AUSTRALIA
The Courier
By FIONA HENDERSON May 20, 2015
CLERGY sex abuse survivor Philip Nagle asked for a minute’s silence following his testimony to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Tuesday.
Mr Nagle was honouring his 12 fellow St Alipius Christian Brothers Primary School pupils who have committed suicide – out of a class of 33.
The shocking statistics were some of the evidence presented about abuse on the first day of the hearings that victims have described as a “carnage” that has fractured Ballarat.
Mr Nagle was repeatedly assaulted by disgraced priest Stephen Farrell when he was a grade five pupil.
“I would know when an attack was coming because he would always remove his glasses first,” Mr Nagle said.
“It was a scary time. I couldn’t work out what I was doing that made the abuse happen because the physical pain made it feel like I was being punished.”
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.