Meanwhile, more former inmates at Neerkol were phoning Broken Rites and/or the police. After Durham was released from jail, he was put on trial again, charged with raping a 14-year-old orphan girl ("Sally") at the orphanage in 1966. The court was told that Sally's mother died in 1964 and her step-father then had sole custody of her and her siblings.

When the Durham charges reached a judge in the District Court, he pleaded guilty to six counts of indecently dealing with a young girl ("Meg", aged 12 to 14) in a Rockhampton parish over a two-year period in 1962-3.

When Broken Rites launched its national telephone hotline in September 1993, our first callers included former inmates of a Catholic orphanage (St Joseph's Home, at Neerkol, near Rockhampton, Queensland).

Some of these callers said they were sexually assaulted by Father Reg Durham, who was the "chaplain" at this orphanage from 1965 to 1997. We referred these callers to an appropriate unit of the Queensland Police, and this resulted in Father Reg Durham being jailed in 1999 for child sex crimes.

November 8,2008
Shane Gregor (Sharon Joy)
Brisbane QLD

The State Government,

I Shane Gregor went to Neerkol Orphanage when I was 7 years of age. I was admitted in December 1961 and was discharged in August 1963. I was sexually abused by two priests while I was there.

A former resident of the Neerkol Orphanage near Rockhampton, in central Queensland, is planning to write to the Pope over the Catholic Church's handling of the sexual abuse issue.

Garnett Williams says he was abused by a priest at Neerkol in the 1940s.