The priest he confided in – Father Gerald Ridsdale – asked him to recount his story in graphic detail before taking him to some Lake Wendouree toilets and raping him.

“It was indoctrinated into us that, as a Catholic, if you had a problem you would go and see a priest about it. So that is what I decided to do,” Mr Woods told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Thursday.

“About a week or so after this incident, Ridsdale called around to our house to see my parents and asked if he could speak to me.

“My mum said he could take me out, and he took me to the same location as the week before and raped me again.”

He said he was 11 when Best began molesting him at St Alipius Christian Brothers Primary School by sticking his fingers down his pants.

When he was 12, Best made him and another boy enact a sex act in front of him.

He would also make Mr Woods undress for him while he masturbated behind his desk before laying the boy across his knees and smacking him.

In 1973, Mr Woods started at St Patrick’s College where he was constantly molested by Dowlan.

After trying to report the abuse, and encountering Ridsdale instead, Mr Woods fled Ballarat at 18 but has since been suicidal and had several breakdowns, including after Best was acquitted of the charges against him.

“To see this man who had committed such brutal and vicious sex crimes against me get off due to legal word games was one of the worst betrayals of my life.”

He also discovered two of his brothers had been abused,

one raped by Ridsdale after he was forced to share a tent with him at a school camp.

He also said a private detective working for Dowlan’s lawyers once contacted him to find out if he was planning to go ahead with the case.

“I swore at her and hung up.

“Dowlan’s lawyers hired private detectives to go around and harass victims, including me. A couple of other victims of Dowlan told me that they had received similar phone calls.”

Mr Woods said he was now a broken man.

“The fact that I have no career, no solid relationship and no fixed address is indicative of the effect of the sexual abuse upon me. This is a heinous situation for someone of my potential abilities to find myself in.”

Mr Woods has had to give up a career as a teacher but plans to travel around Australia helping child sexual abuse victims.

But he said the impact in Ballarat could not be ignored.

“Such chronic sexual abuse in the Ballarat community has led to a large number of men who are not able to be productive members of society and, in effect, have become either emotional, social or financial burdens on the community.

“The Catholic Church needs to take responsibility for the actions and the ongoing cover-ups of clergy who sexually abused children.

“There needs to be immediate, proper care of survivors to stop the premature deaths that are continuing to happen within the Ballarat diocese.”

fiona.henderson@fairfaxmedia.com.au