A Beautiful Boy: Ray's Story
Author: Ray Leary; Kate Shayler
Date: 2016-04-05T14:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Biography & Autobiography; Personal Memoirs; Biography; Memoir; Crime;
Description: Would you know if your child was being groomed by a paedophile? "This is a true story. " Here is a life that exemplifies the need for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Yet Ray, the man, is not completely broken and is a tireless advocate for men abused as children. How did such strength come out of such a dreadful childhood? Born into poverty and violence Ray is forced to beg for food on the streets of inner Sydney. Sent to a children's home at Kincumber when he is caught stealing, he learns more about abuse and violence. When he is expelled for bad behav
Publisher: MoshPit Publishing

Table of Contents

Title Page

Disclaimer

Thanks

Prologue

CHAPTER 1. Nanny Sheehan

CHAPTER 2. Where I Belong

CHAPTER 3. Runaround Kid

CHAPTER 4. Yasmar

CHAPTER 5. Kincumber

CHAPTER 6. Werrington Park

CHAPTER 7. Social Worker

CHAPTER 8. Slippery Slope

CHAPTER 9. I’ll Drive

CHAPTER 10. Daruk

CHAPTER 11. Guns

CHAPTER 12. Too Old

CHAPTER 13. Don’t Go Back

CHAPTER 14. Where Are the Roses!

CHAPTER 15. Shattered by Wood

CHAPTER 16. Court Again

CHAPTER 17. Back to Bite

CHAPTER 18. Thousands Become a Few

CHAPTER 19. Charged

CHAPTER 20. Journey Home

Appendix

Further reading

Find help

Copyright statement

A BEAUTIFUL BOY

RAY’S STORY

by Ray Leary
with Kate Shayler

This is an IndieMosh book
brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

PO BOX 147

Hazelbrook NSW 2779

http://www.indiemosh.com.au /

Copyright 2016 © Ray O’Leary and Kate Shayler

All rights reserved

Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author and publisher.

Disclaimer

We have made every effort to disguise the paedophiles and other criminals in this book unless their crimes are already on public record. We would like to name and shame each and every person who abused Ray and his mates but the law forbids it. Litigation could be just another set of legal hurdles to confront. Therefore any likeness to a real person is accidental.

Ray Leary and Kate Shayler

Thanks

I, Ray, want to thank some people for different things as far as getting this book out goes.

To my children – I thank you for your support and love and for telling me that you are there for me. Thank you for your patience and for your gentleness in telling me some times that you don’t want to hear any more about my struggles. I could not be more proud of you both. You are what matters to me more than anything.

To Lou, my ex-wife – I thank you for your strength when I had none left in the hard times. Your support made the best times possible too. I thank you for raising our wonderful children so well. I will always treasure the memories of the love we had.

To Ross Duncan – you have been there for me in the toughest of times, with words of wisdom or as the bearer of disappointing news. You have kept me together through my darkest times and saved my life. You have been a rock in Journey Home.

To my mates Greg, Rod and Lenny – you are honest, loyal and true friends and I could not have gone through revisiting my life for this book without you.

To my nephew Derek – thank you for all your support on those early morning trips to see my kids. It would have been really hard without you mate.

To the journalists who have listened, heard and acted – Presenter Quentin Dempster and Producer Greg Miskelly from ABC’s 7.30 NSW, Kate McClymont, John Hill and Daisy Dumas for reporting on issues that matter.

To Wattle Place – thank to the staff especially Matt my counsellor for the support and help you have given to me and my family.

To SAMSN – I thank you for being there for me with help and advice.

To Kate Shayler – thank you for putting it all into words despite the difficulty of the subject.

To readers – thank you for reading my story. Please do what you can to be aware and protect vulnerable children. Please listen and act.

Ray Leary
April 2016

Prologue

I need to get to work at the beach just after lunch. No, I’m not a bronzed, confident life guard but I am a life guard of a different kind. I’m middle aged, parts of me are broken and parts are wearing out. I can still pass for a cheerful younger bloke though.

My job is to watch young people, but not the ones who know who they are and where they’re going. No, the kids I look for are the down-and-outers, the street kids and kids on the edges. If they’re in the crowd, they’re most likely looking for stuff to nick. I can pick them. That’s the first lot I watch.

The other lot I watch are the men, hands in their pockets, eyes roaming. Unaware of me. They scan the crowd then they zero in on the same kids I’m watching. When they fix their gaze I follow it and there’s usually one or two boys who they’re focused on. Sometimes the men have picked their targets and made contact already. My job is to get to the boys before the contact goes any further. The kids are in danger.

They remind me of my brother Eddy when he was a happy go lucky kid. He could ride a boogie board better than anyone. He was just beautiful to watch with his long blond hair and easy, fluid style. That was before they got him.

Starting a conversation with the boys is easy for me. I’ve had a lot of practice.

‘G’day. Nice board. Christmas present?’

‘Nuh.’

‘Didn’t nick it, did ya?’

‘Found it. Over there. Them men said I could ’ave a go.’

‘I want you listen carefully, all right? Do they want the board back?’

‘Yeah.’

‘All right. What I want you to do is leave the board right here, get on a bus and go home.’

‘No way mate. This is so cool!’

‘It is cool. But when you give the board back, you’ll have to pay for it.’

‘No, they said we can have ’em all day if we wanna. They don’t want no money.’

‘No they don’t want money but you will have to pay. I know. I’ve been there, done that. They’ll make you pay in other ways.”

‘Ah fuck off mister. You don’t know shit.’

‘I know shit mate. And I’m here to tell you, you are headin’ for the same shit I got into. I’m tellin’ you. Stay away from them men! They’re trouble.’

‘They try anythin’, I’ll tell ’em to fuck off!’

‘They’re bigger and stronger than you and they won’t let you go. Come on. I’ll buy you a milkshake and we’ll talk.’ I can’t offer anything as good as a boogie board but a milkshake usually does it. I take them to the milk bar. I tell them my story and then it’s up to them to stay on the beach or get straight on the bus and go. I can only hope they make the right choice.

Tomorrow I’ll go for the boys on bikes in the bush. I know the places they still get taken to.

CHAPTER 1.
Nanny Sheehan

‘Mum, Mum, look at …’

‘No my boy. Not Mum remember? I’m Nanny. Your mum lives a long way away.’

Nanny Sheehan was my carer when I was a child. I was born in 1961 in the Royal Women’s Hospital, during a time when all you needed was love, according to The Beatles. Mum probably whispered to me, ‘Hello number six. Little Raymond. Oh I hope I can keep you.’

Mum and Dad were living in inner city Darlinghurst and each of her six children was taken away by Child Welfare, except for one who died of cot death. Dad was Aboriginal but us kids weren’t officially Stolen Generations. We were the kids of a violent alcoholic father and a battered wife who couldn’t manage us.

Sis tells me that after my birth I went home with Mum but before I was two years old, I was sent to Nanny Sheehan. Sis and my elder brother Ken kept in touch but Wendy and Suzanne were adopted out and never heard from again. Sis and Ken were in homes. Homes were places where lots of kids, maybe thirty, lived with only one or two adults in charge of them.

Nanny lived in a terrace house with her son who was a quiet alcoholic. The house was in the inner city and there was a lot of public housing around where the poorer people stayed. Many of them were Aboriginal. Mum says now that when she visited me at Nanny’s I’d often be in a shitty nappy and looking grubby while I slept peacefully in my fruitbox bed. I felt nothing but loved and cared for with Nanny. I’ve got nice memories like going upstairs for a bath and Nanny would come in and turn the pilot light on for hot water then she’d turn the gas up and the water would get really, really hot.

Nan would say, ‘Keep your hand away. That’s too hot. We don’t want to burn you.’ I was safe and clean.

My Nanny was very strict and she set patterns for me to live by as I grew to school age. I knew what I had to do. If I was playing in the laneway I knew I had to come inside before it got dark. I knew I had to fold my clothes up and put things away. I knew not to be a cowboy or Indian inside and not to swear.

My memory of early days at school is mostly a blank but I do remember being thought of as a nice, polite little boy with a good sense of humour. The routine when I got home from school is still as clear as it was then: inside, bag down, have an apple or an orange for afternoon tea then upstairs, bath, come downstairs, sit on that lounge, don’t move and watch a television: Flipper, Gomer Pile, McHale’s Navy, Bugs Bunny, the News with Roger Climpson, TV off, have tea at the table, play a bit then inside and go to bed. It was always the same, day in, day out. I had friends to play with at school and at home: hopscotch, hula hoops, jacks, marbles, bonkers, chopsticks with my Chinese friends, and I had Nanny to come home to. Everything seemed to be traveling well and I was secure and happy.

Then an awful day came. Nanny sat me down beside her and said, ‘Nanny is getting old and sick and she can’t look after you any more my boy. You are going to go and live with your mummy soon and I’ll come and see you there. I will always love you but I can’t take care of you any more.’

I felt numb. Just numb. I didn’t know what to say.

Nanny said, ‘She is your mum and that’s where you belong.’

Looking back on it I can see that Nanny was old. She was a little, grey haired lady with a walking stick and those little chubbly legs that old people have. She had huge glasses. Huge! I used to muck around and call her Mr Magoo.

‘Mr Magoo, you’ve done it again!’ I’d taunt her.

Nanny used to chase after me with her little feather duster. She never caught me. I was getting too big and fast while Nanny was slowing down.

When I stopped running about she’d sit me down and say, ‘I am not young enough to be chasing you up and down stairs. You do not speak to Nanny like that! You do not disrespect me. Your Nan has done a lot of hard work for you and you need to treat her better.’

‘Yes Nan. I will Nan,’ I’d say. I was her little blonde haired, blue-eyed boy.

Mum tells me now that she had been to visit me but a lot of times Nanny wouldn’t answer the door. When she was allowed in, Mum only stayed a very short time because Dad wanted her home, in line with his rules. Sometimes when Mum came to visit I’d hide under a blanket next to Nanny. I remember Nan saying, ‘Here she comes!’ and I’d get under there. I wouldn’t come out because I didn’t want to go out with Mum. She was a stranger. Nan didn’t do anything to stop me hiding. Mum would have a fat lip or a black eye sometimes and that scared me. Mum says Nanny was very hard and strict but I loved her and she loved me. I can remember Sis coming knocking on the door too. She’d go into the kitchen with Nan and I’d hear all this muffled, quiet talking then Sis would go.

The day Nanny told me I had to go away was a very hard and emotional day. We cried together and my grief was only relieved a little bit by her promises to come and see me. I felt like I was being sent to the other end of the world, wherever that was.

Well, the dreaded day came when I was about six. I did not want to go. I was sitting on the lounge with Nanny and we were both crying.

Nanny said, ‘I don’t want to fight with your Mummy about this my boy. You are Mummy’s boy and you deserve to be at home with her. Nanny’s getting a lot slower these days and I just can’t look after you.’

Nanny got out her handkerchief, dried her eyes and mine and then we heard the knock on the door.

‘This is Mummy. You be a brave boy and give Mummy a big cuddle. Then you will go home with her and have a very, very good life.’

‘But I don’t want to go!’

Nanny comforted me, stopped me crying and opened the door. I saw Mum there with her handbag on her arm.

Smiling down at me, she said cheerfully, ‘You’re coming home to Mummy Raymond!’

I had to go, so I did. We walked down the road and I thought we would have to walk for ages, miles and miles, but it wasn’t long before she said we were home. I was just so happy. It was so close to Nanny’s!

Mum put some money in the television meter so we could watch it and I fell asleep on the lounge. Later I heard Dad fumbling about at the front door then he came in with a brown paper bag under his arm. He was all smiles, asking Mum how she was and what she’d been up to.

‘Well, I’ve been to get Raymond. He’s here for good now,’ Mum told him. ‘Nan’s taken sick so she can’t have him any more. He’s back home with us.’

‘Aah. Come here and give your dad a hug,’ Dad said. He stank of beer and I hated hugging him.

That happened every afternoon: the fumbling with the key in the door, the brown bag of booze, slumping on the lounge stinking of beer and pretty soon it was like that ad on TV: ‘Hey son, go and get your Dad a beer, will you.’

CHAPTER 2.
Where I Belong

Living at Mum’s was nothing like living at Nanny’s. There were no rules, no times to do things and no-one seemed to care where I was or what I was doing. There was no food, no milk and no help to get to school on time. I missed something. I missed Nanny’s care. I wanted Mum to mind and care, like Nanny had. I can see now that she tried her hardest but she’d married a very abusive drunk and her role was to try to keep him happy. In this house I could do what I wanted, when I wanted to and how I wanted to, most of the time. I could swear and shout and nobody gave a shit. It was a battle to get food to eat and I was always hungry. Dad got up and went to work first then we got up and had bread and dripping. Mum went to work next leaving me and two year old Eddy, born while I lived with Nanny, alone and unsupervised. There was no food in the house until Mum got home after work.

I soon began to feel really unsettled as well as really hungry. I became a little run-around kid who wandered the streets, asking people for money or food.

‘Can you buy me somethin’ to eat?’ Or, ‘Sir, can you give me a shillin’ to get some food?’

Mostly they were men in suits and they would snarl, ‘Get away you filthy brats! Go on. Get away!’ Or ‘Get away you little bastard! Go on. Piss off!’ As if you were dirt. No-one had treated me like dirt before and I resented it; there wasn’t any compassion in them. As the years passed I came to hate those people stuffed into their nice clothes and shiny shoes, but for now I just wanted food and someone to care about me. I wanted to go back to Nanny. Always.

Mum would cook us meals at night and we would sit around the table to eat. Sometimes it was bread and dripping but Sunday dinners were always good; chicken and vegetables, always something nice. Mum tried as hard as she could but during the day, when she was at work, there was not a scrap of food in the house.

Dad pissed all his money up the wall so Mum had to work because we needed her wage to feed us, clothe us and pay the bills as well as keep Dad in drink when he’d used up all his pay. With no-one to set rules, I made my own fun and found my own food. I’d steal fruit off the fruit cart or wherever I could get it. No-one taught me how to steal. It’s something I learnt because I was starving hungry and when I got money, I discovered a world of pleasures that I had no idea existed. Fish and chips, Luna Park, lots of friends, pin ball parlours, lollies.

I tried to earn money too. I made friends with the local mortuary people; I think it was called Killen’s Funeral Parlour though it’s a restaurant now. After school and in the school holidays I used to go up to Killen’s and ask the man if I could work for him.

‘You can wash the cars,’ he’d say. ‘Make sure you wash the wheels and make sure the rims are shiny.’

So I’d wash their hearses and he’d pay me one shilling. Sometimes it was only threepence but I didn’t care. I’d go down to the local shop and buy red and green lolly apples or sherbet with licorice or Cobbers or Freckles. Then I’d go home or play with my friends in the lane.

Sometimes I’d get in a dark, cold mood. I don’t know why but I’d stay away from them for weeks on end. They always welcomed me when I was ready to come back.

There was a big muscly man who collected carcasses from butchers and I’d go in his truck with him sometimes. He threw the carcasses on the back of the truck to take to a factory where they were turned into animal food. He’d pay me a little bit too for helping to carry stuff to his truck.

I went to Crown Street Public School and everything was going along all right there for the first year when I was with Nanny but by the second year I was a mess. I’d seen my father in drunken rages and learnt to run and hide from him. I remember those rages so clearly.

He’s so angry! I have to hide. I run into their room by mistake. No time to get out so I hide under their bed. He’s shouting horrible things at Mum. I can hear his fist land on her. He throws her on the bed that I’m hiding under. Mum’s screaming, ‘No Ray. No more. Please. No more.’ He keeps bashing and shouting at Mum then the mattress is bumping up and down.

He leaves Mum crying on the bed and goes downstairs.

It’s been quiet for a while, except for Mum’s weeping. I come out from my hiding place and lie down next to her. I try to comfort her. She looks horrible.

Generally I was a bit of a live wire, much too active for adults’ likings. I used to like going down to Darlinghurst Police Centre where they parked their big F100 vans. To me they were huge and I loved hanging around them imagining driving one around with sirens wailing and lights blinking all over the town.

I’d be up before anyone and out of the house looking for adventures, not school. There used to be an old water reservoir nearby and it was falling apart, so there were always good bits and pieces to play with there. One day I went up to the top of the building to have a look at what was happening. I leaned on the old rusty railing but suddenly I’m falling and I land in a sand pile. I’m all right but there’s blood pouring out of my mouth and my bottom lip seems to be hanging off. I dash home to Mum. She walks me quickly to St Vincent’s Hospital where we’ve been before when Mum or any of us get hurt by Dad. I have an operation where my lip gets sewn back on. Mum thinks the surgeon did a very good job.

Bad behaviour became quite normal for me. I was always stealing food but I discovered there were places I could steal money from too. I saw ladies coming out of stations with their bags on their arms and I discovered bag snatching. I became pretty good at it. I’d grab the bag and run as fast as I could. I was never caught. Sometimes I just got lipstick and powder puffs with bank books. I didn’t want them so I chucked them away. I just needed money.

Another place to go was building sites. While men were at work I’d scout around the site to see if I could get in without being seen. I’d sneak in to the locker room and steal money or whatever valuables they’d left there. Straight after they started work in the morning or when they went back to work after lunch were the best times. I was quick and cunning, like a little ninja. I could hide easily if I needed to but I always checked that it was all clear before I went in anyway. It sounds as if I was confident about what I was doing but in fact I was terrified and desperately hungry.

When I look at it as an adult, I see that men with families to support would come back to their lockers after a hard day’s work and find their valuables gone. But for me back then it was all about eating and having fun.

After I was loaded up and out of there I’d find my mates in Prince Alfred Park or Coronation Park then we’d buy food and go to pinball parlours, the pictures, the beach or whatever entertainment we could afford. Any money I got I spent. I didn’t want to take any of it home for Dad. It all had to be gone before dark.

The day had to come when people from ‘Child Welfare’ would come to our place to find out why I hadn’t been at school. Often I wasn’t at home or at school when they came. Mum would say later that they had been and that they said I wasn’t at school. I think I told Mum I was. I didn’t want her to know what fun I’d been having or about the stealing.

One of my favourite bits of fun was mischievous. I waited until I heard the postie’s whistle then I’d follow him around. I’d wait for him to do all the letters in our street then I’d take them out of the letter boxes, mix them all up and deliver them to any old box. Then I’d do another street and another. Yeah! That was more fun than school. Child Welfare soon heard about it.

Case Notes

… when the family is unable to see the lad to school the complaints from neighbours and others in the district are very heavy … there has been a definite upsurge in stealing escapades and truancy …’

H.M.T. District Officer, Sydney

After a while I met my older brother Ken. He was back home for a short time from a boys’ home. He was a bit older than me.

If he was there when an argument started between Mum and Dad he would get into it too.

Mum would say to Dad, ‘Where’s all your pay Ray? We’ve got rent and bills to pay. We’ve got to buy food and you go and piss all your pay up the wall with your mates.’

Dad didn’t like being talked to like that so he’d hit Mum in the head or stomach and Ken would try to rush between them and take the punch for Mum.

Dad would shout at Ken, ‘You want to be a man do you and stand up to me!’

Mum tried to stop it. ‘No Ray. No. He’s only a kid.’

Dad was unstoppable with fire-water in him. He’d grab Ken by the hair and beat him until Ken managed to get to the front door and run away.

It was just like that when Dad attacked us kids. Mum tried to protect us. There were many times when Dad seemed so angry he didn’t care who he bashed so Ken often copped it instead of Mum. But Mum copped it too. I got so scared I usually ran away when it started.

Ken never stayed long. He’d get sent away to a boys’ home again. Eddy and I had nowhere else to go so there were times we couldn’t dodge Dad’s fists. There were times when he thought I needed disciplining so he banged my head against the bricks to drum it in that I should do something or other or not do it. I often didn’t know why I was being punished and thrown at the wall. I hated him. He disciplined us beyond discipline, using his fists, his bottles, the wall or his belt. When Dad was home, all I wanted to do was get away.

I used to run back to Nan’s all the time and plead with her, ‘I want to come back Nanny. I want to come back. Please!’

She’d clean me up and let me stay for a while but then she’d always say gently, ‘You can’t come back my boy. You live with Mummy now.’

So I’d go. I felt lost, like I didn’t belong anywhere if Nanny couldn’t take me back. I’d roam the streets, the safest place for me now. I’d stay out wandering until I thought Dad would be asleep then I’d jump over the back fence and, if no lights were on, I knew it was safe to go in to bed. He’d gone to work before I got up in the morning.

Dad could find something to fight about any time. He had been a street fighter and those blokes used to punch on like you wouldn’t believe. Bare fisted punching. The Paddington Police and Darlinghurst Police knew our family in the 1960s. When our mob came down from Gunnedah, it was a bloodbath. They’d fight each other anywhere.

I was too young then to understand it all but my brother, when we drive around now, can tell me all the places where fights went on with Dad and other people and where Dad knocked him out too.

He says, ‘That’s where I had a fist fight with Dad. Don’t know what that one was about. Yeah, there too. Told you about that one did I?’

Dad was so mean as well as violent when he was drunk. Mum would put her hair up in a pony tail and he hated that. If she wore makeup he hated that too. We used to tell her how nice she looked and he would come home and say, ‘You fuckin’ whore! Don’t you ever wear that makeup. Ever!’ Thud!

When the drunk sobered up a bit he wouldn’t remember what he’d done. He’d look at Mum and say, ‘Clean yourself up, bitch,’ as if he had no idea why she was ragged and bruised and covered in blood.

Christmas was a time that Dad spoilt every year by drinking and then fighting. Dad and Mum would decorate the house and make it look lovely but over the years I’d think to myself, Here we go again. Christmas. Is it going to be good or is it going to be bad? I’d start to think it was going to be good but then a fight would start. It was usually Ken and Dad though a couple of times it was Sis and Dad because Sis was staying out with her boyfriend and not coming home.

On Christmas morning we would come down, have breakfast and open our Christmas presents. That part of the day was joyful. Mum would try her heart out to make everything right. She brought the joy but Dad wasn’t that sort of man.

Mum would say, ‘Oh, did Santa bring you that!’

Dad would be sit there grumbling, ‘Come on. Let’s get this over with. I want a beer.’

When he didn’t have drink in him he was all right, from what I remember. He didn’t play with us or want to spend much time with us but he wasn’t violent. He was like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: drink changed him. We might all be sitting down watching TV and Dad would have a drink, then another and another and another, and then a fight would start for no reason that we could see.

The police would bring charges against Dad sometimes. Mum had to give evidence at court but she often wouldn’t go because she had a fat lip and a black eye and bruises that she didn’t want people at court to see. She was afraid Eddy and I would be taken away too, so she let the charges drop.

Once I heard a cop say to Mum, ‘You can’t keep doing this, bringing charges but not turning up at court.’ He was an older cop who seemed quite fond of Mum.

School was pretty hard going for me when I went there. My teacher couldn’t help me much but she did think that people who said I picked on Eddy just didn’t understand that brothers always compete with each other. She said I’d just have to learn to do it more gently. She talked with me one day and asked whether Dad bashed me up sometimes.

I said, ‘Yeah. He bashes Mum and Ken too.’

One time, a welfare person asked me if I wanted to go on a holiday to the beach. There was a place called Stewart House where kids could go just for fun. Fun was my favourite thing. Me and some other kids met some teachers at Central Station and got a bus out to the beach. There was a whoppin’ big house and they told us that all the boys would sleep in this dormitory and the girls in another. I had a really good time there. I was happy. There was food and friends and outings and nice teachers and even the rules were all right.

Today we’re going to the beach in a bus. On the way we sing and the girls start a song where they have to name a boy they like. I hope one of them picks me. At last Dierdre sings my name. I look at her and I fall in love for the first time.

We all pour happily out of the bus and take off down to the beach. I realise my mate from the boys dorm hasn’t come so I go back to see if he’s all right. I find him sitting in the driver’s seat of the bus pretending he’s driving. He’s getting out by the time I reach the bus but I want to have a go of driving so he goes off by himself and I get in.

The driver says, ‘Want a turn? Well you’re a skinny little fella so how about you sit on my lap.’

‘Yeah. All right.’ I’m allowed to pretend to drive! It’s great fun. The real driver tells me when there’s a corner or a red light and I make the motor noises. He accidentally touches me between the legs but he says sorry and we keep driving. Up a hill, change down the gears, around the corner. Red light.

‘Very good!’ the man says. ‘Do you like lolly pops?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, come over to the seat with me. I keep driving ‘til I reach the depot then I go to the seat where the man is. He’s got his belt undone and his fly too. He gets his dick out.

‘Touch it,’ he says.

He holds my hand and makes me stroke him.

‘I don’t wanna do this,’ I say. ‘I wanna drive some more.’

‘Well let’s pretend this is a lolly pop and you can suck it,’ he says.

‘Nah. I wanna drive the bus.’

‘Just try it,’ he says.

Why does he think I want to do that when there’s a bus to drive and a beach to play on? He holds my head down but I don’t want to do it and I tell him I just want to drive the bus. I get up and tell him I’m off to the beach and he says to wait while he tidies up. When he’s ready I head off to the beach with him following behind.

I find my mate and say to him, ‘That guys bonkers! Did he do anything to you?’

‘Why? Did he do anything to you?’

‘I asked you first.’

‘Not telling if you don’t tell me first.’

‘Not tellin’ if you don’t.’

‘He made me put my mouth on his prick.’

‘Yeah, me too.’

We give up talking about it and go to build a castle with a tunnel and a moat and a bridge. My Princess Dierdre can play here if she wants to. I might even have a swim if we’re allowed.

When we get back to Stewart House they give us hot chocolate and we go to bed. The other boy wets his bed and when the teacher comes in he just says, ‘Oh, we all have little accidents. Don’t you worry. We can fix it up.’ The boy is so upset about it the teacher has to comfort him. I don’t hear what he says but later in the day I get called in to say what the bus driver had done.

‘These are very serious things you’re saying. We’ll have to write a report and we’ll make sure that man is not here for the rest of your stay.’

When us two boys walk out of the office we sing, ‘He’s gunna get in trouble. He’s gunna get in trouble’‘ The other boy seems very pleased about that but for the rest of the week he‘s not cheerful like he was before. I feel a bit confused but I just want more happiness so off I go, looking for more fun.

Neither of us tell the others about it. For me it’s just an odd thing that happened.

It’s time to go home and we get taken to Central Station. Dierdre and I want to see each other again so she gives me her phone number. We haven’t got a phone at home so I’ll ring her from the phone box.

It didn’t take me long to nick a coin and ring my girlfriend. She invited me to her house at Whalan and I had some money left so I went to visit her. We were really pleased to see each other and we played and talked and listened to music at her place. Before I left her house I pinched some one and two dollar notes from her Mum’s purse so I’d have enough for my next visit and for some food. When I visited again she told me her brothers were in trouble for taking money from their mum’s purse. I didn’t tell her it was me.

One day when I was eight or so I got up bright and early as usual and crept about the house so I didn’t wake anyone. I found Mum’s purse and when I grabbed it, a brown envelope fell out. Inside the envelope were a lot of two and one dollar notes. I never would have gone to Nan’s purse but here there were no rules so I helped myself. I was so rich and excited.

I went and woke up all my Aboriginal friends. We had a call sign to let each other know we were about.

‘Key orky!’ I’d yell and they’d all come out to play.

We had fish and chips first. There was still a lot of money left so we thought we’d go on a train to Circular Quay then a ferry ride across the water. Still more money so we decided a full day at Luna Park would be good.

We had a great time; a day of laughing and eating and fun. We went on all the rides together: the Big Dipper, the rotor, dodgem cars, all the rides. My favourite rides were the bumper boats and the dodgem cars. We loved smashing into each other and laughing our heads off We ate whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted: fairy floss, chips, battered savs, hot dogs. You name it, we had it. We were kings. I just loved having all that money. I won lots of little ornaments at the stall where you put balls into the clown’s moving heads. Well, I didn’t exactly win them but the man there was kind when I kept going back.

He’d say, ‘Oh well, you nearly got it so I’ll give you this.’ Then he’d add, ‘Got any more tickets? Well, have another go!’

My prizes were little carriages and animals and even a smoking monkey. I thought they’d be great presents to take home for Mum. By the time it was getting dark there was no money left so we all piled on the ferry to cross the Harbour then got the train back to our inner city homes.

I walk inside, exhausted but happy. Dad is tanked and he goes to the toilet. Mum is cooking tea.

‘Hello Mum,’ I say happily, but I don’t show her the big surprise yet.

‘Where have you been?’

‘Out.’

‘Out where?’

She sure does need cheering up!

‘Just out with Les and the boys. We went to Luna Park!’

‘Sit down Raymond,’ Mum says.

I sit down at the table. Something seems to be wrong.

‘What have you got there?’ she asks.

Aha. Now I can make her happy. ‘I’ve got presents for you Mum. A lot of presents!’

I give them to her but she doesn’t look happy. She takes them out of the bag and looks at all the lovely things. I couldn’t read so I didn’t know the marks on them said Luna Park.

‘See Mum. Aren’t they nice! There’s even a monkey and when you give him a smoke he blows smoke rings!’

‘Raymond, I want to ask you something and I want you to tell me the truth.’

‘Yeah. All right.’ I look at her and I know something is terribly wrong.

‘Did you go to Mummy’s purse and take an envelope out?’

‘No.’

‘Well, where did you get the money to get all these?’

‘A friend,’ I say bluntly.

Mum keeps asking questions. I keep fibbing. The toilet flushes. Dad comes in, takes us to hell.

‘Did you take it or didn’t you take it,’ he demands.

‘No,’ I tell him. I’m getting scared.

‘Don’t lie to me!’ With his fist he whacks the back of my head and knocks me off the chair.

Mum puts a note in. ‘Don’t you hit him! He’s only a boy.’

‘Did you steal off your mother?’ he yells.

‘No Dad. No.’

‘I’ll belt you!’ he shouts. He takes off his belt.

‘Did you steal from your mother?”

‘No Daddy. Didn’t. Didn’t.’

He flails his belt across my shoulder. I struggle to get under the table as the belt lands hard again. He comes after me under the table and Mum’s trying to stop him.

I scream, ‘All right, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you. Don’t hit me no more!’

‘Get upstairs,’ he seethes.

I’m terrified and trembling all over as I try to run up the stairs. He’s after me belting my legs all the way. I run to the bedroom, try to push my bed against the door. Not strong enough. He’s here whacking me again and again. I crawl under the bed. He throws the mattress off, tips the bed over to get at me.

I’m screaming for Mum. She’s here. Tries to stop him.

‘He’s never going out again,’ Dad yells.

Eventually he goes away.

Mum hugs me while I cry then she fixes the bed up and we sit down.

‘Raymond, is there any money left? Any at all?’

‘No Mum. I spent it all.’

She tells me to go to sleep and she’ll see me in the morning.

‘Love you,’ she says as she goes.

I haven’t finished crying when all hell breaks loose downstairs. Mum is screaming and I can hear him thumping her. I get up and go down. He’s got her by the hair and he’s beating her with his fist. She falls and as she falls she hits her head on the table. She struggles up pleading, ‘No more Ray. Please, stop. No more.’

It’s no use. I realise that I should never have taken the money.

She’s covered in blood by the time he shouts at her, ’Go on! Get upstairs to bed with your bastard son!’

He turns. Sees me. He goes ballistic again. He grabs my hand and yells, ‘You know what I do to people who steal? Do you know what I do!’

He drags me by the hair to the front door, puts one hand in the doorway and shuts the door on my fingers. The pain is unbearable. I scream. Pass out. When I come to, Mum is screaming and pulling his hair, trying to make him stop. He drags me up, still boiling with rage. He gets my other hand and shuts the door on my fingers. I pass out again.

Mum brings ice. My fingers are all bleeding and broken. There’s so much blood! She cradles me in her lap and says, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’ She puts me to bed but later she gets me up and takes me down to the kitchen. She checks my fingers.

‘They’re all busted. We’ll have to go to the doctor.’

She lifts her head as she’s talking and I see her fat lips. Blood is still coming out of her nose and she’s got slits for eyes.

Mum and I walk to the emergency part of St Vincents Hospital.

They look at Mum and ask, ‘Did he do that?’ She says he didn’t.

When they ask what happened to me Mum says I fell down the stairs and bent my fingers. I started hating her too at that moment. I couldn’t believe she’d say that when I was in so much pain. The hospital people xray my fingers then put them in splints and bandages. As she works on me the nurse says quietly, ‘I know what really happened. You don’t have to tell me. I really know.’

They send us home in the early hours of the morning with some painkillers to help me sleep. Dad is asleep. Mum tells me to put my pyjamas on and go to bed and she’ll see me in the morning. She kisses me goodnight.

Dad has gone to work when I get up next morning. I run to Nan and tell her what has happened. We both cry but she says, ‘I can’t look after you, my little boy. You have to go back home.’

I go home. Watch television. Before it’s time for Dad to get home, I go out and wander the streets until dark. Mum leaves the door unlocked as usual so I can creep in and go to bed. I hate being here even more and I’ll spend as little time here as I can.

About six months after I left her and got into so much trouble, Nanny moved away to a retirement place in Pile Street, Marrickville - too far for me to run to. We kept in touch though.

CHAPTER 3.
Runaround Kid

I only stayed in Mum’s house for about another year and it was the worst year I’d had so far. Since that night when Dad broke my fingers I started getting migraines and I’d vomit and get gastric. Welfare sent me to stay at a residential place called Royleston in Glebe for a break. It was a sort of shelter and I went there a few times. It was safer, more calm than home.

Case Notes

24 November, 1969

Raymond has been a problem and very disturbed child for some years. He has been attending the local child guidance clinic for more than three years and although receiving sedation there has been no improvement in his behaviour. The lad is instinctive in his actions and particularly within the home is unable to control his actions other than to satisfy his immediate needs …

The home is violent in atmosphere and the lad is accustomed to being bashed for both correct and delinquent behaviour … His behaviour outside the home was quite sound although he was returned to Royleston last Tuesday on both parents and the lad’s request. Raymond’s behaviour when under proper supervision is relatively settled and there has been no major problem at the school.

H.M.T. District Officer, Sydney

I started behaving really bad at school. What I wanted was for someone to listen, really listen to me and make me safe. I wanted them to control me and what was happening to me. I couldn’t say the words for it all but that’s how I felt. My teacher could not make me learn; I tried to do the work but if I couldn’t do it, I’d give up and have a tantrum, throwing myself around on the floor. If another kid was getting what I thought was too much attention, I’d do a really good tantrum. I used my tantrums to try to get what I needed: attention.

I got to a certain stage in my school work and I just couldn’t go any further. ‘One plus one is two. Two plus two is four,’ and so on but then I’d get stuck. Unless I had a piece of paper and I could put dots on it and count them, I couldn’t do maths. I wasn’t much good at reading either and there was no more of Nanny saying, ‘Sound it out. Sound out the letters and then you’ll know what the word is.’ Truanting was the best way I found to deal with it when the tantrums didn’t work.

Somebody organised for me to be tested by a clinical psychologist. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I thought I was all right really, just a skinny little runt living his life as best he could, except for the tantrums that people started calling ‘fits.’

I realised that somebody at Crown Street Public School thought I was a terrible, terrible kid who ran around the place making trouble because he couldn’t function properly. They wanted to find out why, so tests were set up. Nanny had moved so she couldn’t take me for the tests and she thought Mum and Dad should do it anyway. They took time off work and went with me.

Case Notes

24th November, 1969

The clinic has been pressing for some time to have the lad removed from this home … the lad’s behaviour is a direct result of his home environment … They told me he was excellently behaved whilst away at a Red Cross holiday home recently.

H.M.T. District Officer, Sydney

I remember sitting with someone and playing with blocks and shapes. That was nice. I didn’t like them asking me lots of questions though so sometimes, a lot of the time, I didn’t bother answering.

Case Notes

5th December, 1969

Raymond scored in the borderline defective range of cognitive functioning. However, it seems likely that this low performance reflects cultural factors in the home background and that his real potential is a little higher.

J. Meys,
Psychologist

The judgement that I was retarded stayed with me and because of the way my future went I never had much schooling. It also drove a rift between me and my elder brother because he would tease me and tell my friends that I was ‘a retard’ or ‘a spastic.’

Today when I talk to Forgotten Australians, it turns out that most of us have ’borderline retardation’ written in our files. That makes you wonder doesn’t it? I know that there are things that I don’t know but I don’t feel that I’m retarded. Just uneducated.

None of my mates bothered with school back then so I didn’t much either any more. We truanted and did what we liked: breaking and entering, smashing stuff, stealing, begging, whatever it took to get food and fun.

Sometimes we didn’t bother going home at night. We just slept rough. There was a place in Central Park that was pretty good. It was a round building that we could climb up onto and sleep there with the other homeless kids. Those kids were often from families where their parents were alcoholics and didn’t give a shit about them.

I think I’ll go up to Taylor Square today. I get the green and white bus to Waverley. Dad works for the Council here but I don’t want to see him. I roam the streets and I come across a construction site. I walk around it to find out if there’s a locker room. There is so I sneak in. This screwdriver will get me into the lockers. I bust about ten open. That will do for a start. I put things into my bag and I’ll do more if I get time.

Suddenly two men come in! I’m off. I can outrun them. Shit! One grabs me and it feels like it could be Dad the way he gets stuck into me with his fists. He lands punches wherever he can while I try to step and dodge. It really hurts. While he punches, he says, ‘Give me that. Come on. Give me that,’ and he grabs my bag, the one I always take to put my loot in. There’s no way out. I’ve had it.

The other man says, ‘I’ll call the cops.’

I’m crying and pleading, ‘Let me go. Let me go.’

All the other workers start coming in for morning tea. They all pitch in to work out who owns what from my bag and they all get their stuff back.

One of them says, ‘Let the little runt go. We’ve got our stuff back.’

Another bloke turns me around so I’m facing the door and he says, ‘Thank your lucky stars we’re letting you off this time!’ Then he boots me up the arse and out the door.

I run and run and run. I don’t know where I’m going.

I end up at Bondi Beach and I wander around there crying for quite a while before I remember I’ve got a couple of bob on me, so I buy some chips. I sit back down on the beach and eat my chips and cry some more and think how lucky I was that they let me go. It’s not dark enough to go home so I have a swim then I wander around to the rocks and chuck stones in the ocean. When it’s dark I head home, sneak inside and go to bed.

Around the Darlinghurst area there was a Lebanese boy who had a stump leg and we used to call him Jake the Peg. He hated that so I called him Stumpy. He was older than me and more functional. He lived in a house near school so every day I had to walk past him. He had the eye for me but I was really scared of him. At first I never talked to him because he looked creepy but as time went on we became friends somehow.

Stumpy could get into the school by a manhole and in the roof space it was like a little cubby house. I was curious about the place so I went with Stumpy one day. Stumpy had his girlie magazines there and when he showed them to me I wasn’t a bit interested. I was only eight. Others kids were having sex there even though they were just kids. There was a little girl with a nice pink dress and Stumpy said she and I should both undress. I was easily led back then. She might have been too, she was so young. I remember her tiny little breasts. When I got my clothes off a kid called Mark grabbed them and ran. I was furious. I took off after him in the nuddy but I thought I’d better go home and get some clothes. I had to get from George Street school back to Denham Lane, crossing busy roads, with no clothes on. It was so embarrassing but I made it by hiding behind parked cars then dashing to the next one. There were cars going everywhere. I bolted across the road and ran until I finally got home.

I banged on the door and shouted, ‘Open the door! Open the door!’

Aunty Rosie opened it and said, ‘Where are your clothes?’

‘Doesn’t matter. Let me in.’ I pushed past her and found some clothes to put on.

Case Notes

Rosie is intellectually handicapped and unable to maintain satisfactory standards although she was frequently asked to do housework.’

District Officer, Sydney

Dad’s sister, Aunty Rosie, had come out of Callan Park Mental Hospital where she’d been put after she was gang raped. Now she lived with us. She was put in charge of Eddy and me.

