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Teen allegedly sexually assaulted on first day at Parramatta Girls Training School, court told

Exclusive: The former boss of Parramatta Girls Training School forced one teenager to strip naked and sexually assaulted her in the building’s notorious “dungeon’’ on her first day there, it was alleged in court yesterday.

EXCLUSIVE: The former boss of Parramatta Girls Training School forced one teenager to strip naked and sexually assaulted her in the building’s notorious “dungeon’’ on her first day there, it was alleged in court yesterday.

Two more of Frank Valentine’s alleged victims were pregnant at the time and a third wept yesterday as she told the District Court he allegedly called her a “whore” after indecently assaulting her.

Frank Valentine, who has been charged with the historic sexual assault of seven girls and one boy. Picture: Richard Dobson
Frank Valentine, who has been charged with the historic sexual assault of seven girls and one boy. Picture: Richard Dobson

“You are just a whore like everyone else here. You are all whores,” the woman, now 63, said Valentine told her.

Valentine, 79, has pleaded not guilty to 39 charges including three historical offences of rape and three of buggery on girls and one boy in the highest-profile prosecution to come out of the child sex abuse royal commission.

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He did not give evidence to the royal commission, where he denied the allegations and had said in a written statement through his lawyers that he had just been a “junior administrative officer”.

Crown prosecutor Donna Daleo told the court he had in fact been deputy superintendent at the school from January 1971 until July 1973, when he moved to the Daruk Training School for boys at Windsor.

He is charged with 39 offences against seven girls at the school and one boy from Daruk between January 1971 and January 1975.

Ms Daleo told Judge Nicole Noman, who is hearing the trial in a closed court without a jury, that the alleged incidents took place in the dungeon, showers, isolation cells, sick bay and other areas of the girls’ school.

The dungeons at the Parramatta Girls Training School.
The dungeons at the Parramatta Girls Training School.
The entrance to the Parramatta Girls Training School around 1960.
The entrance to the Parramatta Girls Training School around 1960.

The then 14-year-old boy was allegedly indecently assaulted in a cell block at Daruk, on a camp at Wiseman’s Ferry and once in Valentine’s home, where the father-of-three made him a “houseboy”.

Looking frail and using a walking stick after suffering from cardiomyopathy and falling from the dock in the courtroom, Valentine sat alone.

Frank Valentine and wife Maris leave Parramatta Local Court on the day he first faced charges.
Frank Valentine and wife Maris leave Parramatta Local Court on the day he first faced charges.

Built in 1840 as the first orphanage in Australia, the draconian Parramatta Girls Training School saw 30,000 girls and young women go through its doors until it closed in 1974, many of them there as welfare cases or because they were poor.

Ms Daleo told the judge she would hear about the harsh treatment meted out to the girls and yesterday the woman claimed Valentine sexually assaulted her twice while she lay in the sick bay with knee injuries from hours scrubbing concrete as punishment. She was 15 at the time.

The shower room, where their were no doors, at the Parramatta Girls Training School.
The shower room, where their were no doors, at the Parramatta Girls Training School.

Another witness, also aged 63 and who was 15 at the time, told the court yesterday that Valentine allegedly took her to the “dungeon” on her first day.

“It was dark, it was dingy and it smelt. He told me to take my clothes off. I said no. He hit me, he punched me in the stomach,” she said. “He pushed me down on the ground in front of him. I was on my knees. He unzipped his pants.”

The trial continues.

The main building at Parramatta Girls Training School.
The main building at Parramatta Girls Training School.

Original URL: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/teen-allegedly-sexually-assaulted-on-first-day-at-parramatta-girls-school/news-story/cefb0363d5d9758d711d4da2d4b1ea6c