Mission to compensate Darwin abuse victims

Aboriginal sexual abuse victims from the Retta Dixon home in Darwin look set to receive financial compensation from the Christian mission that ran the facility.

The Rev Trevor Leggott, head of the Australian Indigenous Ministries (formerly the Aboriginal Inland Mission), has filed a statement with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

In documents viewed by AAP, which have not yet been made public by the commission, Mr Leggott said AIM had decided to sell a property in Winmalee in the Blue Mountains in NSW to compensate victims.

He had previously told the commission he hadn't considered selling part of the organisation's $4.1 million property portfolio because he didn't want to curtail mission work he thought was "more constructive" than compensating victims.

But AIM had reconsidered, and has put forward the property - estimated to be worth about $350,000 to $380,000 - "in recognition of its moral obligations".

"As a consequence of the sale of this property, this will have a very significant negative impact upon AIM's activities in NSW," he said.

John Lawrence SC, for six of the victims, classed Mr Leggott's apology - made during his evidence to the commission - as abject, insincere, cloying and given at "five-minutes-to-midnight".

In a statement through lawyer Mark Thomas, Mr Leggott said the decision to sell the property proved the apology was genuine.

He denied the suggestion by George Georgiou, who represented three other victims, that AIM might have undertaken a cover-up of the abuse to protect its reputation.

"Not for a moment is it submitted that AIM (and then-superintendent Reg Pattemore) were perfect; however they were acting very much according to the tenor of their times - with all of the legal and cultural inadequacies that attended it," he said.

The property sale is expected to take two to four months.

It is not known when the funds would be made available to victims, nor how many victims would receive it beyond the nine that gave evidence to the commission.