Harrowing tales at abuse royal commission

Daily Mail (UK)
June 30, 2014

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/aap/article-2674516/Harrowing-tales-abuse-royal-commission.html

"The ones who suicided are the lucky ones; we are the walking dead who remain."

The 66-year-old man who had been placed in the children's home run by the Anglican Church in Lismore when he was two, sat slightly hunched in the witness box at the royal commission hearing.

His evidence, like that of many abuse survivors who told their stories during 14 public hearings into child sex abuse in institutions, was listened to in numbed silence.

In a broken voice and sometimes in tears he told how his six-year-old brother used to protect him, but then his brother was sent to another home.

Forty years later in 2006 the man giving evidence read an article by Tommy Campion, another former resident of the North Coast Children's Home.

He said he cried for days.

In the 1980s he had been diagnosed with depression and attempted suicide several times. He now had leukaemia. In broken voice he told of beatings that left him scarred; of being left at a table for ten hours because he could not eat the food. If he threw up he would be made to eat the vomit.

A priest who seemed kind made him lie naked while he performed a pseudo-religious ritual that involved molesting him sexually.

In tears he told how he ended up doing that same thing to younger children because he thought it was a religious practice.

"I am sorry," he said.

His life has been no life just like many among the thousands of people who are coming forward to tell their stories - often for the first time.

The royal commission hearings have brought to the surface deeply buried traumas that wives have kept from husbands and husbands from wives for decades.

Children of abuse survivors are learning for the first time why their mum or dad could never hug them. A landscape of broken lives, failed relationships, drug use, anger, suicides, bravery and extraordinary honesty while people struggle still for happiness is being painted by these witnesses.

Preparing for and giving evidence is a renewed trauma and the commission always has counsellors on hand to help them through.

Institutions, the Christian and Marist brothers, the Salvation Army, Catholic and Anglican dioceses, the YMCA, Scouts Australia, state run child-protection agencies and police forces across the country are trying to explain how it happened on their watch.

When a Salvation Army witness started to say how different standards of child discipline in the 1960s and `70s might explain why boys were beaten until they bled in homes in NSW and Queensland, commission chair Justice Peter McClellan interrupted to remind her she was talking about criminal assaults.

Brand protection, systemic failures, wilful ignorances, whether it be in the YMCA, the Scouts or the Catholic Church are being uncovered daily at these hearings.

The Catholic and Anglican churches moved abusers when complaints were made.

They kept no records that can now be produced.

In the case of the Marist Brothers, a man who was jailed for 12 years in 2006 was put on a plane to a clinic for sex-offending priests in Canada three days after the order knew police were investigating him for offences dating back years.

One boy he had abused in the 1970s at a North Queensland primary school had committed suicide in 1989 and his father confronted the brother.

Under the terms of reference this commission is looking not just at incidents of abuse but "related matters".

It is under this heading that ledger books are opened and institutions, their law firms, and whatever body is in place to deal with abuse victims who ask for help are being examined.

One such body, the Catholic Church's `Towards Healing' process has come under particular scrutiny and will again. `Towards Healing' was set up in 1996 to give spiritual and psychological help to people who had been abused by priests and religious. It also handled financial redress for the harm done.

Witnesses from the Archbishop of Brisbane Mark Coleridge to church professional standards officers said once insurers and lawyers became involved the pastoral went out the window.

Some abuse survivors who have been through it said it re-traumatised them because they found themselves alone in a process controlled by the very institution that abused them.

The church is still channelling people into the process aided by a now famous court case run by Cardinal George Pell, when abuse victim John Ellis sued.

The lengthy legal battle ended in the decision that the church was not a legal entity that could be sued in these cases.

The leaders of institutions from Cardinal Pell, to Anglican Primate Phillip Aspinall to former Scouts Australia boss Allan Currie have all apologised.

Some like Salvation Army leader James Condon and NSW Department of Families and Community executive Kate Alexander, have even cried, but none have said sorry with the raw truthfulness of the broken man who told of his childhood in a church-run orphanage.

* Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78 or Suicide Callback Service 1300 659 467.