David Owen to tell Royal Commission of life of abuse: 'a stain on my brain'

By Joanne Mccarthy
Newcastle Herald
April 13, 2015

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/3007892/david-owen-a-stain-on-my-brain/

David Owen holds a photo of himself from the orphanage days. Photo by Peter Stoop

DAVID Owen was born after his 12-year-old mother was raped, was offered for adoption in a newspaper advertisement, and was physically, sexually and emotionally assaulted for years at an isolated orphanage run by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy.

This week, at the age of 76, he will tell the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse what it is like to live your life with the ‘‘stain on your brain’’ of being abused almost from the day you were born.

Mr Owen, of Maryville, wants Australians to care what happened at Neerkol orphanage outside Rockhampton between 1940 and 1975, when children were out of sight and out of mind of the government that was supposed to be responsible for them.

‘‘The reason why people didn’t believe when we told them years ago was because it was so outrageous and so inhuman, what was done to us. All I can do is tell how it happened,’’ Mr Owen said.

The royal commission will hear from former Neerkol ‘‘inmates’’ like Mr Owen, and examine how the Sisters of Mercy, the diocese of Rockhampton and the Queensland government responded to complaints made by the former ‘‘inmates’’ from 1993.

The royal commission will hear evidence of child sexual abuse by workers, priests and nuns at the orphanage.

In private evidence to Queensland’s Forde inquiry into abuse of children at Queensland institutions in 1999, Mr Owen gave shocking and graphic evidence about years of violent sexual abuse by live-in Neerkol priest Father Anderson.

He also gave evidence about the Mercy nuns who knew of the abuse and provided limited medical treatment for the physical injuries Mr Owen suffered from as young as nine, but also beat and abused him when he reported it.

At the royal commission, he will give evidence about the government inspector who was a friend of the priest and failed to note problems at the orphanage.

In 1999, the Forde inquiry concluded Neerkol was severely under-resourced, the Sisters of Mercy were overwhelmed by the care of hundreds of children at any one time, and children were neglected and physically, sexually and psychologically abused.

The royal commission will consider how the statute of limitations has prevented people from taking legal action.

As a child, Mr Owen was told his mother was dead. As an adult, he discovered she was alive and living in Newcastle. They were reunited and he discovered he had half-sisters.

He cried at the memory of seeing her for the first time and saying ‘‘Mum’’, and her response: ‘‘Son’’.

‘‘You only have one mum. I was with her for 18 years until she died. She was a treasure,’’ he said.

Mr Owen could not read or write when he left Neerkol, but he was good at rugby league. He played in Queensland alongside Wayne Bennett. The two men remain friends. The game was a release from the emotions that churned within him.

‘‘That’s where I let the anger out, on the football field,’’ he said.

The anger that welled up was also the reason he never had a sexual relationship with a woman, or married.

‘‘I worried that I’d take out the cruelty that was done to me on my wife, so I never married,’’ he said.

Mr Owen has had to prepare himself to give evidence at the royal commission.

‘‘The rethinking of it, you’ve got to relive it. You feel the floggings. You feel the fear and the pain. You go back to that time because it’s always there.’’

Mr Owen cried when he pulled out a copy of a Cairns newspaper with a classified advertisement in 1938 seeking ‘‘some kind person to adopt a baby boy’’.

‘‘That was me,’’ he said.

And within a few weeks, he was at Neerkol.