Child Abuse Victim Lewis Blayse's Final Interview: 'Let No Child Walk This Path Again'

By Conor Duffy
ABC News
February 3, 2014

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-03/abuse-victim-lewis-blayse-final-interview/5235734

[with video]

Lewis Blayse had been campaigning to bring the Salvation Army to account for decades after he was abused at a home run by the organisation, but on Friday he gave his final interview to 7.30.

He died of a heart attack that night.

Mr Blayse was abused as a boy in the Alkira home at Indooroopilly in Queensland between 1958 and 1960, and helped to raise awareness of the issue.

The home is currently the focus of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

His daughter, Aletha Blayse, helped him run his blog, which he used to connect victims and provide analysis on the commission.

Today Ms Blayse told 7.30 her father was the happiest she had ever seen him after his interview on Friday and a week of extensive coverage of the allegations against the Salvation Army.

"He was on top of the world, I've never seen him look so happy," she said.

"He said now that the media was paying attention that the word would be getting out."

Mr Blayse's family wanted his final interview broadcast and sections aired tonight on 7.30.

In the interview Mr Blayse said he hoped the final result of the royal commission and the work of campaigners would be that the next generation of children are spared the same pain.

"Let no child ever walk this path again," Mr Blayse said.

"That's the most common feeling I've gotten from people. It may be too late for us but, by God, we never want this to happen again, and if the commission does its job it won't happen again."

Blayse helped get abuse inquiries running

Ms Blayse says her father had worked tirelessly to expose the abuse and was thanked in Queensland Parliament for his work in getting that state's inquiry into the abuse up and running.

"When he started a support group for former residents of children's homes in 1990 there was no talk, no knowledge in the broader community," she said.

At the royal commission today, Justice Peter McClellan acknowledged Mr Blayse's passing.

"His experience led him to become a strong voice for the victims of child sexual abuse and he contributed significantly to the community concerns which led to this royal commission," he said.

As well as documenting the abuse at the Alkira home, Mr Blayse told 7.30 about why the alleged sexual assaults were accompanied by so much violence.

"It was different to most of the other churches and organisations in that it was simply that the boys were too frightened to tell anybody," he said.

"It wasn't even so much that they weren't believed as that they just wouldn't tell anybody because they were so afraid of the punishment."

He said the advice he remembered hearing at the home was: "You tell anyone kid and I'll beat the crap out of you."

The Alkira home is one of four homes being investigated by the royal commission, along with the Riverview Training Farm in Queensland, the Bexley Boys Home in Sydney and the Gill Memorial Home at Goulburn in southern New South Wales.