I was so angry about Mark taking my clothes, I could not let it go. The next day at school it still hung on me and I just wanted to throttle him. I had been a nice, sweet little boy but since living at Mum’s I had become a very angry, aggressive little terror. It was fist fights with Mark in the playground that day but a teacher broke it up.

Mark would try and get me on the way home from school. I was sure he would. So, because it was time for Mum to finish work too, I decided to walk with her so he couldn’t try anything. He guessed my plan and Mum was a bit late so I kept going without her. I was outside a fruit shop in Crown Street when Mark caught up with me and it was on. We both wanted to hurt each other and I wanted to pay him back for what he did to me. Mark ripped a board off a fruit box and whacked me on the head with it. He didn’t know there was a nail in the board until it stuck in my skull. I fell down with the nail stuck firm and the slat of wood hanging on to it. Mark took off.

The fruit shop owner came dashing out and told me to stay still and that someone was calling an ambulance. As he put padding around the nail the ambulance man said he couldn’t just pull the nail out because it might have gone into my brain. I saw Mum coming towards us so I told him who she was. They took us to St Vincents Hospital, x-rayed my skull and found it was safe to pull the nail out because it hadn’t reached my brain. I think that Mark was put off getting me after that.

Sometimes there was a real reason for me not going to school and Mum would take me to work with her. She was a tea lady at Vera Fashions in the city and we’d go up in the lift that was driven by a man who was nice to Mum and me. He probably saw Mum go in with black eyes from Dad beating her. She could never take time off or she wouldn’t be paid. I would help Mum with the tea and coffee.

Mum did other jobs there as well. I saw her clean filthy toilets and pick up hand towels that people just dropped in the urinal or on the floor, too lazy to hang them up. There were no rubber gloves in those days and Mum took pride in making those places shine.

Mum was such a hard-working woman. Trouble was, she’d come home and feed and look after the bastard, my old man. She didn’t deserve that. After he went to work in the morning, I’d go into her room and sit on the end of her bed or get in with her and just hug her. Sometimes she would cry and say, ‘I hate that bastard. I hate that bastard.’

But she stayed in her house and put up with him because she still had me and Eddy at home. She would always tell us, ‘You can’t tell anyone what happened. Never tell anyone what happened.’ We did what she said.

It’s not that Dad was completely bad. If he wasn’t drinking he could be all right. You could sit down and have a talk with him or have a wrestle with him but as soon as he got grog inside him he was off. You couldn’t trust him. I remember a few times when I was sitting at home watching TV with mum then dad came in the door with a bunch of flowers that he’d ripped out of someone’s garden.

He’d say to Mum, ‘Here these are for you.’

Then he’d come over to me and Eddy and say mocking crankily, ‘What are you still doing up? You should be in bed.’

Mum would soften him up and say, ‘Oh, I just let them watch TV for a while.’ Dad would give in if his mood was right.

His good times with us were almost completely overshadowed by the bad times. The fear of those bad times kept me running around the streets and finding fun where I could. In school holidays there used to be council community centres where we could play pool or table tennis or do crafts. I used to hang around in the Coronation Park one quite a lot or the Aboriginal one in Redfern. There was also a centre in Moore Park where you could play basketball and another in Erskineville where they taught acting. I really enjoyed that. They would give you little cartons of milk, strawberry, chocolate or vanilla. If I could, I’d steal that and sell it to people in the street. If the staff complained about me or reported me, I’d be back later smashing the place to pieces. If I saw money there I’d take it, even if it was in a handbag.

The list of my crimes was growing almost daily and pretty soon the police picked me up. I went to Ashfield Children’s Court on twenty second December, 1969. The Judge gave me a warning and said that I had to stay at home, go to school and stop stealing. If I agreed to that, I was allowed to go home with Mum. I agreed.

CHAPTER 4.
Yasmar

Nothing changed at home. Mum had to work because Dad was so unreliable. My welfare file says that he saw his wages as his own and spent them all indulging himself.

Soon I was in trouble again. I went to a Centre that had reported me to the police before, to laugh at them and say, ‘See! Yous can’t keep me in! Yous can’t stop me doing what I want.’

Report Form

On the morning of 23.12.69 there was an immediate complaint from the staff of Brisbane Street Children’s Health Centre that Ray was causing concern both in the building and in the grounds. The social worker told me that Ray was very excited and that he had been interrupting interviews and destroying play equipment at the centre … the centre has attempted to assist this lad although it is significant that Ray frequents the centre and shows very disturbed and excited behaviour … the lad was seen at home and warned and it is noted that both parents were ‘out’.

H.M.T. District Officer, Sydney

I took to staying away from home, truanting and stealing again. I got caught by the police and the copper at the desk told Mum and Dad, ‘Raymond is in trouble again but this time I don’t reckon you’ll be taking him home. He will be charged and probably committed.’ I had broken the conditions of my bond that the judge had made.

Report Form

At no time during the period since Ray was released from Court on 22.12.69 has his behaviour been satisfactory. His trial at home has resulted only in behaviour far worse than before his first appearance in this Court.

H.M.T. District Officer, Sydney

This time I was charged with being an ‘uncontrollable child.’ Uncontrollable? Mum and Dad never even tried to put a leash on me.

The Child Welfare Department people told the court that our family was well known to them and they thought I’d had enough chances to behave. The Judge said he was so tired of hearing what I’d been up to that he’d come to the conclusion that it is time he ignored Mum’s tears and pleading that she be allowed to take me home.

He said, ‘You have finally done it now Raymond. I have no option but to make you a Ward of the State. You will be held at Yasmar until you can be transferred to an institution and there you will stay until you are fifteen years old.’

Fifteen! How would I survive without seeing Mum for all that time? I wondered. I was eight years old then and it felt like a very long time, even to a boy who wasn’t much good at school.

Mum was sobbing. ‘No! You can’t make him a State Ward! I’ll find somewhere to take him. Not a State Ward!’

Later I discovered that Mum had been a State Ward herself and that she’d lost all contact with her second and third daughters after they were made State Wards. The judge said that if Mum could find a church home to take me, he would not declare me a Ward of the State.

Meanwhile I was to be held at Yasmar Juvenile Detention Centre, a place where kids were held until they could be placed somewhere permanent. They could only hold you for thirty days but my stay was extended while mum tried to find a non-state place for me to live.

I was taken to Yasmar in a police car and the escorting officer took me to the person in charge, handed over the documents and left me there, scared stiff and crying. A guard took me down the back of Yasmar where there were huge high walls that must have been brick but they were covered with tin so you couldn’t climb them.

All the boys are playing king ball. I watch the game and hope I’ll be all right here. After king ball time is over we line up, we march through to have showers.

‘Halt,’ the officer shouts when we finish.

‘Turn,’ the officer shouts. We turn.

‘Forty six,’ he shouts.

Boy forty six, who doesn’t have a name in here, steps forward and shows his palms, the back of his hands, his neck, ears, knees then spreads his bum cheeks for inspection. Then he goes to the dining room. Then boy forty seven is called forward. The boys do their part of each ritual without talking. Talking is forbidden.

The food is slop. I can’t stomach ‘frogs eyes.’

‘Don’t like it. All right. Go and put your nose in the corner,’ the guard says after I vomit it up. Frogs eyes will be my next meal too.

‘Still won’t eat it. Get to the corner.’

And they’ll keep serving it up, until I have eaten it.

There are three dormitories in Yasmar and I think there’s about twenty beds in each. I‘m frightened, lonely and caged.

It was a dreadful place day and night. You saw all these boys marching and you didn’t know what to do. You saw officers whack boys across the back of the head and you didn’t know why. You stripped off your clothes, picked up a towel and lined up for a shower. There were six shower cubicles without doors or curtains so the guards could check what you were doing. You washed your hair, washed behind your ears, washed everything really fast then you came out and stood in front of an officer. You showed him your ears, neck, one hand, other hand and so on, all in order, so he could make sure you were clean. Quickly put your pyjamas on. Got into bed. Lots of boys cried themselves to sleep quietly and I wasn’t sure why yet. Were they all as lonely as me?

You got up in the morning, stripped your bed and made it again then ran to line up while the guard checked the beds. If he’s not satisfied he pulled it all apart and ordered you to make it again. I had to watch the other boys to find out what to do so I wouldn’t get whacked over the head. I didn’t always understand and I started getting whacked over the head too.

Generally I got on well with the officers at Yasmar and there was one in particular I got on really well with. He gave me sweets or his Sunday dinner because he doesn’t eat the slop they served up here.

Today the nice guard says, ‘Come on Raymond. You can come and help me feed the donkey.’

Feed the donkey? That will be fun.

All the boys look at me as if something dreadful is about to happen and they don’t want me to go. I’m puzzled. Maybe the donkey bites. Down we go to a room that has a big steel door that he opens and we go inside. There’s a furnace for hot water but there’s no donkey.

‘Grab yourself a shovel,’ the guard says, ‘and throw the coal in the donkey. Like this.’

The furnace is the donkey. There’s no real one so I just do as I am told. I shovel and shovel and shovel.

‘Take off your T-shirt,’ he says after a while.

I take my t-shirt off. The way he’s circling me and looking at me makes me start shaking like a leaf. I can sense that something bad is about to happen. He tells me to put the shovel down and come over to him. I have to do as I’m told. This is Yasmar. He has undone his trousers and he tells me to touch him. Then he tells me to go down on my knees. I don’t want to. He pushes my head so hard I can’t stand up. He forces his dick into my mouth. I gag. I can hardly breathe. Then there’s stinking warm stuff I have to swallow.

I never knew stuff like this goes on anywhere. I’m so angry. I hate that man.

I soon discovered that he had all us boys doing whatever he wanted. Everyone knew if you were sent to the boiler room with him, it’ wasn’t to feed a donkey or even just to shovel coal. Now I understood why boys cried themselves to sleep. I did it too but now I had another reason to. When others boys were taken away with particular screws, I cried because I knew what would happen. If certain guards were on duty at night, I knew what might happen.

If you wanted to go to the toilet during the night, you stood at the end of your bed and thumped the floor three times. The screw came down, unlocked the door and yelled, ‘Hurry up!’ You went through the hall, down the steps, turned right and into the toilet. Then you came back up and he locked you in the dormitory again.

Sometimes the guard followed you into the dormitory and jumped in bed with you and made you do things you didn’t want to do. When I heard the key jingle in the lock, I lay there thinking, Not me, not me. Oh please, not me. It was the same when the shift changed. You looked through the bars of the window to see who was coming and you thought, Oh God. It’s him.

The guard on duty had the pick of the crop, whoever he wanted. He had the key to the dormitory and he had all night until six in the morning to do what he wanted before the next prick came on duty.

A lot of us wet the bed rather than go to the toilet at night.

‘You dirty filthy scum,’ the guard sneered when we got up and stripped our beds. ‘Roll them up and get out the front.’

The other boys giggled at us and we knew we were in for teasing about it and being picked on all day. The guards didn’t try to stop that. In fact they seemed to encourage it.

We had to wait while the other boys finish making their beds and then we were taken down for a shower to wash and be called every name under the sun to humiliate us even more.

The only caring people in Yasmar were other boys who had been abused by officers. You knew not to talk about any of the bad stuff when it happened but I learned to tell, by the look on their faces, which boys had been interfered with. I could just look into their eyes and see it. Sometimes when an abused boy came back to the dormitory, he’d be crying himself to sleep and one of the ones who knew would go over to him and try to comfort him.

‘You’re all right now mate. It’s over now.’

But we knew it wasn’t over and there was nothing we could do to stop it. Even at meal times you would see a boy crying quietly and you knew what had happened to him. I cried quite a lot.

It got worse for me when the guard who had befriended me decided that oral sex was not enough. He raped me anally. The pain was unbelievable and I just wanted to die. I was completely repulsed by it but the pain overpowered any other thoughts. Afterwards I was bleeding and I couldn’t walk properly. Although I was only in Yasmar for a short time it felt like an eternity of pain and torture, not a place where I’d be fixed up.

On visiting days you would crave for the doorbell to ring, for it to be someone to visit you. Otherwise you would just be sitting there watching the box or playing games, knowing you were vulnerable because nobody was there for you. When you didn’t get a visitor you were really vulnerable.

Soon after the rape Mum and Dad came to visit and I was allowed to see them. Dad, the son of a bitch, was drunk. I somehow got the courage to tell them what the guard had done when I saw him.

‘Him. See that one Mum? He did it to my bottom.’

Mum pleaded with Dad to do something about it, meaning he should report it.

Dad yelled, ‘That man did what to you!’

All the boys were there and some other parents were too. The boys just looked at me, terrified about what would happen to us all next. Dad had drink in him so he did the only thing he was good at. He changed into a mongrel.

‘Dad, you can’t tell him I told! Please don’t tell!’ I pleaded as the other boys faded away somewhere. ‘You can’t tell him that I told you. No, don’t …’

Dad went ballistic as the guard came out of the office and said, ‘Mr Leary, what can I do for you?’

Dad hit him square in the face and yelled at him and kept swinging. Other guards came running out yelling, ‘What’s going on? What’s going on?’

Someone must have pressed the red button to signal trouble and two other officers came out. Dad was still swinging and taking them all on.

An announcement came over the loudspeakers that visiting day was over and everyone who was not an inmate or a guard had to leave. Dad was restrained and Mum came over and we were trying to tell them what the guard had done. The police were called and Dad was taken away in the police car. That was the only time my father ever stood up for me. Curiously, there is no record of it now. The fight happened, the police were called, my Mum and I were interviewed but all records of that have disappeared, if there ever were any.

Mum was told that my allegations would be followed up and that she would have to get a taxi home. She gave me a cuddle and a kiss and away she went in the taxi they called for her.

The room that I was told to go to was the room where the offending officer had gone to sit with his broken nose. He argued with the superintendent that he didn’t want to go home because he didn’t want to explain to his family what had happened.

‘You are not allowed to be in contact with Raymond. You are not to go near him. You’ll finish your shift in another area.’

A senior officer from the other side of Yasmar was brought over to finish the shift in our section. That night that officer told one of the bigger boys to march down to the showers. We heard a struggle and the boy yelling that he didn’t want to do it but then everything went quiet and when everything went quiet down there you could hear lot of kids sniffling and crying because they knew what was happening.

Years later I heard that the notorious, convicted paedophile, Robert ‘Dolly’ Dunn, had been a cleaner at Yasmar for a time and I was not surprised. He could have been working there when I was an inmate.

I was put on U.P. (Un Privilege) which meant I was in solitary. I had not done anything wrong and I think I was on because I told on the officer who raped me.

‘If you talk to anyone you will be reprimanded. Do you hear me?’ I wasn’t allowed to talk at all. I had to sit at a table on my own and have all my meals by myself. They were half portions, even smaller than usual so I knew I was being punished not protected.

I was sent back home just before Christmas 1969 with a bottom that kept bleeding because it had been torn during the rape. I didn’t want Mum to know about the blood. I was ashamed so I kept throwing my undies away until the bleeding stopped. There were more in my drawer.

‘Where are all your undies going?’ Mum used to ask on washing day.

‘Dunno. Maybe someone’s been midnight shoppin’ for them.’ (That is what we called stealing from clotheslines at night.

The judge who had given permission for me to leave Yasmar put a good behaviour bond on me again. I had to go to school and stay home if I wasn’t at school. Home. Well, how was that going to be?

I couldn’t settle. Dad was still drinking and bashing any one he could. One time he started at me and I ran for my life out the door. He hurled a beer bottle at me and it got me on the head. Mum took me to hospital with a gash that was pouring blood. My head was stitched up and we went back home.

It was late in the year but I still had to go to school. I was often in the headmaster’s office being questioned about one thing or another. Mum had to take me to a kids’ doctor and we had to see a social worker too. The social worker didn’t turn up but the doctor was all right. No help to me though. I had to keep going to the Child Guidance Clinic and talk to a clinical psychologist. While I was at the Clinic I used to steal purses, mess things up and do whatever I wanted to do. I didn’t care about their rules. I was so confused and angry. At home I was seeing Mum bashed and raped, my brother and I were bashed and I’d been raped instead of rehabilitated. I just wanted someone to stop all the violence and stop me being bad and angry and frightened. If only I could go back to Nanny Sheehan. I think the psychologist decided that I was some kind of nut.

Unless I got money from somewhere I’d starve. I wanted more fun too, more than ever after Yasmar. When school holidays came I knew exactly where I could get a lot of cash. It had been weeks since I’d been to school but I was pretty certain the money would be there where I’d seen it in one of my frequent visits to the headmaster’s office. I broke into the school with some friends and went straight up to the office, opened the safe, and there it was. The canteen’s cash tin bulging with money! It wasn’t theirs when I got my hands on it. It was for me and my friends.

‘Key orky! Let’s go to Luna Park!’

Case Notes

On 5.1.70 the lad was returned to the home by the police after he was apprehended at Luna Park. When seen on the day, the parents stated that Ray could not be controlled. He had stolen money from them and they felt that he was still stealing outside the home. Ray had $10 when apprehended. This money was his mother’s. He was not at home again and nobody knew his whereabouts. He had gone over the bridge with Burns and Mason, both older boys, on probation, known as the real troublemakers in this district … The lad again left home without permission on 6.1.70 and did not arrive home until after 8 PM.

Ray was finally found wandering the district on 7.1.70. He was taken home and again very strongly warned.

H.M.T. District Officer, Sydney

I had been ordered by the judge to attend school so at the end of January I went back. The damage I’d done when I broke in had not all been repaired and it seemed that everybody knew that I was the culprit. I didn’t care. I’d had a lot of fun. Sometimes I went to school but a lot of the time I didn’t. Soon it was holidays again and they were very dangerous times for me. Mum and Dad were both at work and Aunty Rosie was in charge. I got into real trouble stealing ammunition from Alexandria goods yard. I’d pinch it from one end, without a clue what it was, then go up to the other end of the complex as the men were coming out of work.

I’d yell, ‘For sale! For sale!’

Sometimes they’d say, ‘What have you got there?’

I’d show them and they’d say, ‘You know they’re dangerous don’t you? Where’d you get them?’

‘Found ’em.’

‘How much do you want for ’em?’

‘Just enough to get some food.’

‘I’ll give you three shillin’s.’

‘All right.’ That was enough to get some scallops and a Chico roll.

I kept going back there until one day some men decided to ask me, ‘We bought these from you yesterday and here you are again with more. Where are you getting them from?’

‘Told ya. I found ’em.’

They took me to security and security called the police. The police charged me with breaking into the Alexandria Goods Yard and stealing. They took me to the station and made a record of my crimes. They reported me to Child Welfare too.

Case Notes

It seems Ray was making a handy profit stealing bullets from one part of the store and selling them to staff in another part of the building.

H.M.T. District Officer, Sydney

I had to wait for my court appearance. Mum took me back to Professor Katz who said I should go off the pills I was on and get a proper lot of tests because the pills were slowing me down but we needed to find a cure for whatever was wrong with me.

I was sent to Royleston Boys Shelter in Glebe while they tried to find a place that could keep me until I was fifteen years old. The place was run by a bitch of a matron and her husband. It had three dormitories but there were officers down stairs to control you. There was a little school in the complex that we had to go to. On hot days we would march from Glebe Point Road to Alexandria Park pool on Broadway.

In Royleston we had to do all the jobs that we’d had to do in Yasmar.

I’m on potato peeling today. Sitting here by myself, peeling away and wondering when I‘ll ever get them all done. An officer has just come up behind me and asked me whether I’ve finished yet.

‘No sir,’ I say.

‘All right. Well, I want you to come in here now,’ he says.

We go into the laundry.

‘Why are we in here?’ I ask, looking around the laundry for my next job.

Suddenly the man grabs me from behind, pulls down my pants and tries to shove his dick up my bum. It really hurts. He can’t fit so he turns me around and shoves it in my mouth. I feel so sick and angry but what can I do? Who will believe me? Not even Dad will believe it’s happened again. What sort of trouble would he cause if I told him?

A few days later a group of us boys are standing at the top of the stairs and someone whispers something very funny. We start to giggle but we’re not even supposed to talk so we try to stop. The more we try the worse it gets. A guard is coming over. Suddenly, thump on the back of my head. I lose my balance and tumble down the stairs. When I stop tumbling another guard runs over to see if I’m all right. I think I am. Nothing’s broken. I wonder to this day whether that guard pushed me down the stairs on purpose.

My throat did not stop hurting after the assault in the laundry so I went to the clinic in Royleston. Somebody noticed that my voice wasn’t right either and so I was escorted to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital where I had an operation. My papers say it was to remove a polyp from my vocal cord. I went back to Mum to recover after the operation then I had to go back to Royleston. My records say I went back into hospital two months later so they could finish off the job on my throat. They took out my right vocal cord. After that operation I was sent back to Royleston.

Meanwhile Mum and the District Officer kept trying to find a placement for me to live until I turned fifteen. The District Officer was getting desperate I think. He tried to get me into Charlton, the Church of England Boys Home, and he even approached Nanny Sheehan again. Nanny explained why she was unable to help although she still cared about me. Meanwhile Mum had been trying to get help at the Catholic Family Bureau. After keeping her waiting for weeks, they said that I could go to St Josephs Convent at Kincumber and stay there until I was fifteen.

Would my life start improving under the care of the nuns? Although it was heartbreaking for Mum to send me so far away for so long, I think everyone thought it would be the making of me. It was the making of me but not the kind of me they wanted.

CHAPTER 5.
Kincumber

A Child Welfare Escort came to Royleston to pick me up and take me to Kincumber. We caught a taxi to Central Station and he held me by the back of my pants so I couldn’t run away. Then we got on the Fish train up to the Central Coast. The last part of the trip was on a boat.

My escort said, ‘If you think you can escape from here, sonny boy, you’re mistaken. It’s an island.’

Of course it was. I could see that. We were coming to it on a boat.

All the nuns were dressed in their white summer uniforms when I arrived at St Josephs. (In winter they changed to black uniforms.) In about a month I’d turn nine. Six years to go before I was out of here. I had to stay and that was all there was to it so I’d just go along and see what happened.

The escort took me to Sister Marie’s office and she welcomed me and told me I would be happy here. She told me about the rules: no talking in the buildings, talk only for the two hour period allocated for talk and play, never talk to adults, stay away from here and there, when the bell rings do this or that, be punctual, eat in silence, mass times are displayed somewhere, complaints about care will not be tolerated, remember you are here because no-one else wants you, follow God’s command to be obedient. My head was full before she finished.

She called another nun to show me around and tell me where to put my things. That nun told me to take off my clothes and put on the clothes supplied by St Josephs. She took my suitcase of my own clothes away and I never saw it again.

There were vegetable gardens, a dairy, bikes to ride around the grassy hill as well as dormitories and other rooms you’d expect there. There were lots of kids about and I made friends easily. One particular friend was called Hooky, an Aboriginal boy. We clicked easily.

My first disappointment came at mealtimes. The food was awful and there wasn’t much of it. I was always starving hungry. I was used to awful food as well as the good stuff I bought when I had money. Good food would have to be dream food for the next six years.

Dreams. Boys seemed to have bad dreams sometimes. I’d hear them sniffling in their beds at night. Was that why some of the nuns got into the beds with the boys? Soon I found out that wasn’t why. They got into our beds to fondle our privates and kiss and stroke us. Then they would leave as quietly as they came. Nobody ever talked about it, I suppose because we knew we’d be in trouble if we did. Who would believe it? The four Sisters who did it would.

Days were fairly monotonous, each one starting with a nun clapping her hands and telling us all to get up. Bedwetters like me, ‘dirty little boys,’ were humiliated, smacked across the head and cold showered. We put on our overalls and did chores before breakfast and school. Kids who were very good were given the privilege of ringing the bell to change to the next thing we had to do.

School at Kincumber was mainly religion: the Bible, all the dos and don’ts, the church, St Joseph himself and all that kind of thing. There was hardly any science, reading or maths as far as I remember. After school we played and, if you ran quick enough, you could grab a bike and ride it around the place. I was always fast enough to get one.

‘Raymond!’ the nun on duty would shout. ‘That is not your bike. Get off and give it to the person who owns it. No, you can’t have a little turn. Get off now!’

Sometimes the days were different. A highlight for me was when a group of people came to take us out on their boats. The nuns had been telling us about it for weeks and had got us quite excited about the day. Bad kids weren’t going but I was going. We had a boat shed at St Joseph’s but we didn’t go there. Instead we were driven to a wharf at Gosford and I was so excited to be put in a motor boat with two adults and some other kids. We spent the day speeding up and down the Hawkesbury River. I think it was more fun than I’d ever had. They couldn’t go fast enough for me!

We had another day out when the Pope came to Australia in 1971. The nuns were especially excited about seeing the Holy Father and so I was too. The nuns wore their white uniforms and we wore black ties, white shirts, black pants and very well polished shoes. We all piled into buses and off we went to Sydney. I saw familiar places as we drove to the cricket ground. Hooky did too. We seemed to know what the other was thinking.

‘Wanna run?’

‘Uh. Maybe.’

‘We could, ya know.’

‘Yeah.’

‘They’d probbly catch us but.’

‘Yeah. Probbly.’

‘Better not.’

‘Yeah.’

So we waved our flags and cheered along with the rest of them and went back to the home at the end of the day.

There were times when we had childlike fun but they could turn so easily into a nightmare - like it did for me one day when we played hide and seek.

Hooky goes one way and I go the other to hide. When the seeker finishes counting, the only place I can hide is behind the shrub near the chapel.

One of the gardeners comes past.

He says, ‘Hello. It’s Raymond isn’t it?’

‘Yeah,‘ I said still puffing a bit.

‘Stay down. They won’t see you there,’ he says.

The seeker shouts, ‘Ha Hooky. Got ya!’ and then he starts shouting even louder, ‘I’m coming to get you Ray. I’m gunna find ya!’

Oh no. Soon he’ll be coming my way.

The gardener says, ‘They’ve gone the other way. Come in here. You can give me a hand.’

We go into the room at the back of the Chapel where the priests and altar boys change before mass. The gardener undoes his pants and makes me suck him. I hate that. I don’t want to do it but I know I’m too small to push my way out.

‘All done,’ he says. ‘Out you go and don’t tell anyone. They won’t believe you anyway.’

I didn’t say anything. No-one would believe me or care. I’d saved Hooky or some other kid from it that day and there were other days later when I couldn’t dodge that man.

As time went on at Kincumber I got to know what went on in the boat shed too.

Two of the nuns who get in bed with us gather a few children up and take them down to the boat shed. They tell us to go in and do as we’re told. We go through the small room where the canoe and the life saving gear is then we’re in the room where there’s a boat being built. There are men in the boat shed but they’re not here for boat.

They say hello then they start talking and showing us magazines called Hello and Picolo. I’ve never seen pictures like that or boys doing what the boys in the pictures are doing with each other. Oh no, there’s one that looks like what the guards did to me at other places - and the gardener here.

The men say they want us to do what is in the pictures while they take photos of us. I don’t want to do it. It doesn’t seem right. But the nuns have told us to be obedient and the punishment for disobedience is brutal at St Joseph’s. The men tell us that we are going to be stars just like the boys in the magazines. They’ll sell the pictures and we will have a lot of money when we leave St Josephs because they’ll keep it for us. The thought of having lots of money is appealing but it doesn’t take away the sense of helplessness or the shame of doing bad things with your friends. The boat shed men do not often want to penetrate little boys. We just have to do mouth stuff, not like what the bigger boys have to endure in the shed at the dairy, as I hear later on.

When those things happen with the boat shed men, we know we are not allowed to yell and scream at them. They can’t stop you crying but you mustn’t scream. When it’s over you go outside and the nuns are standing about fifty metres away.

Yes, the nuns were waiting outside. I reckon they must have known what was happening and they were pimping us to those bastards for money, though it has never been proved. No-one talked about it back then. I was too ashamed to but I reckon there must be lots of men out there today who know what went on. I wish they could talk about it now.

I could tell which boys had been to the boat shed. They were just like me. For the next few days you just couldn’t function properly. You’d be very quiet and you didn’t want to play. You’d never talk about it. You didn’t want anyone’s attention but you felt so lonely. You’d rather go off by yourself to cry. You might start playing handball or soccer but if the boat shed comes into view you lose all your energy and stop playing. If you had been filmed doing something with your mate, just so you’d be rich when you left St Joseph’s, you couldn’t play games with him for a few days.

Until the abuse started I was doing all right at school and in the home. I got on with people. But everything changed when the abuse started. My bad behaviour was back with a vengeance. I rebelled against all the authority figures and the rules. I became a mad, crazy kid again. I didn’t want to cooperate with anyone. I spent a lot of time jumping out of classroom windows, hiding and generally running wild. One time I decided to swim back home so I jumped in the water and kept swimming as fast as I could.

I saw some nuns at the edge yelling at me to come back at once. When one started swimming to me I knew I had to give up and go back.

So I was trapped at this horrible place where no-one could be trusted and no one cared. The nun didn’t come after me because she cared. She came so she wouldn’t get in trouble. Well, I was not going to do what they told me to, the liars. I couldn’t put it into words but I definitely acted out my rage against them.

I started walking about the place chanting, ‘Not me. Please not me today.’ I didn’t decide to do that. It just happened and it was somehow comforting. It was a bit like a prayer I suppose.

Hooky and I were often hungry so we’d sneak into the fruit room and help ourselves then hide somewhere and stuff ourselves.

We’re just leaving with our pockets stuffed with apples and oranges and there’s Sister Alexis and Sister Thelma.

‘What are you doing over here,’ Sister Thelma demands.

‘Nothin’,’ we say.

‘Nothing! Empty your pockets.’

Out come all the bits of fruit.

‘Get to my office this minute!’ Sister orders.

We go to wait outside her office. She can’t do any worse than we’ve already had done to us.

‘You first,’ she says nodding at me.

I go in and she tells me to take off my overalls.

‘How dare you steal!’ she says. Whack! Her strap hits my bum.

I laugh at her, the bitch.

‘God will not forgive you!’ More whacks, harder ones.

It’s nothing compared to what we’ve had from you before, stupid. I laugh some more.

‘You insolent beggar!’ She keeps strapping and the more I laugh at her the harder she whacks me. She’s going wild with rage. Now the strap is really hurting and I feel like there’s no skin left on my bum. I start screaming at her to stop but she keeps going until - well, I suppose until she feels better.

Then it’s Hooky’s turn.

Sometimes when Mum and Dad came to visit, the nuns wouldn’t let me see them. That was fair enough when I got the mumps but I didn’t have them for the whole time I was there. I reckon they just didn’t want my parents to see the state I was in. But they told Mum and Dad that I was sick or away on a camp. Sometimes the nuns told Mum and Dad they didn’t know they were coming and that they should have phoned ahead.

When I was allowed to see them, Mum would say, ‘I came last week but you weren’t here.’

I’d say, ‘But I was here Mum!’ Shame kept me quiet about the boat shed.

Mum would bring or post lollies for me but they were always taken by the nuns and I never saw them. Mum would question me and then Sister Marie and she’d say, ‘We didn’t receive them. If we had, we’d have given them to the boy.’ Liars!

There was one priest who I always thought was a good priest, the kind of man a priest should be: Father Croke.

Hooky and I decided to perve on the nuns when they went swimming one day. Sister Judith, Sister Alexis and Sister Murray were there and Father Croke was getting the leaves out of the water with a net. We hid in the bushes to see what we could see. We watched the nuns swimming about and we giggled at how fat Sister Murray was, wobbling about like a whale.

Suddenly Father Croke looked up for some reason, straight at us hiding in the scrub!

Hooky shouted, ‘Run Ray! Come on. Run! He’s seen us.’

We took off across the two paddocks and up to the house as if the police were after us. We didn’t know what would happen next.

Father Croke never said anything about it but in chapel he gave us a little look that told us that he knew exactly who had been hiding in the bushes that day. That was the end of it as far as he was concerned.

Sister James, a lovely, kind, good person, encouraged me to learn what I needed to to take my first communion. I took her advice. I made my first communion and that felt pretty special. One day I finally got the courage up to confess my boat shed sins to Father Croke.

I went into the confessional and said very nervously, ‘Father, I have sinned.’

‘What have you sinned?’

‘Father Croke, I, I, um, I really don’t want to say nuffin’ but maybe you can help.’

He encouraged me to talk and I told him everything. I must have been in that confession box for hours!

‘When you go out,’ Father Croke said quietly, ‘I want you to say five Hail Marys and five Our Fathers and wait for me at the chapel please.’

Only five! I’d never had so few Hail Marys. When Father came out he had his handkerchief up to his eyes. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Come with me my son.’

I started getting really frightened as we went over to his house. I froze at the door. Would I see the person I thought Father was or was he one of the other kind?

‘Come on in,’ he said gently.

I’m frozen.

‘Come on in boy. Come in.’

I got the courage and went in but I was very worried.

‘Sit down son.’

He sat over on his seat and I sat down too.

‘Would you like a drink?’

‘No thank you Father.’

‘What you have just told me is very, very bad. You must be truthful. Is what you told me in confession true?’

‘Yes Father. All of it. When you’re not here we have to go down to the boat shed.’

He had listened to me and taken it all in. I don’t know if he wrote it down later but I know that he questioned some of the other boys who backed up what I had said. He was horrified. He took me and the other victims under his wing. He was the good man I’d thought he was. Although he was getting old and sick he would always make himself available at play times. He would come and cheer us on or kick a ball sometimes. He let us know he was interested and cared about us.

Things quietened down in the boat shed I think but the nuns started saying that I was mentally disturbed. What I had told Father Croke just proved they were right, they reckoned. They said that I shouldn’t hang around with Father Croke because I was nuts. They really got the shits that I was talking.

Soon after my confession Father Croke had a pushbike for me. It was old and remade but I hardly noticed that. I was so happy. I’d never had anything like it. It even had a little light at the front and he showed me how the bike worked and how to look after it. Father called everyone around, including the nuns, and said, ‘This is young Raymond’s bike and he is to ride it around and he is to lock it up when he isn’t using it and no-one else is to ride it.’ He made many rules about my bike and even the two nuns knew they had to enforce them.

Father Croke moved us away from the bad nuns and I was put in the charge of Sister James and Sister Judith who were both lovely people. I became an altar boy and I never went to the boat shed again.

Things improved after that I think. It seemed a happier place. I felt as if I had done something good and I wanted to behave well for Father Croke’s sake.

When Mum came up for her next visit I told her about what Father had done and I couldn’t tell her why. I just kept saying, ‘Mum I want to come home. I want to come home.’

Father walked by and asked Mum whether he could talk to her privately. I stayed at the table with Dad the drunk and watched Mum and Father Croke talking. Mum started crying and they kept talking for a while.

When Mum came back she said, ‘Father will help us get you home. You won’t be here for much longer.’

‘When am I coming? When? Today? Can I go today?’ I was so excited about leaving St Joseph’s.

‘Soon,’ Mum said and I think she started on the paperwork as soon as she got home.

Father Croke was such a good man to me but in later years I have heard other things about him in the 1960s that contradict my memories of him. He died when he was eighty eight, after I left St Josephs. He is buried beside the chapel.

I went home in September 1971, never to return to St Josephs. I was ten years old, not fifteen. I remember a Sister driving us in the bus and dropping some nuns off at their holiday house at Vaucluse. Then she took me to what she said was my home. It was a different place. We lived in Redfern now. I didn’t know why we’d moved and I didn’t care, as long as I was not at St Josephs. The Sister just let me out of the bus, said goodbye and drove away. It felt strange being left outside a strange house.

I went inside. Aunty Rosie was there and she said Mum was at work. Dad had been sacked for drinking at work but I don’t know where he was. Probably at the pub. I hardly knew Aunty Rosie so we most likely just watched television until Mum came home.

‘Raymond!’ Mum said as she gave me a hug. ‘What are you doing home?’

‘Sister brought me,’ I told her. ‘She dropped me here and went. Do we live here now?’

‘It’s so nice to see you. I didn’t know you were coming. Nobody told me.’

Mum had applied to the court for a ‘termination of the committal’ but no one had told her that it had been granted. Later she rang and was told that St Joseph’s didn’t want me any more.

So my life in Redfern began. Mum enrolled me in Redfern Public School. My school education was probably light years behind other kids’ but I had learnt more about indecency, cruelty and sexual perversion in that Catholic home than anything else.

CHAPTER 6.
Werrington Park

My little brother Eddy was still a happy-go-lucky little bloke. I’d been like that once but I’d changed into an angry, aggressive person.

Mum had fought hard to get me back and now she tried to make sure that things went well. Before she left for work in the morning she would give Aunty Rosie instructions about looking after us boys and the house. Aunty Rosie would agree to everything Mum said and then forget all about it. I knew Aunty Rosie didn’t have a clue what was going on so I didn’t take any notice of her. Eddy and I just did whatever we wanted to and so did Aunty Rosie. Although she was supposed to stay at home all day Aunty Rosie used to roam around the streets looking for cigarette butts to smoke. She wasn’t able to look after herself and one time she met a man who took her home and kept her for a week. I suppose he had his way with her. She came home absolutely filthy and stinking and Mum was furious.

‘You filthy dirty slut!’ Mum yelled.

We loved Aunty Rosie even if she was weird and she loved us.

‘I love you Aunty Rosie.’

‘I love you too,’ she’d grin. Then she’d pout and say, ‘When you’re good.’

She wanted to give us lots of cuddles but I’d become so afraid of close contact that I couldn’t bear to be touched, not even by our lovely, simple aunty. Hugs made me panic.

I felt close to Eddy back then. We often played together inside and outside. Sometimes I’d pretend I was dying, like they did on telly.

From my death bed I’d gasp, ‘You’re my bestest brother and I love you.’

Eddy would say, ‘No! Don’t go. Don’t go.’ And he’d start crying.

‘Well,’ I’d tell him, ‘you can’t really stop it when you’re dyin’.’

Sniffle, sniffle. ‘No. Don’t die!’

Then I’d jump up and say, ‘I’m only playin’. I’m not dyin’.’

The wrestling would be on then and it was fun. We’d just romp about the place like real kids. We’d play in the park and have adventures all over the place, some legal and normal, others not legal - but we were hungry.

I was in an OA third class at Redfern Public School and I think I attended for a while. I must have because my teacher said on a report that ‘on occasions (I) showed more intelligence than might be expected in an OA Class.’ People seemed to think I was dumb or something but I knew I wasn’t. Ask me about boatshed business or hunger or loss - if I’d had the words I could have told them all about that.

Mum took me to Camperdown Children’s Hospital to be tested. They wanted to know why I was having headaches, behaving badly, not learning, hearing voices and talking to myself. My St Josephs prayer had followed me out of St Josephs and back to Redfern. ‘Not me. Please don’t let it be me.’ Over and over again.

Report from doctor

‘Raymond was referred because of his learning problems and behaviour difficulties at school and at home … The family is a disturbed one, father a ‘selfish drinker who spends little time at home’, and mother is an inadequate and not very bright woman.

Raymond … has truanted from school a good deal … stealing and damage to school property … expelled from both kindergarten and Crown Street School … difficult at Kincumber home … Although he did form a close and positive relationship with Sister James, who has since left the home … problems reported; excessive activity, temper tantrums, irritability when confined, obsessively interested in a bunch of keys and dialling the telephone or changing the TV channels, (gets) a strange look in his eyes before entering his ‘‘turns’’ … very demanding … not developed any sense of right and wrong.

… no spontaneous talk and minimum answers to questions. He did not admit to any problem either at the home or school.

Professor Katz
(Associate Professor of Child Psychiatry)

Professor Katz prescribed Tiniframizine to lessen my energy and Mum said it helped. One time we ran out of pills and I really went nuts. Mum was pretty desperate to get more and the welfare bloke said she had to give some to the school so they could make sure I took it.

