Lasting memento of clergy abuse for victim

Sky News
January 5, 2016

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/local/melbourne/2016/01/05/lasting-memento-of-clergy-abuse-for-victim.html

Gordon Hill still has the two shillings, nine pence and a halfpenny he left St Joseph's Orphanage with in 1959.

It is a memento of the 16 years he spent in Victorian orphanages, from the time he was five months old.

With his St Joseph's coins in his car, Mr Hill has twice driven the 3600km from his Geraldton home in Western Australia to Victoria to be at child sex abuse royal commission hearings into the Catholic Diocese of Ballarat.

The 72-year-old is determined his story of physical, sexual and emotional abuse and those of others, including his sisters and brothers, are heard and not forgotten.

'I'm their voice.'

Mr Hill - whose name at 'St Joey's' was 29, his locker number - was five when he was first abused by a priest in the 'horror rooms' downstairs.

Mr Hill said the nuns would thrash him and he was abused by three priests, including by one in a confessional box while parishioners gave their confessions.

After hearing the responses of church figures during the commission's December sitting in Melbourne, Mr Hill still cannot understand the lack of action.

'The cover-up that went on behind closed doors is unreal.'

Mr Hill says an apology means nothing and the only way to hit the church hard is in the hip pocket.

Yet he has received 'not one red cent' in compensation and wonders how it would be possible to calculate redress for what he went through.

'No schooling, sexual abuse, not only physical abuse but mental abuse. How do you measure that?'

It was only after he left St Joseph's that Mr Hill found out he had two brothers and two sisters.

It took 'Hilly', as he's known, five decades to share his story publicly, at the prompting of his wife before she died.

The couple helped 26 foster children, while raising their own family.

Mr Hill has spent the past 12 years as a volunteer helping cancer patients.

'I have achieved something out of bloody well nothing, which takes a bit of doing.'