Mary Hooker said she had two choices on movie night at a girls' home in Sydney's west.
Be raped, or bashed.
Ms Hooker is one of 16 women giving evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse on two NSW state-run girls' homes between 1950 and 1974.
After being removed from her small NSW town, Ms Hooker and her 12 siblings were split up and sent to various homes across the state.
They were taken from their parents in 1970 after their father was charged with raping two of his daughters.
Police told them they were going on a two-week holiday but Ms Hooker was made a ward of the state and bounced through several homes, bashed and abused along the way, before being sent to the Parramatta Girls Training School.
In 1972, she was permitted to stay at the home as two of her sisters were living there.
"Every Saturday night, we were put into a hall to watch movies while the staff would have their breaks," she told the commission.
"During these film nights (two male supervisors) would select girls, including me, and take us to the dungeon ... where they started raping us.
"If we did not let them rape us, they would bash us."
They were told to keep quiet and that no one would believe their claims of abuse.
After they were raped, a female officer would collect the abused girls from the dungeon and march them to the showers.
They would then be taken into isolation, where they would be kept for up to 72 hours.
"By the time we got out of isolation, we had no bruises or the bruise had started to fade," Ms Hooker said.
A longer stay would have meant authorities would have to be notified.
Like many other witnesses, she spoke of the ongoing troubles she has had through her life, including several suicide attempts.
Ms Hooker told the commission she "used to think I had a sign on me that said `rape me'".
She worked for the Department of Community Safety, trying to help kids facing similar horrors to those in her past.
But she left, distraught that nothing had changed in the years since she was abused at the homes.
"It was too real for me," she said, visibly angry and upset.
"I could not stop the abuse. That's too raw for me."
The inquiry continues.
