From: Inside Queensland, March 1998
In late 1997 and earely 1998, scores of former residents of Neerkol responded to a questionnaire seeking information about their experiences in the orphanage.
Numerous letters and face-to-face interviews and endless hours of heart-wrenching and tearful conversations on the telephone followed and revealed, despite the passage of the years, there are many badly damaged people in our community as a result of the Neerkol experience. Here are some of the things they recalled about their lives in and after the orphanage.
"Bloody awful. Our lives have been destroyed. To think they almost got away with it."
"Devastating. It has never left my mind all those years ago."
"It was a nightmare I thought would never end. I still have many sleepless hours."
"Destroyed my life completely - mentally - emotionally - having to have psychiatric treatment for many years. Unable to form any lasting relationship with member of opposite sex. Continual suicide attempts over many years and alcohol problems."
"It affected me in every way. Words are not enough to put it on paper. My chances and my life I can't have back".
"Just about had a couple of nervous breakdowns which put me under psychiatrists for long periods of time."
...
The voice on the answering machine was matter-of-fact and certainly mature. A middle-aged man. His message was brief. Thanks for the questionnaire he had received. He would like to help, but it had taken him two days to work out what it was about and he would not be able to respond. He was illiterate. End of message. Didn't leave his name.
Another victim of Neerkol.
Then a call from someone I did know. And I knew he would have trouble with the letter. His sister, he said, had read it to him, and the enclosed question-naire, but how could he re-spond? He couldn't write. Didn't know how to spell the words.
Anyway, I knew his story, he said. I could fill in the blanks and tick the correct answers.
Then a conversation with a 36 year-old. She had been at Neerkol too. I inquired about the questionnaire.
No, she said, she had not read it. But then she said she wasn't used to reading.
She knew the word "butter" on the packet when she went shopping and which one was "margarine". She knew "was" and "it" and "at" but no, she could not read the newspaper. And certainly not the question-naire. And anyway she could not respond. She could not spell the words.
Another victim explained she had eventually learned to read when her kids went to school. She had helped them with their homework. There was a down-side to the arrangement though. Thanks to Mum, the kids got stuff wrong. She said she could now do "add ups" and "take aways" and the shopping, but not "multiplies" or "divides". No way, she said.
...
"My experiences at Neerkol were very traumatic and have had an effect on me that has re-mained with me to this day. The effect on me was devastating. It has never left my mind all those years ago.
In brief I can tell you I went through mental and physical torture.
I was a bed-wetter and only four years old and had my head held down in a full bucket of water until I couldn't get my breath and that was a daily thing as I was so frightened I would wet every night …
Also the canings were horrific. I was caned continually on my legs and bottom until the nun drew blood and seemed to get satisfaction from doing it …
I can remember lining up for school and I would be shaking from head to foot as I knew the beatings were going to start as soon as I got into that classroom.
There was one incident when a nun died and we were forced to line up and kiss her dead body and because I was so frightened in having to do this a nun held me over the cold body until I kissed her …
I will never forget the empty looks on the kids' faces. None of us ever smiled. It was such a cold, hard place. The cries of the kids being belted, "Please stop! Please stop!" are still vivid in my mind ...
...
I lived a nightmare. No one would believe it. Physical abuse and cruelty, psy-chological abuse and tor-ture, sexual abuse. I am re-ceiving psychological counselling.
When I was old enough to be put out to work I was taken by [a public servant]. On the way I told him I was glad to be leaving because of the sexual abuse I had suffered .
He turned the car around and took me back to Neerkol and told them what I had said. Sister E flogged me and then called Mr Kelly who took to me with his whip. [The public official] waited while this happened and then took me to where we had to go. He said I was crying because I was leaving the orphanage. The people on the farm treated me like a slave.
I had complained to [the in-spector ] once before about being thrashed by Sister C with a broom handle. When he came to orphanage I told him what they had done. And was flogged for it.
He could have stopped what was going on but he was part of it.
Once I had to wear a dress for a week because I talked to a girl. There was such fear.
If they called out your name you would pee or even shit yourself because you knew what hey were going to do to you.
I only once got a Christmas present.They took it off me the next day because they said I didn't deserve it.
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