AUSTRALIA
ABC – The World Today
ELEANOR HALL: First let’s go to Ballarat where the royal commission into child sexual abuse has been hearing extraordinary evidence of brutality in Catholic institutions in the Victorian city.
A survivor of abuse at the St Josephs children’s home has told the commission he was sexually abused by priests and physically and mentally abused by nuns at the home.
Samantha Donovan is at the commission hearing in Ballarat.
And a warning some of the evidence you hear will be disturbing.
So Samantha, tell us a little more about this witness who’s been revealing his story today?
SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Well the first witness today Eleanor was Gordon Hill. He’s 72 now, but as a young child he was put into the St Josephs home in Ballarat, which was run by the female Catholic order, the sisters of Nazareth.
This is what Mr Hill told the commission about the conditions in the home.
GORDON HILL: We were, as I used to call it the drones of St Joeys. We didn’t go to school and we did all the work around the orphanage. Most of us didn’t even know our full names and we were just given a number. My name was 29 because that was my locker number. I didn’t learn of my surname until I was 10 or 11 years old. When I started working that’s when I started working in the kitchens. Sister Reginald who was in charge of the kitchen said to me ‘not another Hill’. I didn’t know what that meant.
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