Two women who were teenage wards of the Home of the Good Shep­herd in West Leed­erville in the 1970s say they were se­ri­ously ne­glected af­ter they es­caped sex­ual abuse else­where.

The women, Dal­las Phillips and Ch­eryle Bandy, say they were of­ten sur­rounded by un­scrupu­lous male “vis­i­tors” to the house, and saw a re­la­tion­ship with a man as their only means of es­cape.

The home closed in 1979, and its main build­ing in Ruis­lip Street is now oc­cu­pied by the Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion of­fice.

Ms Phillips and Ms Bandy spoke af­ter a rally out­side the Supreme Court last week, where vic­tims of child sex abuse called for compensation from the Catholic Church.

“Good Shep­herd need to be ex­posed for what they did to girls like me,” Ms Phillips said.

“Good Shep­herd need to be ex­posed for what they did to girls like me,” Ms Phillips said.

“The nuns did noth­ing to pro­tect us.”

Ms Phillips came to the West Leed­erville home at age 13, af­ter she said she was sex­u­ally abused by monks in the Bene­dic­tine com­mu­nity of New Nor­cia.

“New Nor­cia was an evil, evil place,” Ms Phillips said.

“There were monks and priests who treated Abo­rig­i­nal chil­dren like play­things.

“The head nun of Good Shep­herd was told [by the state] that I needed coun­selling af­ter what hap­pened to me at New Nor­cia. But I never got any. For a long time I blamed my­self.”

Ms Bandy said she was 12 when she ran away from a foster home where she lived for four years and was sex­u­ally abused.

Ms Bandy said she was 12 when she ran away from a foster home where she lived for four years and was sex­u­ally abused.

At 13, she was sent to a house in West Leed­erville’s St Leonards Av­enue run by the Home of the Good Shep­herd.

“There were lots of boys and men vis­it­ing of all ages,” she said.

“The girls would bring men around.

“There were no bound­aries, it was just an open house.”

Ms Phillips said about nine of the girls had older boyfriends who were con­stantly around the house, along with other men who were os­ten­si­bly vis­it­ing the nuns.

One of the reg­u­lar vis­i­tors used to try to “en­tice” girls for sex.

She said she met her first hus­band, who later phys­i­cally abused her, while she was at the Home of the Good Shep­herd.

Ms Bandy said she and other girls in the house would “run amok”, and would of­ten sneak away from classes to buy al­co­hol.

She said a nun from the home would take the girls on ex­cur­sions to places where the nun could gam­ble.

“She’d take us to the TAB and teach us how to bet,” Ms Bandy said.

“She’d take us to the trots at Glouces­ter Park on Fri­day nights.”

Ms Phillips said: “We should have been get­ting an ed­u­ca­tion, but she loved to gam­ble.”

Both women said they were shep­herded to­wards a life of me­nial labour, work­ing for wealthy Catholic fam­i­lies.

“All the school­ing was home eco­nomics and mak­ing us good women for our men,” Ms Phillips said.

The two women say they are con­sid­er­ing civil ac­tion against the church out­side of the Na­tional Re­dress Scheme, but have not yet de­cided whether they will in­clude the Or­der of the Good Shep­herd in their claim.

Good Shep­herd sis­ters provence leader Sis­ter Mon­ica Walsh would not com­ment on the two women’s cases, but said the sis­ters were com­mit­ted to re­mem­ber­ing, hon­our­ing and ac­knowl­edg­ing for­mer res­i­dents.

Good Shep­herd sis­ters provence leader Sis­ter Mon­ica Walsh would not com­ment on the two women’s cases, but said the sis­ters were com­mit­ted to re­mem­ber­ing, hon­our­ing and ac­knowl­edg­ing for­mer res­i­dents.

“In do­ing so we wel­come and strongly sup­port the Na­tional Re­dress Scheme,” Sis­ter Walsh said.