AUSTRALIA
ABC News
Survivors of clergy abuse in the Victorian city of Ballarat have told their stories to the royal commission.
Transcript
PETER LLOYD: Over the past fortnight, the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse has returned to Victoria.
For survivors, being heard can be a healing moment.
Many of those coming forward are from the central Victorian city of Ballarat, where many children were abused in schools and orphanages in the 1970s.
From Ballarat, Kate Stowell reports.
KATE STOWELL: The St Alipius Primary School was one of the first Catholic schools built in Ballarat during the city’s famed gold rush era.
But in the 1970s, it became notorious for the sexual and physical abuse of children at the hands of certain priests who ran the school.
Steve was enrolled there as a young boy when his family moved to the area.
STEVE: I originally came from Melbourne with my parents in 1970. We moved to Ballarat East which was only about half a kilometre from St Alipius. I started there in Grade 3 with the Christian Brothers. I was abused by three of those brothers. It started with Brother Fitzgerald in Grade 3, Brother Dowlan in Grade 5 and also Brother Farrell in Grade 5.
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