I gave up on school and all that sitting around and singing stupid stuff and trying to do the stuff they told us. I started roaming about again and taking Eddy with me sometimes. I thought it was more fun to wag school than to go there even if I got warning after warning from the welfare people. I was picked up so many times around this period for all sorts of things.

There was one time when I got caught stealing from Coles at Town Hall and the police officers put me in the back of the big F100 bull wagon and drove me home. Aunty Rosie was the only person there.

‘You make sure you tell his mother what he’s been up to,’ the copper said.

‘Yes. Yes. I’ll tell her,’ Aunty Rosie promised.

I knew Aunty Rosie wouldn’t tell Mum. She wouldn’t remember. So nothing else happened to me that time.

The Peters ice cream factory was in Redfern and we would knock off ice creams from there and sell them down the road. There was a Tiptop Bakery at Moore Park and we would go there too and knock off food from their little red vans and sell it. On the nights when we didn’t go home, in the wee small hours of the morning, we used to follow the bread van and pick up what was delivered. It was the same with the milkman when people used to leave money out. We could find out where the money was and take it. We took milk too.

It’s Christmas. It’s another bad one and not just because of Dad who has taken to calling me a ‘moron’ or a ‘lunatic.’ Not just because of Yasmar or Royleston or St Josephs or the court case. Two days before Christmas day, I’m out the front of the house with a couple of mates and we hear a truck rock up. As it goes past we see a little blonde boy get run over. We see his body go up and around the wheel then he’s just lying very still on the road. Where’s Eddy! I look around for Eddy. I can’t see him. Terrified, I dash inside to get Mum but I’m so upset I can’t speak. I want Mum to tell me Eddy’s all right. Or to find him.

A woman comes tearing down the street screaming, ‘No! No!‘ She sees that it’s her little boy on the road. Eddy comes from around the back where he’s been playing with a dog. I’m almost bawling with relief.

I was at the age where you want more than your Mum could afford: new clothes instead of second hand stuff, pop music tapes, hair oil, all the modern things I’d seen and heard about. I couldn’t have them unless I stole. I learned a lot from my mates at Redfern: breaking into cars, stealing them, where the rich people lived and how to break and enter, the whole game. It was much more profitable for me than it had ever been before. We’d head out from Redfern to suburbs like Vaucluse, Bondi, Clovelly, Bronte, Coogee and Randwick then we’d smash our way into houses. We stole what we could and we smashed things we didn’t want to take because these people were rich and we were not. We were angry, poor and neglected. There were no guiding lights for us so we led each other into what we hoped would make us rich or at least happy for a time.

The time I lived in Redfern was one of the worst periods of my life. I got hooked up with all the scum of the earth. Not the kids, the adults.

For example there was a petrol strike one time and my mates and I helped this bloke who used to deliver pamphlets. He ran out of petrol and we helped him push his car off the road. He became friends with us.

‘Do you want a job?’ he said to us one day.

We always wanted money so we said yes. He came and picked us up one night to take us to James Cook Flats in Redfern. While the others were out delivering pamphlets, I had to stay in the truck and he forced my head down into his lap. What he really wanted was the skinny little blonde boy, alone.

In January 1972, aged ten, I was in court again, charged with being uncontrollable and with ‘Break and enter.‘ The Child Welfare Department people and the police, were there with all their evidence of my crimes. I was sentenced to serve time in Werrington Park Boys Home (now Cobham) in western Sydney. Judge Doyle said that my parents, teachers and child welfare people couldn’t control me and he had given me enough chances. He hoped that I could be punished and rehabilitated.

Mum got a chance to talk and she said she thought my brain might have been damaged when I was very small because I had received ‘numerous blows to the head,’ one so serious it needed stitches. When they asked her to say more about it she said she couldn’t.

Judge Doyle decided that this time I would be made State Ward no matter what Mum said. That meant the government had to look after me because they thought they could do a better job than my parents were doing. I leave it to you to judge how they did. I have my own opinion about that.

First they wanted me to stay in Royleston in Glebe, just until they could get me in at Werrington Park. My case worker Mr Cope came to Mum’s and asked me what I thought about going back into ‘care’ and I said, ‘It’s better than living here.’ I didn’t talk about the terror Dad’s drunken rages put me in. Or my fear that one of these days he’d kill someone. Maybe Mum. I just didn’t want to be there.

Once more I was tested by a psychologist while I was in Royleston. The report says I was responsive, interested, affectionate and valued the attention I got. The psychologist said he thought I felt lonely in Royleston and missed my family. He thought I was a bit overactive but I didn’t resist the rules. He said I was mildly mentally retarded and had ‘visuo-motor difficulties.’ Must be something about cars, stealing them maybe? Well, none of that mattered to me. I just wanted to have fun and get out of that awful place.

In April 1972, just after I had turned eleven, I was transported to Werrington Park juvenile facility for one hundred and twenty boys and put in Dunheved Cottage. It was a long way from Redfern but it didn’t seem quite as scary as Yasmar and some of the boys were friendly enough.

It was a life of rules and regulations and I managed them all right for a while. We had to do all the chores that kids in homes did: cleaning, weeding, sweeping and preparing vegetables for our meals. I thought I’d be all right here as long as I could bear all the discipline. The house masters reckoned that I was sometimes ‘pleasant and cooperative’ and sometimes aggressive. He said that after the other kids worked out that I was volatile, my ‘bright personality ensures (I am) well liked.’

That changed when I found that it was another place where boys were forced into sexual acts that they found repulsive. I became really angry. My bright light went out. The P. E. teacher was the worst offender but he wasn’t the only one. Day and night we were vulnerable. I couldn’t do a thing about it. I was a skinny little eleven year old and they were grown men.

Having friends at Werrington Park was good: Greg, Mark, Noel and some others. I made friends easily. Greg was my best mate. He was angry too. He escaped from Werrington with Mark one time because of the abuse that went on there. They were brought back by the cops. They reported the abuse but nothing changed.

It was nearly impossible to wag school and I started to make a bit of progress. I wanted to know how to do things like reading and maths, like some other kids could. School had never had the excitement or relevance that truanting did but at Werrington I had to do school and I started to make progress. They reckoned I was ‘motivated towards school life and should continue to make good progress. (I was) performing at 2nd class primary level.’

Some nice things happened, like the dances they had and the outings. They used to bring girls from another home over and we’d do dances like the Barn Dances and that. Girls really fell for Greg. He just had the knack for attracting them and they’d disappear behind the hall and come back inside a bit ruffled. I didn’t have the knack Greg had and I really wished I did. I thought I was ugly so I didn’t believe girls liked me, even the ones who tried to talk to me, or the ones I’d like to take outside and bring back ruffled. Anyway, the dancing was great.

I went home to Mum for each school holiday and for Christmas that year. I really liked seeing Mum again. That Christmas holiday Dad was a hero for a while and he was in the local paper.

The Churchy family lived a few houses away and there were some kids over the back fence as well as some who just appeared and played. Eddy and I liked the Churchys. They knew what went on at home and they didn’t mind if we just appeared at their place. Mrs Churchy would invite us in for a feed sometimes and we spent a lot of happy times being kids with their daughters. We played hopscotch and jacks, marbles and sticks, cowboys and Indians in the lane and we’d always be welcome at the house for a drink if it wasn’t mealtime

The Churchy family was so good to Eddy and me and this Christmas they had a disaster. The grandfather smoked a lot and one night he nodded off when all the others were upstairs asleep. He must have dropped a cigarette and the place caught fire. Eddy and I heard screaming and saw the flames. We woke Mum and Dad up. ‘Mum, Dad! Dad, the Churchy’s house is on fire!’

Mrs Churchy had broken an upstairs window and Dad and Kenny went across the hot metal roof to try to get her out. They had trouble because she was a very big lady and they couldn’t move her. The firemen cut a bit off the verandah railing and she had to jump down onto the round mat they held out below. They couldn’t hold it when she landed and she fell on the ground and broke bones in her legs. Her girls survived, though they got awful burns. My brother still has scars on his feet from running across the hot roof. The grandfather died in the fire.

When the Churchys recovered and came out of hospital they were given a free run in Walton’s store in Botany Rd, Redfern. They could take whatever they needed to refurnish their house.

After Christmas I went back to the drudgery of Werrington. My love of sport kept me going in that place and my progress at school as well. I can’t say I was happy there most of the time but I was happy when I was doing sport. In the athletics carnival I entered just about every event and won a lot of them. I broke the thirty metre age swimming record and, as far as I know, I still hold that record. I kept all my First Place certificates for junior sections of discus, relay, long jump, shot put and cross country. It seemed to me that I was born to run.

I was gifted at sport but I’ve never had the chance to compete anywhere where my achievements would be recorded or recognized. It was always done in institutions. I did gymnastics and running and I played soccer and cricket. One time at Werrington Park I hit a six and the ball went out onto the Great Western Highway. Mr Bubbo, an African teacher who was liked by most of the boys, couldn’t believe a skinny little boy could hit a ball so far. The teacher that we hated was the art teacher. He showed us pornographic pictures of men and boys. I hated that because it felt like, Oh no. Here we go again. Not me, please not me.

When I was given my first day release for good behaviour, I was allowed to go to the city to the footy with some of the boys. I grabbed the chance. Greg, me and the others got the train in to Central Station.

At Central Greg asked me, ‘Wanna go to the game or do something else?’

I said I’d go with him and have some fun as long as we got back to Werrington by six o’clock. If we were late back we would be reported to the police as runaways. I didn’t know what Greg had in mind but we always had fun so I went with him.

Greg sees a friend at Central Station who he knew before he was sent to Werrington. Michael is waiting and invites us to go to Humphrey’s, a pin ball parlour where he and Greg had first met. Sounds like fun. For the next couple of day releases we meet Michael at Humphrey’s and he gives us money to spend on games and drinks. It’s great fun.

Then one day there are two other men at Humphrey’s with Michael. One’s name is George and I don’t remember his friend’s name. George invites Greg and me back to his flat in Bondi for drinks. That sounds all right. I’m not much of a drinker but Greg likes it so we go along.

‘Come in and take a seat,’ George says. ‘What would you like to drink?’

Soon we’re all sitting down chatting. The other man is obviously George’s boyfriend and he is smoking a joint. They ask me why I’m in the home, where I lived before and so on. They seem nice but as the afternoon goes on I start to feel uncomfortable with all the attention and compliments I’m getting.

George says, ‘You have such beautiful blue eyes. They are just gorgeous.’

Then, ‘How would you like to come down here with me?’ He’s heading down the hall.

‘Oh. It’s good here,’ I say.

‘We’ll just talk,’ he says. ‘Wouldn’t that be nice?’

‘Uh, no, not really. I’m all right here’

He comes back and starts chatting again. I see the boyfriend out of the corner of my eye. He’s standing up now. I don’t know what’s going on. They’re closing in.

George nudges me forward and says, ‘Ah, come on little fella. We’ll go and have a talk down here.’

He hussles me into the bedroom. He wants to lie down and talk but then he starts kissing me, stroking me, telling me how beautiful I am and how much he loves me. I’m trapped, can’t get away, can’t stop what happens next. He forces himself into my bum and the pain is so, so bad. Is he going to go right through my body and come out of my stomach? I’m really distressed and hurting when George gets up and leaves the room. I’m crying and all I know is I have to get out of here and away from the three of them. I’d get up quickly if I could but all I can manage is to get up slowly, to get dressed and go.

The boyfriend has come in. He says, ‘Don’t put your clothes on yet. Get back on the bed.’

He does the same as George. Is this what men are?

After it’s all over they drop us off at Central Station. They only just get us there in time to catch the train back to Werrington.

Greg tries to make conversation on the train but I feel so betrayed by him. All I have to say is, ‘You fuckin’ bastard! You knew what was gunna happen. I called you my best mate and you let them poofters do that to me! Fuck off an’ leave me alone.’

Greg walked away from me and we didn’t get on for a long time. It got so bad that he was moved into a different cottage from me at Werrington Park.

Back at the home I didn’t tell anyone what had happened. I was too ashamed and I didn’t want more trouble. Every time I sat on the loo my bottom bled. My white undies always had blood on them and I had to throw them away without getting caught.

When Greg and I were still not getting on we were taken on a camp at Castle Mountain in the Wisemans Ferry area. Greg was chasing me to fight me and I tripped over. A tent peg stuck in my knee. I screamed in pain. Greg ran to get help. I was taken to Nepean Hospital. The cut needed three stitches and a bandage to hold my knee still while it healed. When I went back to Werrington Park, Greg was very apologetic and we slowly started making friends again.

When my Werrington Park sentence was finished I went back to Mum’s in Regent Street, Redfern to live. I was twelve years old. Welfare thought that I’d be all right there because Mum had stopped working, Dad was drinking much less and Ken was there too, paying board which helped Mum a lot. He and Dad were getting on reasonably well. My file says that they were just giving me a try out at home. They expected some problems because of Dad’s harsh discipline and Mum’s weak discipline but, if we had close supervision and firm discipline at school, I might be all right.

Case Notes

Raymond has been in Departmental Establishments since his committal and after 22 months of Departmental care there appears little else that the Department can do in the way of Raymond’s future.

My school report from Werrington Park said I had progressed to ‘upper 2nd class primary level … works well in mathematics and reasonably well in English … reading age is 7 years and 4 months. Raymond is a keen soccer player and tries to help his teacher in many small ways.’

Seeing that last comment reminds me of the deep need I felt for care and approval. All I ever wanted as a kid was love, care, attention. What kid doesn’t?

CHAPTER 7.
Social Worker

Now that I was free from the institution the State of New South Wales, my new parents, gave me a voucher to get some clothes at a depot in Elizabeth Street, Sydney. I had seen what cool boys were wearing and I knew what I wanted. I went into the depot and gave the man my voucher. He told some other kids to go because I would be there for a while and that they could come back later.

He shows me where to look for my clothes. The stuff on the racks is a bit disappointing but I find some jeans and a couple of shirts that are all right.

‘Found what you want?’ the man asks.

‘Yeah. These’ll do,’ I say. He might have heard my disappointment.

‘Would you like to try them on?’

‘Nah. They’ll be all right.’

‘Oh come on. Try them on for me. Let’s see how good you look in them.’

I go into the change room and as I’m trying the clothes on I get an uneasy feeling. From the corner of my eye I see the shopkeeper watching me over the top of the cubicle.

‘Aw shit!’ I try to cover myself.

‘You’re all right. How are they? Look, I’ll just come in and see how they are.‘

He comes in.

‘Hmm, they’re a bit tight aren’t they? I’ll tell you what. You’ve been really good so how about I let you look at the more expensive stuff. I think you’ll really like what we’ve got in there.’

He takes me into a back room where there are much nicer clothes. Flares, shirts that do up with press studs and some very nice shoes. I try things on and I think I look pretty cool.

‘Would you like those?’ he asks. He is rubbing himself as he talks and I try to ignore that as he wraps my clothes. ‘Now, I’m only supposed to let you have one of each but how about we put in one of these and these? Do you like this? It’s yours.’

‘Oh! Okay,’ I say. I can’t believe my luck. Satin shirts!

‘There,’ he says, handing over my package. ‘All right, I’ve done you a favour. Now you have to do me a favour.’

‘Yeah. All right.’ It sounds fair enough. He probably wants me to move boxes or something.

‘We’ll have to go upstairs,’ he says.

We go outside, into the next door building and up two flights of stairs. At the top of the stairs I start to smell a rat. When he shoves me into the toilet cubicle I know I’m in trouble. My eyes start to well up but that doesn’t stop him from taking the favour I hadn’t realised we’d been bargaining over downstairs.

When I see Greg again I tell him about it and he says that everybody knows about that man. It’d been going on for ages and it would probably go on for ages after.

In December 1973 a social worker turned up at Mum’s door. He was tall and thin, well dressed in a suit and had a beard and long hair. He looked a bit like the nuns’ pictures of Jesus Christ apart from the suit. He said his name was Ian Hughes and that he had been asked by the Catholic Family Welfare Bureau to visit us. He said he hadn’t been able to find us until now because we hadn’t given the bureau our new address. He said I had to go in to his office at the Prince of Wales Hospital for an interview. Mum was always impressed and intimidated by people in suits and she made sure I went. She couldn’t take me because she had work on so I went by myself. I knew the Randwick area from my previous adventures there.

When I got to his office at the hospital Ian Hughes wasn’t there so I wandered about and came back later.

This time the lady at the desk tells him I’m here.

He comes out of his office, holds out his hand for me to shake and says, ‘Raymond. Come right in. Marion, hold all my calls please. I don’t want to be disturbed.‘

First he starts asking me about home, school and my headaches and fits. I don’t like him and I let it show. ‘No-one else gives a shit. Why should you? I’m not sayin’ nuffin. Fuck off!’ After I let off steam he seems nice enough so I answer his questions.

Then we move on to what happened to me in St Josephs. He says something like, ‘It’s very distressing, all this that I’ve read about what happened to you there. Very distressing indeed.’

‘Yeah well, it’s true.’ I don’t expect him to believe me.

‘Tell me about it,’ he says.

As I talk he keeps scribbling notes on his pad. He asks a lot of questions and wants to write down all the details of the abuse. I keep going and he gives up scribbling and gets out a tape recorder to use instead of his notebook. He asks me to tell him every detail of what happened and I do. I can’t do it without tears but that doesn’t bother him. It’s embarrassing but he seems kind, caring and angry that a kid could be treated the way I have been.

‘Yeah well, they got me at them other places too.’

He wants those details as well. What happened to me at Yasmar, Werrington and Royleston.

He tells me he is the Aboriginal Liaison Officer in Redfern and he’s running a camp at the Settlement, a place for Aboriginal kids, in the Christmas holidays. I can go if I want to. We’ll be bushwalking, canoeing and playing and there will be parents there too. Sounds like fun. I might go. Nothin’ else to do and I’m not staying home around Dad.

Ian comes to our house to pick me up in his Humber to go to camp. I’m going in a real Humber! Bet Eddy’s jealous. Mum lets me go on the camp because Ian showed her court papers when they met. He told her they mean that I have to go with him whenever he comes to get me. We drive down to The Settlement at Bundeena.

The ladies are getting our food ready and fixing things up. It’s great fun swimming and dashing ‘round the bush and playing games. And there’s food at every meal time. This is pretty good.

Night time. I’m tired and my belly is full. Ian becomes a different person then and he tries to make me do things with him that I didn’t want to do at Royleston or Yasmar or Kincumber. Who does he think he is? An officer? I’m not bloody doing it! I’m furious and frightened.

In the morning I mouth off about it to one of the ladies and she tells the team leaders. I get taken back home to Redfern. Hope I never see that creep again. But he was good except for that thing he did.

I’ve seen a report Ian wrote about me being sent home. He said it was because I had a tantrum. He didn’t say why I had that tantrum though did he!

Unfortunately what Ian tried at that camp didn’t stop me liking him or needing his care and kindness. He kept popping up at home and asking how I was and whether I needed his help with anything. He didn’t seem to want to get me alone again. I started to think of him as a kind of father who was keeping a check on me, making sure I was going all right. He became a friend. Sometimes I’d tell him how bad things were at home, how frightened I was and how much I hated it when Dad was drunk and punishing us. Ian said that if ever I needed a safe place to go when I couldn’t be safe at home, I could come to his night school not far from our place. There would always be a place for me there. It was such a relief to know that there was somewhere. I wanted to keep Ian as a friend so that I didn’t lose that feeling of having a safe place to go. Ian was a founder of this school for kids with learning problems and he lived in the building.

I wasn’t learning too well at school any more and because I was a state ward, the court said I could go to Ian’s school two nights a week. I really wanted to learn reading and writing and maths. I could walk to the night school from home.

Proper school teachers worked there and they knew how to teach us slow kids. They were kind and they seemed to care about me. Especially Ian.

I started making progress with Catherine and Sue but every time Ian came over my shoulder I freaked out. Men behind me made me nervous. I didn’t know what Ian was thinking when he was there. He dropped us all home after night school and I was always the last. Sometimes Dad would be there drunk and he’d bash me for being home late and sometimes he was too drunk to care who I was or where I’d been.

In the daytime I went to Cleveland Street Boys High School, the only normal high school I ever went to. I was enrolled in Form 1 in February, 1974. A psychologist’s report from that time says, ‘His ability falls in the upper end of the mildly retarded range.’ I didn’t like that psychologist with all his hard questions. When he asked me things that I didn’t want to answer I just shrugged and didn’t answer. A teacher reported that I was ‘quite happy’ and that I’d ‘settled in well’ and was good at craft and woodwork. That teacher didn’t know what I felt like inside - very angry, very troubled, very confused.

I hated high school. I didn’t know how to make friends with that kind of boy, the schoolgoing kind, so I kept to myself. I’d still get blood on my undies so I’d take them off and stuff them down the toilet. Where else was I supposed to put them? I was always blocking up the system. I put on a major ‘fit’ at school one day and was taken to Prince of Wales Hospital. They couldn’t find anything wrong. Of course they couldn’t. They were looking in the wrong place. My brain wasn’t where I was troubled. They should have looked deeper inside. And at my bottom.

Case Notes

The right start that Ray made earlier did not last … difficulty managing the work at a class level … not what concerns Mr J. He feels that Ray tends to provoke other boys into hitting him. Ray would then report the lad concerned to the teacher … Ray has been warned about this.

G.W. District Officer, Sydney. 4/7/74

Life at home felt as bad as ever and I started going further downhill. I didn’t know how to talk about all the confusion and anger I felt. I could talk to Ian a bit but my troubles were not going away. I knew that if I started making myself have more tantrums and they looked like fits, I’d get nice caring attention. If a prefect picked on me and I couldn’t think how to defend myself, I’d throw myself on the ground and twitch and yell and carry on. That got them to take notice of me but it didn’t sort my life out. After one of my fits they took me to Prince Alfred Hospital and a doctor said I had to take Valium with every meal. One time we ran out of pills again and I went berserk at school. They took me back to the doctor and he said he wasn’t sure if my fits were physical or psychological. I knew what they were but I wasn’t telling him. I hated school and I hated the way the pills made me feel.

Well, stuff school. I went back to doing petty crimes with my Redfern mates to get food and to have fun smashing stuff. I was very badly behaved at school too when I did go and pretty soon I was expelled. Ian got busy trying to find another school for me.

Case Notes

Mr Leary is a heavy drinker; this results in little money being available for housekeeping. Mrs Leary has great difficulties in managing.

Mr Leary has also accused his wife of being unfaithful to him including having sexual relationships with her three sons. These accusations are usually made when Mr Leary arrives home drunk.

… the situation at home has made it impossible for her to live with her husband. He has been drinking more heavily and given her no housekeeping money … She will remain in the home pending the maintenance hearing …

Mrs Leary has withdrawn the maintenance summons because of the improvement in her husband’s attitude he is particularly good to Raymond and Edward now …

G.W. District Officer, Sydney. 20/5/74

Ian could get me into a special school for kids like me: aggressive, violent, hard to control. Woniora Road School at Hurstville could help me get back on track and I’d have to work hard. Ian thought it would be good for me. He told me his parents live down that way where the school is and he took me to meet them. They were nice.

Mum was a bit relieved when I told her about the Hurstville school though she said it’s a long way to go. It went all right for a while even if I was spending about five hours a day traveling.

One afternoon I was leaving the Woniora Road school grounds and a white car drove along slowly, obviously following me. I kept walking up to Hurstville Station. When I stopped at the lights the car turned left and I went on to the station.

I’m waiting for my train and the man from the car comes onto the platform. He asks me my name and tells me his name is Robert. He starts chatting to me. He is a teacher in a Catholic school not far from here.

‘Let’s go and get a milkshake,’ he suggests.

‘Yeah all right,’ I say. ‘I’ll just go to the loo.’

Robert follows me in and shuts us in a cubicle so he can force me to suck him off. I’m really shaking and angry. I cry.

‘Just wait in here ’til you’ve calmed down,’ he says and he gives me a red back ($20). ‘I’ll wait for you outside.’

When I go out, Robert is not there. I get the train home.

Robert (Dolly Dunn convicted paedophile) often trapped me after school and took me to meet his friends who all wanted the same thing he did. It didn’t take long before they all wanted to rape me and take nude photos of me after school. If I said no to them, they’d ask me if I’d like a bashing or would I go with them? Someone called Mick took the photos and films of me being raped by Robert or Don or Bill or others. Sometimes they gave me red backs and sometimes they promised big money later. They threatened me too. Would my friends want to see the photos? Would my mum? Barely a day went by when one of them didn’t meet me after school or find me wherever I was on weekends or on school holidays. I was spiraling out of control again.

Mum and Dad were having a fight when I came in one night from Ian’s school. Dad grabbed a knife and went for Mum. I was terrified. I ran to Ian’s place, school, safe place. It was the first time I’d had somebody who might do something to stop Dad.

‘Dad’s tryin’ to stab me! He’s gunna kill me,‘ I said as the lady teachers opened the door. I told them Dad had gone after me with the knife to make it sound worse so that someone would do something about Dad.

‘Oh Raymond! Come in. Come in,’ Ian said kindly.

The teachers sat me down and made me some hot chocolate. Ian made a big fuss and got dressed up and said, ‘I’m going around to see this man. This young boy is not going back to that house tonight! He will stay here. I’ll be back.‘

He got in his car and took off. He was gone for about twenty minutes.

‘I’ve seen your mum,’ he said when he got back. ‘She said you’re fine to stay here the night. Catherine,’ he said to one of the teachers, ‘will you run Raymond a bath please?’

I got in the bath and started to calm down and feel safe. I slid under the water and blew some bubbles. It was fun so I did it again but this time when I came up I sensed that someone was watching me. Ian came over to the bath and started to wash me with soap and a sponge. He dropped the soap in the water. When he put his hand down to pick it up he touched my private bits in a way that didn’t seem to be accidental. He went on washing my back and then he dropped the soap again and his hand went where it had gone before. I looked up at him and my unease must have registered.

‘It’s all right. It’s all right,’ he said quickly moving away. ‘Just finish off, get dried and come downstairs.’ Then he left the room.

I dry myself and wrap the towel around me. When I go downstairs the other teachers have gone to bed and there’s no-one in the kitchen. I find Ian in his office so I go in to ask him where I have to sleep.

‘All dry?’ he asks.

‘Yep.’

He takes the towel off me and dries my hair a bit more then he tells me to go to sleep on the mattress on the floor in his office. ‘I’ve still got some work to do,’ he says, picking up some folders from his desk. ‘I’ll see you later.’ He turns off the light, goes out to the kitchen closing the door as he leaves. I fall asleep in my clean safe place.

I wake up to find Ian rubbing his beard around my ear and rubbing his body against me. I feel him get an erection. He lifts my leg and rubs himself between my legs. When he’s finished he falls asleep. I’m frightened and confused and I feel betrayed. He is my social worker, my friend and someone who is supposed to keep me safe. I don’t feel safe.

Being desperate for any kindness I could get I still went to the night school and stayed in Ian’s bed sometimes. Nothing worse than he’d already done happened for some time. But when he found out from Robert that I had already been raped, he raped me too. I cried and bled. He told me to get up and go and ‘empty out.’ That meant I should let anything in my backside out into the loo. I was never told to go to the loo before he penetrated me. The men didn’t care what was there.

I desperately wanted to leave that place, not just go to the loo. I tried the door but it was locked and I couldn’t get it open. Ian had to get up and do it. I watched him carefully and noticed that all I had to do was lift the latch up then turn the knob on the top lock. I could run off if I wanted to! Needed to. Oh wait. The lock at the bottom needs a key. I’m trapped in this room.

Ian told the welfare person that he wanted to take me and my mates on a camping trip to Bundeena. Mum was convinced that the court had given Ian custody of me every weekend so when he said he was taking me camping, Mum said I had to go whether I wanted to or not. Even if I cried and yelled that I didn’t want to go, she insisted that I had to.

The camping part was fun. Ian picked us up and I sat in the front because I was his pet. ‘Pet’ was the word men used for their favourite boy. Sometimes the pet would live with the man and sometimes he would just be at the beck and call of a particular man and no-one else’s.

After the first trip it was usually me sitting in the front with Ian when we went. I was his pet. When we got to where we were going, the rest of the kids would go off swimming or whatever and the boy in the front seat had to stay and do what Ian wanted.

When we arrived at Bundeena other men starting turning up in different cars and I recognised Robert’s before he got out. I also recognised some of the others who met me after school but I didn’t care because I was Ian’s and I wouldn’t have to go with them.

All the hiking, swimming, canoeing, motor bike riding and mucking about like kids was great. I had more friends then, of my own age, than I’d ever had. The men even gave us joints to smoke and KB beer. We thought they were giving us cool stuff that our mums and dads wouldn’t let us have so we all said yes when they were offered. When I had my first joint I felt so relaxed and happy. We’d laugh at everything and sing and hug each other as if we didn’t have a care in the world. It was a good feeling and I wanted it again.

Sometimes one or two boys would be led away from the group to be filmed or photographed and then brought back. The pornographic photos and films would be sold they said and I think that is how these men funded the camps and trips to Queensland and Victoria.

At night all us kids went to a man’s tent, either someone who had bought you for the weekend or your sugar daddy. I went to Ian’s tent. He was high up in the group and I felt pretty special being his pet even though I hated what we did after the fun was over.

The first woman I saw at camp wasn’t a woman at all. It was Robert dressed in women’s clothing and we had to call him Madge. If any little boys were upset in the morning Madge would come and fuss over them and try to comfort them by sitting down and asking the boys to talk about the bad thing that had happened. He would then tell them to stop thinking about that and think about all the good things they were doing and all the good food and drink and smokes (joints) they would get later. Madge did that to stop boys trying to run away or spread bad feeling in the camp and upset the rest of us.

The kids who came were kids whose parents didn’t give a damn where they were or what they were doing. They could never afford to take their kids for adventures like this, even if they gave a stuff about their kids. The thing that kept us going back was that we enjoyed all the good fun. The threats against us did it too but the good times the men offered were overwhelmingly attractive. If any parent ever did want to know who their kids were going with, Ian or Robert would produce a letter from their offices to show he was an official youth worker. That was enough. Often they would send another kid with a man who he pretended was his uncle, to the front door to ask a boy if he wanted to come away for a weekend. That way his parents would not be suspicious about who their kid was going with.

That is how a series of camping trips to national parks, private properties in Kangaroo Valley, Wollongong, Kiama and the Gosford area began for me and they continued for five years. Looking back I can see that those outings had been going on long before I joined in and probably went on long after I left. We would stay in hotels or caravan parks and the deal was that we had to pretend to be the son or nephew of the man who took us. He would give us a fake name, clothes, food, drink (alcohol), drugs (joints) and the promise of money that was being held in trust accounts for us until we turned eighteen.

Once I had a friend called Wayne who was older than me in the head and much more experienced. We went for a two night stay in a national park and he taught me things that I needed to learn to get jobs done more quickly and a bit less painfully, to get rid of men I didn’t want to be with. Most men didn’t want it to end quickly but I was grateful that I had a friend who helped me take charge sometimes. He had learned what he knew from being abused by his two real uncles. All of us kids used to help each other because none of us wanted to be doing what we were doing. We all had similar family backgrounds and the men knew that we weren’t going to tell anyone what was going on because no-one gave a shit.

From all of this activity, the camping trips and hotels and that, I found out how well connected Ian was with men in the city. Robert and Ian had known each other for many years, well before I had started at Woniora Road School and that is how Robert was able to trap me. There were Bill, Michael, John, George and a lot of others in Sydney. They were often wealthy men who could afford ‘silk,’ the best boys. Although we were taught not to try to find out who the men were, we would see them in Sydney with lawyers wigs on or in police uniforms or we could sometimes work out who they were because they were in newspapers. They would take us to their posh houses, the kind of houses owned by men with pretty high profile positions: judges, teachers, barristers, police, businessmen, doctors and more.

I spent many nights in Ian’s bed because home was not safe. Apart from the awful thing he did at night, he made me feel cared for. He said that he loved me and I believed him. No-one else treated me the way he did: always glad to see me, bought me gifts and nice clothes, cuddled me, kissed me, told me I was beautiful and was always so nice to me. I thought that raping me was about his love too. I hated it and it made me feel worthless as well as in pain but I wanted all the other stuff. I let him take nude photos of me too so he could keep them. I was his pet. Ian had introduced me to other people as a boy he was helping. Once he even let the welfare man know that I was staying with him for a while.

Later I found out that many of the local Redfern boys had been to Ian’s school and had been his pets and that I was not his special person. I was just the next in line after years of other boys being used by him. But for now I felt special to him.

The rules and stuff at Woniora Road really started to piss me off. I knew I was being bad but I couldn’t help it. I felt so, so angry and powerless and out of control. I couldn’t find any words to say it but if I threw a chair or bashed someone or something, I felt a little bit better. Although I couldn’t talk about the abuse I didn’t want to either because that would mean reliving it. I just let myself enjoy the good times and put the rest away somewhere where it couldn’t get out except in angry, violent episodes at school that I didn’t really understand.

Case Notes

A telephone call was received from the principle of Woniora Road Special School. He reported that he was having no end of problems with Ray and feels that he should be transferred back to Werrington Park. He is capable of having completely uncontrolled tantrums and states that he believes that Ray is totally psychotic. Ray has apparently run away from the school 10 times altogether … he will have to exclude Ray not only for his own sake … but also for the welfare of the rest of the school.

J. L. District Officer, Sydney. 8/10/74

I was expelled after six weeks. Woniora Road couldn’t control me and neither could I. Who cared? Ian did. Ian could fix things.

Case Notes

S.C. informed me that placements for Ray had been exhausted; in fact he had stretched the point by placing Ray in Woniora Road - he was a special case there. He feels that the school does a very good job with difficult children and if they cannot manage Ray, no school will be able to. S. C. feels Ray is too dangerous to be placed in a day school situation and that residential care is now the only choice left.

A.L. District Officer, Sydney. 1/11/74

Mum thought that I would have to go back to an institution but she told the district officer that she wanted me to be with her. She said that Dad was improving again. I couldn’t see it but I didn’t want to go to another institution. She also told the district officer that her mother had deserted her when she was two years old and then she’d been pushed from pillar to post throughout her childhood. She told him that she had made a great mistake marrying Dad because he was so possessive and jealous. She said she had left him many times before but when he was sober he was a very good husband.

By the end of that year, 1974, I was fully connected with a ring of paedophiles in Sydney, thanks to my social worker, Ian Hughes. I didn’t know the word paedophile but I knew their ways. I didn’t know the word homosexual either. Us boys just thought that all the men who wanted to have sex with us were ‘poofters’ and ‘fags’ and that is what we called them. Gay pride had not become strong in Sydney then but we just hated them all. Sometimes in the wee small hours of the morning, we took our rage out on ‘fags’ who picked up men at certain places and we bashed them and left them in bloody, whimpering, lumps who weren’t going to hurt boys again for quite a while.

The camps were secret and continued for the next five or so years with a regular lot of boys and new ones too. Ian and friends of his kept coming and Robert and Ian were always there. The added promise of bikes and leather gear to wear as well as lots of food and fun seduced us to go with them. They left us alone in the daytime except for taking photos of us with less and less clothes on, giving us joints and beer and watching us play. We ran wild or rode bikes or swam in creeks or waterholes. They had a favourite game that they liked to play around the campfire at night. Spin the bottle. If the bottle pointed to you, you had to take off an item of clothing. When you had no clothes left to take off a man would say, ‘Well, what are you going to do now? I know. You can …’ It was usually to perform a sexual act with one of the other boys. You’d protest but you knew you had to do it because the men said so. I was always too frightened to keep saying no.

Nights were a different story. Each man took the boy he had chosen during the day into his tent where the boy had to pay for the fun he’d had. The men set the price. The boys knew screaming or yelling for help was useless so far away from civilisation. After we had paid, we had to give the bikes and leathers back and be dropped off at home or in the city. We could have them back next time. Our motto was always, ‘What happens on camping trips stays on camping trips.’ We were reminded of that at the end of every trip. Do not to tell anyone outside the group what you’ve been doing.

After a while Ian told me to go with another man. My feelings were hurt and I felt frightened and rejected. The man was brutal and didn’t care what I wanted. Or didn’t want.

When I got home I was bleeding and in tears. Mum and Dad were watching television. I didn’t want them to see me so I went straight to the shower and stayed there for hours, trying to feel clean and to finish crying.

Mum never seemed to suspect anything. I asked her recently whether she wondered why I stayed in the shower for so long that night. She said she thought I must have been exceptionally dirty. I don’t really understand why she never picked up the clues. Dad was probably drunk out of his mind but I don’t know why Mum didn’t pick it. I always had the belief that my being at home made life much too complicated for her. I thought she’d rather we weren’t there when Dad was drinking. Eddy and I would try to get between her and him and we’d take the punches to save her.

Even after I started objecting, boldly or timidly, when Ian came to get me for a weekend away, Mum made me go with the social worker who had the paperwork. My sister still remembers me crying and pleading with Mum not to make me go. She says she suspected something was wrong but Mum never did. Sis sometimes saw me dressed to look like a million dollars and she suspected something but Mum never did.

When I’d been away for three days or so and gone back home, all I’d get was a belting from Dad and a telling off. It got to the point where I would just laugh at Dad’s belting me. Nothing he could do would cause as much pain as the men caused.

All my Redfern friends became known to Ian. After camps some of them said they hated him and they wouldn’t want to go anywhere with him ever again. With me he had become more violent and I hated that. It made me want to die when it was happening. I grew to be afraid of him but also more needy of his protection as more men came on the scene. Men knew they were not allowed to damage Ian’s property and if they did he would beat them up and expel them from his ring.

Some of the boys started hating me too because I had got them involved with the men. I lost a lot of friends in Redfern and that was hurtful. I started being called a ‘fag’ and kids would yell as I walked down the street, ‘Hey faggot, how are yer poofter friends?’ I knew I was not a poofter.

Back then my own confused sexuality had nothing to do with what Ian and the men did. That was all about them. Did I even have my own developing sexuality any more or was I just a frightened, unloved thing that men could exploit for their own pleasure? That must be how they saw us.

My friends and I who had got dragged into the ring of men found that if we could satisfy the bastards quickly, it would be over quickly. The ones that didn’t want to finish quickly would order you to stop what you were doing and some were strong enough to literally throw you off them.

If you say you don’t want to be penetrated, they just push harder and harder and you cry, ‘No! No, no, no!’ but they don’t care. You just black out. You feel the motion but you’ve gone somewhere else in your head where there isn’t agonising pain. When you come around again they pick you up. They give you a flap on the head and say, ‘Off you go,’ as if nothing ugly and terrible has happened. As if you don’t want to stand in a hot shower for hours and hours to wash it all away.

CHAPTER 8.
Slippery Slope

Ian’s camping friends started turning up at our house to take me out. There was Robert, George, Michael, Dave, Peter, Gary and others. I’d go off quickly before she could find out what they wanted.

Possibly the worst day of my life was a Sunday morning when some of them dropped me home in their H. D. Holden after a night out. They said we were going to the beach now and I had to pick up a towel and cossy. I didn’t want to go with them but I had to. I crept inside and picked up the stuff I needed. I was heading out the door and my little brother Eddy followed me.

‘Can I come to the beach too?’

‘No Ed. Go inside. Quick!’ I didn’t want the men to see my beautiful brother.

‘But I want to come!’ he whined.

‘No! Go inside,’ I told him desperately.

Eddy got louder. He was just about screaming.

‘Sh! Mum’ll hear you. Go inside. You’re not comin’.’

Then this fuckin’ thing called Mick says, ‘Well now! Who’s this young lad?’

I felt sick as I said, ‘It’s my brother.’

He was still whining, ‘I want to come to the beach. I want to come too.’

Mick says sweetly, ‘Go and get a towel little one. We’ll wait for you.’

I didn’t want him to put on a performance because Mum and Dad were in the house and they’d say, ‘Oh take him with you. Don’t be mean.’ I definitely didn’t want him to come and learn to feel the pain and the confusion that I was living in.

