AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Erin Parke

David Francis is not bitter, nor angry. He is simply sad for those who suffered abuse, and are still too scared to talk about it.

“It’s a pretty hard thing to deal with,” he said.

“When you start going back and talking about things, you’re going to bring up your past again, so what happens is it can affect your mental stability. It’s a hard thing to talk about.”

At the age of seven, Mr Francis was made a ward of the state and sent to the Beagle Bay mission, north of Broome.

There he says he was abused.

“Sexual abuse happened on the mission pretty common. Especially in the dormitories, there was sexual abuse going on there,” he said.

The 51-year-old plans to tell his story to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse.

But he is one of…