The Royal Commission into child sex abuse is holding its sixth public hearing relating to the Anglican Church in Newcastle.
In the coming weeks the Commission will hear evidence from more than 30 people.
Several former bishops of the Newcastle diocese will be among those giving testimony.
On the first day of hearings, witnesses included two survivors of sexual abuse.
One of them detailed being assaulted by a minister and taken to a home for boys where he was forced into performing sexual acts, sometimes with mulitple men.
Outside the court protesters were determined to support the victims giving evidence.
Inside, Counsel Assisting Naomi Sharp outlined the horror that would be contained within the evidence.
"Another issue for consideration during this case study is whether there was a culture within the diocese that permitted child sexual abuse to flourish, and which protected perpetrators."
Cessnock-based minister Father Peter Rushton, who's now dead, raped Paul Gray for the first time when he was just ten years old.
Mr Gray says he was raped on a weekly or fortnightly basis until he was 14.
"On many of these occasions Father Peter would cut my back with a small knife and smear my blood on my back and I would like to add there that was (intended to be) symbolic of the blood of Christ."
Mr Gray recounted attending a church camp where he was chased and raped by two men.
At times he struggled to speak but insisted he finished his statement.
Mr Gray says he was also abused at a local boys' home.
"I was usually locked in the room at the end of the hall, sometimes for hours at a time, and different men would visit me in the room and either rape me or make me perform oral sex on them."
Another victim, Phil D'Ammond, became a ward of the state when he was 13.
Church youth worker James Michael Brown, now serving 20 years' jail for abusing boys, was eventually made his guardian.
Mr D'Ammond said it was normal for Mr Brown to abuse him at night.
"Drug abuse later became a way of life for me to avoid facing reality and memories of Jim's abuse."
The mother of an abuse survivor, Suzan Aslin, told the commission she raised concerns about both Peter Rushton and James Brown with the then-bishop of Newcastle, Alfred Holland.
"I don't know what the Bishop did and, as far as I was concerned, who else was I going to tell? Yes, I probably should have gone to the police, which I mentioned to the police years later, but at the time I thought, 'I have done the right thing, I have told the Bishop. The Bishop will fix it.'"
Mr Holland will be one of several Anglican figures who will give evidence to the Royal Commission.
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