‘Come on then,’ the creature called Mick said. ‘Get in. You can sit on my lap.‘ There were already three people in the back seat. So Eddy got in and sat squeezed in with Mick.

That was the day that Eddy’s life was ruined. It’s the day our brotherly love died. It’s a day I will never forget. We went to Bondi and stayed the night with the men at Don’s place. I went into the bedroom with Greg and Don and Eddy stayed with Mick.

Don asks, ‘Have you been with girls today?’

I’d love to have answered yes but the truth was that the men would always find me before I got the chance to pick up girls. I’d liked girls and that is what we would have chosen to do if we’d been able to.

‘No,’ was the answer.

‘That’s good,’ Don would say says. ‘I don’t want that fishy smell around me. Would you like a drink?’ he’d ask while he puffed on his stinking cigar.

The next day Eddy didn’t say anything but I could tell what had happened by the way he looked. I knew that look. My happy-go-lucky little brother who just wanted to have some fun at the beach was gone. I would do anything, anything at all, to undo that day. But I can’t. We have never been the close brothers we were. Those creeps took that away from us.

As the next few years passed my brother grew really long hair and he learnt to ride a boogy board better than anyone. He was graceful and confident and men noticed him. Because he was so beautiful he was a very popular pet. Later it got to the stage where he hated summer because that’s the time when men were most active. He moved out west when he could to be away from beaches. Meanwhile, he would always go to a man for help or a clean bed and food if he needed it, not home. One time he escaped from a boys’ home and ran back to the place he’d been arrested at for being ‘exposed to moral danger.’

Don worked in a pinball parlour where lots of kids used to go when they wagged school. What better place for a paedophile? Or a pimp? All he had to do was watch who came in, make a phone call and say, ‘The package has arrived.’ Peter or someone would turn up and the ‘package’ would be taken to a place he most likely didn’t want to go. Peter even pretended he was a Youth and Community Services (YACS) officer sometimes.

‘Why aren’t you at school?’ he would demand. Whatever the boy said, he would say, ‘Well, you should be at school or with your parents. I think you’d better come with me in my car.’

He looked the part so kids would often go with him.

My schooling is still a problem for the welfare people (YACS). Where will I go if Woniora Road School can’t manage me? There seems to be nowhere left. Ian takes me to see a Dr Wise, a paediatric neurologist. Ian says that means they’ll find out if my head is all right.

Case notes

… his clinical impression is that there is nothing seriously neurologically wrong with Ray and that his behaviour pattern can be controlled by medication. Mr Hughes, social worker at the Prince of Wales, arranged for a submission to a special school for disturbed children … Mr Hughes approached his parents to care for Ray in the interim.

D.H. Senior District Officer, Sydney. 22/11/74

Ian found a place for me in Prince Henry Hospital school where there was a special class for emotionally disturbed kids. The teacher was Mr Epp and I really liked him. He could help me learn and he didn’t expect me to pay with my body. He was a good man who cared about teaching us and he would help us learn skills to get jobs when the time came. One time he invited me to meet Mrs Epp and we went to a little cafe and had tea together. They were such nice, good people. Mr Epp offered to drive me home but I said, ‘No. It’s all right. I’ll get the train.’

Now that I was at that school, Ian knew exactly where I was. Men would turn up after class to take me away, then back home. I became very popular. I was silk.

Ian taught us how to behave around his rich friends: good manners, how to have conversations with our wealthy ‘uncles’ without prying into their lives, what clothes we should wear (bought by them and taken back) and how to wash our bodies thoroughly because the men didn’t want us to be dirty or smelly when they took us to bed. We couldn’t be starving, neglected, homeless kids around them. I was entrenched in the network of boys Ian rented out to his friends. Some of us became procurers by inviting other kids to come camping or whatever else was on.

The men would watch boys playing and then one would say to the pets, ‘Go and make friends with him and him and him.’ It might take a month for a friendship to develop between us but the fags could wait. Then they would get the pets to invite the boys camping for a weekend. They would take them to Kangaroo Valley or the Royal National Park where no one could hear them scream and if they tried to run away they wouldn’t get anywhere. That is how a lot of kids in my era got caught up in it: poor or neglected boys lured in by the promise of good times and money.

Ian could be very scary when he was angry but it wasn’t only us boys he got angry with. If any of his men damaged his boys or made them too frightened or distressed, Ian would be there comforting and calming the boy then raging at the men. He’d yell at them or bash them or expel them from the ring. He was our protector as well as our pimp.

For a while Ian had been taking photos and thirty five milimetre film of me and the other boys doing the things we’d learnt from magazines. He’d promised that there would be big money in it for us when Robert sold it all in Manila. We never saw any money. Ian would promise us all sorts of things and never delivered. I was supposed to be his pet but as he kept giving me to other men I became more and more angry. He might give us twenty dollars for going with a man he chose but he’d hardly ever hand all the money over to us.

‘It’s in your bank account. It’s going to have so much in it that you’ll be able to buy yourself a really good bike and some leathers when you’re old enough,’ he’d say. We never even saw an account book but we believed him because we wanted the things he said we’d have enough money for.

Gradually Ian started asking us to do more films with men not just boys. Rapes, not just boy stuff. I hated it and I started telling him I didn’t want to do it, especially if the man was too big. Ian would always con me by saying things like, ‘Oh just this one more time.’ Or, ‘He’s come so far to see you.’ Or, ‘There’ll be very big money going into your account, Raymond.’ The one that worked best was, ‘Come on Raymond. After all I have done for you, are you going to say no to me now when I need you to do this one small thing for me?’ He always made me feel that I owed him something.

I wanted my money more often than he was willing to give it and he’d get angry if I asked for more. I started telling other boys that Ian just took what he wanted from you for as long as he wanted and then brushed you off and held on to the money.

There were times when we felt so angry that, in revenge, we broke into Ian’s night school and stole and smashed things. We stole the lady teachers’ handbags and their jewelry too. Looking back I can see that that wasn’t fair but we were angry and we didn’t care who we hurt. They must have guessed who did it and Catherine and Sue thought that I should not be allowed to stay overnight any more. But Ian wanted me and he had promised that there would always be a place for me to sleep, so I kept going.

The men who used us would turn up everywhere. They were always able to find us. If we were just mucking about in a park they’d find us. If we were at the beach or a pool or a pin ball parlour they’d find us. If we went to the city for a day or the Penny Arcade, Humphreys, any of those amusement places that kids used to go, the men would turn up. Many a time we didn’t want to go with them and we’d run as soon as their cars pulled up. I’d yell, ‘Run Eddy. Run!’ They’d catch me and give me a beating then bundle me into their car and take me to a hotel or a posh house. A lot of the time I didn’t want to go home or I’d go and Dad would be drinking so I’d leave. All of us street kids did that. We stayed at mates’ places. We would sleep in the same bed toe to toe. Hughes made use of that too by telling me to touch the boys and if they liked it or didn’t mind he would get to know them and that was the end of that poor kid. It was just the way it had been when Greg had set me up and lost me as a friend at Werrington Park. Betraying them felt bad but they wanted the same things I did and they would often see me dressed up for a big night out and envy my wardrobe. What would Ian think if I didn’t do as he said? That was always the biggest, most scary question.

My days were filled with school, then going with Ian or other men at night and sneaking home if I could. My weekends were spent away with Ian and his friends. Oh well, I thought, just follow the pattern and make the most of the good things. Those fags couldn’t do any worse than they had already done. I was wrong about that but I didn’t find out until a bit later.

Mum always tried hard to make things like birthdays and Christmas nice for us but that life was becoming more and more forgettable to me. She got the best she could for us with whatever Dad hadn’t wasted on drink but she couldn’t compete with what the fags were giving us. It must have hurt her when I didn’t want to have my birthday with her. I wanted to celebrate with my mates in pizza huts or pinball parlours. Or we could go to someone’s house and they’d put on a barbecue and we’d have a lot of fun. Then we paid for our birthday fun in bed and left.

My behaviour got so bad that Mum admitted she couldn’t control me. Ian came to my rescue and asked his parents if I could stay with them for a while. They agreed and I was allowed to go there. They lived at Gymea where Mrs Hughes ran a preschool. I liked Ian’s parents. They seemed very old to me but they gave me my own room with a nice bed to sleep in and good food. They had two girls living there too so I had company my own age.

They let me help in the kindergarten too. I always liked to be helpful but my Mum didn’t let me help much because I got in her way. I liked playing with the little kids, giving them their food and drinks and making them laugh. I especially liked making them laugh.

I was really good at doing different voices back then and Mrs Hughes let me put on a puppet show for the kids one day.

‘You get your show set up and we’ll keep the kids outside,’ she said.

My theatre was made of a box for me to sit on while I reached up to the stage with the puppets on my hands. Everything except the stage was hidden behind a curtain. I called the audience in and disappeared behind the curtain before they could see me.

When they were settled I began my show using the voices I could do and making sure the right puppet had the right voice. All went well until I heard a little boy say, ‘There’s a foot! I can see a foot down there!’

Next thing I know he’s kicking my foot real hard. ‘Ouch!’ says the mother puppet in a boy’s voice. More kicks. ‘Stop it!’ says the dog puppet, also in a boy’s voice. Soon the audience is laughing and so am I and that’s the end of my show. Mrs Hughes wasn’t disappointed in me though. She said it was very enjoyable.

I started to settle down in the Hughes’s place. When I was behaving better I was allowed back with Mum and Dad. I always missed Mum when I was away from her and, although I can’t remember, I imagine I was glad to go back to her. Despite my love for Mum it was Ian pulling the strings and keeping me where he wanted me.

One night when Mum and Dad were having another fight I went to Ian’s to stay the night.

He put me in the room where we slept and sat down.

‘Now what are we going to do?’ he asked, rubbing his beard. ‘I have other plans for tonight. What are we going to do with you?’

‘Well, you said every time I get in trouble I can come here. So I’m here. I can’t go home. Dad’s smashing stuff.’

Catherine came downstairs and Ian met her in the kitchen. I could hear their voices getting louder and louder and they ended up yelling at each other. I think they must have been going to spend the night together but I was in the way. Catherine went storming upstairs and Ian came in to me. He was very angry.

‘You’ll be sleeping in here by yourself tonight. Catherine and I have just had a big argument about you staying. Yes,’ he steamed through gritted teeth, ‘she knows it’s you who’s broken in. Damaged things. Stolen from her. She says it’s not right having you staying here.’

‘So what am I gunna to do?’ I asked.

‘You stay here and I’ll be in the kitchen.’ He stormed out.

Later he came back in, furious. He knocked me down and raped me more violently than anyone had ever done before. I was dry and the agony was incredible. He left the room then and I lay there weeping and wondering how much worse things could get for me if the person who cared most about me could be that cruel.

When I got up in the morning Ian said, ‘Don’t have breakfast. Just get out of here before Catherine’s up.’ He was still cold, harsh and furious.

I heard later that Ian had wanted to marry Catherine but after that night, she didn’t even want to know him. It was around the time when Catherine walked out that Ian became more violent and stayed that way. His appetite for boys, especially ‘fresh meat,’ grew and he became as much a threat to me as a friend. I still needed the friend and his protection.

Robert and Ian would drive us boys to Wollongong and find new boys to groom and use. The time spent with the men was worse than ever and by this time I was well known to the men in the ring and they could get me anytime they wanted to. Mum and Dad were both working and they had no idea what I was up to.

Mum was convinced that Ian had custody of me on weekends so she didn’t mind working an extra shift then. She always needed the money to pay her debts at shops like Waltons and others. She got a job as a cook in the Sydney City Mission in Redfern. Either Eddy or I always made sure we were there to walk with her through the park at Redfern and keep her safe.

One night I was late meeting Mum because Ian and his mates didn’t get me there in time. When they dropped me at the park, an awful feeling came over me that something was very wrong. I got out of the car and saw the ambulance lights flickering in the park. I bolted up to the Mission and asked for Mum.

‘Your mum left half an hour ago!’

I pelted down to the ambulance and there was Mum covered in blood with a bandage around her head. I felt so sick that I hadn’t been there for her. I was enraged that some mongrel could do that to my mum who had so much to put up with anyway. She was taken to hospital because she had concussion and she stayed for a couple of days. We went to visit her and then we took her home to Granville. For the rest of the time she worked at that place I never ever missed meeting her and walking her through the park. Mum had been jumped by some Aboriginal boys and they gave her quite a hiding and took all her money.

A few days later I was hanging around with Tony and some other mates at Prince Alfred Park pool and they started showing off about all the money they had. That was all right with me until they said where they got it from.

‘This stupid bitch is walking through the park and we snatch her bag. Stupid cunt wouldn’t let the fuckin’ thing go. She kept holdin’ on so we had ta knock her about a bit!’

I exploded. I jumped him. I was a skinny little runt who wanted to get Tony and give him pain.

‘That was my Mum!’ I screamed at him. ‘You fuckin’ bastard!’

We had a massive fist fight and I was kicked and beaten. I think I managed to land a few good punches and we both gave as good as we got. I remember leaving the pool licking my wounds as I walked up to Coronation Park where there was a community centre where I could smash things and let off steam. We didn’t see much of Tony after that even though I don’t think he knew the lady he bashed was my mum when he did it.

Around this time, according to my file, I was found unconscious in a park at ten past one in the morning. I was taken to hospital but I don’t know who knocked me out. Everyone assumed I’d been in a fight. I might have been.

The welfare people suggested that Mum should stop me and Ed seeing Tony and his brother because they were ‘the worst element in Redfern.‘ We should stay in Granville and make friends there instead of going back to Redfern.

Ian and other men especially liked to take us to a place near Gosford that was owned by a man called John. Us boys would have fun there swimming in the waterhole that they called ‘The Holy Pond.’ The pond was full of leeches and John was particularly keen on putting salt on them to make them squirm and drop off us. Nights there were horrible and in the morning the men would tell us to go and wash away our sins in The Holy Pond. I’d forgotten all my Catholic religious training by then and we joined in the joke because the cold water was such a relief for us when we were hurting.

One time Ian picked up Ed and me in his campervan that we had come to call The Love Bus. Then we picked up two brothers who we’d made friends with in Granville. I had told the parents Ian was taking us up to Gosford for some swimming and hiking.

We set up camp then go to say hello to John. After that Ian tells me to go to the back of the bus with him. He tells me he wants the younger of the brothers and I have to go and get him.

‘But you promised you wouldn’t do any of that!’

‘I know. I just want to talk to him. Go on. It’s all right. Go and get him.’

‘Ian wants you to go up the back,’ I say to the boy who’s hanging around with his big brother.

The boy goes in to Ian. Suddenly he starts screaming and fighting. The big brother rushes in and they both get stuck into Ian. Ian skillfully charms his way out of trouble. We have tea and go to sleep.

In the wee small hours of the morning a police van comes bumping down the track. Two burly policemen get out and ask Ian some questions.

Then they say, ‘These two boys are coming with us. Their parents rang Gosford Police Station. They say they haven’t given permission for you to take their boys out over night.’

Ian says huffily, ‘But officer, I am a youth worker with a very reputable organisation.’

‘Give us your name and address. We’ll follow it up but these two are coming with us. You should know you need to get the parents’ written permission before you take kids out overnight. The other two can stay but we’re taking these two with us.’

Ian is furious.

Apparently the boys told their parents what had happened when they got home. Those two boys don’t want to know me now and their father came around and blew me and Mum up.

I don’t think charges were brought against Ian but the police must have made some record of it. I have often wondered why they didn’t take Ed and me back home too.

During my time in the Prince Henry special class, Ian asked a reporter from the local paper to come out and have a look at the wonderful work they were doing. I think that there were threats to close the school down so Ian had decided that some nice articles in the local paper might help to save it.

At lunchtime he introduces me and Clarrie, another little blonde boy with crossed eyes, to a woman with a notebook and pen and then he goes away. Clarrie and I are friends and he comes with me when the men take us away on weekends. He is Robert’s favourite. We talk about the school and what we do here and I tell her about how good Ian has been, getting me in this place and how he is even trying to get his parents to adopt me. We say how we really like the school and Mr Epp is the best teacher we’ve ever met.

‘And what does Mr Hughes do?’ she asks.

Clarrie says, ‘Oh he comes and plays sometimes and all I have to do is suck his dick.’

‘I beg your pardon!’ She looks like her eyes are going to pop out of her head.

Clarrie repeats what he said and adds, ‘I do it to Ian and Robert.’

Then she looks at me.

‘Yeah, I have to do that too,’ I say. ‘I’ve known ’em for a long time and I always have to do that or let him do other things to me.’

‘Are you sure you are talking about the gentleman who just introduced me to you?’

‘Yeah. Ian. And his friend Robert.’

She keeps asking us questions about the camps we go on to the Hunter Valley, Gosford, the Royal National Park. She wants to know who the kids are and where they come from. Do their parents know? What men go? What do we do there? She seems very interested and she keeps writing down our answers. She’s pretty busy.

Then she says, ‘Well, I think I’ve heard quite enough. Thank you boys. I’ll be in touch with Mr Hughes later.’

We never saw her again and Ian never mentioned her. I think Clarrie and I thought we’d done a good job giving the lady all the right answers.

I wonder how our lives might have gone if that woman had contacted the police and the police had followed up on it. That didn’t happen. We just went on with life as we knew it.

Prince Henry School was going well for me though and Mr Epp started talking about me getting a job and supporting myself. That was a bit worrying. Supporting myself! I was fourteen years old and couldn’t imagine how I’d do it. Who would help me and where would I live? Mr Epp said he’d teach me some skills. Good luck Mr Epp.

Case Notes

18/9/75

A telephone message from R.D., psychiatric social worker at Prince Henry Hospital. He stated that Raymond was making good progress at the school and in his opinion was ready to assert his independence and demonstrate his ability to support himself … He proposed that Raymond work for three days per week and attend Prince Henry school for the other two days. He further stated that Raymond proposed to leave home and live in a hostel which he described as a therapeutic community … Is run by an organisation called the Richmond Fellowship.

A.F. District Officer, Parramatta

Life gets even more ugly. I’ve been thinking rape is the worst thing that can happen but I am introduced to a world that I still can’t fathom.

Mick finds me and my mate, Al. Mick gets us into his car with promises of the good things we’ve come to want and expect. He puts hoods on us and drives for quite a while. We eventually take the hoods off, get out of the car and he walks us up a short bush track. He opens a gate and tells us to wait. Another man comes along and they set up a camera. We must be going to do a movie. We can hear chains rattling.

‘Take your clothes off,’ Mick tells us.

We sit naked on a bench and wait to be photographed. We’ll probably have to do stuff we do for magazines.

‘You first,’ Mick says to Al.

They leave and I can hear chains rattling again. Pretty soon I can hear hitting sounds and screaming, ‘No! No more! No more!’ The screaming stops but the hitting doesn’t.

I’m frightened. I want to run away. Where to though? We’re out in the bush. Where will I go? I don’t want to be in the bush in the dark by myself without my clothes.

‘Come on Raymond. Your turn now,’ Mick says.

‘No. I don’t want to do it.’

‘Come on! Don’t be silly. You’ll be all right.’

He helps me inside a cage made of steel bars and cyclone wire. He chains my hands out above my head. He chains my feet apart too. I’m shaking all over and I can’t see what’s happening behind me. Mick pops a pill in my mouth and it makes me feel like my hair is standing up out from my head. It arouses me too but I’m not in my body.

I’m being whipped, not hard and it doesn’t hurt. I know the camera is on me. ‘Ha,’ I say, ‘My dad does it harder than that,’ and I laugh at them. Not a humourous laugh but a druggy kind of out of my body laugh.

‘This is not meant to be a joke. It’s serious money.’

Now the whip lands really hard and that breaks me.

I scream, ‘Stop!’ Another line of whip pain and I scream again. I can’t move or cringe or even try to get away. I can feel every stroke but I can’t move. I’m hanging by chains. It doesn’t get worse than this does it? Mick keeps filming as a man comes up behind me and shoves himself into my bum. I can’t scream but I can feel the agony. Mick keeps filming.

‘He’s falling down,’ the rapist says. ‘I need him higher.’

Mick stops filming and pulls on the chains so the man can have what he wants. Then Mick’s filming again.

That memory is very clear even today. I was a skinny little kid just right for men who wanted films of the torture and rape of chained up little boys. As an adult I have searched for this place and found it. It is not in the bush but in the heart of Sydney.

I don’t remember what happened when that session was over. I was drugged but I ended up back in town.

We were often taken to those bondage sessions in the cage. Those men found so many ways to chain us up and so many horrible things to do with pliers, electric things, leather straps and all kinds of stuff inside us or outside us with our legs up or down. It was terrifying and vile and so were the men. We were promised a fortune but even so we had to be tricked into going there. Or threatened with worse violence.

When they drugged us, whether we wanted them or not, I’d hide the pill in my mouth and spit it out if I could. I hated being drugged because I didn’t know what the men would do to me. I would smoke a joint or have a few beers but I hated the amyl nitrate. I’m glad I spat the pills out because I didn’t become addicted to anything like a lot of the other kids did.

Sometimes we were taken to Robert’s place after a bondage session. He would be there in a house in Hurstville wearing either a pink or blue frock. At times Robert joined in the rape and torture but sometimes he preferred to play the caring nurse or mother role after it was over. He took us one by one into a room and told us to bend over. He would inspect our bums and say either, ‘Oh this little darling is all right. He can go out again.‘ Or he might need to say, ‘No, this little pet is too torn. He’ll have to be off for a while.’ Then he would croon and comfort the broken boys while the others were taken away for more.

One time we went to Peter’s house in Turramurra and we sat watching television while we waited for our fags to come. This lot had got us to go with them rather than with Ian’s group because they gave us the money. Ian never gave us the money. Later I started to realise that Ian must have been keeping the money his men paid for us.

Robert came out dressed in a pink dressing gown and matching fluffy slippers. In one hand he had his usual glass of scotch and a cigarette dangled between his lips. We turned around to see who it was and we both got a fit of laughter that we couldn’t hide. He minced over to us and asked, ‘What are you laughing at?’ I think he thought he looked gorgeous and really didn’t know why we were laughing.

‘Where’s the blue one?’ asked a man who’d just come in. ‘You usually wear a blue one.’

‘Oh, I thought a change of my image was in order,‘ Robert replied quite seriously.

That set us off giggling again but our smiles turned to grimaces not long after the other client arrived. They were always wealthy, well dressed men who smelled nice and paid big money for us. Robert would take a cut and give us the rest. They’d offer drinks, alcohol or a joint before bed and they’d be gone back to their real lives before we woke up the next day.

I was still going to the class at the hospital and often men would be waiting for me outside when the class finished. I didn’t know how to make it all stop but I felt damaged and confused and I didn’t really care what happened to me.

CHAPTER 9.
I’ll Drive

My elder brother had a driving instructor who we called ‘the Four Fingered Poof.’ He’d had four fingers amputated after a work accident.

‘Never, never, never go anywhere with him,’ our brother told us. ‘He’s bad news.’

One day, just as I was coming home from Prince Henry, the Four Fingered Poof blocked my way with this flashy car.

‘Oh Ray! Hello,’ he said. ‘Come and have something to eat.’

I was starving so I went with him and he got me a hamburger and some fish and chips. Next thing I know we’re driving out the back of the Kurnell refinery, in the middle of bloody nowhere. He said if I didn’t do what he wanted he’d drive away and leave me out there in the dark. Then raped me. I thought I’d be ripped in two or he’d go through my guts. Screaming didn’t help because no-one could hear me. Then he shoved me back in the car and drove me home.

I told my brother about it. He said he’d never do business with him again and he didn’t

A man called John came to pick me and my mates up one time to take us to a water hole in the Royal National Park.

Ian turned up just as I was about to get in the car.

‘Raymond,’ Ian yelled getting out of his car. ‘Where are you going?’

‘It’s my social worker,’ I said to John. ‘I’ve got to go.’

John got out of his car and came over to Ian.

‘Have you forgotten you’re going out with me and the boys today Raymond?’ Ian asks.

‘Oh, yeah. Forgot about that,’ I said, knowing who was in charge. ‘Sorry John.’

Ian muscled up to John and started a conversation that I couldn’t hear. John was no friend of Ian’s and no match for him either. Ian thumped him and I saw him crumble like a little baby then struggle into his car and drive away.

We saw John a bit. He was never any match for Ian but he was very violent with us skinny little boys. He’d lord it around Redfern as if he owned the place and he’d find us wherever we were. He’d bash us if we said no, we weren’t going and he’d take whatever he wanted by force. For a while he was working at the Peters Ice-cream factory and he’d bring me boxes of Paddle Pops. I’d put them in the house and then he’d say, ‘Well come on. Let’s go for a drive.‘ When I had paid for the Paddle Pops he would drop me home again.

In December 1974, Mum walked out on Dad. Dad had thrown a glass of beer at her and chased her down the street in a drunken rage. Mum just kept running and went to Dad’s brother’s place first then to Sis’s. Sis had married and had a baby and another one was on the way. She lived in a tiny flat at Harris Park. There was nowhere for me to live but in Redfern with Dad until Mum got settled somewhere. Eddy stayed with Mum because he was younger but I had to stay with Dad. I was so angry with Sis for not letting me stay. So angry that I stole the money she had saved to get her wedding photos printed and I spent the lot. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t stay with Mum back then but now I do.

Dad seemed lost without Mum but he still had his beer. I was lost anyway and I mostly stayed out on the streets earning money to buy his drink and smokes. He didn’t seem to care where the money came from as long as his beer was there. It was an awful time. Getting money wasn’t that hard because all the men knew me. I couldn’t refuse Dad his beer. He was scary enough when he had it. What would he be like if he didn’t?

Dad had got behind in rent payments and had to move out of the house. He went to a bedsit in Lidcombe and I stayed at the homes of whatever men would take me, like Robert or Don or Mick. When Sis told me that Mum had got a flat in Blaxcell Street, Granville, I went there. Mum was as happy as Larry living without Dad. I was really happy when I went there too, just with Mum, Eddy and me. Mum didn’t even know where Dad was and Sis had made me promise not to tell her.

I thought I could get away from the men and all that horrible stuff by living out there in Granville. The plan was that I’d go with Mum on the train in the mornings. She’d go to her job in Redfern and I’d go on to school at Prince Henry Hospital. In the afternoon I’d meet Mum in Redfern and go home with her. Mum had to keep going to work to earn enough money to get our furniture moved from Redfern so we didn’t have to sleep on the floor for too long. That was the plan and welfare thought it was all right, for now at least.

Welfare asked Ian from time to time how I was going. He rang them too, to report on my progress. He told them I was going well but that I worried about going into a home again. Welfare was worried that I had too much unsupervised time after school so Ian said that he would arrange after school activities for me. The after school activities were arranged all right: with Ian in Chippendale or Robert in Hurstville or with any of their mates who had money. It was a big mistake to think I could get away from them by living in Granville. As long as I was connected with Ian, I couldn’t get free. He knew men from the Wollongong area and the Hunter Valley as well as the Sydney lot and they all got to know me and my brother.

Soon I was in trouble with the cops again.

It’s 13th October in 1975 and my three mates and I are walking down Anzac Parade on our way to a pinball parlour at Bondi. There’s an empty highway patrol car, a VJ Charger, with the keys left in the ignition.

‘Let’s take it,’ someone says.

‘Nah,’ I say calmly but I’m tempted

‘Come on Ray! You know how to drive. You’ve done it before.’

I give in and we all jump in the car. Pretty soon we’re off.

‘Get the siren goin’. Get the siren goin’!’

‘How? How do you get the siren goin’?’ I ask.

We get the blue light flashing and then we’re just pushing all sorts of buttons. At last. Eeeor, eeeor eeeor. The siren! Careering down Anzac Parade through Kensington, past the University. This is cool! All of a sudden a bull wagon comes out of a side street and starts chasing us with his siren on. We come to a roundabout and there’s another two police cars coming the other way. They join the chase. We pass South Sydney football club with three cop cars chasing me. My heart’s pumping like it never has before.

One police car comes up beside me and the cop yells, ‘Pull over. Pull over.’

Nah. Not me. I keep going.

‘Pull that car over. Now!’ he yells.

No way! I put my foot down and speed to Maroubra Junction. By now my mates are pleading with me to stop but I won’t. Too much fun. Don’t want to get caught do ya! All the cars on the road screech to a stop, just like on TV, and all of us keep going through the intersection with our sirens wailing.

Oh shit! Another police car comes out and blocks the road.

‘Hold on! We’re gunna crash,’ I tell my mates. Then I see a little gap off the road so up the gutter we go, past the cop car and back onto the road with four cars chasing us. We keep going out near Malabar and as we pass Long Bay Gaol one cop car overtakes me and puts his nose in front of me so all I can do is go up the ramp to Long Bay Gaol! No, wait! I can get up over the gutter again, so I do. My mates are all crying for me to stop while I speed past the entrance to Prince Henry Hospital. I know where I am.

Soon we come to a T intersection. I go left heading to La Perouse and Bear Island. All of a sudden the police cars scream to stop and I keep speeding along. If I’d gone right I would have got away but we didn’t know that yet. All we know is they’ve stopped chasing us.

’Good on ya Ray. Good on ya. We did it!’ My mates are all relieved. ‘We got away!’

I cruise along the road and then we all realise we’re going around a horseshoe and we’ll be heading straight back to where the coppers have pulled over.

‘Oh shit! What can we do? Let’s see where this road goes.’

I drive down a bit further past the snakepit then round the bend past boat shed, and now I’m driving up the hill, siren still wailing because I don’t know how to turn it off, trying to decide what to do. I look ahead and see so many blue lights on so many police cars!

‘What am I gunna do?’ I ask my mates.

‘We’re going to gaol! We’re going to gaol!’ they sniffle.

I drive slowly towards the police thinking I have no way else to go. Then I get an idea.

‘Hang on,’ I yell.

I drive between two parked police cars, straight into a ditch in the park. Police run everywhere yelling, ‘Get your hands up!’ They grab us all. They push our faces into the concrete and handcuff us. One pig shoves his knee into my neck to keep me down.

‘You’re hurting me. Fuck off!’

‘These are only kids!’ I hear one of them say.

‘You black bastards!’ the police yell as they pull us out of the wrecked car.

‘This one’s white!’ one cop says as he pulls me out. ‘Were you the fuckin’ driver?’

‘No sir. Wasn’t me,’ I say.

‘Who was the driver then?’ (Whack, whack, whack on my head.)

They throw us in the back of the van and give us the roughest ride ever back to the Daceyville station.

We get a little slap around the head and a severe talking to. I think, well fair enough. We’ve done a bad thing. We rolled a police car into a ditch.

Then everything seems to calm down. It isn’t going to be too bad. Oh, the sergeant who left the keys in the car storms in.

‘Where are the little fuckin’ bastards!’ he roars. ‘Right! Which one of you was driving the car!’

They all point straight at me.

‘Come ‘ere,’ he says. He bends down to my level. ‘Steal my car?’ he says abruptly. ‘Steal my police car? Why did you steal my police car?’

Thinking denial might be best, I say timidly, ‘I didn’t Sir. I didn’t.’

Whack! ‘Who stole my police car?’

Whack, harder.

‘Who stole the police car?’

Whack, harder still.

‘Me sir.’

‘I’ll be back in a minute!’

Out he goes and he comes back with a piece of green hose and a telephone book.

He tells the other officers, ‘You men, take them into another room.’

I back into a corner. ‘What are you gunna to do Sir? What’re you gunna to do?’

‘Do you know how much it’s going to cost to fix my police car?’

Then he goes ballistic with the hose and the phone book on my head, my limbs and my body. He keeps beating me and swearing and yelling.

Shit! Isn’t there anyone here who’s big enough to stop him before he kills me.

No.

When he feels better he stops. He drags me up and I slump into the dark cell he has ready for me. I probably won’t die in here but I might. I’m so sore and my head really aches. I sniffle and cry.

A nice copper comes and says, ‘What’s happened to you?’

‘I stole a policeman’s car and he bashed me up.’

‘The Serg did?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Oh! Er. Here’s a hot chocolate.’ And he goes back to his desk quickly.

My mates’ parents come pretty soon and take them home. My parents don’t come for hours. They live together again now.

‘You’ll get a letter to appear in Yasmar Court,’ the copper on the desk tells Mum and Dad. I am charged with car theft but no mention is ever made of the fact that it was a police car.

My face is red and puffy and my legs are covered with little red snake lines from the hose. Mum and Dad want to know what happened and what the Sergeant did to me. Dad voices his opinion loudly and says he’ll report it. He’ll make sure the courts find out about it. The cops tell him to be quiet or he’ll be arrested for disrespecting them or something.

We leave the police station. Ian is waiting outside and I’m relieved that he is here. He assures Mum that he will fix things up. Mum is grateful though she doesn’t like him much. We have to wait a couple of weeks for my next appearance in court.

Dad had kept coming to visit Mum in Granville. I don’t know how he found her. She kept refusing to take him back. I might have had a chance of getting on track at that time but there were the men, always finding me and taking me off. Dad eventually persuaded Mum to let him come back to her and before long she was being bashed by the drunk again. I still went to Prince Henry but I wanted to go home less and less.

Case notes

… Mr Epp, Raymond’s teacher at Prince Henry, said that Raymond has made good progress at school with constant and individual attention he ‘has gained some insight into the cause of his tantrums and has learned to relieve the tension which leads to the boy ventilating in a less explosive manner.

In about June 1975 Raymond’s progress at school appeared to deteriorate. Mr Epp and Mr Ian Hughes, social worker connected to Prince Henry felt that this was caused by increased instability in Ray’s family … Mr Leary has been drinking heavily and beating up Ray and Mrs Leary at times. Mr Epp said that Ray appears to be more afraid of his father and protective towards his mother and brother. With the increased tension in his family life he began to lose control once again over his tantrums.

D.W. District Officer, Parramatta

While we waited for my court appearance for the police car theft Ian picked me up and took me to a friend’s place. I knew the friend was a policeman because he had the black uniform that they all wore back then.

Ian said, ‘This is a police officer and we want to ask you some questions. See, you’re going to get put away this time and we want to know what you’ve told the police. Did you tell them anything about what we do on weekends?’

‘Nuh. They didn’t ask.’

‘Have you talked about anything to do with our weekends?’

‘Nuh. Hey mister, can I have a look at your gun?’

The cop shows me the gun and lets me hold it as he says, ‘I’m going to help you. You won’t go into a home again.’

‘That’s good.’ This gun is so cool. If I had one …

‘All right. I want you to sit there and tell me everything you said in the police station. The honest truth. And have you told Mum or anyone else what we do on weekends?’

‘No.’

He takes his gun back.

‘So, they don’t know anything about Ian or Robert or any of the others? Bill? Don?’

‘No! They only wanted to know about the police car.‘ I’m getting upset by all this questioning and my eyes well up. Ian put his arms around me and comforts me.

‘It’s all right,’ he says. ‘We’re just working out the best thing to do for you. It’s all for your own good. All right?’

I stay in the policeman’s house for the night. He has his way with me and so does Ian. I am very unhappy but they say they will help me. Ian takes me back to his parents’ house.

In my file there is a letter from a Dr Susi to Dr. Wise. Dr Susi says she had seen me from 1967 until 1969, the time period when I had started school and Nanny Sheehan had sent me to live with Mum and Dad. Dr Susi tells Dr. Wise, ‘… he finally managed to get himself into a children’s home. His own home was dreadful, although mother struggled valiantly to improve the conditions … and the EEG report was asked for before Raymond was given Melleril to reduce his anxiety and self destructive behaviour at the time.’

I don’t remember this happening. It seemed that lots of medical people gave me pills to control me but none of it made me better so here I was in trouble again. Would they send me to a home?

My day in court arrives. Ian comes to speak for me. He says we don’t need a solicitor, that he can speak for me and Mum. He says not to worry because he won’t let them send me to a home again.

YACS (Youth and Community Services) people speak about what a bad boy I’ve been for so long and how they think that I should go back into a home permanently. When Judge Doyle agrees, Ian interrupts.

‘Your Honour, I am the boy’s social worker, Ian Hughes. I suggest that it would not be in his best interests to send him to an institution. As you know Raymond has been in an orphanage at Kincumber where he was maltreated and traumatised, and to Werrington Park and Yasmar where he was again put in harm’s way. Prior to that he was assaulted at Royleston. We cannot let that happen again. I would like to ask your leave to let me find a suitable place for the boy to live.’

‘Yes. I see. How much time would you need?’ Judge Doyle asks.

Ian says he will need about two weeks and he tells the judge, ‘You may recall that my parents have adopted other children who appeared before you. I will speak with them about Raymond.’

‘Well, what about his schooling? Will they attend to the boy’s education?’

‘Yes Your Honour. I’ll see to that. He’ll stay where he is for another year I think. I’ll check.’

We have a lunch break and Mum and I sit together while Ian goes to make some phone calls. Then we go back in.

‘Your Honour,’ Ian says, ‘I have phoned my parents in the lunch break. They know Raymond and say that it will be a pleasure for them to have him living in their home.’

‘Good,’ says the judge. ‘How long will it take to arrange this?’

Ian says he’ll need a week to organise it. Because school holidays are nearly here he has arranged for me to go away on a camp, then to come back and stay with my Mum for three weeks and then stay at the Richmond Fellowship in Glebe. When school term begins, I can attend Prince Henry Hospital again and live with his parents.

The judge asks the YACS people whether they see any problems with this plan.

‘Yes, we do, Your Honour. We believe that Raymond has been shown enough leniency and has been given so many warnings but he has not cooperated or modified his behaviour. It would not be in his best interest to leave him outside an institution. He needs to be where he will be rehabilitated.’

‘Yes, I can see your point,’ says Judge Doyle, flicking through my rather thick file.

Ian argues that because of all the abuse I have suffered in institutions, I need to spend some time in a loving family.

All the professional people arguing are asked to approach the bench. They have a conversation there then return to their seats.

Judge Doyle says he is very tired of my breaking all the rules he sets for me and he thinks there is a very good case for my being sent to an institution.

My tummy churns and Mum gasps. But it will not happen this time, the judge says. He will give me my last, absolutely last chance. Ian has convinced him that I should not go to an institution. What will happen is that I will need to spend one night in Royleston, just one night. Then I will be staying in the Richmond Fellowship in Glebe until Mr and Mrs Hughes are ready for me. I can help in their preschool during the holiday. When school resumes I am to go to the special class for disturbed children at Prince Henry Hospital. I will be released on probation today and all the rules that he has set for me in my other court appearances will apply. I will go from school to the Hughes’ home and not go out without their permission. I will be courteous, co-operative and well behaved. If I fail I will definitely be sent to an institution.

When they have finished the proceedings we go outside and Mum looks as if she’s about to cry.

The night after my court appearance Ian took me to Royleston. When we got there I saw the man who assaulted me when I was there last time. I told Ian. He took me outside and asked, ‘Is that man you pointed out in there one of us?’

“What?’

‘Is he one of us? Does he do the things we do? You know, camping, films.’

‘Nuh. He pushed me last time. I told you.’

‘But has he ever done any of that stuff we do?’

‘No!’

‘All right. You can’t stay here more than the night.’

Ian and the YACS officer called for me in the morning and we walked down the road to the big two storey building of the Richmond Fellowship. We went inside and had a talk with the people in charge. They told us about all the rules and what happened there. Ian said that he’d arranged for some government money to come to me so that I could pay for a camp he he’d organised for me to go to for some of the school holidays

The camp was all right. Nothing bad happened and I came back to the Richmond Fellowship in Glebe.

I was only fourteen and Richmond was full of weird adults but it was better than being at home or in a boys’ home and I still had Ian to look after me.

Case notes

… he seems quite happy in his placement and has caused no problem to the people that run the place … he is a likeable young boy but could be easily lead and strict supervision would be needed … both Mr Hughes and Mr Dunston have taken a very big interest in Ray and they seem to have had a good influence on the boy.

