Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1494132
9 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 5 MARCH 2023 NEWS report what was happening in the school. The Brothers used inch-thick leather straps they hung to their sides to strike blows to the back of a boy's thighs. "Brother Kel- ly seemed to me to love hurting the boys… A particular broth- er, Brother Roy Ackery, used a large narrow strap which had hacksaw blades stitched into it," Raphel Ellul recalled. Ellul left Tardun bereft of any real education, drifting into a motorcycle gang at 19, becom- ing an alcoholic for nine years before giving up the vice upon his second marriage. He said the abuse rendered him sexual- ly inept with his first wife, stul- tified by Catholic guilt, as well as suicidal. "What happened to me was I lost my country, I lost my language, I lost my culture, I lost my family, and I lost any chance of a decent career." Dery Sultana has managed to recount this story through the testimonies of Raphael, Manny and their older brother Peter, who has now passed. Peter, a teen who left the school when his brother was left behind to endure the abuse, remains a sceptic of the abuse visited on his young brothers. "Age gave these children a different per- spective on the abuse that was going on," Dery Sultana says. "But I am happy that I managed to get all perspectives on board, even though it sometimes gives a contrasting view." Historian Henry Frendo, the late Monsignor Philip Calleja – who led the Church's emi- grants commission for decades – and former prime minister Lawrence Gonzi, whose uncle was Archbishop Michael Gonzi up to the mid-1970s, also fea- ture in Sultana's documentary, appropriately entitled 'Who Would You Tell?'. "Calleja went twice to Tar- dun, and he did ask the ques- tions... it's all in the film really... I mean, the fact is that this was not a horror story for every- one. The ones unlucky enough to be fancied by the Brothers, endured that horror," Sultana says. For the Maltese viewers of 'Who Would You Tell?', Sul- tana hopes they can under- stand the reality of poverty in Malta after WWII, a determin- ing factor in pushing out chil- dren into what was supposed to a better world for them, in a scheme concocted by the Church to also empty their orphanages... I don't mean it to be anti-Church. The real- ity of these children was that they were transplanted from the dense urban towns in an is- land, to an Australian expanse in which they had no hope of finding any help for their or- deal. Who would, they tell?" mvella@mediatoday.com.mt The Brothers used inch-thick leather straps they hung to their sides to strike blows to the back of a boy's thighs. "Brother Kelly seemed to me to love hurting the boys… A particular brother, Brother Roy Ackery, used a large narrow strap which had hacksaw blades stitched into it," Raphel Ellul recalled. The wilderness around Tardun: the boys who escaped to nearby farms were often returned to the school and then abused once again. For young children with no agency and stuck in the care of the Christian Brothers, there was nobody to tell about the abuse and even rape they endured at the hands of the clerics Dery Sultana: "The reality of these children was that they were transplanted from the dense urban towns in an island, to an Australian expanse in which they had no hope of finding any help for their ordeal. Who would, they tell?"