AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times
David Ellery
Reporter for The Canberra Times.
Daniel Hopkinson is 36 years old and still waiting for his life to start. The former Marist College Canberra student has never been able to finish a university degree, make a long-term relationship work or secure lasting employment.
“I am now unemployed, under-educated and still looking for a life path,” he wrote in a submission to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on May 23.
He had been prompted to tell his story for the first time in more than two decades by the news the commission was to hold a public hearing in Canberra starting on Tuesday, June 10.
While specific details of his allegations cannot be published as they have yet to be tested in a court of law, Mr Hopkinson names a brother, whose name has not come up in previous investigations and court actions, as an alleged sexual predator.
Mr Hopkinson says while he was never sexually abused himself, he did become aware other children were being molested, and that in his final year at the college in the mid-1990s, he confronted staff over that abuse.
“I was victimised by this individual [the alleged sexual predator] for three years [from year 4] and when I progressed into the senior school, the victimisation continued through different brothers.”
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