'A better chance'?: sexual abuse and the apprenticeship of Aboriginal girls under the NSW Aborigines Protection Board

Between the two World Wars in New South Wales, under the administration of the Aborigines Protection Board, Aboriginal girls and young women were taken from their families to be placed as indentured domestic workers in white household under a so-called apprenticeship scheme. This article examines this policy, for an apparent paradox emerges. Despite a rhetoric of protection, of giving Aboriginal girls ‘a better chance’ than they would otherwise have had if they remained with their communities, the records reveal an usually high illegitimate birth rate to girls in apprenticeships, while close examination shows the authorities made no effort to stem what amounted to a pattern of sexual exploitation of these young Aboriginal servants.