AUSTRALIA
Care Leavers Australia Network
Anne Louise Brown
WA Today
13th June 2012
The last man to hang in Western Australia, Eric Cooke, was institutionalised in Fremantle Prison as a juvenile.
Ronald Ryan, the last man to hang in Victoria, was a ward of the state, sent to the Salesian Order’s school for orphaned, wayward and neglected boys aged 11.
And Glen Sabre Valance, the last man hung in South Australia, spent his formative years in and out of state-run orphanages and boys’ homes.
Coincidence? Perhaps not.
In Western Australia the dark reality of abuse committed in state, church and charity operated children’s institutions is slowly bubbling to the surface.
And, it seems, the only way to heal the scars of the past is to hold a royal commission into what happened in these institutions now, for the future, so it never happens again.
Mick Hilder was aged between 13 and 14 when he was sexually abused by WA’s most notorious paedophile, Dennis McKenna, at St Andrew’s boarding hostel in Katanning.
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