AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times
[with video]
Warning: This article contains content that may distress some readers.
A Queensland government official who oversaw children’s institutions in the 1950s helped cover up brutal sexual abuse, a national inquiry has heard.
A former resident of the Neerkol Orphanage near Rockhampton has told a royal commission an inspector from the state children’s department told him to keep quiet about repeated sexual abuse inflicted upon him by a priest.
David Owen, 76, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Thursday he was abused so badly by priest Fr John Anderson as a nine-year-old altar boy at Neerkol, he often bled from his backside.
Mr Owen said when he was a teenager he told a state children’s department inspector called Mr Paterson of the abuse during a visit by Mr Paterson to Neerkol.
“He said that he knew Fr Anderson was abusing me, but I wasn’t to tell anyone, and that if I was caught bleeding I was to say that it was piles,” Mr Owen said.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.