Why has no one ever faced a court over the state-ignored rape and torture of hundreds, possibly thousands of girls in NSW institutions?
There have been reports, inquiries, books, TV programs and even a play about what happened at Parramatta Girls home near Sydney. There have been apologies at state and federal level.
Advocacy group Care Leavers Australia Network (CLAN) will tell you, however, many did not live to hear those apologies. Unable to bear the pain and shame, they took their own lives.
Yet no one was ever held to account.
No politician was forced to resign; no senior civil servant from the NSW welfare department ever fell on his or her sword.
According to Dr Joanna Penglase, whose doctoral research was on children in care, that department has always shown reluctance to acknowledge abuse in its institutions.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has now listened to evidence from 16 survivors of the Parramatta Girls' Home.
Some of what was done to them when they were children in care falls into the category of crimes against humanity: gang rape, long periods in isolation, starvation diets, forced labour, beatings and assaults.
CLAN has already made a submission to the United Nations Committee against Torture on treatment in the homes.
Up to 30,000 girls, some as young as 10 and a majority between 13 and 17, were placed in institutions operated by the NSW government because they were neglected or classed as delinquent.
The state appointed men and women to care for them.
Diane Chard told the commission that, when she was in the Parramatta home between 1963 and 1966, carers Percival Mayhew and Gordon Henry Gilford beat her in an isolation cell.
Mayhew was the superintendent and Gilford his deputy.
"They bashed me with their hands and feet. They kicked and punched me. They bounced me off every wall. I was bleeding from the ears. I was knocked unconscious and I urinated on myself," she said.
"Late that night, Mayhew came back into my cell and raped me."
Records show that on February 7, 1971, Percy Mayhew was transferred to head office of the Department of Child Welfare and Social Services.
The royal commission has said it has not been able to locate any documents that might indicate Mayhew was ever reported or disciplined for any acts of child abuse or was ever the subject of a criminal charge for child sexual abuse.
Neither were others named by the commission: William Gordon, Donald Crawford or Noel Greenway.
The commission has heard others were reported to the Public Service Board. Among these were Gilford, Denis Monaghan, Frank Valentine, William Maxwell and Eric Johnston.
There were internal inquiries and some resigned or were sacked. Valentine, who is still alive, denied the allegation and there was not enough evidence to recommend a charge. He was moved elsewhere in the department. He had legal representation at the commission last week.
There no records of criminal proceedings against any of them.
That string of complaints in the 60s and 70s must have tipped off the Bob Askin Country Liberal government and Minister for Child Welfare F M Hewitt that something was radically wrong in state homes.
We can't ask either. Both, like many from the time, are dead.
Maybe before they came to power in 1965 they had already gotten the message all was not well from the much publicised riots at Parramatta.
It was during one of them that 16-year-old Wendy Grey was on the roof when a TV reporter shouted at her "Is it about the food?"
"No", she shouted back "its about torture and rape".
She had escaped from a cell where she was kept naked when William Gordon, the man who frequently raped her, opened the door.
She wrapped herself in a uniform from a laundry basket and climbed to the roof to escape.
For that, she was sent to Long Bay prison, where she was raped by six guards.
No one was ever charged.
This was 1961 and the response from government was to set up the Hay institution for Girls - an even more draconian place.
It is not the first time all of this has had a public airing.
In 2004, both Parramatta and Hay were considered by the Senate committee inquiry.
The Forgotten Australians report noted girls in care were treated worse than boys.
"It was because of the entrenched Victorian attitudes to fallen women and the view that girls were inherently more difficult to reform than boys," the report said.
It also noted that Parramatta "became renowned for extreme cruelty, was the subject of many inquiries, which were scathing of its activities".
The senate report said girls who were abused were often locked up when the perpetrators went free.
It asked states to remove the statute of limitations on reporting child sex abuse. NSW has never done that.
The report also recommended that states look at redress schemes. NSW has never fully done that.
Reports to police by at least two women did not result in prosecutions.
It is not that NSW authorities totally ignored Parramatta.
Interest peaked in 1973, when the nascent women's liberation movement got involved.
An ASIO document from December 1973 shows the NSW Police Special Branch reported a demonstration outside the home. The protest was peaceful and 200 demonstrators, mostly women, sang freedom songs.
A police note to ASIO read: "From the observations taken by us the main content of those attending were lesbians."
The homes closed in 1974.
What happens next is up to the Royal Commission.
