Church ‘denied controlling orphanage where children were abused’

AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)

Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Sunday 17 November 2013

The Anglican church denied it had control of a New South Wales orphanage where children were horribly abused when victims sought compensation, a witness has told a hearing in Sydney.

Tommy Campion gave evidence to the royal commission into child sex abuse on Monday saying that when a group of people pursued the church for compensation in 2005, the response was that it was not a church institution.

Campion, a former press photographer, has become the public face of those who survived the abuse. He was a resident at the North Coast Children’s Home in Lismore, from 1947 when he was two years old until 1964.

He told the hearing he wrote a five-page letter to the Anglican Grafton diocese in 2005 outlining the “complete and utter hell” children went through at the home.

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