Royal Commission Looks into North Coast Children's Home's History of Child Abuse

By Hannah Puyat
The International Business Times
November 18, 2013

http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/523044/20131118/child-abuse-church-anglican-children-north-coast.htm#.UoonseL0CCp

Decades after the abuse, hearings for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will be opened in Sydney, Nov. 18. With startling allegations of maltreatment and cruelty between 1940 and 1980, it is estimated that close to 200 children were sexually or physically abused at the North Coast Children's Home in Lismore.

One of the children was Tommy Campion, 65, who started the whole class action lawsuit against the institution. Campion has told and retold heartbreaking stories of children who were brutally assaulted and shamed in a daily basis. He recalled that when a child would soil the bed, he would be made to wrap the dirty sheet on his head and be paraded up and down the floor to be ridiculed.

It was in 2006 that Campion thought to speak up as he was having disturbing nightmares about his experiences in the children's home. Upon writing a letter to the church, he was given counseling and thousands of dollars in compensation.

He accepted the counseling but felt that the money involved was hush money and refused to receive any. In the same year, 40 people joined him in the class action lawsuit, 38 of them were paid in out-of-court settlements the next year.

Tony Madden, a friend of Campion, who has worked in child protection for decades warned him that he was fighting an uphill battle but the 65-year-old refused to back down.

As a result of his actions, the Anglican Church is now facing some very heavy allegations as to how this sort of behavior was made secret and swept under rug. Rev. David Hanger, chair of the professional standards committee for the diocese of Grafton, admitted the slow and inappropriate response of the Anglican Church when the suit started.

Hanger has also stated that while most of the perpetrators were dead, those alive would still be made to pay for their actions. More victims are surfacing at present and the Church is doing all it can to deal with the grievances. The royal commission hearings will continue for the next two weeks.

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