Girls were stripped, beaten, locked in a dungeon and tortured when they resisted rape by officers employed by the NSW government to run two homes for girls.
One girl at the Parramatta Girls home had cigarettes put out on her breasts by the man in charge and another had all her teeth pulled because she was a "bad" girl, a public inquiry in Sydney has been told.
The royal commission into institutional child sexual abuse is hearing evidence from 16 women who were inmates at Parramatta Girls and Hay Institution for Girls between 1950 and 1974.
Girls from Parramatta were sent to Hay if they were rebellious and difficult. Hay was run like a concentration camp and girls came back broken, witnesses said on Wednesday.
Abuse over three decades saw girls slapped, kicked, punched, dragged by the hair and subject to oral, anal and vaginal rape.
Caroline Spruce, counsel assisting the commission, said despite the span of time the experiences of the women were similar.
Wendy Patton, 69, a child migrant from England, was at Parramatta Girls in 1960 when at 15 she was made a ward of the state.
In a statement read by her daughter Vicky, who sat beside her in the witness box, Ms Patton said her first impression of the home was "horrifying".
The man in charge, William Gordon, repeatedly tried to sexually assault her and when she fought him off he put her "in the dungeon, which was an isolation cell".
"He would tell a female officer to remove my clothes and everything in the cell.
"I remember spending my day counting bricks. In the morning they would bring me a mug of milk, which was sour, I could not drink it. I think they put Lithium in it."
She said Superintendent Gordon came to her cell at Christmas and said "let's make this a happy Christmas" and asked her to go with him because he had a present and clothes for her.
She dashed past him and he grabbed her, after which she said he raped her and this was seen by a female officer.
She said she was often in isolation where Mr Gordon raped her repeatedly.
"He used to burn his cigarettes into my breast and make my genitals bleed".
William Gordon is one of nine former officers who have been named at the commission for alleged abuse. Another, a former matron, has not yet been named.
Mr Gordon and six other officers are dead. Two are alive and have been notified of the hearings.
Ms Patton told the inquiry she escaped from her cell during a riot in 1960 when she climbed onto the roof and shouted at a TV reporter who asked her "Is it over food?".
"I replied 'No it is about rapes and girls being tortured'"
After that she was sent to Long Bay jail for a month. She was 16.
She said she was raped by six guards at the prison.
Ms Patton told commission chairman Justice Peter McClellan that she thought the statute of limitations for child sex abuse crimes should be waived.
"I want children to have a voice and be heard and believed," she said.
Ms Patton was one of eight women who gave evidence on Wednesday.
Robin Kitson, 66, an Aboriginal woman, was twice sent to Parramatta Girls. On the second occasion "I had all my teeth forcibly removed by the dentist because they said I was a bad girl. I was 16."
During her incarceration at Parramatta she was raped by other girls. Two held her down and sexually assaulted her with a broomstick.
Ms Kitson and other witnesses Dianne Graham and Fay Hillery said in the bare isolation cell they were often drugged with Largactil.
The hearing continues on Thursday.
