AUSTRALIA
The Australian
Legal fight like being ‘raped’ again, child abuse victim tells Royal Commission
Dan Box
From: The Australian
November 20, 2013
A VICTIM of child abuse, who was repeatedly raped as a young girl while living in a children’s home, has said the experience of dealing legally with the Anglican church about what took place “was like being raped all over again.”
In a written statement read to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse this morning, the woman said she was seven when she entered the home in the Anglican Diocese of Grafton, northern NSW.
“It smelt terrible, like faeces, and there was vomit on the ground. I could see about twenty-odd children, all dirty.
“It was horrific. I felt that I couldn’t protect myself or my sister … I was told, and I heard other children being told, that we were ‘dirty little heathens’,” her statement said.
Decades later, the woman joined roughly 40 other former residents seeking compensation from the church, which spent years challenging their claims and denying any liability for what happened at the home.
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