C.M. District Officer, Leichhardt. 15/12/75

Then the weekend came when bad stuff happened. A crazy girl who lived there turned me into the demon from hell. She forced me to do repulsive things to her, down there between her legs. I didn’t want to but she made me. I hated her. I could feel myself starting to crack apart. Something was growing and I couldn’t stop it. I needed to upset people and hurl things around the house and refuse to do as I was told. I felt so crazy and mixed up that I ran out of the house, grabbing some car keys as I went. I jumped in the car and started it up. I was off.

Bang! I bashed into another car.

A YACS Officer came with Ian and Mr Epp to find out what was happening.

‘I’m not stayin’ here no more! I want to go back home with Mum.’

‘You can’t go back to Mum, Ray. We’ve talked about this.’

‘Well I’m not stayin’ here. They’re fuckin’ psychos! ‘

‘They are not psychos Raymond. They are very sick people, that’s all.’

‘They’re bloody fuckin’ psychos. I want to go to Mum’s.’

That was the most words I could say about what had happened. Even if I’d known the words for it, I didn’t expect them to believe me. If shit like that happened here, why the fuck had they sent me to live here?

They told me it was a bit of an experiment and that they wouldn’t put a child as young as me in the place again. They could see that it was a terrible mistake.

Case notes

Ray’s behaviour at Richmond house had been good and there had been no complaints from the other residents.

… he was left with a lot of time on his hands. He began to start to cause trouble among the other residents despite warnings.

…the social worker at Richmond house … asked that Ray be removed as soon as possible … done enough to break his probation and could have been taken back to court where he stood a good chance of committal. However this course of action would, I fear, do more harm than good for Ray. He fears, to a large extent, being sent away and normally this is enough to keep the lad on the right side … the fact that Ian Hughes is vitally interested in Ray, as also is his teacher Mr. Epp … Ray is very anxious to please them. They offer him support he will never find at home which he needs.

… it must be considered that for six weeks he did nothing wrong … the only person his own age was a girl of 16 who was far older than Ray emotionally … he went from ‘favourite son’ to ‘pest’ and so he hit back …

C.M. District Officer, Leichhardt. 21.1.76

They helped me pack my bags and Ian took me to Gymea to his parents’ place. They were glad to see me and I started to settle in their care. There were rules but they seem fair enough. One of the girls they have adopted seemed happy and the other girl was too although she was fairly aggressive and grumpy. There was nothing that bothered me here and I didn’t have my ‘tantrums.‘ I only used bad language if I’m really, really angry but I hardly ever was. I slept in the lounge room at first but that was all right. I liked living there.

Mrs Hughes tells the YACS workers that I am ‘a dear little boy and very affectionate … very emotionally disturbed.’ She thinks I miss my mum and she’s right. Mum is hurt that I’m having such a nice time staying with the Hughes.

CHAPTER 10.
Daruk

Every school day I traveled from Gymea to Prince Henry Hospital School. It took a while but I felt settled and happy.

Mrs and Mrs Hughes let me have my own room upstairs and it felt really special to stand in it and think: Hey, look at me! This is My Own Room.

I got a crush on the younger of the girls who looks a lot like Christie McNicholl who sang The Night the Lights went Out in Georgia. I kissed her once or twice and she didn’t mind at all but soon things changed that stop our friendship growing.

I kept going to school. Mr Epp saw kids in the wards and then he’d come to teach us kids in the special class. He was good at teaching me and I liked him. I felt safe with him from the start because he never looked at me the way the men in the rings do. He didn’t want anything from me.

At home at the Hughes house one night there was a lot of excitement. Ian’s brother Steve was coming home from being away somewhere. Mrs Hughes asked if I’d mind if Steve slept in my room and I went back to the lounge room for a while. I told her I didn’t mind. We picked Steve up and on the way home we stopped at a restaurant for dinner. Ian had taught me good table manners and good manners in general so I was on my best behaviour Ian and his parents would be pleased with me.

Steve kept looking at me in a way that made me feel uncomfortable. Unsafe. I tried to ignore it and keep being good.

One night Steve went out and he came home when we were all asleep. He was very drunk. I knew how drunk smelled and how drunk sounded.

I can smell Steve when he quietly slips onto my bed in the lounge room. I open my mouth to speak but he claps his hand firmly over my mouth.

‘I’m going to take my hand off your mouth and you stay quiet. All right.’

I nod. It seems like he just wants to snuggle up. Then he gets up, drops his shoes on the floor, fumbles about a bit and gets under the blanket with me. He’s taken his clothes off. He takes my hand and makes me touch him. I can tell he’s done it before and I’m angry. Shit I hope that’s all he wants.

He rubs against me then he suddenly, violently forces himself into my bum and the pain is dreadful. So dreadful I scream! I’m so angry. I push him off and he staggers toward the stairs, falls over in his panic then rushes up to his room. Meanwhile the two girls and the parents come running in.

‘What’s wrong my boy!’ Mrs Hughes asks.

By then I was shaking and cold. I tell Mrs Hughes what Steve did.

She’s shocked and says, ‘You’ve had a very bad nightmare Ray dear. A very bad one. It’s all right now. It’s all right.’

I push her away. ‘No. It wasn’t a nightmare. See!’ I pull my pyjamas down to show her the truth and the blood.

‘Girls, go back to your room. Now please!’

As I cry and tell them what Steve did, the bastard comes down from upstairs.

‘I can’t sleep!’ he said. ‘What’s all the noise about? What’s happening?’

‘You know what you fuckin’ did. Tell them it wasn’t a dream. Tell them what you did you fuckin’ poofter shit!’

‘I beg your pardon! That’s my mother and father you’re talking to.’

Mr Hughes took Steve out and told him I was too upset so he should go back to his room. Mrs Hughes stayed with me on the lounge trying to comfort me. Mr Hughes came back in and said, ‘I’m going to ring Ian and ask him to come over and take the lad.’

Mrs Hughes was teary and shocked as she ran a warm bath for me. She cuddled me and I could feel her shaking.

‘It was a very bad dream. Such a very bad dream,’ she kept saying. She bathed me and I bent over so she could wash my bum.

Then she took me back to the lounge and I kept asking her, ‘You do believe me don’t you? You do believe me?’ I wanted so much for her to trust me and believe me. I wanted to be able to be in her family. But not if Steve was there.

She stroked my hair and said, ‘You’re all right now. We’ll sort it out when Ian comes in the morning. Try sleep now.’ She stayed with me until I went to sleep.

Ian came next morning and his father took him into the back yard where they could talk. I watched through the venetians in the kitchen. It was a very loud angry talk and a lot of finger jabbing too.

‘I want the lad taken away from here as soon as possible. You’d better organize. As soon as possible.’ Ian looks shocked but his dad goes on. ‘He is just too disruptive to the household. He has to go. We can’t have this sort of thing with the girls here!’

One of the girls came into the kitchen then so I left and didn’t hear the end of the conversation. I felt low. I was going to be abandoned by the people I wanted to love me and care for me.

Later the two men came in from the back yard and Ian told his mum, ‘I’ll be taking young Raymond with me for the day Mum.’

We said goodbye and as we walk down the hall Mr Hughes said, ‘Oh and Raymond, Steve will not be here when you come back. He’s going away and he won’t be back for a while.’ What a relief!

Ian and I drove off in the Humber.

As soon as I’m in the car he starts on at me about what happened in the night. He is furious. He pulls off into a side street and stops.

‘Ray, I want the truth,’ he demands. ‘The truth and nothing but the truth. Do you hear me! Tell me exactly what happened from beginning to end. No lies.’ I had never lied to him because I was terrified of what he’d do if he found out.

‘Yeah. All right. I’ll tell you.’

‘Mum said you caused an incredible uproar last night and you reckon my brother did something to you. What did he do?’

As I told Ian the lot he listened and said every now and then, ‘You poor boy. You poor, poor boy.’

When I stopped talking Ian said, ‘And what else?’

‘What do you mean what else? That’s it. I’ve told you. He’s done it to me just like you and everyone else! What am I going to do?’ Who will stop it happening? Aren’t I safe here either?

‘All right. Come on. We’ll go and get you checked.’

He drove us to a house that I think was Dolly Dunn’s place.

Ian wouldn’t take me to a doctor ever, because he’d have to explain what had happened to my backside.

At the house Dolly/Madge checks me and tells Ian, ‘His tissue is torn but he’ll be all right.’ Then he says, ‘Come on little darling, let’s run you a bath.’

Later Ian drives me back to the Hughes place and on the way he asks me whether I still wanted to stay with his parents.

‘I don’t want to fuckin’ stay there if Steve’s there!’

‘Steve won’t be there,’ Ian promises. We stop for dinner and get back in the car.

‘You do believe me, don’t you,’ I sobbed.

‘I believe you. Look, we had some terrible things done to us when we were kids too.’

It still upsets me today when I remember how badly I wanted him to believe me. As an adult I have learnt that paedophiles often use their own childhood abuse as an excuse for their behaviour. But we all make our choices and we can all choose not to abuse children. There are no excuses.

Back then I was so relieved to hear that man say, ‘I believe you. Now give me a cuddle and we’ll go home. I think this might muck your adoption up for Mum and Dad but we can talk about that when we get home. You want to keep going to school don’t you, so that will be happening.’

The anger took hold of me again when Steve abused me and it kept growing inside me. I became badly behaved for Mrs Hughes. I ran away from her and started staying out all night with the men and coming home whenever I felt like it. Dolly would pick me up outside school and take me for the weekend. Mrs Hughes would ask me where I had been and I’d say, ‘I don’t have to fucking tell you. You’re not my mum.’ I loved Mrs Hughes but I was so confused and angry. I didn’t want to cause her pain but I didn’t know how to stop myself.

Every night Mrs Hughes would come to my room and put white cream on my bottom to help it heal. My bad dream bottom needed treating and needed time to heal.

I stayed at the Hughes’ for another month or so then one day I came home from school and the Humber was outside.

‘We have some good news,’ Mrs Hughes said. ‘Ian has arranged for you to go and live at home again with your Mum and Dad. You can be with your family again.’

Then Mr Hughes made a point of saying, ‘Now, we want you to know there is nothing wrong with you. That’s not why you’re going home. We just can’t manage with the others here too. We still love you and care about you.’

Mrs Hughes has packed all the little things they had given me into a bag. She holds it out to me.

‘No, you keep them,’ I say. ‘They’re yours.’

‘Raymond dear, we want you to have them. They are gifts for you. Please take them to remember us.’ She was crying and so was I. I was so sad to leave and so sad that I’d behaved so badly lately but I didn’t want to be where Steve could get me.

‘We want you to go and have a very good life with your Mum and Dad,’ she sobbed and hugged me one last time. Today I can’t tell this part of my story without crying. How different the rest might have been if I had been able to stay.

Ian took me back to Mum and Dad’s place. Mum was really happy to get me back and Dad was too drunk to care. Ian comes inside and does his usual crawling to impress Mum and Dad.

As far as welfare was concerned I was living with Mum and Dad then but in fact I was hardly ever there. On weekends and school holidays I was hanging around with my old friends in Redfern and being picked up by Ian or his friends in the Sydney paedophile ring or the Wollongong ring or the Central Coast ring. We needed money and we knew how to get it. I spent more of my time with men in the rings than I did at home. During the week we were runabouts, wagging school, riding trains, jumping taxis, playing the pinball machines in Humphrey’s, Penny Arcade, Fun Factory to name a few or playing snooker at places like the Crystal Palace. We just wanted to have fun and to enjoy our time more than we would if we’d been at home.

If a businessman (‘poofter’ as we called them) came in to an arcade on his lunch hour, he might shout us a few games and then he might say, ‘Will you be here when I come back at five o’clock? I can give you some money.’ We knew what he wanted from us for his money so we’d be there to meet up with him.

We would spend time hanging out in the Cross too and one night it starts raining so we go into a coffee shop. A huge woman with way too much make up on and sequins all over her very tight dress came in too. We’d seen her around but we didn’t usually talk to her. It was Bubbles who was a bloke who cross dressed and did shows that were really popular. Anyway my two mates were doped out of their brains and they sat down while I ordered my favourite drink: a chocolate milkshake. I turned around and Bubbles looked me right in the eye and said, ‘Hello there. I’ve seen you around here quite a lot lately.’

‘Yeah. G’day. I’m Raymond.’ It was hard to know what to say to a bloke dolled up like that.

‘Look Raymond,’ he said quietly, ‘I’ve seen you around and I know what you’re getting into. I’ve done it myself and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. You get out of it before you get too far in. You go home.’

I was shocked that he cared. ‘I can’t go home,’ I said.

‘You don’t want to go the way you’re heading with your life, Raymond. It’s no good and it’ll end in disaster. I’m telling you. I know. I’ve done it. Go home!’

‘I can’t go home. I get bashed and stuff.’

‘Look, if you really can’t go home, and I mean really, I’ll tell you where to go if you ever need help. You know the Wayside Chapel?’

‘Yeah, that’s where all those alkies go, isn’t it?’

‘That’s the place. Well, go inside and talk to a lady called Dorothy. She’ll tell you why you shouldn’t be hanging around with the Murphy brothers and their kind. And she’ll give you a feed and help you out if you’re in trouble.’

‘What for?’

‘If you need food or clothes or just someone to listen to you. Maybe somewhere to sleep safe. She’s a motherly sort of person. Her husband’s there too and they’ll do what they can for you. You go and see her if you’re in trouble. All right?’

‘All right. Thanks, ah, er, mate. Yeah. Thanks.’

We went to our separate tables and we never talked again but Bubbles’ kindness sticks with me. I couldn’t go home but at least I felt a bit of warmth in the Cross.

After that when times were very tough I did go to see Dorothy fairly regularly. She’d always give me a cuddle and ask how I was. I could get food there rather than starve. Dorothy didn’t preach at me but she did encourage me to live safely and see my parents. She gave me peace among the storms in my life. I owe her a lot.

One warm night in May we were mucking about in the El Alemein Fountain in the Cross. There were four of us and it was really late at night. A man with a beard comes over to us and says, ‘Oh, hello. What are you doing here?’

‘Just playin’,’ I tell him.

‘Playing in El Alamein Fountain eh? At this time of night? Where are your parents?’ he asked.

‘At home I s’pose.’

‘Who are you friends?’

‘That’s Eddy. And that’s Chris and Mark.’

‘Do you want to earn some money?’ He looked as if he had lots.

‘Oh, yeah.’

The bearded man, Harris, takes us in his very posh car to his friend Baz’s place in South Dowling Street. Baz’s father is a big business man and Baz has a nice Mercedes Benz and lots of money. Harris tells us to play around with each other so he can get off on it. We do the things that we have been taught to do for pornographic movies and photos. We kiss, masturbate each other and give blow jobs. My brother and I never touch each other. Photography must be what we’re here for. They’ll pay us for photos.

Wrong! Harris penetrates me even though I tell him no. Mark has already said no to him so the bastard takes me. I hate it. Everyone goes to sleep but I don’t sleep a lot because of the pain and the bleeding.

In the morning the others get up and have a shower while Harris dresses in a very nice suit ready for work. He asks me a few times whether I’d like to have a shower but I’m too sore to walk about. I just want to stay in bed. Without him, the bastard poof.

A man who must be Baz comes home. I’m still in his bed.

‘Glory, glory me!’ he exclaims.

Harris comes in the room and says, ‘Oh, I didn’t think you were coming home ‘til Monday.’ They both go out of the room and have a talk and I’m glad they’re gone.

Baz comes back, lies down beside me. Ah shit! I should have got up. Too late!

‘Hello there. And what are you doing in my bed?’ he asks in an overly friendly way. When he’s had enough chatting he rapes me. After, he is very loving and cuddly and tells me to get up and have a shower while he sees what the others are doing. He makes us all something to eat and then we go out the back.

‘I have to go to work now,‘ Baz says. ‘But if you ever need any money give me a call.’ Then he hands me a bundle of money. I have no idea how much it is but it’s a lot.

The four of us go to the Fun Factory, the Penny Arcade, the Crystal Palace and all the places we know, eating whenever we’re hungry and having as much fun as we can on the money we’ve got. It lets me forget my pain for a time. We get on a train to go to Circular Quay and we’re running through the carriages, bashing seats, swearing and shouting and having fun.

We got caught by State Rail guards who found out we didn’t have tickets. They didn’t give a stuff that we had money and we could pay. They took us into an office and called the police because they noticed how much money we had. The police came and took us down to the Darling Street lock up.

Ian has been less contactable these days because the night school got closed and he had to move. I saw him sometimes but I didn’t think he’d be around to help me out of the mess I was in this time.

The cops interviewed each of us and asked us where we got the money from.

Then two detectives take me into a room by myself.

‘Tell us where you got the money,’ they say.

‘A man gave it to me,’ I tell them.

‘What did you have to do for the money?’

‘Why tell you? You won’t do nothin’.’

The older copper says, ‘You tell me what happened. I’m going to listen.’

I tell him what the two men did and I say, ‘It really hurt. I told him not to do it but he did.’

‘Do you know exactly why you got the money?’

I’m too ashamed to say yes, I do know why. ‘Nuh. The man just gave it to me.’

‘Do you know the names of these men?’

‘Yeah. Baz and Harris. One’s a solicitor and one’s something to do with freight.’

While I’m talking the old copper types on a typewriter. He says he believes me. He calls another detective in and tells him to ask the other boys what happened. Later that detective comes back and says the boys confirmed what I said. They said they saw Harris penetrate me but they didn’t see what happened with Baz because they were in the shower but they were pretty sure they knew what had happened.

Detectives investigated and charges were brought against Baz and Harris, or so we thought.

Report for Court.

Ray … spends his time with his friends in the Redfern area, frequenting billiards saloons and the like. He apparently has had some experience with adult homosexuals and was apparently the ringleader in the present affair and, in fact, procured … for the appetites of homosexuals. His attitude when seen has always been defensive and truculent. He has no apparent insight into his own behaviour problems – a creature of impulse and presumably intends to be a waster like his father … he would benefit from the rigourous regimen of institutional life and it is accordingly recommended that he be committed to an institution.

A.L. District Officer, Parramatta

The judge agreed. To my complete surprise, I was taken into custody for being a ‘neglected child, exposed to moral danger.’ I had to go to court again. They reckoned I was neglected because I was never at home when the welfare people called and the cops had to find me and bring me back home. Well, if Dad started something, I wasn’t going to stay there and get bashed.I was held in Yasmar and then on 4th August, 1976 I was taken to Daruk Training School for Boys. I was fifteen and I had got to sixth class level at school.

The goals they set for me at Daruk were to get better educated, learn how to live in a community, learn how to make friends, learn something that will help me get a job and learn something they call leisure skills. Forget the last one - I could already play pinball machines real good, snooker, surfing and lots of other stuff.

Daruk was pretty much like Werrington Park with its military style of life. Yes Sir. No Sir. Do this. Do that. Yeah, I could handle that for three months.

Although I was sentenced to three months in Daruk, my sentence was extended by three months because I ‘interacted inappropriately’ with other boys. What actually happened was that a group of rough Aboriginal boys in Daruk, including me, were taken on a camp. Some of the boys had it in for me. I don’t know why. Maybe they’d heard about me and Ian back in Redfern. On camp they jumped me and gang raped me.

When we came back to Daruk I couldn’t walk properly and I had sores around my bum. I’d got venereal disease from them. I was put in the infirmary for treatment. To punish me for my homosexual activity on camp, Mum and Dad were not allowed to visit for four or five visiting days. While I was in the infirmary the same lot got me again. I reported what had happened each time and all that followed was that another three months was added to my sentence.

One report said I was ‘dull’ and yet they said I made satisfactory progress with my goals. They said that I had ‘been involved in homosexual activity’ and that someone had better keep an eye on me when I left Daruk because I’d be using poofter stuff to ‘gain rewards’ for myself. Rewards! Sure. Those pricks just didn’t know shit. I didn’t choose the life I led and they were supposed to be my parents anyway, the State of NSW. They were my parents. What did they do? Lock me up with psychos and release me to other psychos.

When Mum and Dad were allowed to visit me in Daruk they asked why my sentence had been extended.

The superintendent said, ’Raymond knows why. If he wants to tell you, he can. But I cannot give you that information. Do you want to tell them Raymond?’

I shook my head.

‘It’s the inmate’s decision,’ said the superintendent. ‘I cannot go against his wishes.’

I was released to the care of Mum and Dad. Ian picked me up from Daruk and drove me home. He said he’d be in touch then he went.

Although I had been locked away after reporting Baz and Harris, there had still not been a court hearing for that. Meanwhile, school was over for me but I had few skills and a very poor education and it seemed that wherever I went the men would find me. I was a State Ward so the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) appointed a case manager to me. When he saw me he told me that Bob Jane T Mart needed a cleaner.

‘Will you be able to stick at the job?’ he asked.

I gave him a definite yes and I started work. Now I wouldn’t need the men because I would get money by working. I’d tell them all to get lost. At work I mainly did all the cleaning and picking up after the mechanics and I got the lunches. I didn’t enjoy it. It was so boring and I didn’t like being ordered about all day, but I decided to give it a go.

The trial of Baz and Harris will be on soon and us four boys are witnesses. The prosecutor says all we have to do is tell the truth. Well, that shouldn’t be hard. I can do that.

One week before the trial, Harris and Baz come to my workplace, show the boss police badges and say they need to talk to me.

‘Two detectives here to see you Ray,’ the boss says.

‘They’re not detectives!’ I say.

‘They showed me badges. Take them into my office and you can talk there,’ he says.

I don’t want to see them, but what can I do? If I say who they really are, he’ll sack me for sure.

Harris says, ‘We’re going to court next week Ray. What did you tell the police? You’d better tell us everything or there’ll be really bad consequences for you.’ I knew that meant more beatings and torture.

‘I’ll tell you. Whatever you want to know, I’ll tell you.’

Baz starts asking me questions and Harris writes down my answers. My boss interrupts with coffee and leaves then the questions start again. I tell them everything I can remember.

‘He’s told them fucking everything!’ one of them says. ‘We gave you money. Why did you tell them everything?’

‘Because of what you did to me when I said no. Why do you think I told them?’

‘All right. I suppose we’ll see you at court next week then.’ They go.

My boss asks me what that was all about.

‘Just somethin’ that happened to me when I was younger,’ I tell him.

‘Uhuh. Well, I don’t need to know about it then do I. Okay. Back to work now.’

I go to court for the trial of Harris and Baz. Eddy’s been in Charlton Boys Home at Ashfield since that night with the two men. He arrives with Mr Bolton, some worker from there, who introduces himself to me. Chris comes to court with his Mum and Mark turns up with his grandmother.

When I’m called into the courtroom, I hear the charges read and I see Baz sitting beside Harris. I like that we’re going to get back at them today.

When I’m questioned I answer truthfully except I don’t want to say about being paid for what they did to us. The judge gets confused.

‘Stop!’ he says. ‘You do know who you’re giving evidence about, don’t you?’

‘Yes Your Honour. Him,’ I point to Harris, ‘and him.’ I point to Baz. ‘They both did it to me.’

‘What!’ says the judge.

‘Them two, your Honour. The man with the beard and the man sitting next to him.’

‘Wait a minute. Let me get this right,’ says the judge. ‘Mr Prosecutor, your witness is testifying about the accused’s barrister! Do you know what’s going on here?’

‘Uh, er. No, Your Honour.’

Questions go here and there between them for a time and then the prosecutor says, ‘Can we have an adjournment Your Honour?’

The prosecutor talks to us outside. He is very upset.

‘What are you doing in there Raymond?’

‘You told me to get in there and tell the truth. Well, I’m telling the truth.’

‘But you’re giving evidence against the barrister!’

‘Yeah.’

‘The charges are against Baz.’

‘Well, Harris did it too.’

‘You’re telling me that the barrister raped you and Baz raped you too?’

‘Yeah!’

‘But the other boys are saying it was Harris who got you.’

‘Harris and Baz both did. First Harris then Baz came home and he got me too.’

(I know that the old policeman back at the station had believed me and had typed up everything I’d said about both men. I wonder now whether something had been changed and someone was being protected. I have heard that Baz paid a huge amount of money to Harris to get him off the charges. I think it’s possible that they created the confusion together. It should have been about an underage boy being raped by two different men.)

Anyhow, after the talk with the prosecutor we go back in. Because I’ve already given my evidence I’m allowed to sit in the courtroom for the rest of it. Chris is the next witness called.

Cutting to the chase, Chris said, ‘He didn’t fuck me. He didn’t do anything to me.’

The police prosecutor, who is shattered, asks, ‘Did you or did you not engage in a sexual act with that man there? Baz.’

‘No,’ Chris says bluntly, truthfully. What he does not say is that he had been with Harris before Baz got home.

Chris goes on to say, ‘Ray and me and Ed and Mark did stay in that place and we couldn’t see each other so I don’t know what went on with him and Ray.’

(Chris was the only one who could have supported my claim because he had seen it and had watched while Baz gave me all the money. To this day I think Chris was paid off by one of them.)

Then it’s Eddy’s turn.

‘Can you tell me what happened on the night in question, in the address in Dowling Street?’

‘Yeah. We were all up the Cross and that man,’ pointing to the barrister, ‘took us home.’ Harris pulls a face as if to say, I don’t know what he’s talking about.

The judge says, ‘Stop. Stop. Stop. Don’t you mean that man? The accused?’ He points to Baz.

‘No. That man. He’s the one we did things with.’ Why can’t this judge bloke see who did what? He looks as if he’s about to explode.

‘Mr Prosecutor, would you please try and get your witnesses sorted out! The accused is fighting to stay out of gaol. All your evidence so far is, to say the least, confused.’

Eddy keeps going and gets cross examined. Baz’s barrister seems to enjoy himself making us all look like gooses.

‘And what happened next?’ he asks.

‘We all went to sleep,‘ Eddy says, ‘then we got up and we had showers.’

‘Who did?’

‘Me and Chris and Mark.’

‘Where was Raymond?’

‘Asleep.’

‘So you cannot say that the accused, Basil, or Baz as you so charmingly call him, did anything to your brother because you were having a shower at the time he alleges it happened.’

‘No. Yeah. I can’t. Didn’t. But that other man got Ray before.’

The judge says this is madness. He tells Eddy he can step down and he asks the prosecutor and the barrister to approach the bench. They have a bit of a talk and then the judge says we’ll adjourn for lunch and resume at one o’clock.

Out we go together and we all ask Chris the same question, ‘What the fuck are you doing, Chris?’

‘We’re givin’ evidence against Baz. He didn’t do nothin’ to me!’

Back in the court room the madness keeps going. It’s Mark’s turn to give evidence and he never plays with a full deck. He’s a bit simple and he’s got no tact. They try to swear him in, ‘… so help you God?’

‘God never helped me,’ Mark says.

Smothering a smirk, the man says, ‘Well, do you swear to tell the truth?’

‘Uh. Yeah. All right.’

The prosecutor begins questioning. ‘Please tell the court who picked you up that night at the El Alamein fountain?’

‘That man there picked us up,’ Mark says, pointing at Harris.

‘We’ll just continue,’ says the judge. ‘I’ve heard enough nonsense but let’s just proceed. So, you’ve met this man at the fountain and he’s taken you back to a place where you have all taken your clothes off.’

‘Yep,’ says Mark.

‘And you all, er, play around together.’

‘Yep. Us and him.’

‘And a sexual act has taken place involving Raymond?’

‘Yeah, but before that he tried to stick his dick in my bum but it wouldn’t go so I told him he’s not doing it.’

Mark’s way of telling what happened makes us start giggling.

‘What exactly did the barrister try to do to you?’ the judge asks.

‘Well, we were mucking around and that man came over to me and made me bend over. Then he put Vaseline on my bum and tried to do it to me but I said, “Too big. Too big,” and he pulled it out.’

By now everyone is trying so hard to stifle giggles. All except the prosecutor. He’s nearly popping his wig.

The judge asks Mark, ‘You are giving evidence today against which person in this court room?’

Mark points straight at the barrister, Harris.

‘I have heard enough,’ the judge announces. ‘Would the barrister for the accused please approach the bench and would the police prosecutor please approach the bench.’

When they come back to their seats Baz is required to stand.

What happens next convinces me that the justice system is a load of shit.

‘In the light of the evidence that has been produced before me today, I find the accused not guilty on all charges. You are free to go.’

We can’t believe it. We all shout, ‘What!’ And Mark adds, ‘You’re fuckin’ kiddin’!’ He repeats himself at least twice, more loudly each time.

The judge says, ‘Sir, would you please sit down.’

‘Yeah but does that mean he’s not gunna get in trouble for what he did?’

The judge bangs on the bench and says, ‘Quiet! Quiet!’ Then he explains the reasons for his decision. We mumble, ‘This is bullshit.’

Harris and Baz shake hands enthusiastically and hug each other as the prosecutor herds us out of the court room to the open air. He is ropable. He tries to explain to us why everything went wrong. He says that it was because all the evidence that we gave, except for me, was against the barrister who had not been charged with anything. I had given evidence against both men but no one had backed up what I said. Chris was the only one who could have.

I had got six months in Daruk Training School while Baz and Harris got off with no punishment. Where is the justice in that? It felt more like being hit in the head than being cared for by the state, my newest parents.

After we finished at court Mr Bolton invited Mum and me to join him and Ed at his office at Charlton Boys Home. He wanted to talk to us. We went there and Mr Bolton said how difficult the case must have been for us. He sent Ed out to join the other boys. He kept talking and making me feel really bad that I’d got Ed involved with bad people. I got teary. I always felt bad about that and I didn’t like or need him to remind me.

‘Mrs Leary there’s a camp on for boys Ray’s age at Kangaroo Valley soon. What would you think of him attending it? I could take him and bring him home.’

Mum agreed that I could go. I suppose she thought I had to go because is in a suit.

I got myself to Charlton Boys Home for the camp and I was looking forward to camping and just having fun and making new friends.

‘Hello Ray,’ Bolton said. ‘Ready to go camping?’

He finished a bit of work then took me down to his Volvo. We drove to Clovelly where he lived. He introduced me to a boy called Tristan who is about eighteen and very solid. I could see motor bikes on a trailer so I thought we must be going riding. We waited for some other people to arrive but they didn’t come.

‘We are still going aren’t we?’ Tristan asked.

‘I still want to go,’ I added.

We drive to Kangaroo Valley and get there when it’s pitch black. We set up camp and go to sleep after a bit of touching. Later in the night Tristan whispers in my ear, ‘I’ll get up and go to the toilet and you follow me out.’

‘All right.’ I didn’t know what we were going to do but if it was mischief it might be fun.

Soon he’s kissing me and carrying on. I realize then that this is not the kind of weekend I thought it was going to be. Here we go again, I thought, disappointed and frightened. Tristan tells me to get on all fours and the pain starts. When I look up there’s Bolton watching and smoking a cigarette. It spooks me the way he’s just standing there watching. He’s an authority person and if he saw what we were doing he could make things hard for Eddy. I’m terrified and I jump up and run and run. Tristan is chasing me through the bush. Bolton joins Tristan and I run harder and get to the swimming hole, thinking I’ll jump in and get away from them.

Bolton comes towards me with his hands up in front of him saying, ‘Calm down. Calm down!’

‘I fuckin’ want to go home,’ I scream at him, crying and shaking. ‘I don’t want to stay here!’

‘It’s all right,’ Tristan joins in. ‘Just calm down.‘ He takes me a little way away from Bolton and manages to calm me down.

By now it’s early morning and Bolton says he’ll go and make a phone call. Tristan takes the bike off the trailer and we start riding around nude. When I glance at some bushes I discover that Bolton wasn’t making a phone call at all. He was hiding there with his camera taking photos of us. I wondered to myself, why they let a poofter like him run a boys’ home.

Back in the city Tristan and I become friends of sorts but, when he tells me to come to Clovelly during the daytime, I realise he’s planning to make money off me going with some of his men friends so I call it off. I don’t see much of Bolton or Tristan after that, not for some time anyway.

My job at the tyre place had been boring but since the weekend with Bolton and Tristan, I had really gone off the rails again. I was so depressed that I became aimless and I couldn’t see any point in going back to work at that job. I didn’t resign. I just didn’t turn up anymore.

Dad didn’t want me at home because in his sick and twisted mind he insisted that Eddy and I are having sex with Mum. So if I knocked on the door to visit Mum, Dad would come out and say, ‘What d’you fuckin’ want?’

‘I‘ve come to see Mum.’

‘Betty!’ he’d shout. ‘Raymond’s here.’

Mum would come to the door and that’s where we’d stay to talk. I wasn’t welcome in his house and I knew Mum wouldn’t argue with him about that. I didn’t want to live there but I wanted to keep in touch with Mum because I loved her and I needed to check that she was all right. I couldn’t tell her much about my real life. Not even about the things I enjoyed: the luxurious hotels, fabulous food, trips to places like Queensland where I never dreamt I’d go. I was so confused because I liked all those nice things but at the same time I hated what I had to do to get them.

Nanny Sheehan was often on my mind and I could sometimes visit her in the nursing home where she lived. I couldn’t tell her much of what I’d been up to but I knew she cared about me. It was getting harder to find time to visit her. One day in 1976 I was at my cousin’s house and they got word that Nanny Sheehan had passed away. I had lost her once before but I could still see her sometimes. Now I had lost her completely and that really hurt. I don’t remember how I reacted but I can imagine I would have cried and cried and maybe run amok.

It didn’t take long for me to know she was still with me though.

‘Nanny’s calling me and I want to go with her,’ I used to tell Mum.

Nanny would come back and talk to me or tell me, urgently, ‘Run my boy! Run!’ Once she told me to follow her across a main road. She was a Mr Magoo that time. I nearly got run over by a bus. One night after I’d gone to bed, she told me to follow her. I did, in my pyjamas. The police brought me home and they said I was sleep walking. I wasn’t. I was following Nanny. I felt comforted that she was still around but I hoped she didn’t know where I was when I went to ugly places.

I lived on the streets now. I depended on men to feed me and buy me clothes. I had some friends and cousins who I could go to for a sleep in a proper bed if a man didn’t find me. I saw much less of Ian but Robert or Mick or Don or someone kept picking me up. And I could go to Dorothy too.

Going with men became a pattern for me. Instead of going home and seeing Mum bashed and getting bashed myself, and eating bread and dripping all the time, I could work for twenty minutes and have whatever I wanted. Just follow the pattern. Don’t think. Just do what you have to do.

CHAPTER 11.
Guns

There were night clubs in Sydney then where boys could go if they needed money. If we were picked up by police for mucking around in the city, we’d tell them we were on our way home to our parents.

‘Have you got money?’ they’d ask.

‘Yeah, we’ve got money.’

Then we’d show them our cash and they’d tell us to go straight home. They never asked where we got the money.

Barefoot Boys was one of the clubs we were allowed in even though we were underage. It was a gay bar across the road from Her Majesty’s Theatre. You got in through a door opposite the theatre and went up the stairs. Street kids used to go up there and the people who were operating it used to pimp us around. It was a bit like Costello’s Nightclub that opened later.

Costello’s was where our group mostly went. It was a really well known place in the Cross from about 1974 to at least 1980. It was run by two men who let us have drinks and watch TV until someone chose us to go with him. You might go into the back room to watch pornography or you might go away with a man. They put little cubicle things in too and when I first saw them I didn’t give them a lot of thought.

A very drunk man comes into Costello’s and he has a drink with one of the bosses. The boss says, ‘Ray, you go with my mate here, John, and make him happy.’

John staggers in to a little cubicle and I follow, thinking he’ll probably pass out pretty quck. There’s a mattress on the floor and a lock on the door. John doesn’t think a nice chat and a bit of getting to know you matters. He rapes me violently just about as soon as we’re in there.

‘What’re you crying for?! I haven’t even started yet,’ he says. He’s too pissed to do anything else. We put our clothes back on and he rubs my back and says, ‘That was nice. Are you all right now? I don’t want the boss to see you upset.’

I get myself together and we go out of the room to be with the others.

Us boys often talk about the men who use us. We tell each other to watch out for particular men but not to worry about others because they‘re gentle and generous. Someone tells me that this John character is a lawyer. I don’t care who he is. I’m not going with him again, the creep. I can’t always dodge him though.

The men didn’t use their real names with us. They all had false names like the Hook, Dolly, the Gun Mole. They never took us to their own houses. They had places called ‘pads.’ A man would take his wife and kids away for the weekend and tell his neighbour that a friend might come to stay. He would let the other men in the ring know that his place could be a pad for the weekend.

His friend would pick up a young pet from the meeting point where they had been told to wait. He would wine and dine the boy and then take him to the pad for the night or the weekend. In the pad they could use whatever they wanted to as long as they cleaned up and were gone by a certain time.

If the victim reported the crime to the police, the police might go to the house only to find a happily married couple living there who had had a nice weekend away and knew nothing about any child abuse. All of the men played this scam and the victims ended up looking like liars to the police.

The men might not take you to a local pad though. I was taken to pads in Queensland, Melbourne, Wollongong, all over the place. Someone would pick us up at the airport and drive us to woopwoop for the weekend. Who would know a doctor or judge from Sydney in woopwoop? They’d just be a man and his son or nephew having a weekend break.

The Gun Mole was one man I knew and he used to operate on the north shore. He’d do armed robberies in TABs to get money then take off Queensland or stay in Sydney in expensive hotels with the silk of the group of boys. (Others would go to the Philippines for holidays with the expensive silk boys who lived there.) The Gun Mole had me a few times and my friends told me that he was always violent, not just with me. The Gun Mole was in cahoots with some very high profile people in the ring. There was one pet who he really, really wanted and paid big money for. He gave the boy a job sweeping up hair in his beauty salon. The kid told me years later that he had been threatened with knives and guns and even with death if he went with any other man. The Gun Mole was very possessive and obsessive. That was the kind of person I came across in those days.

Sydney men would take us down to Wollongong and introduce us to people from the ring that operated down there. Bevan, the notorious mayor, was one of them and there were many others. Frank, an M.P., for instance, hired me in Wollongong. Later on I found out that he was murdered by someone close to him.

I got the impression that the Wollongong paedophile ring had much more money than the Sydney ring. They would come up to pick up boys and take them down there for the day or a weekend or the school holidays. If they did not take us south they might take us to the Gold Coast for a weekend or to Adelaide. Whereas the Sydney men would make threats against boys who got upset and threatened to tell the police or tell their dads, the Wollongong people would comfort distressed boys so that they wouldn’t tell. I remember once my brother told one of the Sydney men that I was going to the police about what was happening to him. I took a beating for that.

‘You ever even say that again, I’ll kill you,’ they told me.

I believed he would too so I didn’t tell. I still tried to protect my brother whenever I could.

The next time I saw Ian, I was in a posh bloke’s place at Rushcutter’s Bay and he turned up with a boy about thirteen years old. Ian says that he’s working with boys at the Addison Road Community Centre at Marrickville now.

It had been really hard for me to let go of Ian. With the other men it was just do the business and leave. But Ian made me think that he had really looked after me, had gone to court for me, got me into the special class, bought me clothes and given me a place to stay when I had nowhere else. He had even tried to get his parents to adopt me. He had thoroughly convinced me that he loved me and genuinely cared about me like the father I’d always wanted.

So the weekend after I’ve seen him I made my way to Addison Road and found Ian playing parachute games with a bunch of street kids. His Love Bus was parked up the other end of the complex.

‘Hi Ian,’ I say. I am so glad to see him again.

‘Ray!’ he says. ‘It’s good to see you.’ He gives me a cuddle and tells the others that I am a friend of his who he helped years ago. ‘Ray is a close friend of my family,’ he adds, then invites me to join in the game.

When the game is over and the boys have gone, Ian and I go over near the bus. He asks how I am, how Mum is, what about Dad and my brothers. He knows us all.

‘Haven’t seen you for a while,’ I say as he unlocks the bus.

