AUSTRALIA
The Australian
NICOLAS PERPITCH THE AUSTRALIAN MAY 01, 2014
THE Christian Brothers paid a former child migrant $3000 as compensation for years of rapes and sadistic beatings that drove him to attempt suicide at the age of nine.
However, the payment was on condition that he made no further claims against the West Australian orphanages that have come under scrutiny this week for cruelty and perversion.
Yesterday Edward Delaney told the royal commission into child abuse that he felt forced to sign a document he did not fully understand. He said it was part of a Slater & Gordon class action that he had come to consider a joke. “For what we went through, I felt this was an insult,” he said.
Mr Delaney was among the last of 11 witnesses to give evidence at public hearings in Perth. They were residents at four Christian Brothers institutions in Western Australia between 1947 and 1968.
Mr Delaney was born in England to a mother who had been raped. She could not afford to look after him and put him in a home run by Barnados. The royal commission heard that he was sent to Australia without his mother’s knowledge, and arrived at Bindoon orphanage when he was nine. He attempted suicide the same year.
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