Termonbacca.
A former resident of a children’s care home Derry has claimed he was raped in the institution before being shipped, aged eight, to Australia where he suffered further sexual abuse.
Seventy-year-old Des McDaid, who has waived his right to anonymity, was giving evidence to the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry.
The inquiry, sitting in Banbridge in Co Down, is examining allegations of child abuse in religious and state-run institutions in Northern Ireland, including the Nazareth House and St Joseph’s (Termonbacca), both run by the Sisters of Nazareth, in Derry, from 1922 to 1995.
After leaving St Joseph’s Home at Termonbacca, he told the inquiry he witnessed brutality and sexual abuse of boys at the Clontarf orphanage in Perth.
Speaking via video link to the inquiry, he said he was sexually abused by older boys, members of the Christian Brothers religious order and a lay teacher.
Mr McDaid, who is originally from County Donegal and one of 16 boys shipped to Australia in 1953, told the inquiry he was raped by an older boy at the Termonbacca boys home and abused by others in Australia.
Mr McDaid said when, at the age of 48, he traced his mother she begged him for forgiveness and that they had kept in touch.
The inquiry has heard 131 children from Northern Ireland, some as young as five, were sent to Australia as child migrants.
Fifty of them will given evidence at the inquiry, either by oral or written evidence.
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