A 62-year-old man has described how two senior staff members at the Turana youth training centre, where he was a ward of the state, repeatedly raped him from the age of 15 and how he was bashed by a police officer to whom he reported the abuse.
Giving evidence to the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse on Monday, Norman Latham said he was made a ward of the state in 1962 when he was 15 because his father repeatedly bashed him and his mother, prompting him to run away from home frequently.
Shortly before he turned 16, he was transferred to a unit in Turana by a senior staff member, Eric Horne, who is now dead, and was taken to the office of another senior staff member, Douglas Wilkie.
“I remember Wilkie saying to me, ‘While you’re here, your arse belongs to me,’ ” Latham said in his witness statement, which was read out to the commission by a friend as Latham sat in the witness box, his head in his hands.
Latham was told that if he did not obey Wilkie and Horne, he would be sent to a maximum security area of the facility where the worst juvenile offenders were kept, the commission heard.
“I was raped by Wilkie nine times during my stay,” Latham said.
He recalled one occasion where Wilkie said to him, “You’ve had no visitors, you have no family, your arse belongs to us.
“He took me to the infirmary, locked the door behind me, took my clothes off … then pushed me against the bench and raped me,” Latham said. “He ejaculated, then gave me tissues to wipe myself.”
He was also raped by Horne 10 times. The first incident occurred three weeks after Wilkie had first raped him. It happened in the same locked, windowless infirmary where Wilkie had sexually assaulted him, he said.
“I remember crying that night and feeling scared that I was being abused by two senior screws,” Latham said.
“I felt Horne and Wilkie were tag-teaming me and raping me whenever they felt like it. I felt paranoid and stressed, and didn’t know when they were coming for me.”
Frequently throughout the assaults, Latham said he was told that no one would come for him, and that he risked being sent to the maximum security area, known as “Poplar House”, if he said anything.
Latham ran away from the institution six times, the commission heard, but was always returned by police, who did not ask him why he ran away. Once, Latham told a police officer, “If you stopped the arseholes from raping us, you wouldn’t have to chase us.”
The police officer delivered him a blow to the head that required medical treatment, the commission heard, but he was then taken back to Turana.
When he left Turana, Latham said he began drinking heavily, and he told the commission he had tried to take his own life several times since.
“My wife and I met in 1968 and it took me 12 years before I told her what happened to me,” Latham said. “I only told her because she asked me why I was having so much trouble sleeping.”
Latham said his flashbacks returned when his wife died in 2006. With the encouragement of a counsellor, he reported the abuse to police in 2009.
The commission heard that in 2013 Wilkie was charged with multiple sexual assault offences relating to the sexual abuse he allegedly perpetrated against Latham. After a committal hearing, Wilkie was committed by a magistrate for trial.
But four days before the trial, Latham told the commission he was told that the trial would not proceed.
“I was not given an explanation, apart from that it was too hard to get witnesses and evidence. They ripped the rug out from under me. I got drunk. I got depressed.”
He had since applied for compensation to the state of Victoria for the abuse he had suffered in state care, but justice was more important to him.
“I want justice. I want Wilkie and Horne accountable for what they did to me,” Latham said.
Brent Young QC, representing Wilkie, said his client “emphatically” denied the allegations against him. He did not cross-examine Latham.
Survivors of abuse and their supporters applauded Latham as he stepped down from the witness box at Melbourne’s county court.
For the next fortnight, the commission will hear from witnesses about abuse that occurred to wards of the state while they were housed in state-run care facilities.
The hearings continue.
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