AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
By JOANNE McCARTHY April 13, 2015
DAVID Owen was born after his 12-year-old mother was raped, was offered for adoption in a newspaper advertisement, and was physically, sexually and emotionally assaulted for years at an isolated orphanage run by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy.
This week, at the age of 76, he will tell the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse what it is like to live your life with the ‘‘stain on your brain’’ of being abused almost from the day you were born.
Mr Owen, of Maryville, wants Australians to care what happened at Neerkol orphanage outside Rockhampton between 1940 and 1975, when children were out of sight and out of mind of the government that was supposed to be responsible for them.
‘‘The reason why people didn’t believe when we told them years ago was because it was so outrageous and so inhuman, what was done to us. All I can do is tell how it happened,’’ Mr Owen said.
The royal commission will hear from former Neerkol ‘‘inmates’’ like Mr Owen, and examine how the Sisters of Mercy, the diocese of Rockhampton and the Queensland government responded to complaints made by the former ‘‘inmates’’ from 1993.
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