‘Look Raymond, it’s time you moved on,’ he says as we go inside. He seems annoyed. ‘I’ve connected you with some very good people who will look after you. You don’t need me. It has to stop.’

‘I don’t want it to stop.’ I feel abandoned.

He grabs me. Shakes me. ‘It is over. Finished. Can’t you get that? It is over!’

I’m hurt and I explode into a tantrum that’s real. ‘You don’t give a shit about me! You just brush me off and you don’t give a shit.’ I rave on and on at him. ‘No-one gives a shit and no-one cares about me …’

Wham! He slaps my face and I fall, hitting my head on the sink as I drop down sobbing. Ian sits on the step of the bus, lights up a smoke and glares at me, rubbing his beard.

‘Look, come up to bed, one last time, for old times’ sake.’

‘Nah. I don’t want to do that.’

‘Ah come on,’ he says.

‘No. I don’t wanna.’

He gets up, grabs me and drags me to the back. He does what he wants to me. Then he gets up, put his pants on and goes to sit on the step and have another smoke. He’s treated me like dirt. I’m hurt and so angry.

‘I need some money,’ I yell at him. ‘Dad’s drinking and I can’t stay at home.’

‘Well, you can’t stay here,’ he sneers.

‘I need some fuckin’ money,’ I yell as I walk towards the door.

‘Don’t you raise your voice to me,’ he growls then, thump, his fist lands hard in my guts and he beats me up and leaves me bloody and slumped on the floor.

I get up, full of hatred. I walk slowly back to the bed. I open the drawer beside it. I pick up his gun. I turn and point it straight at his fuckin’ head.

‘Can you give me some money?’

‘No. I’ve done quite enough for you.’ The bastard isn’t even scared!

‘I hate you. I really hate you.’ I feel my finger on the trigger.

‘Look, I’ve hooked you up with some wealthy men who’ll look after you. Now piss off and ask them for money.’

I squeeze the trigger. Click.

Nothing happens.

I walk towards him. I squeeze again and again. Click. Click. Nothing happens. I’m shaking all over by the time I reach him. I feel like I’ll explode with pain, frustration, rage.

‘You stupid, stupid arsehole,’ he says. ‘You’ll always be a street tramp. Now give me the gun.’

He snatches it. ‘It’s empty,’ he scoffs and punches me hard in the guts. ‘Now piss off!’

I can hardly breathe through my rage and hurt. I can hardly feel the pain of the cuts and bruises. The other pain overshadows everything else. I run and run and run. I can’t see where I’m going and I don’t care. I find myself in Enmore Park so I sit there sobbing, feeling so much hatred.

My ideas about love had got quite confused and skewed in those years with Ian. When I was a kid I thought I was ugly. I was skinny and I didn’t have any proper food in my system but Ian and the men told me I was beautiful because I had blonde hair, blue eyes and my skin was silky smooth. They would tell me that they loved me, that I was fabulous, then they raped me. I came to think of sex, violent or otherwise, as love. Men who photographed me nude did it for money to give me later because they loved me. Men who told me to swallow when they’d used my mouth wanted me to do that because they loved me and wanted some part of them inside me. Because I was so needy, talk of love would get me in. A lot of the time I didn’t feel loved but sometimes, with some men, I did, although I never liked the way they used my body to show it.

CHAPTER 12.
Too Old

Although I had always looked younger than I was there came a time when the men didn’t want me as much. There wasn’t a cut off age but body hair wasn’t attractive and there were always young boys being procured. I started being ignored rather than chosen. What could I do?

I was virtually homeless and literally penniless. I had developed a taste for fine food in top restaurants with wealthy people who bought me the best of clothes and took me to stay in five star hotels to sleep in nice clean beds. Fortunately I hadn’t developed a drug or alcohol habit like a lot of the boys did. Even so I needed to earn money and there was only one way I knew of to get enough. From age sixteen I was a rent boy in the Cross. A prostitute.

There are people who have a go at me these days about that choice.

‘You could have gone out and got a job,‘ they say.

I say to them that I’d had almost no education and the only jobs I could get would not have paid the rent, even if I shared a real dump. I’d grown up with poverty but that all changed when I was paid big money for twenty or so minutes work. I was a confused, unloved teenager who had lived a certain lifestyle and it was all I knew. I hated it but it was all I knew. I didn’t actually want to live like that. I wanted a stable home and someone to love me and care.

A couple of the men who knew I’d had no schooling and found it hard to get a normal job, helped me out a bit. Some got jobs for me. One in particular bought me some clothes and showed me how to dress and present myself at job interviews. The first job he got me was delivering dentures around the city. I’d go to the depot at Surry Hills, collect the teeth and take them wherever they had to go. I had to get the receptionists to sign receipts for them. I was pretty good at that job because I knew my way round the city really well. The trouble came when my boss started to insist that I do the paperwork myself. I couldn’t. I didn’t want anyone to know that I could not read. Writing my name and address (Mum’s) was challenging enough. So, instead of admitting that I couldn’t read or write, I just stopped going to work. Another problem had been that I was a bit of a gofer and I hated being told what to do, especially when it was just getting coffee or whatever.

Between jobs I’d go to the Wall in the Cross or wander the streets and make money the way I knew until a legitimate job came up again. Certain men would see a youngish, blonde, blue-eyed boy, well presented and they would take me home and pay for my services. A blow job was $40, penetration was $80 to $100. Some let me stay overnight but they didn’t want me in the house while they were at work. They were pretty posh people and they had quite expensive stuff that they didn’t trust me with. They would send me back out on the streets.

During this time Bolton, who had worked at Charlton Boys Home and taken me to Kangaroo Valley, invited me to his place at Summer Hill. I needed a bed so I went there and stayed for about a week.

Bolton had been very keen on inflicting pain on boys to get himself aroused. I hoped he had changed by now. He used to strap me with a belt and often use the buckle for extra pain on my bottom, my back and my legs. Other men had beat me too and I was not going to give them the satisfaction of seeing me cry. But Bolton had broken me down and made me cry because of the pain and because of the situation I was in. I hoped he had changed by now but he hadn’t.

One night while I was watching television there was a knock at the door and Bolton brought a man inside.

‘This is my friend Colin,’ he said.

I shook his hand and Bolton told me, ‘Sit on the lounge Ray. I just want to talk to Colin.’

Soon he came back and said, ‘Colin wants to see you in the bedroom.’

I didn’t really want to go so I groaned at Bolton but he said, ‘Go on. Off you go.’ I knew I had to or I’d cop a beating, so I went in. Besides, I needed the money I hoped he’d give me because I didn’t have any.

Colin was waiting and he patted the bed and said, ‘Come and sit down.’

I sat down, then did what I was told. Colin’s penis was bent when it was erect so he could not penetrate and settled for a different way. Afterwards he slipped me a piece of paper with his phone number on it and said, ‘Don’t tell Bolton. If you ever need anything, this is my work number. Only call it after six o’clock and I’ll answer.’ Then he gave me money.

‘All right,’ I said taking the redback.

‘Remember, don’t tell Bolton you’ve got my number,’ he said and I could tell he was worried. If Bolton had found out about it there would be trouble for me and also for Colin because Bolton would not get his cut from any deals we made. It would be beatings for both and Colin would be blacklisted.

After a week with Bolton, I couldn’t handle his cruelty any more so I was back on the streets again. A few days later I went back to Mum’s at Granville. I could get a shower and a meal there.

‘Where have you been?’ Dad asked.

‘Staying at a friend’s place in Redfern,’ I told him but I thought to myself, What do you bloody care!

Dad said, ‘What stealing and causing trouble there again?’

‘It’s better than staying here and getting bashed and being accused of rooting my own mother,’ I yelled at him.

That set him off and so I ran out of the room and called Mum who came in and calmed Dad down. I had a shower and stayed the night. I cried a lot in bed and in the morning I got up and out of there at the crack of dawn before Dad got up.

I wanted to be with my friends where I felt safe. We hung around in the city spending the days having train rides, hanging around in parks and we could get a feed when we were desperately hungry by going to see Dorothy Ginn at the Wayside Chapel. We could always find somewhere to sleep at night whether or not it was legal: trains or buses, railway stations or in parks: wherever we could put our heads down. For me anything was better than trying to go home again.

One night it was really cold so I went home but Dad started drinking and I didn’t want to be around him. I remembered I had Colin’s phone number so I rang him.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Would you like to come to a movie?’

‘I‘ve got no money,’ I said.

‘I’ll pay,’ Colin replied.

‘No. I’ve got no money to get the train.’

‘I will pick you up then. Where do you live?’

We went to see ‘Earthquake’ and I really enjoyed it. He bought me a choc top ice-cream, popcorn and a coke. After the movie I said I’d better be off home. Colin suggested we get something to eat and then he’d drive me home or I could stay at his place and he’d drop me home in the morning.

As we walked through a building I realized it was a school we were in.

‘This is a school!’ I said. ‘What are we doing in a school?’

‘This is where I live,’ he said and we walked up some stairs and Colin unlocked what looked like a classroom door. His quarters were three rooms converted into a flat. He had a study, an amenities room and a master bedroom with a single fold up bed.

We sat on the bed and ate the food Colin had bought then he said he was too tired to drive me home. I stayed the night but I honestly had not expected to have to have sex with him. I thought we had just had an outing together. I guess I knew I might have to pay the price but I hoped I wouldn’t. Colin expected it. He tried to penetrate me but because of his deformity he couldn’t. I was glad. I did what I’d been taught to do.

The next day was Sunday and he asked me if I’d like to go to Bullen’s Animal World. Would I! We spent the day there and we went back to his place and I stayed the night.

Colin drove me home the next day after school. He locked his room when he went to work and I hated that. He’d bought me lunch from the school canteen and when school was finished he took me home. Before he left me he made sure I would not tell Bolton that I had his phone number. From then on I regarded Colin as a friend because he was much kinder than other men.

Mum and Dad stayed a bit longer at Granville then they moved to Sydenham. That was my official address but I didn’t stay home much.

One time I went to Don, who we call Santa Claus because he was so fat, and he had been a Santa in Grace Brothers store. Later he got jobs as an extra in movies like Mad Max and in television shows like A Country Practice and he procured at least three boys from that work for the paedophiles. I believe Don was named in the Wood Commission but charges were never brought against him until quite recently. The boys in my time didn’t like going with him because he was such a big sweaty blob.

He would lose jobs regularly and didn’t mind being a dole bludger. Even so he liked to hang around with the wealthier men. Anyway, I told him I had nowhere to stay. He said I could stay with him as long as I earned my keep in his bed. I could spend my days doing what I liked as long as I was home at night. He was managing a pin ball parlour then but after a few months, it closed and Don was on the dole. He started pimping me out and keeping all the money I earned. I didn’t want that. I wanted out of the game all together not further back in. So I left Don in the New Year period of 1976.

I went back to Mum and she managed to convince Dad to let me stay for a while.

‘Look at him!’ she said. ‘He’s dirty, skinny and he stinks. He’s got nowhere else. He promised me he’ll look for a job.’

I got a job in the Service Box Pty Ltd in Erskineville. It was a factory that made the boards for games like Monopoly and Ludo. I stayed there for about six or eight months.

For a time I had a friend call Aaron. He background was similar to mine and he was thirteen when we met. His parents lived in Redfern and I met him in around 1977 through the CB radio network. Aaron would be on the radio in the small hours of the morning and I would be too sometimes. We decided to have an eyeball and we became friends. I didn’t have a lot of money at the time, just what I was getting from the men but, after I saw the squalor Aaron lived in, I wanted to help him get on a better path for his life.

The house he lived in with Googy, his alcoholic, bald-headed father, and his alcoholic mother, was filthy. His father put chains and padlocks all over the fridge so nobody could take food out of it while he was not there. It was just tough luck if you were hungry and he was out. The parents had separate rooms and the mother had a boyfriend living in hers. Neither of them gave a shit about what Aaron was up to. It was just like Eddy and me. I really cared about Aaron. People ask whether we were gay. No. We were just good friends. Neither of us is gay.

I took Aaron to the beach one day and I warned him when I saw Bill wandering about. ‘See that man, the one with the mo? Stay away from him. He’s bad.’ I did that whenever I saw men I knew about.

Sometimes I bought food for Aaron and his kid brother but it seemed that when we went to the shops, phone numbers were secretly exchanged and the grooming began. Men would tell Aaron that if he wanted real money he should call them. He was so vulnerable. Aaron started to tell me, ‘I’m going to get a motorbike,’ or ‘I’m going to get a more powerful radio antenna.’ Sometimes he’d say, ‘Oh, I can’t go out with you tonight. Mum and Dad are taking me to dinner.’

I could see right through his lies but, try as I might, it was impossible to keep Aaron away from the rings so I thought, Well I’ve warned him. At least he has clothes and food. It’s up to him to decide to get out.

I was quite tied up in trying to get my younger brother free then too.

Micheal Bolton found me again at this time and he drew me further back into the ring with offers of good money for bondage sessions and filming. Men who used me for sex always tempted me with offers of a lot of money too. The box factory paid hardly anything so I left it, choosing to go where the big money was instead. I could save it and get free when I had enough. I hated it all but threats of exposure kept me going there.

‘If you don’t want your mates and your Mum to see the photos we’ve got of you, you’d better come with us,‘ they’d say.

The threats of violence got to me too and made me uneasy. Sometimes they wanted me for the usual business and sometimes for still photos with other kids or for pornographic movies.

I did some things then that I’m ashamed of. I am so sorry I did them but you can’t undo things. I’ve tracked the people down and apologised to them from the depths of my heart. Two accepted my apologies and said they understood why I did it. Two told me to piss off. I can understand that but I hope that some day they will forgive me too.

I wanted out but I always felt better about myself, apart from the pain and bleeding, if I looked good and had a full belly. The stupid thing was that the better I looked, the more pain and bleeding I had to suffer. I was tangled up in a very horrible thing.

The next time I went to Colin’s place it was after he took me to the African Lion Safari at Warragamba Dam. It was a beautiful place and I loved seeing the lions wandering around and watching them tear carcasses apart at feeding time. Other men had taken me there but I never got bored with going to that place.

That night as I slept bright lights woke me. Colin had pulled my undies down and was taking photos. I yelled at him to stop. I was furious because he was doing exactly what Ian and Dolly had done to make money off me and Bolton and his lot too. Colin put the camera down and told me he wouldn’t take any more. He said if I didn’t stop shouting I’d get him into trouble.

Later on when I thought I could trust him he asked again whether he could take some photos of me. I let him because he promised they would stay in the folder of photos of nude boys he had in his cupboard. He had a big collection of these photos that he showed me so that I’d know it was quite normal and right to be photographed nude. He got off on cutting the heads off photos of his students and putting them onto the nude photos of boys in magazines. He liked fantasizing about his students.

As I got to know and trust Colin, he asked me about my life and I told him everything, including about Ian, Dolly and the others. He seemed to be really interested in me and I did not see then that he was gathering information that would help him to manipulate and use me, just like Ian had done.

After that second night at his place, I woke up in the morning and Colin had gone. The door was locked. I couldn’t get out. He’ll come at lunch time, I kept telling myself, I got really anxious, as I always did when I was caged. I spent the morning trying to hold off panic by pacing up and down the rooms like a caged animal, breathing quickly and heavily. I hated being trapped. I tried watching TV but that didn’t help much. I tried to sleep so I wouldn’t feel caught but I couldn’t sleep. Colin came back at lunch time with some food and quickly told me he’d be back again when classes had finished.

‘Is everything all right?’ he asked.

‘Don’t like being locked up,’ I said crankily. ‘When can I go?’

‘Here’s some lunch. Watch some T.V. and I’ll be back when school is over at three thirty.’

He set rules.

‘Never ever go out that door unless I am here. Never go into the school grounds either. And leave the windows closed.’

I still hated the door being locked but I liked Colin, the gentle, quiet man who seemed to care and who didn’t want to hurt me. I started seeing him regularly. I didn’t feel frightened all the time like I had with Ian and his lot. Colin was not a controlling person or a pimp and when it came to sex he could accept that my no meant no. He was the first man I met who was like that and that helped me to stay with him. After all where else could I go? Home to be beaten by Dad and accused of the sickening things? Or to Don to be pimped out or Bolton to be tortured? No, Colin was safe.

Sometimes Colin’s rooms were really hot and I had to open windows although he said not to. When he finished work he’d come home and ask how I was and so on then he’d take me to dinner and drop me off in the city.

Over the coming months Colin befriended Eddy, Aaron and other friends through Don who also procured young boys for him. We all got to know his rooms because he took us there either by ourselves or in pairs to photograph us and he would show us his folders again so we all knew what to do. I suppose that Colin sold the photos he took to other peadophiles but we didn’t know that at the time.

Colin helped me learn all kinds of good things as well. He helped me get my L plates and helped me learn to drive using his yellow Torana and the school’s white Torana that was for Year 12 boys to learn in.

He let me drive his car to the border when he drove on to Gympie where his mother lived. We took Frank, another street kid too and stayed there for a while. Colin had told us to behave like school boys but we didn’t know how to do that so we were just ourselves. Frank and I did not get on well and we argued all the time, swore blind at each other and sometimes we’d get into fist fights.

One day Colin’s mum went shopping and Frank said he didn’t want to do what Colin wanted us to do for a photograph. Colin pleaded with him but the boy started fighting and chairs were turned over and the place became a mess. When Colin’s mother came home she saw the mess.

‘What has gone on here?’ she demanded. ‘Look at my house!’

Colin took her aside to talk but we heard her say, ‘I’ve had enough. They are supposed to be Catholic school students. They have been nothing but trouble since you got here. I am sick of the language and the behaviour. I want them out Colin. You take them home. Now.’

We drove back to Sydney and we never saw Frank again.

When I turned seventeen I was discharged from state wardship. Did I feel sad that the state, my parents, were deserting me after all the loving care, support and guidance they had given since I was made a ward of the state? No! Would you believe it?

That Christmas I dressed nicely went to see Mum. I was allowed inside but, as usual, a fight broke out. Dad told me I stank.

Mum got pissed off with him and said, ‘I beg your pardon!’

The fight was on then. I got in the way of punches he threw at Mum and I kept getting in the way and became the target. I went to the phone box and rang Colin. He drove over to pick me up and he took me home to his place to wash and dress the cuts. He was affectionate and caring. I had to pay for his care even though I did not think he would ask me to when he knew what I had been through that day.

Whenever I was in trouble after that I would head for Colin’s place. I’d climb up the drainpipe to the side window so no one in the school would see me. Colin would come home and find me asleep in his bed. After a while he said this could not continue and that I had to go home. He always thought that my parents should care for me and take responsibility for me. He only wanted me at his place when he wanted something from me, like sex or photos. A few times he took me back home to Mum and Dad’s place and he found it very hard to interact with them. The time came when he could see why I could not stay with them.

One time he took me to a football match and then we went back to his place. He gave me a soft drink that tasted off but I was so thirsty I drank it while we sat on the couch. I became very dopey and fell asleep, fully clothed and still on the couch. I was aware, even though I was sleeping, of flashes of light coming at me from all directions but I was too groggy to get my eyes open. When I woke up next morning I was naked and I remembered the light flashes while I was sleeping. I thought they were the same as the ones I’d seen when Colin had first photographed me but I couldn’t be sure so I didn’t ask him. I went back to sleep as I was still a bit dopey then Colin brought me food at lunch time and left, locking the door behind him.

One time in about 1978, I was hanging around Paddington markets when I looked across and saw Ian Hughes with a woman and two kids. I was over hating him by then so I went to say hello. He introduced me to his wife and step children, saying I was a boy he had helped when he worked in Redfern. His wife kindly said perhaps we’d like to go and have a catch up while she and the kids looked around the market.

Ian bought me a milkshake and we sat on a bench in the park. He asked how everything was but he seemed tense. He said he was married now and living on the central coast. He was busy with study and work and marriage and he was happy.

‘Well, maybe I could come up some time,’ I said. I didn’t want to have the same relationship we’d had before. I just thought friendship would be good and a bit of guidance if I needed it.

Ian controlled his explosion but snarled, ‘Don’t you ever, ever come up there unless you ring me first and I know you’re coming. My wife doesn’t know about us and I prefer to keep it that way.’

‘Yeah, all right. I just meant …’

‘The friendship is over Ray. You got that? It’s over and I’ve helped you enough. I wish you well in your future. Now piss off and leave me alone.’

He could still hurt me and make me furious. I sat in the park steaming for a while. I think I started to develop a more realistic idea of him then, though I still wasn’t looking at the big picture of my life. I think I was still too young and uneducated.

Sometimes I would hear from other boys that Ian had been down at a weekend camp doing what he always did although he lived on the Central Coast. He sometimes used different names but we all knew who he was. I’m sure he got something going or was involved with a paedophile ring up there as the years passed. I can’t prove it but there are records of him being questioned over allegations made about some boys there.

Colin helped me get my P plates by teaching me to drive when we were on dirt roads and, because I couldn’t read, he went through the rule book with me too. I was so excited. Colin thought I’d pass the test easily but I didn’t. I got it the second time and it felt very important. I was grateful to Colin. It felt like he was the father I wanted instead of the one I had. I wanted to move in with him and I was devastated when he wouldn’t let me. I had nowhere else that was safe. I thought Colin was someone who would look after me and not beat or abuse me. I didn’t think about what the school would say if I lived there. All I thought of was my need to be cared for.

I found out from my friends that Colin was bringing other boys to his place on the weekends when he told me to stay with Mum and Dad because he was busy with school work. I started making trouble for him because I was so angry about the lies. I let down his tyres, smashed his windows and did nuisance things like that.

Colin eventually said, ‘All right. How would you like to move into a flat with me? There’d just be you and me and you’d have your own room. We could say you’re my brother.’

The real reason for him wanting to move out of the school premises was that he was bringing a lot of boys to his place and it was becoming dangerous for him. If he was caught he would probably have been sacked from the school.

In 1981 he moved from the school residence into a flat in Summer Hill and I moved in as his pet who he would introduce as his young brother. The deal was that in exchange for living there he would shoot movies and still pictures of me as well as have the sexual relationship. He didn’t want to sell the pictures, he said. He just wanted to look at them. He remained a timid man who did not force himself on me. I felt safe and when he was at work I could now choose to stay home or hang out with my friends.

Colin made it a condition of me living with him that I look for a job and pay rent. I would always be there when he got home and I was happy living with him. He made me start to think about getting my life on a better path. Sometimes I saw Colin sobbing wretchedly over a photo of a woman and child. I really felt for him in his sadness but I never knew who the people in the photo were.

As time went by our relationship turned into friendship and the sexual thing faded away. I was getting too old for a man who preferred young boys. I felt relieved about not having to do that stuff any more but I was jealous too that Colin would take the young boys out to groom them and I was left at home by myself.

I liked him as a friend or a father, not a sugar daddy. He helped me improve my prospects for a better kind of life. He was a teacher so he was able to help me learn to read better and he helped me with maths too. No more tantrums from me if I couldn’t understand. He patiently explained things and I started to improve. He fed me and clothed me and gave me advice too. When I turned seventeen he bought me a second hand car and when it wore out he replaced it.

Although I lived with Colin and had been with many men I was never a poofter. I liked girls a lot and would like to have had a girlfriend. There was a girl I became friends with who lived near the school. Her mum thought she was a bit too young at fourteen to have a boyfriend so nothing happened between us except friendly g’days.

‘I don’t mind you bringing your mates around,’ Colin said, ‘but I don’t want any girls brought home Ray.’ That was that then. No girls at home for me. It didn’t stop me being interested in the opposite sex though.

The trouble was Colin still liked young boys: Brett, Billy, Damo and others. Sometimes I’d be asleep at night and I’d hear him come home with someone. Other times I’d come home and there’d be a young boy sitting on the lounge. I became really jealous and anxious that I was going to be homeless again. I thought I was about to lose the one person, apart from Nanny Sheehan, who had really cared about me.

‘I don’t want them here,’ I’d yell at Colin. ‘Don’t bring them home.‘ Sometimes I was so angry I hit him. There were quite a few times when we had physical fights. I was stronger than him but I hated physical violence and I became so angry about it all that I’d run away. I’d take off and ring a friend who I could grumble to. Most were druggies by then and they’d say, ‘Come over an’ have a bong.’ So I’d go over and sit on a bean bag.

‘I’ve got Doctor Feelgood here. Have one of these. Don’t let the prick worry you. You’re too old for him now.’

So I’d smoke what he gave me and mellow out with a bong or a joint.

People often judge Colin badly now and I do too to a certain extent. What he did was wrong but he did keep me from a far worse lifestyle than I would have been having. I had lost four friends to drugs already and Colin was the only one I could talk to about it who showed any compassion for me and my sadness.

What he did to me had already been done hundreds of times before and far more violently. I felt I owed Colin a lot back then. He really helped me in a way that no one else had. He became the father I had always wanted. He corrected me when I was wrong and he praised me when I did well. He respected me, helped me with my education and gave me a safe place to be. I thought that when we moved into the flat, he had got over his appetite for young boys but he hadn’t and that was so disappointing. Not only was he still interested but his appetite escalated over the next six years that I lived there.

CHAPTER 13.
Don’t Go Back

Now that I had a car and a licence, the men I had been used by started to see me as a threat and I was. I knew where and how they selected and groomed boys. All the men I knew in the 1960s and 70s were operating in the same places in the 1980s. I was determined to try to save as many boys from the life I had as I could.

I would go to beaches where I knew they hunted and I would tell the boys, ‘You don’t want to go with those men. I did but I couldn’t get away, even when I wanted to. They won’t let you go once they’ve got you.’ Some kids listened. Others didn’t but I wasn’t giving up.

‘Yeah, but they give us motorbike rides and trips away and all that stuff.’

‘I know they do. I have been given them too. But you don’t get something for nothing. You’ll have to pay with pain and blood and disease. They’ll control you and they’ll take back the stuff they’ve given you. You won’t be able to talk to your parents about what’s happening to you and you won’t like it. Then one day you’ll be too old for them and they’ll dump you. You’ll have nothing. Nothing.’

One afternoon after I’d been warning kids off, Mick rang me. (Mick was later gaoled for years for his paedophile actions.)

‘You ever go near one of our pets again Ray, we’ll kill you. You got that? We’ll kill you. This is your first and last warning.’

I knew that they could do it because the Gun Mole was their mate. He was violent and cruel. I couldn’t let go of my need to stop boys getting caught up with the rings of men though, so I kept going.

When I was eighteen I went down to Menai where I knew they took kids to ride bikes. I talked with a kid then grabbed him and drove him back home to Liverpool. I said to that kid, ‘Don’t go back. Don’t ever go back down there. Bad things happen. Promise me you will never go back.’ I don’t know if he went back or listened to my warning.

I get another call from Mick. I know he’s being investigated by the police because people are talking about how some boys from Bankstown had put him in to the police and his days were numbered. It turns into one of the scariest nights of my life. Mick meets me for coffee and it seems like a friendly chat at first. Then the Gun Mole, who’s just got out of gaol, comes in.

We all have coffee and then they offer to take me home.

‘No, don’t worry. I’ve got my car at Redfern station.’

‘We’ll drop you at Redfern then.’

‘No, no. It’s all right.’

‘It’s no trouble Ray. Come on. Get in mate. We’ll drop you off.’

I know they aren’t going to let me go as they shuffle me into Mick’s car. They might just yell at me, rough me up a bit then let me go. We drive through the city and head south. I know I’m in for more than a bit of a rough up when we don’t stop driving. We head for Menai where the bike track is. When we get to the Woronora River Mick asks, ‘So Ray, what’ve you been up to with the Smith boys? And those kids they hang around with?’

‘Smiths? Nuffin.’

‘Don’t lie to us,’ he says. ‘We know you’re up to something.’

‘What are you talking about? Look, one time I was at the pool and they happened to be there so I offered to take them to Luna Park. I took them and they had a great time. That’s all.’ I don’t say I did it to keep them away from Mick and his mates but I think he knows.

We keep driving. We pass Lucas Heights nuclear reactor. Off the road now, onto a dirt track.

‘Mick, where are we going?’ I ask. ‘I’m getting scared.’ My eyes start filling up. Hope he doesn’t notice. We pull up.

Mick says, ‘Come on. Out you get.’

I get out, crying quietly. The Gun Mole gets out too. Pulls my arms behind my back suddenly. Holds them there. He loves causing pain.

‘Who’s been talking to the cops?’ Mick says

‘Not me! I haven’t Mick.’

He punches me in the gut a few times. The Gun Mole keeps a firm grip on my arms.

‘I don’t know nothin’,’ I whisper.

Mick grabs my ball sac and twists it.

‘I am not fuckin’ around here Ray. Do you want to be driven out of here tonight or do you want to be found here in years to come?’

Can’t answer. So much pain.

Mick lets go of my balls. Lights a smoke.

His mate lets go, tells me calmly, ‘Come on Ray. All you have to do is tell the truth. Just tell us what names you’re giving the cops and then we’ll drive you home.’

Mick’s finishes his smoke. He pulls me by the hair so I’m up against the car. ‘All I want to know is have you mentioned my name to the pigs. Have you told them where we go and what we do?’

‘No Mick. No. I haven’t! I haven’t talked to nobody.’

‘That Hughes character. Your mate? What’s his title? What does he do? Why did he have so many pets around his house in the day?’

‘He was a social worker. It was his job. I don’t see him no more.’

‘You don’t see him no more!’

‘He’s moved away. I was his pet then he moved.’

‘Who does he talk to?’

‘I don’t know. I never seen him talkin’ to cops.’

Four more punches in my guts. I slide down the car onto the ground.

‘Pick him up and get him in the car!’ Mick says.

They drive me back to George Street in the city and dump me on the path. I feel too shaken to feel glad I’m still alive. I get the train back to Redfern. I sit in my old bomb car. With the door locked.

My sac is blue for the next few weeks and peeing is agony. My body is black and blue all over but I’m alive. When Colin gets home in the early hours of the morning he asks me what had happen. I cry and tell him that I thought I was going to die and that I’d just got the warning of my life. Colin nurses me for the next three days or so.

The rings of men always picked on housing commission boys, homeless kids, kids with no one who cared about them. That’s how they were able to groom their victims. No-one cared enough to keep an eye on those kids or to listen if they wanted to talk. I had to compete with the men in the rings if I was going to save the kids. The boys were groomed so cunningly and effectively that I still wonder whether what I said to them made any difference. I cared and I just kept trying to help. In the early 1980s I took bashings for about fifteen boys who I took away from paedophiles like Dolly, Mick, George, Geoffrey, Don and Dave.

By the time I was nineteen or so, I had accumulated some parking fines and I decided I’d go to gaol instead of paying money that was hard to earn and make go far enough. I went to Silverwater Gaol for a short time but I was shit scared because I’d heard so many stories about what happens to young blokes in prison.

The routines like lining up on the yellow line for roll call every day weren’t a problem. I’d learnt them in other places. I made friends with a few of the guys who played touch football out the back. I thought I could cope and do my time then be debt free as far as fines went.

A few weeks pass and then this young, good-looking surfer comes in for not paying fines. He starts playing touch football too and I make friends with him. He doesn’t know his place here and he’s a bit too sure of himself. He doesn’t know that one of the muscle men has taken a fancy to him either.

Over the next few weeks or so I can feel that something is going on among the inmates but I’m not told about it. I just keep my head down and stay out of trouble.

This new young bloke keeps mouthing off at footy or when we’re playing pool. Everywhere. He’s challenging the long term men. He just won’t keep his mouth shut.

One Saturday we’re out playing touch footy. The kid is mouthing off to one of the heavy men and his mate who are a couple.

The older one tells him, ‘Fuck off ya cunt!’

After that the touches in the game turn to hard hits. The surfer’s getting pounded. At one point I catch a ball and he yells, ‘Pass it to me Ray. Pass it to me!’ I pass it to him and two big blokes run at him. Instead of touching him they tackle him and a fight breaks out. The guard rushes over and breaks it up.

It’s shower time and the young bloke and I are the last ones in. The guards locks the shower door as usual and the young bloke starts mouthing off again.

‘Mate, did you see me? I really gave it to him. Gave him what he deserves. I’m not lettin’ him stand over me. You can’t let them stand over you either Ray.’

Keys rattle. I turn to see the top screw unlocking the door.

‘Leary, you’re finished,’ he announces. ‘Get out of here.’

I grab my towel and leave. As I walk out the door I see that behind the screw are three other men, all inmates, including the couple the surfer upset at footy. I say hello as I pass them.

‘Keep going Leary!’ the screw orders. ‘Get dressed and get out on the yellow line.’

I’ve got a dreadful feeling that something bad is about to happen. While I get dressed I hear voices, screams, thuds, moans. Then silence. As I walk out to the yellow line, I see the screw standing at the door, doing nothing. The three men come out to join parade on the yellow line. The young bloke doesn’t appear. The screw locks the doors to the shower. We get marked off and parade to tea.

We don’t see the young bloke for a day or two. When he comes to afternoon parade he’s got fat lips and one eye is completely closed. I go to talk to him at recreation time.

‘How are you goin’ mate?’ I ask quietly.

‘Fuck off!’

‘All right. Just want to see how you’re going.’

‘Just fuck off. Don’t want to talk.’

I put my hand out to say something nice.

‘Don’t you fuckin’ touch me!’

‘All right. I get it.’

I’m too scared to stay in gaol any more. If it’s happen to him how long will it be before it happens to me? How can I get out of here?

I don’t want to ring Colin because he’s at work and he’s done so much for me already. I ring Sis and beg her to get me out. Sis rings Mum who goes to a loan shark to borrow the money for my fines and get me out. It takes her a week to get it organised. I stay shit scared.

Mum and Dad both come to get me. As we walk out I tell them what happened to the young bloke. Suddenly my Dad’s got me by the throat, up against Silverwater fence.

‘You didn’t see nothin’. Yer didn’t hear nothin’,’ he yells into my face. ‘Keep yer fuckin’ mouth shut. I don’t want to hear anything else about it!’ Then he lets me go.

I can still hear the beating of that kid today. It put me off ever doing anything to earn a gaol sentence. If I ever get into that much trouble, I’ll do myself in rather than be locked in one of those places. Mum and Dad both said to me at different times, ’If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.‘ That must be the only thing I ever agreed with Dad about.

In 1979 when I was with Colin my mate Shane told me all about the Australian Air League that had a branch at Marrickville. It sounded exciting. Shane had joined so I did too. It was good to have a normal thing to do that was fun as well as interesting. I made a lot of good, normal friends my own age there. We were taught about planes and flight, navigation, signaling as well as discipline, physical education and parade. I started out as a Cadet and got my orders, officer rank, in 1981. I was the P. E. instructor.

I got to swim and run and do all the sports I loved. The Air League had annual sports competitions and the one I remember best is the swimming carnival in 1980 when our team was in the relay final in the state games. The swimmers ahead of me did well but we were behind two other teams when my leg of the race began. I swam so well that I passed the two ahead of me and our team were the champions that year. Sport was what I enjoyed most about the Air League.

As soon as I joined the League, the ring of men like Dolly, Mick, Don and Peter heard and knew that I was in contact with a lot of boys again. I don’t know how they found out but they started following me. Every time I’d come out of the Air League Hall to see the boys off to their parents’ cars, the creeps would be there in their cars. They wanted to give me grooming instructions for boys they liked the look of.

‘No,’ I’d tell them bluntly. ‘I’m not doing it.’

‘There’s big money in it for you Ray.’

‘Not interested. Don’t want any part of it. I’ve got a good life and a job and I don’t want your money.’

When their offers of big money didn’t work, Mick tried some bullying. ‘Mate!‘ he’d say then I’d feel his hand on my shoulder. ‘We really want you to help us out here.’ He knew how to squeeze my shoulder so that a bolt of lightning went through me.

‘No! I won’t do it. I’m going home. And you’d better stop comin’ around here because I’m starting to get really unsettled.’

For a couple years they confronted me in the car park and for a couple of years I said no. I meant it too. There were two neglected and vulnerable brothers the men were particularly interested in so I’d rush over to them at the end of meetings and take them home. The creeps followed me to find out where the boys lived. I wasn’t afraid of driving through red lights to lose them whereas they didn’t want the police catching them for anything at all. As far as I know they never found out where the boys lived and the boys never went to hell.

‘They’re here again,’ my mates started to say. ‘Who are they?’

I’d just have to make up stuff. ‘Oh, they own a courier business and they want to know if I can drive for them this week.’

Eventually they gave up harassing me at Marrickville.

CHAPTER 14.
Where Are the Roses!

On my twenty first birthday I was walking about the streets of Sydney and I saw a card in the C. E. S. Office for a job up the road from where I lived with Colin. Grosvenor Hospital wants gardeners. Colin always encouraged me to find a job and he helped me reach a standard of basic education where I thought I might be able to do it. I decided to go and ask about this gardening thing. I’d bluff along if I had to. I was put on a programme where I’d be given a six months trial on a job because I had no skills and had been unemployed for so long. If they liked me they’d offer me a permanent job. They sent me for an interview and Colin helped me get ready for it.

I tell them I’ve had some training in gardening. When they ask about hobbies I tell them I play touch football well and often. I’d join a few teams by then and loved playing. That afternoon the Grosvenor people ring and say, ‘You’ve got the job. Start in the morning.’ The big boss told me after some time that I’d got the job because I could play football and they needed me on their team.

I visit Mum and Dad to let them know about the job. ‘That’s good,’ Mum says. Dad doesn’t say anything because he’s passed out on the lounge.

When I tell Colin about the job he is really happy for me. I think he sees that I’ll be earning my own keep and he won’t have to give me money now.

I only have to get up, shower and dress then walk up the road to work! I get there early.

‘You can start by weeding that bed,’ my supervisor, Jim, tells me.

Hard work doesn’t bother me. I’ve got plenty of energy so I get busy. Jim comes back later to see how I’m going.

‘Where are all the bloody flowers!’ he yells. ‘The roses! Where are all the fuckin’ roses? What have you done?!’

I don’t get angry like some of the other starters do. ‘You told me to weed it so I weeded it!’ I say.

Over the next few weeks he starts whacking me around the head and I don’t like that. I let it go on for a while then he tells me that I have to get the lunches for the boys too. He says it’s in my job description. The whacking doesn’t stop but at the end of my trial period I get a full time job there. I have to join the union so when I get whacked one too many times I call them. A few times I get them out to Jim to talk about assault. As months go on we come to an understanding. I learn about gardening and mowing and he learns not to hit me.

Grosvenor is a place where disabled kids come to stay and over time I get to know some of them. Some look normal and others have to have wheelschairs because they’ve got no control over their bodies. I don’t mind any of that. I just love being able to help and to make them laugh.

When the rings of men hear that I’m working around children, they think they’ve struck gold. They want me to procure boys for them. They hassle me to let them see the kids so they can take their pick. I don’t want them anywhere near me and I especially don’t want them around the kids in the hospital. I tell the men the children are disabled. The men lose interest and they stay away.

After a while my boss offers me the job of someone who is leaving. It was 1983 and by then Jim is impressed with me because I get to work early, have lots of energy, stay and work where I‘m told to and don’t sneak round corners to have a smoke like the others do. Best of all I play footy really well.

‘Do you want the job?’

Do I want the job? Shit yeah! The pay isn’t much but I enjoy the work and I’ve been able to stick at it. The real reason I like it so much is all the football I play. They don’t want to lose an employee who helped them win in the competition against other health facilities. I play competition touch football down at Balmain and Kensington too on weekends and some nights.

Mick and Robert came to me out of the blue one time and said, ‘Everyone contributes to what we give our boys Ray. You are no different and you will give us a hundred and fifty dollars a fortnight.’

‘I won’t!’

Mick replies, ‘Well, you know what photos we have Ray. If you don’t pay up we can show them around your workplace and to your football friends. How about your mother?’

‘Look I have to pay board to Colin and only get paid …’

Robert interrupts, ‘You know how it works Ray. Everyone pays. You can drop it in to me at Earlwood.’

