AUSTRALIA
The Australian
TESSA AKERMAN THE AUSTRALIAN MAY 19, 2015
A former student of Ballarat’s St Alipius Boys Primary School has told the Royal Commission it was a place of “true evil’’ where up to dozen of his Year 4 classmates went on to take their own lives after they were abused.
Giving evidence on the first day of hearings in the Victorian town, Philip Nagle said he was abused as a boy at the school and his home by St Alipius teacher Brother Stephen Francis Farrell.
He told the commission that he knew when an attack was coming because his teacher would remove his glasses.
Mr Nagle said the abuse started when he was in grade five and had Brother Farrell as a teacher.
Later that year at a school camp, Mr Nagle first thought of taking his own life.
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