Claims of gang rape at orphanage: inquiry

By Miranda Forster
7 News
April 15, 2015

https://au.news.yahoo.com/qld/a/27127579/neerkol-victim-says-she-was-ignored/

A woman has told a national inquiry she was gang raped at a Queensland orphanage and had a child.

A girl was gang raped at a central Queensland orphanage and gave birth to a child when she was 14, a national inquiry has heard.

A woman made the claims at a public hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Rockhampton on Wednesday.

The inquiry is investigating experiences of children at the Neerkol orphanage near Rockhampton between 1940 and 1975.

The woman, referred to as AYL, said she was 10 when she was sent to Neerkol in 1961.

There, she said, she was routinely raped by a male employee from 1963 and in claims aired publicly for the first time said on one occasion the man and two other employees bound, gagged and raped her at the orphanage.

AYL also said at age 14 she gave birth at a girls' home in Mitchelton, Brisbane and the child was taken away by a nun who was present at the delivery.

"I do not know what happened to the baby," she told the commission.

"At the time, I was told that I was having the devil taken out of me."

The woman said she had previously asked for the claims she gave birth to be included in her March statement to the commission but they weren't.

She told the inquiry she was made to scrub the floor with a toothbrush when she told a priest about the sexual abuse she suffered at Neerkol.

The commission has heard the nuns who ran the orphanage meted out savage and arbitrary punishments to children, and some residents were molested by priests who are now deceased.

Former residents told of being locked in rooms and cupboards, starved of food and water, being forced to drink their own urine for hydration and to lick their own vomit.

Formal apologies and compensation offered by the church cannot erase the horrible memories, many former residents say.

"I can never be compensated for the abuse I suffered at Neerkol," the woman known as AYL said.

"I just wish that I could wind back the clock and be a child."

The commission is investigating historical allegations of child abuse at the Neerkol St Joseph's Orphanage near Rockhampton, which was operated by the Sisters of Mercy until 1978.

The public hearing is due to wrap up next week.