RAPES, forced injections, staff beatings and electro-shock treatment were daily occurrences for most patients – many of them children – at Wolston Park Mental Hospital.

That a sizeable proportion of those who were sent there were neither insane nor adults appeared not to faze Queensland State Governments over the decades as they dumped thousands of unknowing victims at the Wacol facility.

As children and wards of the state, girls and boys, some as young as 11, were placed with adult offenders.

Randall Carrington was just 18 when he was admitted in 1978 to Wolston Park Mental Hospital.

His crime in the eyes of the authorities was being under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs at a park, which was compounded by the fact that when police searched his backpack, they found male pornography.

He was taken to Brisbane’s Lowson House mental ward aged 17 and later transferred aged 18 to Wolston Park’s Pearce House locked ward for criminally insane male adults.

Randall’s sister, Kerry Carrington, was his sole carer, only a teen herself at the time, and fought for his release from the state institution, once known as the Goodna Asylum for the Insane.

Randall was released after two years of suffering at the hands of staff, but he later committed suicide – in part haunted by his treatment at the asylum.

After 44 years, the Queensland Information Commissioner has only now handed Randall’s case notes to Professor Carrington.

She said recent Ipswich Tribune articles on Randall had put pressure on the government to release the information which she had requested for decades.

“It is no coincidence that the government has only now presented me with this material,” Professor Carrington said.

“I thank the newspaper for its part in what has been a transformational process for me.

“Personally, reading his notes has been cathartic and validating.

“It has confirmed my own memories of Randall being in a ward for the criminally insane, and among people charged with murder and the most violent of offences.

“He was bashed and sexually brutalised by staff and patients – my brother was just a boy of 18. He should never have been placed in Pearce House.

“Staff gave him copious amounts of drugs and electro-shock treatment until he was comatose.

“When they released him, he was like a vegetable. I even had to teach him how to brush his teeth.”

Professor Carrington said the State Government must launch a “truth commission to expose the atrocities of the past” and to establish the extent of the alleged paedophile network that operated there.

“My brother and hundreds like him deserve a posthumous apology – we want justice.”

In memory of Randall, we publish a short letter detailing his abuse at the time: “This morning, I was in bed when the charge nurse came, ripped off the covers of myself, grabbed me by the ankles, dragged me out of bed. I fell on the floor, so I called him a bastard.

“He then came over and hit me about four times and then grabbed me by the throat, choking me.

“After that, he left, then came back with the second nurse who had a needle.

“I said I didn’t want it, then ran downstairs.

“They chased me and caught me, taking me back upstairs and giving me the needle.”

R. Carrington (27/9/’79).