institutions for child abuse in the country according to a recent report.
The report was released by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse earlier this month and showed there had been 142 claims of sexual abuse at the orphanage from 1950 to 2010.
The only other WA institution with more claims was the nearby St Vincent’s Orphanage in Waterford with 152 claims.
Boystown in Beaudesert, Queensland recorded the most claims with 219.
The report said claims of child sexual abuse were made in relation to 1049 separate Catholic Church institutions across Australia.
Of the 1049 institutions identified there were 574 that had only one claim, 305 institutions with less than five claims and 170 institutions with five or more claims.
The numbers lay bare how endemic sexual abuse was in the orphanage in its 54-year history.
In 2014 men who attended Castledare told the Royal Commission of the abuse they experienced including being groomed as ‘sex pets’ and slave labour.
One of the most shocking tales was from a man known only as witness VI who spent four years at Castledare from 1964 to 1968.
The man, who was seven years old when he started at Castledare, told of his shame of being groomed and molested by one of the school’s brothers, Brother Dick.
“At night Brother Dick would come to my bed and take my pyjamas off, I remember that he would rub himself up and down against me,” he said.
“Other times he would touch me, get into my bed with me and lie against me…I used to pretend I was asleep and pray that he would leave or disappear.
“I was there for four years and it was an on going part of my life, it seemed like it was almost every night.”
The witness said he felt so guilty and ashamed of his abuse to the point where he tried to hide it.
“As the other boys knew that I was Brother Dick’s ‘pet’ they did not include me in their games,” he said.
“I always tried to isolate myself to reduce the risk of them finding out about the sexual abuse.
“I tried to be as invisible as I could.
“At Castledare I never felt safe as there was always the threat of Brother Dick.”
He then told of the child slave labour used to build the famous Castledare miniature railway at the site.
“I recall that the most arduous project I participated in was the construction of a railway which carried trains around Castledare on open day,” he said.
“The irony of that was all the kids built this train and every Sunday all the parents – not of the kids but of Perth – would come out and enjoy this fantastic railway we had built.”
