Child abuse royal commission heads to Western Australia

ABC - The World Today
April 28, 2014

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2014/s3993254.htm?site=perth

SIMON SANTOW: As orphans in England they were promised an adventure and an education in Australia, but instead they were beaten and sexually abused.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is in Perth for the next fortnight to publicly examine four homes run by the Christian Brothers.

The commission will hear the experiences of a number of men and how the Catholic Church responded when presented with the allegations and the evidence.

One victim says the hearing is a crucial part of the healing process but nonetheless, he says, he'll take his suffering to the grave.

Thomas Oriti reports.

THOMAS ORITI: John Hennessey was 10 years old when he was moved from an orphanage in England to Western Australia.

He arrived on a ship at Fremantle in 1946 and remembers the Christian Brothers separating boys from their sisters.

JOHN HENNESSEY: I can still hear the screams of those little kids parted from their brothers and sisters.

THOMAS ORITI: The boys were loaded on a cattle truck and taken to Bindoon Farm School, north of Perth. Most of the school was built by the boys themselves.

John Hennessey says during his seven years there he was beaten and raped.

JOHN HENNESSEY: We had, I think about 14, 15 Brothers there and 75 per cent turned out to be paedophiles. And they used to abuse us at will.

THOMAS ORITI: John Hennessey will give evidence at the Perth hearings.

He says he was stripped naked and flogged for eating stolen grapes from the farm's vineyard at the age of 12, and he's had a stutter ever since.

JOHN HENNESSEY: Medical advice told me that I would take this to the grave, because it was so embedded that medical treatment couldn't treat it.

NEWS ANNOUNCER (archival newsreel): Australia is getting more and more welcome migrants.

THOMAS ORITI: John Hennessey is one of many orphans who were taken to Bindoon as well as other homes run by the Catholic order, including the Castledare Junior Orphanage, St Vincent's Orphanage, Clontarf, and St Mary's Agricultural School, Tardun.

All four homes and eleven perpetrators will be examined over the next fortnight.

The abuse has already been investigated through other inquiries, as well as the book and film Oranges and Sunshine.

(excerpt of trailer for film, Oranges and Sunshine)

DAVID WENHAM (as "Len"): We were processed in here. By the end of that day, I was with the Christian Brothers.

GREG STONE (as "Bob"): Nine years old, lifting rocks the size of my upper body. He had this big knobby stick.

(end of excerpt)

THOMAS ORITI: The Christian Brothers apologised to victims in Western Australia in the 1990s.

The CEO of the royal commission, Janette Dines, says the inquiry will look at the various responses by the Church.

JANETTE DINES: What's been the experience of these men in seeking compensation, in going through the civil litigation process, and also what are the changes that have been made in government department oversights of out-of-home care.

THOMAS ORITI: Francis Sullivan is from the Catholic Church's Truth, Justice and Healing Council.

FRANCIS SULLIVAN: It's incumbent on the Christian Brothers to come forward again and explain themselves, make sure that the truth is revealed.

THOMAS ORITI: John Hennessey welcomes the Royal Commission but says he'll be forever tortured.

He says the Christian Brothers taught him to hate women, which is at the heart of his greatest regret.

JOHN HENNESSEY: This is why I'm not married today, because I felt uncomfortable with women. But I do damn them to the grave that I've got not little Hennesseys running around the place. I would've loved to have had my own children. But I was deprived.

SIMON SANTOW: A former resident of the Bindoon Farm School in Western Australia, John Hennessey, ending that report from Thomas Oriti.