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Ken McIlwain was watching the nightly news in 2011 when the story of the 'Skype affair' at the Australian Defence Force Academy broke.
"I must have gone ballistic in the lounge room," he said. "My wife said 'you need to go and see someone because there's something wrong'.
"I'd kept it secret for 40 years. My wife didn't know, my family didn't know, no one knew."
What he'd kept secret through four decades of a successful life - a marriage, raising four daughters, starting a business, working hard – was eight months of systematic rape by two fellow sailors at Sydney's HMAS Nirimba naval training base in the early 1970s.
Mr McIlwain, 59, is still dealing with the fallout. But the patient ear of a psychologist, along with having his experiences listened to by a senior Navy officer under a "restorative justice" program, have helped.
As a 16-year-old, he left a household run by an abusive, alcoholic father and became an apprentice at HMAS Nirimba ironing shirts. It wasn't long before the assaults began.
"I was raped by two guys. One was an apprentice like myself, but more senior. The other was an officer."
It went on regularly, at least once a month and sometimes once a week. Mr McIlwain went to a medical officer and told him he was being raped. The doctor gave him bottle after bottle of sedative.
After the last attack, Mr McIlwain went to the showers. It was when he saw blood on the floor that he decided he couldn't take any more. He took a stash of Valium and "took the whole lot with a tin of Pepsi".
He was in hospital for three months and then the psychiatric ward at Concord Hospital. He was later kicked out of the Navy on medical grounds.
In two landmark reports delivered on Wednesday, a high-powered taskforce urged the government to hold a royal commission into some of the most severe cases of rape and sexual abuse episodes at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
More than 1100 alleged perpetrators of sexual and other abuse continue to serve in the military – some of them in senior ranks – but they are unlikely ever to face punishment, the taskforce found.
It is not at this stage recommending a broader royal commission for abuse right across the ADF.
Mr McIlwain approached the Defence Abuse Response Taskforce after it was set up by the former Gillard government. He was paid compensation, which he gave away. He also had sit-down with a Rear Admiral who was in full white dress uniform – the same kind of uniform he used to iron at the HMAS Nirimba.
"I looked in his eyes and saw he was speaking the truth and someone believed me. He was a representative of the Navy but he was another man who believed what had happened. The biggest problem is that no one believed you."
Defence Minister David Johnston said the government would consider "very carefully" the call for a royal commission.
