DUNEDIN (NEW ZEALAND)
Otego Times
May 11, 2019
By Chris Morris
Russell Butler is in a race against time.
The 63-year-old South Dunedin resident and practising Catholic has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and recently received the Last Rites from a priest.
Now he spends his days in his small Melbourne St flat, surrounded by medication and family photos, facing the inevitable.
But, before he dies, Mr Butler has a story he wants to tell.
He wants people to know about the savage beating he says he received as a 10-year-old boy at the hands of a nun from the Sisters of Mercy.
And he wants his story put on record by the pending Royal Commission of Inquiry into historic abuse in state and faith-based care.
Mr Butler told ODT Insight the beating occurred in 1966, when he was a pupil at St Mary’s Primary School in Mosgiel.
At the time, most of the lessons at the Catholic school were still delivered by nuns from the Sisters
of Mercy religious order.
And, more than 50 years on, Mr Butler says he can still recall every detail of a lesson handed down one day by Sister Mary James.
That day, Mr Butler, a self-confessed “cheeky little Catholic boy”, had become embroiled in a playground fight.
Afterwards, he fled – running home to his parents’ house, before returning to school later in the day.
Upon his return, he was punished by the school’s head nun.
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