AUSTRALIA
Dubbo Photo News
Saturday, 08 February 2014 Written by Natalie Holmes
Dubbo man Paddy* is haunted by the memories of his boarding school days, where he was abused and tortured at the hands of his primary educator. He talked to NATALIE HOLMES about the bitterness and the brutality.
Paddy* was just a kid when he was abused by a staff member at the Catholic college he attended. At first, it seemed like a lovely place, but the dream quickly turned into a nightmare. Now, more than half a century later, those memories still haunt him and Paddy recalls some of the horrors of that time at the hands of someone into whose care his parents had entrusted him.
“I was a skinny little boy all of 13 years old. He was a fully grown man; he must have been a coward to bash up a skinny little boy in this way. There was something wrong with him.”
Paddy recalls his first taste of violence at the hands of his educator.
“One day, I was walking with my hands in my pockets and he came up from behind and punched me in the back of the head. After that, every chance he got he would give me the cane.”
Singled out time after time, Paddy suffered countless bouts of humiliation, raps over the knuckles, hundreds of canings, beatings with a rubber hose, and even sexual assault.
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