I couldn’t find a way out of this. I paid at Robert’s house until he moved and then I had to give the money to Bill in Newtown or Michael would meet me in the city on Friday nights. When I didn’t have money I just didn’t pay board to Colin. He hassled me for it but you can’t get blood out of a stone. There was no way I wanted Mum or my boss to know about the photos.

Meanwhile, here I was, aged twenty one and starting to do things that I should have been doing when I was a lot younger. Football was my life. I’d play five or six nights a week. My mates would say if they could get the ball to me our team would score. My father had been very athletic before he chose the grog instead and I think my speed and agility were the only good things he gave me. There is something about that connection with him that I like.

I was just living my life, doing my own thing and really enjoying it. I put my past behind me as much as I could and got on with things although I still had to pay the one hundred and fifty dollars to Robert or whoever. The extortion went on for three years or so then I thought I’d try a new tactic. I bluffed my way out.

‘Go on then. Show ’em. I don’t give a shit.’ It worked!

In 1988 I played for St George Touch Comp in the grand final and we were down 4:0 at half-time. We said to each other, ‘We know we can win this.’ So out we went and played our hearts out. We beat them 4:6 and I scored two of our tries. It was the best game I ever played and I think I will always remember it. I felt pride and joy and everything good that day.

Most of the boys I played with were younger than me and we all got on really well. I was buying my own cars by then, old five hundred dollar bombs that I’d drive us to games in until the car fell apart. I’d usually saved enough to buy another five hundred dollar bomb.

On weekends when I didn’t have anything to do before a footy game I’d still go to beaches and parks looking for boys to save. I’d make sure I was in the city on Friday nights when I knew the men would be hunting. I’d see kids between the ages of ten and twelve in the city at McDonald’s or Central Railway near the country terminals waiting for a car to come along and pick them up to take them on what they thought was going to be a fantastic weekend. I’d pick them up instead, warn them and take them home.

One time I went with Colin to a place where we knew Eddy was being abused. We planned to take him away.

Colin went to Eddy and said, ‘Eddy, come home with me and Ray. You don’t have to be here.’

Eddy started to come with us and that’s when Mick saw us. He and his boys got a hold of Colin. I didn’t hear all of what they said but it included a warning to ‘fuck off or else’. There were four of them and just one Colin with skinny little me.

‘Come on, mate. Get in the car,’ Colin said.

We left without Eddy and that was really hard. Colin tried to talk to Eddy a number of times but Eddy thought he knew what he was doing. He was probably thinking that he had a better life than he could have at home.

I knew Don was managing a pool hall again and grooming young boys so he could take them home and later pimp them out. The boys didn’t know what he was up to, giving them free games and money for drinks but I did.

One night I decided to follow him when he had two boys with him. Don left his front door open when they went inside so I went inside too. I wasn’t sure what I would do next but Don had left the room so I quickly told the boys what was going to happen.

‘Now’s your chance. Go out that door and run. Don’t stop running. Never come back.’ They ran.

Don came back into the room. ‘Oh, hello there Ray. Where have the boys gone?’

‘Out the door,’ I told him.

‘What did you let them go for?’

‘Well, you didn’t tell me to stop them,’ I said.

‘I was having a shower,’ he said.

He lost the plot and really belted me. He punched me straight in the face then all around my head. I went home and Colin patched me up again.

I’d been in the Air League for a few years when John, the Four Finger Poof, arrived.

Mick had ordered me, ‘Get him into the League Ray. We’re counting on you.’

‘I’m not doing it. How many times do I have to say that! I’m not helping you.’

‘Get him in or else,’ Mick said threateningly.

‘I can’t just get him in. There has to be two senior officers interviewing him and he has to have a test. I can’t get him in.’

‘Just say he’s an old family friend. Tell them he’s a good guy and they should have him.’

‘It doesn’t work that way.’

Mick tried bribery but when he saw it wasn’t going to work, he gave up. To my horror John got himself in. I stayed very watchful of everything he did.

John had scored a big compensation payout for losing his fingers. He could afford silk but what he wanted was a particular boy, Ewan, in the League. Ewan complained to me that John was harassing him and ringing him at home to invite him out.

‘You leave that kid alone. I know what you’re doin’,’ I told him.

‘Fuck off Ray.’

‘No, you fuck off or I’ll make sure you’re expelled.’

He said he’d stop ringing but then he started turning up at Ewan’s house.

‘I don’t want to come any more,’ Ewan said one night. ‘Can’t stand that creep turning up all the time and hassling me.’

‘Has he got you mate, done anything bad to you?’

‘Nuh. He just keeps staring at me and turning up all the time.’

‘You can tell me if he has.’

‘No. He hasn’t, Ray but I hate him.’

I reported what the kid told me to my fellow officers and soon after John left too.

Mick and Robert wouldn’t leave me alone. They’d given up harassing me for the fortnightly payment but now they had another proposition. They said I had to buy a motor bike for two particular kids. I couldn’t afford it but I didn’t want to risk the photos to be spread about and I’d had enough beatings. I bought the bike on finance arranged by the salesman with AGC Credit Line. It took me years to pay off the debt and by the time I had, the men had forgotten me. My life was looking pretty good. I was enjoying it. I thought this was how it would be from now on.

I was wrong. It got better.

Grosvenor was the making of me in a sense. I got close to a number of the kids. I could play with them, sing to their radio songs, make them laugh and be around if they needed me. On school days I drove them to Lucas Road Special School and I drove them on weekend outings. I had a special bond with one little bloke and when he died I was heartbroken. His parents thanked me for what I gave him. I still have a picture of him laughing.

I worked at that place for nineteen years and my past stopped being part of my daily thinking. When I slept, dark shadows and incredible pain haunted my dreams. There was only me in my bed so when I woke in a fear filled sweat, I’d try to compose myself and get more sleep. I have not had a good night’s sleep since I graduated from Nanny Sheehan’s fruitbox.

For the rest of my life my bed would always just have me in it, I thought. I’d had no experience with women and to be honest I thought I never would although I never gave up hope. I worked with women but I never socialised with them one to one. I wouldn’t know what to do if I got the chance.

My footy mates took me on a cruise one time and that’s how I met my first girlfriend. Olivia and I had a few drinks and before I knew it I was going to bed with this very large and very lovely woman. It was quite an experience. Olivia thought it was really odd that I didn’t know what to do at my age, thirty or so. She did all the running and she was very affectionate but our sex life was a pretty one way thing because I was not able to respond normally. I didn’t pick up on clues or hints that she was interested.

Somehow we got engaged. I wasn’t comfortable but I thought, This is what you do and this is what you feel when you’re a normal person. At our engagement party my family and Olivia’s family started fighting. It was just words at first but then it turned physical.

Engagement cancelled. Relationship over.

When Grosvenor Hospital merged with Riverglade Hospital, a part of the Gladesville Psychiatric Hospital, I had to drive the bus over to Riverglade. I met my second girlfriend there. Kerry was a secretary whose mother also worked there. We seemed to hit it off pretty quickly. We started going out to movies and dinner. I was a bit more confident but still basically fumbling about. I met Kerry’s family who were quite well off and were very affectionate. But I would become stressed at all the touching they did so naturally. They were generous too but when they gave me presents I’d be thinking, What am I getting this for! You don’t get something for nothing. You always have to pay so what do they want? I didn’t trust or want it.

Kerry made me feel as if she worshipped the ground I walked on but she was so clingy and touchy and I was still not able to pick up clues that she was interested in me sexually.

We got engaged. The party was almost a carbon copy of the party with Olivia. Engagement off. Well, at least I knew that I was capable of being with women now.

My job included driving developmentally disabled and psychiatric adults around for a nice day out at the beach, the gardens, parks or the movies. Each group had a nurse with them and my job was to drive the bus and help out when they needed me.

I got on really well with the nurses and I found I really liked working with the clients too. One Down Syndrome man, Merv, became a good friend and he would be waiting for us to get there. He’d run out when he saw me and jump on me as if he was a little kid. He’d hug me and keep saying, ‘Fuckin’ bus! Fuckin’ bus!’

One of the nurses, Lou, was especially nice. On a trip to the Royal National Park Lou announced that she really had to have a comfort stop. Right now! I had to pull up and let her go in the bushes. When she got back to the bus Wendy, another nurse, was smoking in the doorway.

Lou said, ‘You probably shouldn’t be smoking so close to the bush Wendy. What if you start a bushfire?!’

For some reason the clients thought that whole scene was hilarious. They decided to call Lou ‘Bushy’ after that. She took it really well and laughed about it. Bushy and I developed a lovely friendship over the next few years. She was from the country and was doing her nurses training at Riverglade and Grosvenor. Sometimes she sat behind me in the bus and massaged my shoulders with hands that felt like magic. I loved it and I stopped feeling the panic I felt when people touched me. Only with Lou though. I was attracted to her too and I liked that she really listened to me when we talked. I never told her about all the rings of men I’d grown up with.

Gradually our relationship deepened and I realised that Lou was the girl for me. One day she invited me to her place which was a little flat in a garage behind a house. Lou had made tea and caramel dumplings. We had those and we talked a bit but I was really nervous. I wanted to stay the night but I also wanted to run at the first chance I got. After we got up from the table I dashed for the door, said, ‘Thank you for a lovely night. See you at work,’ and I was off. I was so relieved to be out of there but I was also incredibly disappointed and frustrated that I couldn’t do what I wanted to do and what Lou obviously wanted too.

My past was getting in the way without me being aware of it and it was killing my confidence. It had in the previous relationships too. They had been, ‘Wham bam. Thank you ma’am’ situations. I just didn’t know what to do to gratify a woman and I wanted Lou to be happy with me.

Next day we were a bit awkward but we talked about the night briefly. I told Lou something had spooked me and I didn’t want to stay. Lou said that was okay. Not to worry and we went about our work, still friends as we had been. I had heard the nurses gossiping about men over the years and I was quite worried that Lou would make me the subject of gossip. She never did though and that was a great relief and it made me appreciate her even more.

Lou invited me and some of my mates to tea. We had a few drinks and Lou had cooked a lovely meal for us. We were talking and laughing and I started making excuses for leaving. Lou had gone into another room and my mates were not going to let me get away. They grabbed me and threw me into the bedroom where Lou was and then they left.

There I stood thinking, What the hell happens next!

We worked it out and then I went home. Well, I thought that’s what you did. Over the next months I learned a thing or three and it all came good. I still didn’t tell Lou about my past and it began to feel less and less like it mattered. I thought I could just put it all away and leave it there.

Lou says that what she liked about me in those days was my happy go lucky nature and my deep concern for disadvantaged kids. She says in a way I was like a big kid myself with all the footy I played and the way I related to younger people.

I kept in touch with Mum during those years. I would go to see her but always copped the same attitude from my father. He would shout to Mum to come to the door and that’s where we talked. I was still not allowed in the house but I loved Mum and wanted to keep in touch with her, especially now that my life was going so well. I always had plenty to tell her about.

In 1993 I wanted to introduce Lou to Mum. I had warned Lou about Dad but she didn’t mind because her father drank quite a bit too. I took her to the house at Blacktown where they now lived and we were invited in. I did the introductions and my parents just kept doing what they were doing without realising that Lou was someone special. Mum hadn’t particularly liked my other girlfriends but for some reason she really took to Lou. The three of us did things together and talked a lot and Mum said that she’d never been treated so nicely. Lou could see fairly soon how badly Dad treated Mum and me and she couldn’t stand him.

Later Dad was diagnosed with cancer and Lou got to know him much better then because she helped Mum with him but she still didn’t like being around him. She thought he was always a foul mouthed bastard.

I was still living at Colin’s place and I could never take Lou there. She’d suggest we go there sometimes but I made whatever excuse I could think of not to go or I’d just say, ‘Oh you wouldn’t like it there.’

I told Colin about Lou and how special she was to me. He said, ‘Good! Maybe you’ll marry her and piss off!’ He said it in good humour but I think there was some truth in it too.

Lou decided to go back to the country to live. Part of it was that our relationship was getting a bit too rocky because she felt that I was putting my football and my friends ahead of her. I knew I didn’t want to lose her because I loved her and she showed me how to live normally. We were going to her parents’ farm for the weekend and as we drove through the mountains I said, ‘Let’s just stop here,’ I said. ‘I just want to show you the look out.’

We got out of the car and I said, ‘See that crucifix over there?’

‘No. I can’t see it.’

‘All right then,’ I said. ‘Maybe this will make it clearer why we’re here.’ I managed to gather my courage and start my proposal speech.

‘Lou, I have brought you here because I want to ask you, would you marry me?’

‘Will I?’ she said. ‘Yes. I will.’

She looked like the happiest woman in the world and I had a smile from ear to ear as we drove the rest of the way to her parents’ farm. I didn’t think I’d ever find the courage to ask her and I was so happy that she said yes.

‘How are you going to ask my father if you can marry me?’ Lou asked on the way up. That took me back a bit. I hadn’t really thought about asking him.

We get to the farm. Lou’s mother is cooking and her father is out the back. We tell her mum what our plans are and ask if I have her permission to marry her daughter. She is very happy about it. She gives me a kiss and congratulates us.

When we get up in the morning both women hassle me about asking Lou’s dad.

‘Well come on. He’s out in the cold room. Go! You’ll have to ask him sooner or later.’

So out I go and he turns around. I say, ‘Wal, can I talk to you?’

He says, ‘Yeah mate. What’s the problem?’

‘Um. I’ve just asked your daughter to marry me and I would like your blessing.’

Everything is quiet and still. He looks at me. I see he’s holding a meat cleaver.

‘It’s about bloody time!’ he says, laughing. He shakes my hand and I realise that he knew why I was there all along. ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’ he says.

We have a lovely weekend and we are all very happy. We decide to tell my Mum on our way home so we pull up at the house at Blacktown and go in. I’m allowed in if Lou is with me now. I really want this to be a happy occasion but Mum is in a cold, sullen mood and Dad isn’t well because of his cancer.

I say, ‘Sit down Mum. I want to tell you something.’

‘I’m busy,’ Mum growls. ‘I don’t want to sit down.’ She shrugs me off.

I try again. ‘Mum sit down. Please. I want to tell you something.’

She throws herself on the lounge and says impatiently, ‘Well, what do you want?’

‘I proposed to Lou on Friday afternoon,’ I tell her. ‘We’re going to get married.’

I expect her to come out of her sulks and be joyful. She doesn’t. All she says is, ‘Well you’re big enough and ugly enough to look after yourself.’ Then she stands up and goes to make a cup of tea. How could she!

Lou and I stay the night. Lou cries and cries when we go to bed. ‘I just wanted it to be happy,’ she sobs.

I still feel pretty angry with Mum. In the middle of the night I get up and storm into Mum’s room

‘What are you doing?’ Dad grumbles.

‘Shut up you!’ I yell at him.

Then I go right off at Mum. ‘You get your arse out of bed and get down there to Lou. That girl has been crying ever since we went to bed. This is supposed to be a happy time in our life and you’ve made it shit!’

‘Well, what do you want me to do?’

‘Get out of the fuckin’ bed and get down there and talk to her!’

Mum gets up and she and Lou talk it out. After that it’s okay.

I don’t think I have ever been as angry with Mum as I was that night. I was delivering news that was the best, the absolute best news I could have and I expected her to be happy for me.

When I told Colin I was getting married he was really happy for me. I asked him to come to the wedding and I really wanted him to. He declined because he didn’t want to put me in a position of having to explain who he was and how we’d met.

We knew Mum and Dad did not have any money to contribute to the wedding but it didn’t matter because Lou and I saved up for it.

I felt like a million dollars on my wedding day. I never thought I would see this day or feel so happy. My work friends and my footy friends came and it was really good for me to see that I had real friends who cared enough to come and be happy for us.

Lou arrived at the church in her uncle’s antique car and when she walked down the aisle I was shaking so badly that I wanted to run. My best man kept saying, ‘Stay Ray. It’s not that bad.’

The huge commitment I was about to make scared me. I had never done anything this important before and Lou was the girl of my dreams so I did not want to blow it. I stayed and we made our vows to love and to cherish each other until death did us part. I have never spoken truer words in my life.

At the reception somebody recorded the thoughts of the guests at our wedding. Lou’s mum made a lovely speech. She found it hard to do but she put the effort in and gave me the warmest of welcomes into the family. My mum made a nice speech too. When it came time for Dad to say something it was dreadful. Embarrassing! He was pissed as usual and he couldn’t even remember which of his sons was getting married.

‘I’d like t’ wish my sheckon ….third … What is he? …’ I was so glad when he gave up.

Marriage was something I thought I’d never achieve but there I was with a wonderful wife in a rented house at Wanda Street in Merrylands. Happy? Could it get much better than this? I thought not and I dared not think of us having children.

I am hopeless with money and Lou said she would look after ours. My habits with money had developed in my childhood and had stayed with me. I’d spend it as soon as I got it. Although I found it hard handing my money over to my wife at first, I must admit she did a wonderful job.

I was playing a lot of football and Lou realised that if she wanted to have time with me she would have to get interested in football too. She couldn’t believe how many nights I played but she started playing touch football too. I’ll never forget the first try she scored. She was so excited she fell on the ground and started kicking her legs and shouting, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ I was so happy for her!

During the 1990s I started to see things in the news about paedophiles being arrested and familiar names were starting to pop up. The awareness wasn’t as focused early on as it became later when I wished with all my heart that Colin hadn’t taught me to read the paper.

Although I had put my past behind me, I couldn’t hide from it when I slept. So many times Lou woke me up or a nightmare did and I’d be sweating, shaking, sucking my thumb and whispering things like, ‘No, no, no! Not me. Don’t do it.‘

Lou would ask, ‘What’s the matter? What’s happening?’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I’d tell her. ‘You don’t need to know. Go back to sleep.’

Lou respected my privacy I suppose, because she never probed or pushed me to tell her what it was all about.

One night I came home from work and we watched television then Lou said, ‘Well, I’ll get our tea, Dad.’

‘Yeah, all right.’

Over the meal the word Dad came up again and again. Then it registered.

‘What! Dad? Me Dad!’ I felt like I’d burst with the joy of it.

Our baby was born in Westmead in 1995. I’d had a couple of incredibly happy times now but none could beat the happiness I felt the day our son was born. I stayed for the birth and I cut the umbilical cord. Words can’t describe how that felt. I was such a proud father.

The first time Lou told me it was my turn to bath little Matty I was really nervous. I was not sure what appropriate touching was. Of course, Lou didn’t know why I was hesitant. She stood beside me and saw me shaking like a leaf.

‘Come on Daddy. It’s your turn. You’ll be great.’

She assured me that I’d be able to do it well. She was right. I got over my worries about bathing him but I have never got over my worries about protecting him. I was always aware that I had a boy and that I would never, ever let a paedophile anywhere near this precious little person who had fulfilled a dream for me. I absolutely loved looking after him. It was just delightful. Men who say they don’t want babies are really missing out on a lot.

When Lou started doing nightshift it was scary for me having all the responsibility myself. I had to give Matty dinner, bath him and put him to bed. I kept going in to make sure he was still breathing and I didn’t want to go to sleep in case anything happened to him. Nothing ever went wrong but it was still such a relief when Lou got home. It was a massive learning curve for me and I loved it.

Mum is already a grandmother but she loves our Matty and comes over to help out with him sometimes. Matty adores her. Lou doesn’t want her to wear herself out so she makes the occasional suggestion that she hopes will make things easier for Mum.

‘Oh I do it this way.’

Mum gets the shits and growls, ‘I don’t need to be told how to do things. I’ve had more babies than you’ll ever have.’

Lou is upset now because she was only trying to help but Mum has turned really nasty. She thinks Lou is picking on her.

When I come in and ask what’s going on Mum says, ‘Bloody Lou. I’m not a bloody child! I have raised seven kids.’ Blah blah blah.

‘You and your moods Mum!’ I growl back. ‘I can’t put up with this. Get out of my house!’

‘What are you saying?’ Mum says.

‘I’m saying pack your stuff and get out of my fucking house! I’ll even ring your daughter for you, to come and pick you up.’

Sis drives over and all I can say is, ‘Just get her out of this house.’

Mum won’t talk to me now. She has a real bee in her bonnet.

After a couple of months we’re all over it and it’s Christmas. Matty, two years old now, loves water so we’ve set up a wading pool in the backyard. Christmas is a much happier time these days. All the family has come to our place. Everyone is helping to get the barbeque except Mum who has taken Matty to our wading pool.

Someone suddenly shouts, ‘There’s something wrong with Mum!’

I bolt out to the pool. There’s Mum with an agony look on her ghostly face, holding Matty up out of the water. She’s having a heart attack but still holding Matty’s head out of the water. What an incredible woman! We call the ambulance and Mum is taken to hospital where she is diagnosed with angina. When she gets her medication she recovers well and gets back to helping out again as soon as she can.

Lou and Matty would come to watch me play touch football and I was so proud. I‘d never had any family come to watch me play sport. Happiness! I had it in trailer loads! We were very much liked at touch footy. I was such a happy go lucky person, just going about my business thinking all was well.

Then came May 1996.

CHAPTER 15.
Shattered by Wood

A phone call comes for me at work just when I’m getting ready to go home.

‘Ray, I’m an investigator with the Wood Royal Commission. You know about the commission I take it?’

‘Not much. I’ve seen bits and pieces in the paper.’

‘So you know it’s been set up to investigate police corruption?’

‘Look mate, I’m about to go home and police corruption’s got nothin’ to do with me.’

‘A friend of yours has told the Commission that you can give us information about police protecting paedophiles. Is that right?’

My stomach churns and something deep inside me stirs like a monster who’s been sleeping. I want to run away.

‘I don’t want to have anything to do with it,’ I tell the man. ‘I’m a different person and I’ve put all that behind me.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to talk to us Ray. We’ve heard that you have a lot of information that will help with our enquiries.’

‘Well, you can fuckin’ do your enquiry without me. I don’t want nothin’ to do with it.’

‘We need your evidence Ray and we’ve got a subpoena for you. We’ll be picking you up from work at seven thirty Monday morning.’

I become more and more anxious over the weekend and I go to talk to Colin. He’s worried about being dobbed in because he’s still teaching. He encourages me to go to the commission and talk about all the bad people I’ve been involved with but to leave him out. He thinks I should go and tell them about the whole ugly life I had as a kid.

I leave Lou in the dark about it and go to work on Monday morning thinking there must be at least a million places I’d rather be. After what had happened in court all those years with Baz and Marshall, I have no respect for the legal system. I don’t want to be laughed out of court again. Much worse is the fact that Lou is going to have to know all the bad stuff I was involved in. The work people will find out too. That won’t be good but the worst worry I have is that Lou will know.

I hope the day goes quickly so I can get to footy then home to my wonderful, pregnant again wife and little Matty. I wait around at work until the men in suits turn up at eight o’clock with a document.

My boss says, ‘I don’t know what it’s all about but if they’ve got a subpoena, it’s all right with me.’

They take me to the Downing Centre to the Wood Royal Commission. The investigators take me into an interview room where there are recorders and cameras set up. Soon the interview starts and they ask me about my past. I tell them about Michael, Dolly, the Hook, Travers, Hill, McKinnon and that lot. They throw a few names at me to see if I knew them. I have to say, ‘Look, it was all years ago and I’ve put it all behind me. Don’t forget the men didn’t use their real names either so I might know them but I don’t know. If you show me photos I’ll tell you if I know them.’

They pull a bunch of photos out of a folder and show me one at a time. If I say I know them, they asked me to tell them all I know about the person. It’s full on and they want every detail I could give them. Tape after tape is filled. I found a lot of my ugly, hidden memories seeping back into my mind like poison. I felt quite shaken.

I learnt the word paedophile during this time and that’s what I call them now. Not ‘men.’ They are not men. They are paedophiles. They are not poofters or fags. They are paedophiles.

Thank goodness for the lunch break! But then it’s on again. More and more questions. Give us details. More poison dripping back into my world. I crack up in the middle of the afternoon. I’m exhausted and very, very shaken.

‘This is too much. I can’t do this no more,’ I tell them, just about screaming at them. ‘Look, there was three groups of them. One in the city and they took us down to Wollongong and up to the Hunter Valley. They’re all connected somehow. I just can’t do this no more.’

They let me off early, dropped me back at work as if nothing has happened. I‘m supposed to just go back to my life. I go straight home. I just couldn’t function well enough for footy. How am I going to manage tomorrow when they come back and get me? Bloody Ian … no don’t think about it. That fuckin’ monster who ruined my life. I’ll tell them about how he … stop thinking about it. But there’ll be even more poison in my system and what I’ve got now is bad. Almost too bad to bear. It‘s hard to focus on what I need to do - Lou and Matt.

Lou notices that I’m not my normal self. I flake out in front of the T.V. The Commission is on the news again.

Lou sees my tears and says, ‘Hon, what’s wrong?’

‘I don’t want to tell you.’

‘What’s wrong? Tell me. Maybe I can help.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it. Don’t ask me again.’

After a sleepless night of remembering and worrying I go to work. The investigators come and take me back to the interview room at the Downing Centre. Franca Arena (State Government M.P.) and another woman come in too. I’m introduced to them and Mrs Arena encourages me to give as much information as I can to the investigators. The two women listen to the interview but they don’t talk with me. I know who Mrs Arena is from news reports. She’s having a hard time too. I think in a speech she gave in Parliament she named a high profile person as getting preferential treatment by a particular judge. Then news broke that her sons are gay. Not that that had anything to do with the Wood Royal Commission but I think she was upset by the treatment the press gave her and her sons.

The investigators want more and more details about more people and places. The day is dreadful. The trickle of poison becomes a flood that is when my breakdown started I think. There is no counseling, no debriefing. I don’t even get dropped off at work today. I am broken when they leave me at the station. I get the train home.

Lou is cooking tea and I watch TV. Suddenly John Marsden’s face is looming out at me, up close evil. Right in my face. I start sobbing. Can’t stop it. Out of control. Lou wants to know what’s the matter.

I can’t answer for a long time but when I’ve got a bit of control back I ask her to sit down so I can talk about it. There’s no nice way to say it but I can’t hold it in any more. I let it all pour out and as Lou’s face registers shock and horror, I just keep going. There’s no way to make this story less disturbing.

These day I think of all the times Lou woke up at night when I was having nightmares. She would say, ‘Talk to me.’ I would say, ‘No.’ I kept it all hidden away. Then along comes the Wood Commission and she says, ‘Talk to me,’ and I talk and talk and talk. All too late.

Lou says she’ll stick by me and we’ll see this commission thing through together.

I need to get people to back up the evidence I give. I can’t shoulder it on my own so I ring my family and some mates from those days and go to see them.

I ask Mum to tell them about Ian Hughes coming around to our house on Friday nights, picking me up, dressing me up like a million dollars and bringing me back on Sunday night. I want her to talk about how I’d be quiet for days after and wouldn’t tell her anything about what had happened. Mum says she’ll talk to me about it but she won’t put it down on paper or say it in court.

‘How could I say that in court? I’d look like an idiot,’ she says.

‘Fuck what it makes you look like, Mum! I am asking you to verify what happened to me!’

She goes on and on and on. I hate her. ‘Oh, it happened all those years ago. It’s time you forgot about it and moved on,’ is her final statement on the subject. I had put it behind me, hadn’t I? I had moved on but now it’s destroying me all over again.

Next I ring Noel. ‘Look mate we have to have a talk. Can I come and see you?’

Noel had come into the scene during the 1980s after I had started work at Grosvenor when I would still see some of my mates. He played in our 1988 grand final footy team. He was from Melbourne and got involved with the ring of men that I had previously been involved in. It was still operating quite strongly in the 80s. Noel got involved with the Gun Mole while he was on the streets. He was very bright and had an impressive physique. When he was still quite young he had been taken in as a pet by a very high profile, wealthy man who looked after him and later put him through university and helped him to get a really good, high paying career started.

I went to his place that night to ask him whether he’d give evidence to the Commission knowing that his evidence would corroborate mine.

‘No, no mate. I don’t want to talk about it in public. He paid for what he did. It’s all over with now and I’ve got a life.’

Noel thought that I should not give evidence either. He said, ‘Ray you really need to stop and think about what you’re doing.’

‘That’s what Mum’s saying,’ I tell him. ‘But I can’t let them just get away with it. Anyway, I’ve been subpoenaed.’

‘Look, I don’t know what sort of time you had with them. Your perps {perpetrators} might have said we’re going to give you this, that and the other but mine actually did give me a lot. It wasn’t good but I did what I had to do. That’s why I’ve got where I am now. Just forget about it.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Well I’m sorry but I have got a girl who I’ll probably marry and that’s how it is with most of the blokes now. They’re married and they’ve got kids or they’ve got girlfriends. They’re not going to start telling everyone what they’ve done in the past. The ones who aren’t dead or doped out of their minds that is. You don’t really want to do it Ray! Just stop and think about it.’

I go home devastated, exhausted. I wasn’t angry with Noel because I could see his point of view. I just couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d been through and the fact that I was now subpoenaed to talk about it. To his credit Noel did give a full statement about the paedophiles that we had been involved with on the understanding that he would not be interviewed by the Commission.

Maybe Aaron, my C. B. radio mate, would do it. I asked him. He said no. He had made a name for himself as a coach of a football team and he could see bad outcomes if he let out what he had been in the past. I could see his point too.

Some friends who I asked said, ‘Good on you Ray. You go get them.’

Others said, ‘Get out of here you bastard. You got me into that so don’t come asking me to help you.’

That really hurt because I knew they were right. I had got them into it to save myself from pain and I felt I owed them now. I wanted them to understand that I did it because I had to. I felt I had no choice at the time.

So, I was going to be the only one in my peer group to carry the load. Was I strong enough? It turns out I wasn’t but I tried so hard.

I was questioned intensively for five days I think. It’s a bit of a blur because I was traumatised. In the middle of it they gave me a day off because I was a mess. We had a long weekend and Lou took me up to her mother’s place for a break. She explained it all to her but I don’t know how she reacted. I was out of it.

After the questioning with the investigators was finished, someone decided that we should drive around so I could show them all the places where paedophiles had taken me. We drove to the Central Coast but I couldn’t remember exactly where John’s place was. Then I saw the Sara Lea factory and it all came back. I told the investigators where to drive and sure enough there it was. They couldn’t go in because they didn’t have a warrant but I went in. The place was really overgrown and at first I couldn’t find the Holy Pond. I was determined to find the wretched thing so I kept bashing around in the bush with my heart pounding as if a paedophile was after me. Then there it was, full of weeds and rubbish but it was the Holy Pond. I photographed it and I photographed other important places on the property and went back to the car.

We went to places in Vaucluse, Rushcutters Bay, Turramurra, Chippendale, Bondi and more.

‘Tell us what happened here,’ the detectives would say and I would relive the tortures, rapes, beatings, filming and betrayal of my friends again and again. I cried and vomited at a lot of those places. I photographed each one.

We went to the Central Coast where Ian Hughes had gone.

‘Hughes has passed away,’ they told me. ‘So we can’t go after him.’

I was shattered to hear he wouldn’t be brought to justice because, to my way of thinking, he had started the whole thing off for me and kept it going for years. I don’t know why they told me he had died. I know now that he was living in the house we went to that day.

There was one place I remembered with intense horror. I wanted to find it so badly - the cage. I knew I had been taken on a bush track, chained up and just the memories of that place made me vomit. We just couldn’t find it and had to give up. I have found it since that time though. It is in Sydney, the senior side of what used to be the Remand Centre where delinquent kids were held under guard. Does it make me wonder which guards knew about or were involved in the bondage and torture sessions that went on there? And how those creeps got keys to get in? Bloody hell, it does.

Back to the story of the search during the Wood Commission. I think the investigators were stunned at how many places we did find that day. It was incredible that such a broad network of paedophiles had operated with little if any police intervention. How much police protection the creeps must have bought was shocking. I hoped that my evidence would help track them down, paedophiles and police. I wanted so very much for other boys to come and help with the evidence. A lot of them had got themselves an education and could see where the Royal Commission was heading.

‘It won’t make any difference anyway,’ they’d say. ‘Are they going to arrest everyone you tell them about? ’course they’re not.’ That is when I saw that a lot of the boys were dulling the pain with drug habits, including alcohol and weren’t in any state to talk about what had driven them to their addictions. But I was focused on telling all. In fact I became obsessed with it.

To my everlasting regret I mostly ignored my wife and child in those days. The abuse I’d lived in was with me twenty-four hours a day, whether I was awake or asleep. I remember the joy I felt when Lou had told me she was pregnant again but during these years I lost touch with that self that had been whole and happy. Now the poison had taken hold and I wasn’t paying attention to anything but the evidence.

Our daughter Jessica was born during the turmoil and I loved her deeply from the minute I saw her. My joy of fatherhood was whole in that moment. We had wanted a boy and a girl and here was a perfect little baby girl. I knew what my responsibilities to her were but I let the bad stuff in my head overwhelm my family life. I didn’t seem able to stop it. Lou had been so supportive, bless her heart, and I am still grateful for that. She was there for me whenever I needed her. She was my rock but cracks were appearing without me noticing.

I look at the scene now and see how disturbing and repulsive my past must have looked to Lou. I can see that, from her point of view, I was not the man she married. I can see that I should have told her about my past very early on in our relationship. But there is no going back.

We didn’t tell anyone else in Lou’s family except her brother, what we were going through. Lou was worried about me and she rang the investigators. They had to send me to a police psychiatrist at Hunters Hill who put me on Valium or something to try to calm me down and help me sleep. Sleep! What’s that? A bit later I went to see my own doctor and she gave me different medication. I was on five or six tablets a day. They were heavy doses of Valium, Diazepan, Triptenol or whatever.

During the enquiry someone had suggested that I should go to a surgeon and get my anus repaired. Because of the paedophile doctors I’d known in childhood it was very hard for me to trust one to do the job now. Lou encouraged me to go and at least now she understood why I bled so much. Eventually I got the courage to do it but it might have been zombie courage with all the medication I was on.

We went to see a doctor in Westmead Hospital. We told him how the damage had been done and that there would be a case for compensation against the state. The doctor performed the operation and wrote his report. I was annoyed that he wasn’t willing to say that, in his opinion, penetration / sodomy / buggery had caused the damage. All he would say was that it was a fissure and that he had put so many stitches on the inside and so many on the outside. I thought and I still think that it was pretty gutless of him to take that approach. Didn’t he believe me when I told him what had happened? Couldn’t he see from the damage he repaired that trauma had caused the fissure?

I was lucky that Lou came to visit me in hospital the morning after the operation. My tummy was rumbling like a volcano and Lou, an enrolled nurse by now, thought that it would be all right for me to go to the toilet. I got such a fright when I saw how much blood was on the hospital gown and all over me. It took me right back to all the violent rapes when I had bled for days. Nurse Lou told me not to worry, that I was all stitched up and it would heal nicely.

One of the investigators in the Royal Commission had said, ‘Ray, you have a potential lawsuit against the state of New South Wales. You were their responsibility and they failed you badly. Go and get some legal advice.’

I had put that off at the time because it was more than I could deal with. Lou encouraged me to follow it up later, when I felt able to.

We went to see some solicitors but they had to admit they were out of their depth so they sent me along to Glenda, a solicitor more able to deal with it. I think she found what I told her very hard to believe but she said she would give it a run and she started working on it in 1997.

She employed an investigator, Ross, to gather evidence. The Wood Commission had all the evidence but those files were sealed, not available to anyone so I had to go through it all again. Ross had been with the Federal Police but was now a very resourceful private investigator.

By 1998, as the evidence came in and more people started talking in the media about child abuse, Glenda seemed to start believing what I was saying. She had been chewing on my case but seemed to decide that something had better be done about it before I necked myself or whatever. As time went on more and more state wards started making claims against the state and it was all over the papers. Five years were spent gathering evidence for my claim, including statements from other victims of paedophiles.

While that was going on Lou decided that she wanted to go back to live in the area where she’d grown up. I didn’t want to lose her so I resigned from my job at Grosvenor, got a really good reference from Jim and we moved out west.

I had a job waiting for me, cleaning in Riverside, a psychiatric hospital. I’d seen Mum work in places like that where patients smeared shit all over the walls and left all sorts of messes, so I wasn’t looking forward to it. Most of all I was terrified of meeting new people who I’d have to work with too.

The morning I was due to start work I got in the car and started driving to work. At a crossroad, I was overcome with a sense of not being in the place where I needed to be. There were important things I had to do in Sydney, urgently. I drove straight back to Sydney and went to my boss at Grosvenor.

I said, ‘I’m back. Things didn’t work out up there. I’m not going to be able to settle in the bush. I want my job back.’

Jim said, ‘But I haven’t even done the paperwork for your resignation yet! I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to the big boss but, all right, start again in the morning.’

I drove back to talk with Lou. That was horrible.

‘You’re not going to believe this,’ I told her. ‘I’m going back to Grosvenor.’ I told her what I had done and why. She was furious! She hated me!

We didn’t separate at that point. I wanted so badly to keep my marriage and family together. I kept my job in Sydney and went home on weekends. A friend got me a bed in a nursing home in Auburn for a while and after that I’d just ‘sleep’ in trains or parks, anywhere I could put my head down during the week, then go home for the weekend.

That arrangement didn’t work well. Lou and I both tried to keep the family together but it was just too much. I was manic and overtired and I’d rush up on weekends to be with them. Then I’d upset the children by saying goodbye every Sunday, leaving Lou to calm them down. I just wasn’t there for them during the week and I was barely there on weekends because my mind was often somewhere else. We struggled on for about twelve months but it just didn’t work.

One weekend I went home and Lou was doing the ironing. ‘I can’t do this any more Ray. I want a divorce.’

It felt like a cannon had blown a hole in my guts. We got into a horrible argument. I was trying so hard to keep it together. Couldn’t she see that! I didn’t want a divorce. Things would get better if she just gave it time and gave me a chance to finish the stuff I was dealing with. Couldn’t she see it would break my heart not to be with the kids! Who would look after me if I lost her? Both of us were hurting, crying, shouting at each other.

Lou could see the problems but she wanted a divorce so she’d be free to set up a new, normal, calm life for the kids. Looking back, I can see that the decision had to come but right then it was all too much. I don’t hold any grudges against Lou now. She’d put up with a lot of awful stuff for quite a while.

‘You want a divorce,’ I yelled. ‘All right. You’ve got one!’ I was furious and lost.

It was a long, lonely drive back to Sydney.

CHAPTER 16.
Court Again

Some time in that period, allegations were made that the solicitor John Marsden had acted criminally and the media went after him. I saw it on TV and in the papers and I felt sick just seeing his face.

Jana Wendt interviewed some boys about Marsden for the programme called ‘Witness’ on Channel 7. Jana asked the boys about their experiences with Marsden and they told her what a fiend he was. I thought the program was sensitive and thorough.

After the story was put to air John Marsden brought a defamation case against Channel 7. I was excited because I thought at last he’d have to pay for his crimes. Marsden’s case was not about whether he had raped underage boys but I didn’t get that. It was about whether the Witness programme had defamed him.

Someone who had been more involved with him than I had knew that I was underage when I’d been raped by him. The next thing I know, I get a call from Glenda, my solicitor, who wants me to come to her office.

‘Are you sure it was John Marsden who raped you?’ she asked.

‘Yes I’m sure. I will never forget that prick. Oh, er, sorry. Person.’

‘All right. Channel 7 has approached us and they want to subpoena you as a witness for the prosecution in his defamation case against Channel 7,’ she tells me.

I was under a lot of stress at the time and I got confused. I thought this circus was all about getting John Marsden charged and convicted for sex with minors. That’s why I was willing to turn up.

Glenda told me to go to Mr Stitt’s office. He was Channel 7’s barrister. Ross and I went into the city and met Mr Stitt.

