Having Lived through Hell I Hope True Light Is Now about to Shine

By Tommy Campion
The Daily Telegraph
November 15, 2012

www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/having-lived-through-hell-i-hope-true-light-is-now-about-to-shine/story-e6frezz0-1226516861720

WHEN I saw Prime Minister Julia Gillard on TV announcing there would be a royal commission into child abuse in churches and other institutions I was overwhelmed.

I wept uncontrollably. I became breathless. I walked the floor struggling to breathe, trying to comprehend what I had heard.

It was later I realised it was about time the truth was revealed, perhaps it was time for hope and happiness, not sadness.

I lived in the Church of England North Coast Children's Home in Lismore from 1949 to 1964. Most of those years were full of hatred, bloody brutal floggings, bashings, starvation and sexual abuse. It was a home of hell and fury.

In the time I was there more than 200 innocent children were verbally, physically and sexually assaulted. Fear ruled our lives.

Children were abused, many savagely beaten by the matron, staff and Anglican clergy using belts, electric cords, pony whips and small flexible branches which at times we were ordered to fetch from the backyard.

Unable to do anything, I stood helplessly and watched in fear.

I also watched helplessly as my little mates were violently beaten, screamed at and dragged by the hair to their beds.

Floggings were a day-to-day occurrence for both boys and girls. Sheets were wrapped around the children's faces if they soiled their bed. Then they were paraded through the dormitory as a lesson to be learnt. The staff stood over the children as they were made to wash their sheets. Most of the little ones were too small to reach the tubs.

One beady-eyed Anglican clergyman would flog the children with a thick leather belt from around his long black flowing cassock. At the height of his anger, he would use the buckle.

"You are all bad," he would yell at the children.

"You will all go to hell."

At night, lying in bed in the boys' dormitory, many times, late at night, through the thick concrete walls of the girls' dormitory, I would hear screaming as the matron flogged a child.

The screaming was deafening. But when I heard the child whimpering, it was heart-breaking. One night during Bible study I was asked by the matron to recite words from the Bible.

Because of my fear of her I could not remember the words.

I froze. I said I didn't know the words, I had forgot the words. She asked me again, loudly.

I started shaking. Her anger exploded. She lunged at me, grabbed hold of my bony shoulder and flogged me so violently the skin on my back burst open. She only stopped when she was exhausted.

She left the room, leaving me bleeding on the floor whimpering.

I still have the scars.

The matron was the vilest person I have ever met. She had an uncontrollable temper; she was a violent drunk who was callous and incapable of love and kindness to children. She dished out punishment without a blink of an eye. The torture she dealt out was nothing short of barbaric.

The abuse was systematic and ongoing for some time. The Sunday Mail later reported: "This was open abuse; most kids were witnessing it, on the end of their bed watching it. It was the intensity of it ... it gave me the impression of Dante's version of hell."

This all happened in an Anglican home, a place where children should have been protected and cared for.

Yes, there is a desperate need for a royal commission that investigates abuse in places other than just those connected to the Catholic church.

The Church of England North Coast Children's Home has a dark history of neglect, sexual violence, brutal beatings, floggings, hatred and other forms of sadistic cruelty.

Sadly, some victims have taken their lives, some have been in and out of mental institutions, have had counselling or psychiatric treatment; have succumbed to alcohol and drug use or spent time in prison struggling to cope with the consequences of the merciless abuse that is the legacy of their years of torment in the Anglican home.

At Tweed Heads on the NSW border, in a cold dreary Anglican Church vestry, Bishop Keith Slater made a face-to-face apology to me for the abuse suffered and accepted that indeed the abuse did occur.

In his letter of regret and apology to me, Bishop Slater said: "I accept that there was a duty to care for the residents of the home in the situations in which the church or its clergy (including clergy from St Andrew's Church) or other staff were involved in the care of the residents of the home. And I accept that children at the home were abused by clergy engaged and licensed by the church."

It has taken me years of fighting for the truth to hear those words from Bishop Slater. Hundreds of letters have changed hands. I was swamped with thousands of hours of writing letters, checking facts, investigating, speaking with witnesses and coping with the pain of abuse.

I hope that those people who suffered abuse may get a certain amount of closure from the royal commission - if not for them, for the others.

The commission may take years and it will not be easy for the victims to hear of the painful stories that are about to erupt. It must not direct all the focus on the Catholic church, but also give the Anglican church a good old nudge along.

It is with much suffering that I urge the royal commission to listen to my story. A story of violent abuse and lies and a cover-up of huge proportions within the Anglican church.

Richard "Tommy" Campion is an abuse survivor and former News Limited photographer