It was 1955 and Martin was eight-years-old in Grade 3 at St Columba's School when teaching nuns dressed him up as a girl and paraded him in front of every class.

Martin said the nuns had seen him playing with the girls in his class and walking to school with them and wanted to shame him for it, calling him a 'sissy'.

He did not know it at the time, but looking back he said he believed the nuns suspected he was gay and devised the cruel act to punish him.

"The sisters were tough but some of them were a bit twisted," he said, recalling the traumatic day.

"All I was guilty of was walking to school with girls."

Experts say experiences of trauma like this could inhibit people's capacities to cope with stress and to live their life, wearing down physical and emotional resources.

Experiences of trauma as a child can affect brain development, lead to low self-esteem, feelings of self-worth and shame, research reveals.

Young Martin had migrated to Australia from Holland with his family two years before the traumatic day.

He said he was still learning the language and enjoyed playing with the girls rather than the boys in his class because they were 'gentle' and 'nice'.

"We were eight-years-old and so innocent," he said.

Martin said the school head, deputy head and his classroom teacher put him in a dress, tied a pink ribbon in his hair and paraded him through every class in the school calling him Mary to be laughed at and ridiculed.

He said the teachers also told the boys in his class to 'take him to the puddles' if they saw him playing with the girls in the school yard.

"It made life impossible for me after that," he said.

"Several hundred kids witnessed it."

Martin said he was shy and had 'hidden away from life', suffering from social phobia and the 'strangest' psychological and 'unbelievable' physical symptoms all his life.

"I was already a very extremely timid and frightened, self-doubting, very religious child," he said.

"What the nuns did affected me profoundly. After that I was publicly shamed and humiliated wherever I went.

"My friend's parents told them don't have anything to do with me anymore. I wasn't able to develop normally. I could never feel I could have a friend ever again.

"I was cat-called wherever I went, 'Hey Mary, aren't you wearing your dress today? Where's your pink ribbon sissy boy?' I was afraid to go into the playground and frightened to go into the street.

"It went right to my self-identity and sexuality of course... I consider what the nuns did psycho-sexual abuse. I thought I must be a girl if God's handmaids thought so and I was terrified I was going to grow breasts.

"I cried every night after school for one and a half years."

Martin said as he suffered swelling in his eyes, face and lips, terrible headaches, overwhelming anxiety, depression, asthma, an inability to trust others and sneezing fits as a child, teenager and adult.

"I have had flashbacks and thoughts twigging in my head since childhood and I have been trying to put it all together like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle all these years, trying to make sense of it all," he said.

"Before this happened I adored the nuns. I loved the learning and was good at school. That's why I think this affected me so incredibly."

Martin was ultimately able to move school where he managed better, attempting to put some of his past trauma behind him. He used prayer to get through his days.

But he said moving beyond school into real-life was when his anxiety worsened and disrupted his life plans.

Martin said he suffered a nervous breakdown at teacher's college because he had not learnt to socialise and interact with other people and never recovered enough to feel confident to return.

He began work in the public service, married at 27 and lived in a flat in Melbourne. He later became a nurse when on long service leave from the public service.

"I could pretend I was normal," he said.

"But I was so confused about my sexuality."

Blue Knot Foundation president Cathy Kezelman AM said Martin was demeaned and humiliated by people in a position of power and control while his young brain was still growing and developing.

"What he learnt was people weren't safe. He was made to feel enormous shame about who he was," she said.

"Childhood trauma can affect the way the brain develops and lay down different pathways, negative experiences can impact that.

"You can develop almost scripts in your head about how you are perceived. He developed a low sense of self-worth and self-esteem and couldn't relate to his peers because his peers were mocking him. That can really impact relationships later on.

"Also when you grow up feeling so inherently unsafe, it can mean your nervous system stays on high alert because you don't know when you are going to be bullied and demeaned next.

"What that can do is really impact your emotional and physical health in the long term because it means you find it very hard to go back to a sense of calm."

Martin separated from his wife and returned to Ballarat, where he met his current partner John McCumber at age 35.

