Among the wooded hills above a tiny hamlet in New South Wales, where farmers tended their cattle, and horses grazed on lush pastures, the most unspeakable sexual horrors were taking place — yet no one in the neighbourhood knew a thing about the depravities.
The adults and even the children themselves who were players in an incestuous tragedy had become adept at keeping their terrible secret to themselves for three years — and for three generations before that.
Or so it was, until concerns about the unwashed state and the slow-learning abilities of the youngsters — when they occasionally turned up at school — began to spread among education and welfare authorities.
What officials found when they raided a ‘bush camp’ in the hillside valley has since shocked not only Australia but the world.
For the disturbing events that had taken place among the gum trees are now making their mark as among the planet’s worst-known cases of incest and inbreeding.
In this family of 40, brothers and sisters slept with one another, as did aunts, uncles, fathers and daughters — the tragic result being more physically or psychologically damaged children coming into the world.
Had the camp, some 20 miles from the nearest large town, not been raided by police and child protection officers in June last year, it is likely that those newly born damaged children would themselves have gone on to have sex with one another and start a new generation of misfits.
The Australian family court has, in an extremely rare move, allowed the terrible details to be made public, but it has ordered that neither the family, the location of the valley nor the name of the nearest town be identified to protect the minors.
But, with the help of police, I was able to find the valley which today gives no clue to the sickening scenes that took place there.
Ten of the children had parents who were probably father and daughter or brother and sister. They lived in buildings similar to this. File picture
CULLED FROM NEWSONE
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