THEY were the 10 steps to hell. Yesterday they were covered with leaves blown by the wind. But for more than two decades these concrete stairs were the loneliest path for hundreds of girls  being the quickest and most secretive path from the superintendents office down to the dungeon.

Among them was Mary Hooker, now 55. She has told the royal commission into institutionalised responses to child sex abuse that she was a 14-year-old girl when she was walked down into the dungeon at the Parramatta Girls School.

media_camera The shower room at the old Parramatta Girls home. Picture: Craig Greenhill

As the royal commission has been investigating the brutal regime at the institution where girls as young as 10 in the care of the state were bashed and raped, The Daily Telegraph was yesterday allowed into the network of rooms in the basement, among them the feared dungeon.

Editorial: Innocence lost in brutal institution

“I was given a piece of newspaper to sit on. It was completely dark.” Ms Hooker has said.

The walls are half a metre thick. The heavy wooden door into the dungeon has gone but the iron brackets and part of the huge bolt that kept it locked still remain.

media_camera The ring in the wall where girls were handcuffed.

The ring is still on the wall where handcuffs were shackled to.

Inside the institution, no one could hear the girls scream. Outside its walls, no one believed them.

Ms Hooker has told the commission that she was raped in the dungeon a number of times by three men, a superintendent, deputy superintendent and a relieving deputy superintendent of the notorious girls school.

Today these rooms are empty but their spaces are full of the memories, nightmares, of the teenage girls sent here by the courts from 1950 to 1974 for reasons such as being in moral danger and neglected. Some were guilty of just being poor. Many, like Ms Hooker, were Aboriginal.

media_camera The imposing entrance to the Parramatta Girls School circa 1960.

Their evidence of degrading treatment is among the worst heard so far by the royal commission.

Down in the basement, little has changed since the last of the girls left when the school was closed following protests and riots.

The 10 stairs lead to a wooden door. Through the door and to the left is a dirty concrete-floored corridor, its walls made from convict-built bricks where graffiti left by the girls is fading with the peeling paint. After a few steps, the corridor turns right and directly on the left is the dark, dusty room that was the dungeon — just six small paces long, four wide. Some girls were left here naked, others locked in for days.

media_camera The shower room at the old Parramatta Girls home. Picture: Craig Greenhill

It is not eerie, rather it reeks of hopelessness.

Ms Hooker said she was sent here because she had refused to continue scrubbing the concrete walkway on her knees. “These scars on my body … will always heal but the memories will still be there and will continue until my death,” she said.

On the other side of the thick wall behind the dungeon is the shower room. The commission has also heard about the regime whereby girls queued to shower naked in front of officers, in cubicles without doors.

media_camera The dungeon at the old Parramatta Girls home. Picture: Craig Greenhill

Its yellowing and peeling walls were also witness to bashings and rapes. As a 14-year-old, Wilma Robb was beaten by a superintendent and deputy superintendent in the shower room with her hands tied behind her back and then her face was smashed into the sink.

The sink, that she had to clean her own blood from, is still there.

Built in 1840 as the first orphanage in Australia, the old Parramatta Girls School is now empty and about to be handed over from Corrective Services NSW to another government body, Property NSW. The former inmates have asked that it be repaired, heritage-listed and opened as a museum.

On Sunday, part of the grounds will be open to the public for a children’s day to commemorate the 129 orphans who died there.

media_camera The dungeon at the old Parramatta Girls home. Picture: Craig Greenhill

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Originally published as Schoolgirl sex dungeon exposed