AUSTRALIA
CQ News
Jessica Grewal 19th Nov 2013
CRUEL barbaric and utter hell is how child abuse victim Richard “Tommy” Campion has described the conditions children were forced to live in at Lismore’s North Coast Children’s Home.
Eight years after he first broke his silence about the torment he and many others were subjected to under the watch of the Anglican Church, the now 66-year-old has told his story to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
The whistleblower was the first witness to take the stand at Monday’s public inquiry, which is looking at how the Anglican Diocese of Grafton responded to claims of child sexual abuse at the home and it’s handling of a group claim.
With a cracked voice, Mr Campion painted a confronting picture of a dark place where children as young as toddlers suffered whippings and other physical and sexual abuse at the hands of a “sadistic matron” and two “wicked” reverends who had “no regard for human life, let alone the wellbeing of a child”.
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