John said Martin had always experienced 'crippling self-doubt' and felt unworthy, battling anxiety and depression for many years.

Now 75, Martin said his traumatic experience as a child continued to come back to 'bite him in the bum'.

"I am getting flashbacks again and also that sense that I will die and no one will know about it," he said.

"I want people to know about it before I die. I am desperate to get this off my chest and acknowledge what happened.

"I am worried other children suffered too from abuse as a child.... Not all the nuns were like that, but they all saw what happened and did nothing about it."

One of Martin's schoolmates Helen Carrucan said she reconnected with Martin during their late adult years, about 20 years ago, because she had never forgotten the traumatic day.

"It is quite amazing really because a lot of stuff in primary school you don't remember do you," she said.

"I used to sit at the front of the class and I can just remember feeling so distressed that he was up there with a bow in his hair and she was introducing him as Mary Mennen.

"He just looked so beaten. I hadn't been a particular friend of his at school, but I never forgot that.

"When we reconnected, I said to him at some stage when we were having chats, do you remember that day that happened?

"He said 'of course'. I said 'I have never forgotten that'. He started crying and said 'you are the first person that has ever told me they remembered that happening'.

"It was really important for him to know someone else had witnessed it and regarded it as something significant in their lives."

Ms Carrucan has worked as a nurse and in social work and has seen how experiences of trauma as a child can impact people throughout their lives.

Ms Kezelman said there were so many potential impacts of trauma, particularly at a young age and over time.

Berry Street executive director statewide services and LaTrobe University adjunct associate professor Annette Jackson said trauma came in 'many shapes and sizes'.

"People often think of trauma as being events during war, major disasters, major car accidents and other aspects that are physical trauma," she said.

"But we also know without a doubt the most prevalent form of trauma occurs in relationships and occurs with people who are known to each other, the examples are family violence, child abuse and neglect and bullying."

Associate Professor Jackson said traumatic events were so overwhelming they intruded into one's normal capacity to cope or were repetitive not allowing a chance to recover, as was often the case with abuse and bullying.

"We can all be exposed to a traumatic event such as a bushfire or a car accident or in too many situations family violence, but that doesn't mean we will all be impacted in the same way," she said.

"The key to how we each recover is relationships.

"When our internal resources aren't enough to help us to meet this overwhelming threat, that is when we really need to draw most on our family, friends, teachers, social workers and others who are there to support us.

"Support and comfort from other people helps us to self regulate and make sense of not only what happened but what is in front of us on any given day.

"It is important to recognise what happened is the problem. We are not responsible for what others have done to us is a really key message."

Associate Professor Jackson said it was important to know resilience was something that was built and developed overtime - we are not born resilient.

"Again it comes back to relationships but also some of us might be resilient in a bushfire but really struggled with COVID, or did really well with lockdowns but really struggled with someone in their family being ill," she said.

"We have to be kind to ourselves as well as to each other. Resilience takes practice."

Ms Kezelman said the Blue Knot Foundation ran helplines for people to call trauma counsellors who aimed to create a space where people could be heard and feel safe.

She said counsellors aimed to help people form strategies about how to manage their triggers, how to self soothe and manage strong emotions.

She said explaining trauma and how it affects the brain and the body was an important step, so people could realise their responses were biological and were not their fault.

"Once people understand that it can really help, because many people who have experienced childhood trauma feel quite alien from society, they feel very different, they feel enormous shame," Ms Kezelman said.

"That psycho education can help people gain a little bit of insight into themselves and realise it is not their fault and start to build those internal resources, realise they have strengths they can build on and realise who they can reach out to in their support network.

"There are many many ways people find a pathway to healing. Another important aspect is reassuring people you can heal and recover from trauma with the right support.

"There is no single journey, everyone is an individual.

"There is hope and there is possibility for healing. The brain can repair and develop different pathways from those that were laid down during the trauma."

Visit blueknot.org.au for resources or call the Blue Knot helpline on 1300 657 380, 9am to 5pm seven days a week.

If you or someone you know is in need of crisis support, phone Lifeline 13 11 14.

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