At just four years old, Jim Luthy was orphaned when his mother died and his father abandoned him. He was placed under the Salvation Army's care in Goulburn but his experiences at the Gill Memorial Home left him traumatised.

"It was a place of extreme brutality," Mr Luthy told Genevieve Jacobs on 666 Mornings. (Listen to attached audio)

"I was abused physically by a Salvation Army Officer there. I wrote to the Salvation Army, they acknowledged that this officer was an extreme abuser, they didn't dispute that, eventually. They gave me a number of pay outs for the abuse but I was abused physically, bashed, hit and - for anything - abused emotionally."

Mr Luthy claimed between 85 and 90 per cent of children at the home were abused.

"There was always the fear - always the fear - that you would be ... bashed and abused," he said.

"There was no mercy. There was no kindness there at all."

Mr Luthy said in those days no one believed the abuse was going on.

"School teachers wouldn't believe you even though children couldn't sit down because their buttocks were bleeding, they couldn't write because their hands were so badly bruised," he said.

"The police didn't believe you if you talked about being abused. The press certainly didn't, the health department didn't. Who would believe that these things happened? There was a - a veil of silence, I guess, right across the community. People knew what was happening but nobody was prepared to speak out."

In a statement to 666 ABC Canberra, the Salvation Army said it felt deep regret for every instance of child sexual abuse inflicted on children in their care.

"We are grieving that such things happened. We acknowledge that it was a failure of the greatest magnitude," the statement said.

Territorial Commander of the Salvation Army, Commissioner James Condon, said he would attend every day of the Royal Commission's hearings on Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

"He is sickened by the accounts of sexual and other abuses being shared by former residents of our homes and he feels the weight of responsibility for each and every instance of abuse inflicted on children placed in our care."

Mr Luthy, who is now a school teacher in Queensland, has already spent about five hours detailing his story to the Royal Commission and expects to give more evidence in the coming weeks.