‘We have a series of photos,’ he said, ‘and we’d like you to look at them and identify John Marsden as you knew him back when you claim he raped you.’

‘No problem,’ I said. ‘Show me the photos.’

He showed me photos of Marsden at various stages of his life. It was so easy for me to point out the Marsden I knew. The horrors of dealings with him came straight back and hit me in the guts as soon as I saw his face. That feeling hung on me for some time and was still there when the subpoena came for me to give evidence in the defamation case. I wanted to be sure that I gave accurate evidence so he would be convicted. I was about getting him convicted for rape and my mind couldn’t sort that out from the defamation case.

Lou and I were going through our divorce then but she came down to support me. No one else was there for me and I am still grateful to her for making the effort. It must have been such a hard thing for her to go through.

The day that I gave evidence as the first truth witness was not too bad. All I had to do was tell the truth about Marsden. I distinctly remembered that night in Costello’s nightclub. Of course I hadn’t written down the date at the time it happened but I have absolutely no doubt about what happened. Seven other witnesses were questioned after me.

At the end of that day people from the past told me, ‘Wait ‘til Marsden gets you tomorrow.’

That night my name was all over the papers. I hadn’t expected that. Eddy was furious. His friends knew I was his brother and they might know more now than he wanted them to.

‘You just couldn’t keep your fuckin’ face out of it could you!’ he shouted.

Cross-examination happened on the second day and that’s when I fell apart. Why hadn’t I mentioned Marsden in the Wood Royal Commission? (The legal people had subpoenaed the Wood papers, or that’s my understanding of it.) I told them that it had been an incredibly stressful time for me then and I hadn’t remembered everything straight away. The paedophiles didn’t use their proper names anyway. They had ‘story book’ names like ‘The Hook,’ ‘Sir,’ ‘Dr Darling’ and ‘Smee,’ from Peter Pan when I was young and later on different names were used.

On and on the questioning went in court and I became more and more stressed. The judge offered me a break and I took it gratefully but then it was on again. I couldn’t make them see how thoroughly I’d put my old life and all those perpetrators behind me and how the toxic memories of them had gradually seeped back to me. It hadn’t come back as a complete picture. It was like a jigsaw puzzle. I still haven’t got all the pieces today!

I said that Marsden raped me in Costellos when I was eleven or twelve. That rape was fact. The timing wasn’t. Barker, Marsden’s barrister, argued that it could not have happened because Costellos did not exist at the time I said the rape happened.

‘Mr Leary, it gives me no pleasure to say this,’ said the barrister, ‘but I am suggesting that you are a liar and that you are lying about Mr Mardsen.’

‘And I say I’m not.’ I was so angry about being called a liar in court. Why would I lie? ‘How would you know anyway,’ I said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘You weren’t there.’

Then I looked at Marsden. He sat with a smirk and waggled his ugly head as if to say, Well, bully for you Raymond. I wanted to shout all sorts of things at him but you can’t do that when you’re in court and you’re cracking up and in tears.

I didn’t care what date it happened! The fact was that it was definitely John Marsden who raped me when I was under age in Costellos, even if it was before the bloody place was popular, big and sleazy. The law didn’t see it that way.

Marsden’s barrister came back at me with, ‘You cannot, in all honesty, say that my client raped you in Costellos when you were eleven. He couldn’t have, could he?’

‘He raped me in Costellos.’

‘But he did not rape you at the time you said he did, did he.’

‘Well, no. But …’

‘Thank you. That is all.’

In his summing up the judge said he was inclined to believe my evidence. That was comforting but I’d been called a liar. Channel 7 had not proved that what they said about Marsden was true and they were given a huge fine. One newspaper said that Marsden’s reputation was the biggest casualty of the whole saga.

I felt like a casualty. I didn’t care about Channel 7’s case. All I could think of was that I had been called a liar in court. I was very depressed and my prescribed medication didn’t help. I felt even worse when I read a newspaper report that said I’d been called a liar. I couldn’t imagine my life could get worse.

‘I’ll take you back home,’ Lou said when she saw the state I was in. I don’t think she could have been feeling much better herself.

‘I can’t Lou. I need to think.’ Think about my misery. Think about how I can never get justice. Think about how my life is shit.

I go up to The Gap at Watsons Bay. I need to think what to do. It’s too much to bear. The kids have a father who is called a liar in public. How can I get past that? Might as well end it. What about the kids though? They don’t need a liar father but they need a father. Don’t they? The whole world thinks I’m a liar. I’m the only one who knows I’m not. What’s the use of trying to get justice? Channel 7 failed anyway. Can’t do this any more. Can’t bear it.

‘Ray!’ someone calls.

I look around and some cops and one of Channel 7 journalists, the one who’d talked with me about Marsden, are there. Somehow the journalist guessed where I was and he’s brought the police with him to find me. They talk to me and bring me back from the edge. The journalist takes me to a hotel and pays for a night’s accommodation. In the morning he comes back, we talk over breakfast then he wishes me well and I go back to living in the blur that is my life.

I think it was around this time that I got in touch with Dorothy Ginn again. It was very good to remember her kindness during my tortured years. She remembered me too and her warmth and care were still comforting. She asked me to come and speak with a group of people at her office in Ashfield about her work in The Cross. At the time I was still angry and depressed about the Wood Commission but if Dorothy wanted me, I’d go. I wasn’t a speaker but if she wanted me, I’d go.

I talked about what had happened to me and why I was involved in the Wood Commission. I talked about how during that time, my past had caught up with me and how I owe a great debt of gratitude to Dorothy for how she had been so kind to me back when I needed her.

Question time came after my talk and I didn’t handle that well.

‘Why did you keep going back to the paedophiles? You knew what would happen to you, that you’d be violated. So why would you go back?’

‘Well, it’s the only way I knew to survive. I was brought up with that. I had no education and no idea of how to get any other kind of job.’

‘But why go to be violated?’

‘Should I have gone home to be bashed by my alcoholic father, watch my mum get raped, have no food and no safe bed? Or be put in a home and be locked up and violated?’

A lot of people who grew up normally can’t get their heads around starvation and I don’t just mean of food. I mean of affection, approval and connection as well. If you desperately feel the need for those, you’ll do whatever you have to to get them. You don’t know what ‘normal’ is but you know pain is the price you have to pay for those other things.

CHAPTER 17.
Back to Bite

My case against the state was still pending and Ross kept gathering evidence and getting statements from who ever he could. I felt driven to find people and places to verify the truth I’d stated at the Wood Commission. All I could think of was driving around finding people and places from my childhood. Some of the people I found were not friends any more. They were figures from my nightmares. I would have hunted down Ian Hughes too but I’d been told during the Commission that he was dead.

I went back to Mum too to see if she would help.

‘Look Raymond. It was a long time ago. Can’t you just put it all behind you and move on? You’ve already lost your wife and kids because of it. Just let it be.’

Mum made me so angry again but to her credit she let Ross come and take a statement from her.

’I remember Ian Hughes, that awful man, came to the door and Raymond was crying and he didn’t want to go, didn’t want to go, didn’t want to go. But that man had a piece of paper that said Raymond had to go with him every weekend …’

Colin came through for me too. He gave his forty five page sanitised version of how he met me, who I was then and what he did for me. Someone suggested that I could take a lawsuit out against Patrician Brothers because that’s where Colin had his way with us boys but I didn’t want to do that because I still thought of all his kindness as just that, not grooming. I see it differently now but at the time that is how I was thinking.

Other people gave statements too but they did not want to turn up at court and be publicly outed.

Ross was keeping me together in those days. I couldn’t hold down a job and was very out of touch with the real world. He would give me money to help me get to see the kids and he helped me find accommodation. Things were tough for him too then because his business wasn’t doing as well as it had been previously. He knew that I was going to get a compensation payout from my court case and that I would be able to pay him back when the case was settled.

In January 2001, I was going through a stage of bad depression again and it got even worse. I felt that my life probably wasn’t worth living but for my kids. They kept me going.

I had them at my place for the weekend. I didn’t get time to shower them before it was time to drive them back to their mum. Our divorce was very nasty and Lou had remarried by then. Her new husband hated me and didn’t want me around his kids. Anyway, I dropped my kids off and drove back home.

I found answering machine messages from Lou. They were cold and angry. ‘I don’t care what time it is when you get this, ring me.’

I rang.

‘How dare you, you sick bastard! You’ll never see the kids again. That’s the last time I ever let you anyw …’

‘Hang on! Hang on! What’s happening? What are you talking about?’

That’s when what I’d told her in the past came back to bite me. ‘If the kids ever, ever tell you someone has touched them or hurt them, believe it. Don’t think they’ve made it up or anything like that. Believe them!’

Now here was Lou telling me that Matty had said to her and her husband that I had been inappropriate with him in the shower. She wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell her that we hadn’t even had a shower.

‘Lou, you know I would never do that. Don’t do this to me. You know I would never, ever do that.’ The world was spinning out of control and I could hardly breathe.

I was living on the edge of sanity anyway but that accusation was absolutely devastating. I hated Lou for believing I might do that. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why she’d think I would. She’d seen how I was with Matty from the day he was born, so careful not to do anything at all inappropriate.

Looking back I can see that she did exactly what I had told her to do. She says she was very conflicted at the time and unsure of what to do. But the kids were her priority and what she did, she did for them. I appreciate that now and I think a tiny part of me did then too except, how could she think I’d …

Anyway, Lou reported the incident to DOCS and an investigation followed. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong so I thought it would be all right. I guess when they looked at my background, they thought the accusation could well be true.

It seems a lot of people think that if you were abused as a kid, you will be an abuser when you’re an adult. Those people need to look at the real world. There are heaps of people who are very good people now but who were abused as kids. You don’t automatically become an abuser. You might be so sickened by it that you can’t even bear to think about it.

But my visits with my children had to be supervised by a DOCS worker after the report. They watched everything I did and judged how I played with my children. They decided that I asked the children too many times about how their mum was and didn’t know how to play with them. They said the kids were taking on the parenting role and looking after me. How can you be natural with your kids when some DOCS worker is monitoring every move you make? Matty told me not long ago that he used to purposely kick the football over the fence so we could at least walk out of the yard to get it without being stared at.

Lou moved up north with her family so visits were arranged in the Relationships Australia office at Hexham. I was living with my brother at the time. Once a month for six months I would travel up from Sydney and the kids would travel down for our two hour visit and then we’d all go home. I was running on almost no sleep then and I suppose it’s incredible that I’m still alive given the miles I drove.

I didn’t work at Grosvenor any more but I was determined to do what I needed to do to see my children. I got a casual job with the Blind Society. I loved that job. I used to go and collect the kids from their houses and take them to school at North Rocks then take them home in the afternoon. After eighteen months I was laid off, I think because of the DOCS investigation. You could not have people with those kind of allegations hanging over them working with blind children. That was fair enough and I’d become a strong advocate for child protection by then. Being laid off meant money was very, very tight.

The kids and I survived the six month period of supervised visits and then I was allowed to travel north and have them overnight. That was good because now I was free to be myself with them. I’d rent a hotel room and we stayed there having happy times together before I took them to their mum at the end of the weekend. It was still pretty frosty between Lou and I. We both tried not to let the kids see how angry and upset we were though.

By 2003 my case against the state was ready to be heard and dates were set. Three days out from the hearing that we expected to take ten weeks, I went to my brother Eddy to beg him to give evidence too. His partner had never liked me. She thought that once you’ve been a victim of a paedophile you become a paedophile, as if it’s some contagious disease.

She didn’t want Eddy to give evidence because he was happy now with his career and relationships and the dark days were long gone. They were paying off a mortgage and she didn’t want him taking time off work. She definitely didn’t want people to find out we were brothers.

‘Anyhow, you two work it out,’ she said, walking out of the room. ‘But I want nothing to do with it.’

My brother and I talked for a while then he said, ‘I’ve decided I’m not going to turn up. You’re on your own.’

We got into a heated argument and I stormed off, angry and hurt that my own brother wouldn’t help me. He gave a statement to Ross and drew the line at that.

I didn’t understand back then that I didn’t need any other witnesses to speak at the hearing. We had their statements and that was enough. I thought Eddy’s being there was crucial because he was often there when I was abused. Him saying he wasn’t going to come was devastating. I lost the plot.

I felt so completely desolate. All I had wanted was justice but I felt that I couldn’t shoulder the load by myself for ten weeks of court. I had to end it all.

I need a two litre bottle of Coke and my pills. I’ll go on the train. First handful of pills now and keep driving. It’ll be over soon. Feel like I can still drive. Take some more. And more. Blacktown station. Finish the pills and Coke. Topping myself is the only way to make the whole ugly mess go away. Kids. Ah my beautiful kids. They’re better off without me. No-one cares if I’m dead

Get to the station even if I can hardly walk. Bloody court. Can’t say it all without the others th …

Say it all! No, wait. I get to say it all to someone. Someone has to listen. Maybe do something. I’m throwing that chance away. No! I don’t want to miss that. I have to pull myself out of this death I’d done. Too late. I’ve taken all my pills.

Find a phone number. Here’s one. Ring.

“Took all my pills. Gunna die. Don’t want to … to’

‘Where are you Ray?’ It was Ross. ‘Do you know where you are? Tell me what you can see. What’s around you?’ His frantic voice reminds me that he thinks we can win. What have I done!

Falling into blackness.

Ross told me later that he got a team of people out looking for me.

I woke up in a hospital somewhere, drifting in and out of consciousness.

At the hearing on Monday Glenda said that I was unfit to appear. She had to say the same thing for each day that week because I was still in hospital, recovering. They had to wait until all the toxins had passed through my body. Hospital staff would come and ask me, ‘Are you all right? Do you know where you are?’

I was very rude to them. It must’ve been the medication. I’d say, ‘Fuck off. I just wanna sleep.’

On the Friday of that week the judge closed the case with no admission of guilt by the state. The lawyers and barristers were all paid and the case was put away somewhere.

When I came out of hospital Ross sat down with me in a park and we talked. Ross seemed annoyed.

‘The case is over Ray. You no longer have a claim against the state of New South Wales.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you attempted suicide instead of fronting up at court. It’s all over.’

‘Can’t we get another date?’

‘No. Apparently not. It’s over.’

I wander off in a daze. What kind of justice was that?

CHAPTER 18.
Thousands Become a Few

When Ross sat down with me and told me my case against the state was closed, he had also said, ‘Glenda will take you down the Victims of Crime path now. You might get a payout there that will help you out a bit.’

‘I need some time away from it all, Ross,’ I said. ‘My kids are up north so I need weekends to go up and see them.’

I would go and see the kids and try not to talk about anything bad that was happening to me. I just wanted to enjoy them growing up but it was hard not to talk about such heavy things. I tried but I think that most of the time I didn’t quite make it. The kids were amazingly patient but at last they asked me to stop talking about it. They just wanted to have fun with me. I admired them for telling me so well and so thoughtfully. I tried much harder and I think I got better at it.

When I was stronger I went to Glenda about my case with Victims of Crime. I had named twenty three different perpetrators who had each performed many criminal acts against me. I am aware that I’m uneducated but common sense seems to have been abandoned in that hearing. The acts were treated as all one act when the perpetrators were part of the same paedophile ring.

Hughes raped me then he introduced me to Dolly, Mick, Jo and others who all raped me. To my mind that is four and more different abusers and many different offences by each one. It was treated as one abuse because the men were associates in the same ring. The same went for all the people in the Wollongong ring and the Hunter Valley ring. I suppose Victims of Crime would have gone bankrupt compensating me for thousands of single rapes when I was a child of the state of N.S.W. I can still name one hundred and twenty men who raped me as a child between 1969 and 1978. Then there was the bondage and torture and all the movies and still photos. Thousands became a few in the hearing.

I think they do it differently now. Was I an experiment there? A case to show where their rules could be improved, reformed? Are crimes addressed one by one now? I’m never going to see it, I suppose.

My payout was gratefully accepted all the same. Glenda was paid and so was Ross. I’d been unable to work after my breakdown and I was receiving a pension. Ross had been generous in his support but I couldn’t keep asking him for more.

Another police officer decided to join Ross in the investigating business and he and I did not see eye to eye. He didn’t like that I came into the office and used the phone to try to get people I knew to come forward and give evidence. I had worked with Ross for a while now with people who I knew who were taking action against the state.

Ross’s business partner invited him to invest in a sixty ton vessel that they could convert into a cruiser that could be hired for functions on Sydney Harbour. Ross agreed and they were confident it would be a good earner. I trained as a deckhand and I worked on the boat. I was the barman too. I enjoyed the work and the regular income was used to go and visit my kids. I never expected my past to come aboard. The good manners I’d learned back in the day helped me when I was serving drinks.

‘What will you have sir?’ I ask the next man in the queue without really looking at him. I pour his drink and as I hand it to him I look right into his eyes. Red flag eyes!

He’s older and grayer but I know who the prick is. He knows who I am too. I go ballistic. I jump the counter and I let him have it. I punch him and spit on him and go completely crazy.

‘He’s one of the ones that got me,’ I shout. I make sure all his work mates hear me. ‘He’s a fuckin’ paedophile!’

Ross and his partner pull me off The Four Fingered Poof. ‘You can’t do that Ray!’

‘He’s one of them,’ I puff, struggling to get to him again. ‘One of the bloody fags … I’ll kill him!’

Lucky for him Ross holds on tight. ‘Ray you can’t do that! Settle down mate. He could have you charged.’

Ross tells the piece of shit to get off the boat and never come back. He’s probably glad to go.

The boat did well for a couple of years and I was able to earn enough to live on but then it all went pear shaped and had to be sold.

Well, I’d have to find another job to support myself and keep up my visits with the kids. I still had touch footy on weekends and that helped keep me stable.

I was on a part pension (disability for PSTD) and didn’t have enough to live on and see my kids. I tried to find a job but my lack of education made me pretty unemployable. A mate suggested I get a job with a removalist he knew. I did and I worked three shifts a week. Although the pay wasn’t heaps, I didn’t have to worry about money. I didn’t tell Centrelink because they would reduce my pension. What father wouldn’t do that to stay in touch with his kids?

Well, someone had it in for me because I was called in and charged with fraud. That was scary because I had always said I’d top myself rather than go back to gaol. Luckily I wasn’t sentenced but I was ordered to repay the money I’d taken fraudulently. I was allowed to keep working but I had to tell Centrelink when I did and I kept making the payments back to them. I really admire people who do removals day in and day out. It’s such hard work and my back started feeling it. I resigned and started looking for work again. I went to an Ability Options day and that helped me get my current job.

My dad died of cancer in 2010. He’d been sick for years and when he died I can’t say I was sad. I stood by his coffin and told him exactly what I thought of him as a father. I told him he should have protected me but he didn’t. He should’ve kept us safe but he didn’t. He should have respected Mum and treasured her but he didn’t. Instead he bashed, mistreated her and humiliated her. He should have valued his children but he valued alcohol far more. He was the kind of father I would never ever want to be. I think I stayed around paedophiles like Ian Hughes for so long, partly anyway, because some of them were at least some kind of father figure to me.

One particular morning not so long ago I was playing footy at a park. One of our guys had started bringing boys along to watch and play at social games on Sunday mornings. After the game I saw him take a boy into the toilet and the boy looked worried. I followed them because I thought it didn’t look right. I stood at the door and I could hear the man was saying, ‘Go on. Do it. Do it.’ The boy was crying and saying, ‘No, I don’t want to. I don’t want to.’

I knocked on the door and said, ‘What’s going on Buddha?’

He opened the door and said, ‘I’m just pulling his pants up.’

The boy was really distressed.

‘I think you’d better come out,’ I said.

The boy walked to where most of the people were and Buddha came, rounded up the boys he’d brought to take them home. Before Buddha got there I asked the boy whether it was true that he was Buddha’s nephew. He said he wasn’t and that really convinced me to act. I called the rest of the people over and said, ‘I think we should bar Buddha from coming because of what I heard coming from the toilet room. He told us that the boys are his nephews but look at them. They aren’t. Believe me, I know the signs. This is bad.’

No-one knew about my childhood. They were all very shocked that a person in our social group could be so vile. I told them I was going to the police straight away. The blokes decided that we would tell Buddha not to bring boys any more.

I went to the police and told them what I’d seen, in case it was as bad as I thought. They filled out a report and I didn’t hear anything before I went off on holidays to see the kids.

When I came back, the footy boys said the cops had been looking for me and I had to ring them. I did and it turned out that Buddha was a paedophile and he’d been arrested. Reporting him for something I was only ninety percent sure was bad, had been worth it. Buddha did time and is on the Sex Offenders Register now.

CHAPTER 19.
Charged

By 2011 I had not shaken off the need to track down people I’d known during my bad years. I took a drive up to Erina to look at Ian’s house even though I knew he was dead.

Dead? There he was sitting out the back reading the paper! It was definitely him. Old feelings came rushing back with some that were not so old. The ones that weren’t so old forced me back to my car to speed down to Sydney and report it to every cop in the city. ‘Hughes is not dead! He’s up there reading the fuckin’ paper.’

I couldn’t find a cop who’d listen and take a report. Almost as a last resort I went to the police station where I had helped get Buddha stopped. The young detective who dealt with Buddha had moved on but another detective was willing to listen and he took a statement from me and made a report.

A very, long slow process began and I never felt that it was being taken seriously after the first report was made. I felt the attitude was, Oh that was ages ago. We’ll get to it if we can, when we can. The perp is old now so what can he do?

I thought, he can answer for what he did to us boys. He can spend whatever life he has left in gaol where he should have been forty years ago or more. He can give me back at least some of my life. That’s what.

Ross already had a heap of material implicating Hughes but that didn’t seem to speed things up when we handed that over. I had to grin and bear the frustration of calling the cops and being told that nothing had happened. I wasn’t giving up. I was determined not to let Ian get away with his crimes. The hope of justice at last kept me optimistic. I was doing it primarily for myself but also for the other lives he’d ruined.

Meanwhile I found part time work as a bus driver assisting elderly people on outings. I loved the work and the people and they seemed happy with me. I was still playing touch footy, seeing my kids grow into very fine teenagers and any spare moment was spent talking with street kids about the dangers they face.

Eventually, in 2012 a sting was set up by the police. I would go and face Ian and ask him why he’d done all that disgusting stuff to me and my friends. The date was set and, although I was terrified about how I’d be seeing him again, I thought it would be the beginning of the end and I’d get myself a better life when he went to gaol. I would have justice at last.

The day before sting, I got a phone call from the police. Yep, this’ll be to confirm where we’ll meet and what time.

‘Ray, bad news mate. There’s been a bikie shooting and we can’t go ahead with you tomorrow.’

‘What!’

‘Sorry mate but they’ve taken me off your matter and put me on that one.’

I’d better not put down what I say to the cop. It isn’t pretty.

A month or so passed and then we rescheduled the visit to Ian.

I’m pleased that I’m holding together much better than I have since the Wood Commission. I never sleep much so the day of the visit to Erina sees me up early and at the meeting point hours before the cops.

I meet the detectives and then, as I walk to Ian’s house my heart is pounding so loud I can’t believe I have to pound on his door.

The door opens and a woman says hello. It’s not his wife because I know she died a couple of years ago.

‘I’d like to see Ian Hughes,’ I tell her.

A familiar voice calls from inside, ‘Who is it?’

I shout my name. My nerves are jangling but I try not to let it show.

‘Raymond! Come right in,’ he calls as if I’m his dearest friend.

I go into the room the lady points to. She must be his carer. Ian is in bed with an oxygen cylinder beside him. He tells the carer to leave us alone.

‘Come and give me a hug for old times’ sake,’ he says.

‘I don’t want you to touch me,’ I tell him. I’m repulsed by the thought.

‘Fair enough,’ he says. ‘Well sit down and let’s talk.’

‘I want to talk to you about my childhood, where it went, what you did …’

‘Oh, I did terrible things, didn’t I?’

‘Yeah, you did and I want to know why.’

‘You were such a beautiful boy and I loved you. I still love you. Those eyes and your silky skin.’

‘Yeah well, what about when I told you all the stuff about St Josephs and the homes I was in. You just used that …’

‘They did terrible things to you there and I did terrible things …’

Ian Hughes talks on and on. My phone rings and it’s the police telling me to leave because we have enough.

I say, ‘No I’m all right. I’ll be there soon. I’m just visiting a friend.’

Ian has more to say and so do I, so I stay. He doesn’t know the police are listening. I ask all the questions they need answers to and I get in a few of my own too. Did he go to see my parents that first night I ran to his place? No. He just drove around the block and sat in his car for a while. Why didn’t he follow up what I told him about St Josephs? He should have but he might have lost me. Why did he try to get his parents to adopt me? So he could have me around. Why? Because he loved me. Because he made big money …

I haven’t stopped shaking from the time I left my car before the visit and it’s hours after I leave his house that I do stop. But I got him talking for an hour and twenty two minutes. I got him to confess to it all.

‘Mate you did so well!’ says the detectives in charge. ‘So very well. If all our witnesses could do like you did in there, we’d be dancing in the streets. Well done.’

I feel terribly unsettled. He was bad back then and he might still have been bad when he moved up here. But he still loves me! What have I done to him? Is he really so bad? My old dependence on him and our friendship muddle my brain. I can’t stay still. It takes a while for me to accept again that it wasn’t love. It was abuse and exploitation for his benefit, not mine. Definitely not mine. I’m glad I got what the cops needed but my old needy child self creeps back every now and again and wonders about being loved. I remind myself that I have done the right thing.

I go to see Ross to celebrate and calm down. I ring friends and debrief.

Now I just needed to wait until the conversation was transcribed and then charges would be laid and a date set for Hughes’s trial.

The next time I heard from the detective it was to tell me that they’d been to see Hughes and deliver the summons to answer the charges against.

‘You should have seen his face when we gave him the summons Ray. At first he’s all sweetness and charm and “What can I do for you gentlemen? A drink? Blah blah.” Then he reads the summons and he turns. “Get out of my house you m … er f … ing bastards!” He knew you’d got him and he was furious.’

The date has been set for the trial on 15th January, 2013 for five different offences. No-one thinks the trial will take long because of the evidence I got. It was like a confession. Ian Hughes would surely just fold, plead guilty and die in gaol where he belongs.

‘I’ll be away over Christmas and I’ll call when I get back,’ the detective told me.

‘What if Ian’s in hospital by then?’ I asked.

‘I’m pretty sure the judge would give us a bedside hearing.’

‘But he’s confessed. Why can’t he just be convicted?’

‘That would be good but it’s not how the system works. He has to be given a chance to defend himself.’

‘Defend!’ I got very angry and anxious. ‘What the fuck can he defend? He’s confessed for chrise sake.’

‘Calm down Ray. That’s the way the law works. I know it’s hard for you but that’s how it is.’

On 10th January, 2013 the DPP leaves a message for me to ring them.

‘Hello, it’s Ray. I’ve been waiting for you to ring me about the trial.’

‘Don’t you know? Didn’t anyone ring you?’

‘No.’

‘No-one rang you! Oh. Well, er, Ian Hughes died on 15th December, 2012. There’s not going to be a trial.’

‘What!’

‘They can’t try him when he’s dead Mr Leary. Didn’t anyone tell you he died?’

All I can feel is anger that I can hardly control. I might have said some bad things to the lady who broke the news. I didn’t care. I was fifty one and about to get a chance at justice after all the blood, sweat and tears and after doing every bloody thing the cops asked me to. Now I get fuck all.

I rang the cops again and asked what would happen to the evidence and the charges. It will be held in files. So Ian Hughes dies without a conviction. You can’t convict a person who didn’t get a chance to defend himself. It stays on record that he was charged. Where’s the justice?

Not long after that I was given charge sheets that showed that Hughes had abused four brothers while he was working at Mater Hospital. He had held a knife to the boys’ throats while he carried out the abuse. The boys did not turn up to the hearing so the charges were never proved. I hope those kids read about the charges against him in the paper. I hope they know he died with a summons hanging over him and the truth recorded for anyone who cared to know.

A solicitor rang me one day to ask if I would be contesting Ian Hughes’ will. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t want any of his money. I know how he got it.’

CHAPTER 20.
Journey Home

‘There is something else I need your help with,’ I told Ross. ‘You know I haven’t had much education and I can’t spell or write properly. So I want to ask you, would you help me to start an organisation for male victims who have gone through what I’ve gone through?’

‘Great idea!’ Ross said.

‘There’s just not enough support. There hasn’t been for me in the last thirteen years and I don’t want it to be like that for other men who try to do what I have tried.’

‘Sensational idea. I’ll be glad to help you.’

It took us a while to get going with it. Journey Home, started in 2010. I chose the name, Journey Home, because all through my childhood, between each disastrous episode, I would always take that journey home to Mum. Mum by herself was safe and I knew she cared about me. She never understood why I came home crying or why my white undies went missing but she did care and she showed it as best she could in her circumstances. I needed her. Although home was very dysfunctional and violent it was still home and there were always times when I needed to be there with Mum.

Through Journey Home men can contact me and I will support them and, with Ross’s help, gather evidence that they can take to court if that’s the road they choose. I will never tell them it’s easy to get justice because it isn’t. But I will be there for them if they need me.

I get calls at all times of day or night from men who need to talk. Some are angry and some are hurting badly. Sometimes their anger is directed at me instead of where it should be directed. I understand that, but I draw the line at abusing, swearing and shouting at me because I am not the enemy.

There’s all kinds of abuse we’ve suffered. If you were in a home and you walked into a room and suddenly whack, a guard hits you in the head or thumped you in the guts, that is abuse. It’s physical abuse and they had no right to do that. That is not what they were there for and neither were you. If you were a state ward then I reckon the state has to answer to you for what they let happen in the institutions.

You might think I was overjoyed when the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Childs Sexual Abuse was announced. I wasn’t. It sent me back to the Wood Commission and I started having anxiety attacks again, thinking I was going to be put in a pool of poison again, just when I’m starting to feel strong. With help I have calmed down and made a submission detailing my abuses. I‘m going to front up and tell them all I know.

I’ve been criticised for warnings I’ve given to people about giving evidence to the new Commission, on the ABC’s 7.30 Report for example. My critics ought to listen to me better I think. I have never said, ‘Don’t do it.’ I have said, and still do say, ‘Be very careful and understand that you might be retraumatised. Make sure you have a support network in place and use what support the Commission makes available. ‘I’m glad to see they have learnt to provide support after the Wood Commission.

I have sat beside many men while they give statements to investigators for the police. They often become embarrassed and upset at the detail that they have to give but the police do need that information. It is very traumatic to relive all the details and to admit you are a victim/survivor of abuse but the police do need the details.

So I tell the people I support, ‘Look, later we have to go to the police and they will ask you for all this if it isn’t in your statement. So is it easier for you to do it here, confidentially, with support, or with the cops? Let’s just try to get it done now and then you can relax.’ Some men decide they can’t go through with it at all and it’s their choice.

Ross asked me, right at the beginning of Journey Home, ‘How do you know they’re telling the truth Ray? They could be making it up.’

‘Why would anybody want to make that up?’ I said. ‘Why go through all that!’ I know from my own experience, just by looking into the eyes of a man, whether he is a victim or not. A man tells me he was abused and I look into his eyes and I know.

I think the most moving contact I had through Journey Home was with a man who we’ll call Joe. I knew him when we were kids but we hadn’t been in touch for many years.

He rang my Journey Home number and said who he was. I remembered him and asked all about his life. He had moved interstate to get away from the rings in NSW. Sadly he had no education and could not get work so he turned to what he knew: prostitution. He had developed a heroin habit in Sydney and was still an addict.

Joe wanted to meet up with me. He wouldn’t let me pick him up. He’d get the train. We met at the station near my place. Joe was tall and very thin with long dark hair but the most noticeable thing was that he stank. We had a meal together and talked right through it. He told me he was homeless and hung around men’s rooms when he needed a hit. ‘Fuck Ray. They still want me. I’m forty nine and they still want me.’

It broke my heart to hear him say that as if it was some kind badge of honour. We talked about his options for a better future but Joe couldn’t get off heroin for long enough to hold down a job and he accepted that he’d just keep doing what he’d always done.

I invited him to stay at my place but he was sure I wouldn’t want a bloke like him there. I couldn’t convince him to stay and I watched him dawdle up to the train and head for the city where he might score I suppose.

Joe had contact with Wattle Place in the town he lives in. They had given him his air fare to come to Sydney. Wattle Place is a branch of Relationships Australia. Their venues were set up after the federal apology as a place where Forgotten Australians can get support and resources like counselling and advice on how to access other services. They help with filling out forms and applications too because there are many of us who can’t read or write.

Recently I heard that the Wattle Places had a limited life because we should all be fixed and moving on. That’s got to be a joke. Childhood stays with you for life.

When the State and Federal governments made apologies to Forgotten Australians, I thought that was really good because a lot of people got some closure on it, having had all the bad stuff publicly acknowledged. For others it wasn’t enough and they want compensation for the loss of their childhoods and for all the pain and suffering they went through. It still affects a lot of us.

A lot of Forgotten Australians are pensioners with not much education. A lot have drug addictions or are alcoholics and are trying to find ways of coping with life and they don’t need false promises and false hope. It’s no use having people promise them financial compensation if there’s not going to be any.

I met a lot of criminals when I was a child. Some have been convicted. Some have died. Some are still out there.

Appendix

The Royal Commission into New South Wales Police Service (Wood Royal Commission) was held between 1995 and 1997 … The terms of reference were to determine the existence and extent of corruption within the New South Wales Police … and to advise on the process to address such a problem.

In 1995 (it) received letters patent widening the terms of reference to include investigating the activities of organised paedophile networks in NSW.

(Wikipedia)

Every time I have tried to get justice the system left me battered and broken rather than giving me peace or closure.

Since the Royal Commission Justice Wood has explained that the terms of reference for the Commission were to investigate corruption, not to lay charges. That’s the job of the police.

Well, I want to know how can police, not the corrupt ones, lay charges when the evidence gathered is locked away? The investigators identified forty one paedophiles. Most were not named in the final report. Fourteen corrupt police officers who were allegedly involved in the police paedophile protection racket were identified and many of them were not named in the report either. I don’t call any of that justice! Not for us boys.

Robert Joseph “Dolly” Dunn (c. 1941 – 11 July 2009) was an Australian convicted child molester. He was a school teacher by profession, working for the Marist Brothers, a Catholic religious order.

He began a 20-year jail sentence in 2001 for 24 sexual offences occurring between 1985 and 1995. In 1996, a Royal Commission chaired by Justice James Woods was shown home videos and photographs from Dunn's collection, which included many images of child sex abuse, usually featuring Dunn himself as the perpetrator.

Dunn fled the country, but was later found in Honduras after being tracked down by Australia's 60 Minutes program. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright authorised his extradition back to Australia after he was deported from Honduras to the United States.

Dunn had a long history of abusing boys between the ages of seven and fifteen years old, often videotaping them. Usually, he would offer them money and marijuana in exchange for anal sex. From jail, he repeatedly made written and verbal statements to the effect that he saw nothing wrong with sex between a man and a boy. He previously spent time in Indonesia and the Netherlands. He was a friend and accomplice of Australian diplomat William Stuart Brown, another convicted child molester.

(Wikipedia)

Tony Bevan. ‘Former Lord Mayor of Wollongong, now deceased. Bevan ran a mail order child sex ring. He would seat boys in a King’s Cross motel room and invite “elderly gentlemen” – prominent Sydney professionals and politicians to take their pick.’

(Coddington D.
The Australian Paedophile and Sex Offenders Index. 1997)

Michael Hill. ‘A paedophile named in the Wood Royal Commission during investigations into the Paedophile Robert Joseph (Dolly) Dunn … boys provided statements implicating Michael Hill, in 1991, after which Hill was jailed for 16 years … known to seek out very young boys, including Aborigines and street kids … when police searched Hill’s home they found clothing to fit boys aged six to 13, including swimwear and leather motorcycle gear.’

(Coddington as above)

Donald McKinnon. ‘Hill along with two other paedophiles targeted at the time, Donald McKinnon and Sydney Hamilton, were all known to seek out young boys … QC, counsel for the police service, told the Commission that Donald McKinnon’s prosecution had not proceded on the grounds that the alleged victim could not go through the court process.’

(Coddington as above)

I know that McKinnon was convicted later for other offences because I sat near him while visiting a friend in gaol. He didn’t recognise me but I will never forget him or what he did to me and others. He died in gaol a few years ago.

John McLean. Bevan was friends with John McLean, “Johnny Mac”, who ran a club called Costello’s in King’s Cross, known as a boy brothel. Bevan … would approach parents and ask to take their young sons to Sydney in search of work. Instead he would take them to Costello’s and offer them for sale to men. The Royal Commission was told the club operated without difficulty from police … call with a tip off … boys would be bundled into a small space below elevated seating … Downstairs Costello’s operated a bar, but the upstairs area was divided into cubicles, lockable from the inside, with just a plastic-covered mattress and a jar of Vaseline. The victims who appeared before the Commission, now men in their 30’s, described how their lives were shattered by the experiences of their youth.’

(Coddington as above)

Harris (not his real name) is mentioned several times by Grusoven in Hansard, linking him with bribery, corruption and paedophilia. For example ‘serious allegations involving (Harris) which are essential to the paedophile protection racket allegations. They were obviously far too hot to handle.’

(He) had helped a paedophile escape a heavy sentence after he assaulted two little girls at Reef Beach. But this allegation was not even mentioned in the Milloo report and I believe was not even investigated. More than this, with his position in society and his involvement in the paedophile network over the years, the vulnerable Harris, who had already admitted to a crime, was in the perfect position to help authorities with inquiries in this regard. Why did they not ask him about a number of incidents involving prominent members of society whom he knew to be paedophiles or part of the paedophile network?

(Hansard)

Bolton (not his real name), who had been connected with John Marsden and the camping trips and photography sessions, was named in a story Jana Wendt did for the Witness program on Charlton Boy Home in Ashfield. Bolton had worked there for a time. A group of men who’d been Charlton boys took Jana and the camera men through the place and stopped at each point where one had been abused. It was a shocking story.

It took until 2004 for him to be given a prison sentence despite his many abhorrent acts. He has not been charged for what he did to me or my mates at camps and the cage and all the other places. I named him in the Wood Commission.

Joe Westward and John Maclean were brought under scrutiny by a Sydney commercial TV station for being paedophiles. That station got John Maclean on tape while he was sitting looking at boys from about eight to twelve years old. It was chilling.

‘Oh isn’t that one pretty!’ he said and he told them how much he liked going with pets.

‘What do you mean you like going with pets? What are pets?’ the journalist asked.

‘Little boys,’ he replied as if he’d been asked what time it was. He had no shame. He was dying of cancer and he didn’t care what he said. I say more should have been done about him well before he died.

Ian Hughes – ‘… led by a state government social worker, Ian Hughes, who died in December after being charged with five counts of child abuse. Some of the abuses happened at Hughes’ rented property at Chippendale. The paedophile social worker lured illiterate street kids and state wards here under the guise of running a night school to teach them how to read and write.’

(Ten Eyewitness News)

Further reading

The Fence on the Cliff by Dorothy Ginn.

The Australian Paedophile and Sex Offender Index by Deborah Coddington, (1997).

Viewing

My interview for Channel 10 News on the Journey Home website (www.journeyhome.org.au)

ABC 7.30 Report 25 March 2013.

Find help

Support places for men abused as boys:

Journey Home at www.journeyhome.org.au

SAMSN at www.SAMSN.ORG.AU

Life Line 13 11 14

Beyond Blue at www.beyondblue.org.au

CAPS Free-call 1800 688 009

Wattle Place at www.nsw.relationships.com.au

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First published 2016 © Ray Leary and Kate Shayler

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Title:
A Beautiful Boy: Ray’s Story

Authors:
Leary, Ray
Shayler, Kate

ISBNs:
978-1-925447-51-4 (paperback)
978-1-925447-52-1 (ebook – epub)
978-1-925447-53-8 (ebook – mobi)

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