Abuse in a hospital ward: Victorian survivor fears for safety of children visiting patients

A Victorian woman has reached a settlement with Melbourne’s Austin hospital over the sexual and physical abuse she says she was subjected to there as a child. Composite: Getty Images

Riley* was in her early 30s when she began combing through her late father’s medical records, searching for answers about a heart attack he suffered almost two decades earlier.

Instead she found evidence of the years of violence he inflicted on her when she was a teenager visiting him in hospital in the mid-1990s. Some of it had been documented by hospital staff from the beginning.