“You were not allowed to go within six feet of another prisoner, and your room was a concrete box with a mattress and two blankets, nothing else.

“Your hands had to be showing at all times while you slept. If they weren’t, they would stick the fire hose through your door and flood you out.

“If there were any letters, you had them for 48 hours and then they were taken and destroyed.”

Mr Kelly said he was so numbed by his experiences in the home that one morning when another inmate, 16-year-old “Bobby”, undid the razor blade they all used to shave, and slit his own throat, he was unmoved.

“Bobby survived but was taken away to a mental institution somewhere else,” he said.

At mealtimes Mr Kelly said he and up to 17 other inmates were forced to keep their hands in the air when they weren’t eating.

Solitary confinement, known to inmates as “the death cell”, was another punishment the boys faced.

“I was put in solitary confinement eight times during my time in Tamworth,” Mr Kelly said.

“While you were in there, you would get a piece of bread and a drink of half water, half milk.

“The door to solitary confinement was separated by an iron grill. When you went in, you were given an iron bar four inches long and one inch wide, and you had to scrape the bar along the bars in the grill. If you stopped, you were beaten.”

At other times a cereal box, with two holes for eyes, would be put over an inmate’s head and he was made to wear it until it fell apart.

Mr Kelly said torture, starvation and humiliation were all part of the daily routine.

He was incarcerated at Tamworth for more than 180 days.

“As a 16-year-old I (had) thought I was invincible,” he said.

“In Tamworth I became so desperate, so lonely and so afraid.”

At one point he was so desperate he considered killing another inmate just to get out.

“I thought ... I’m going to grab the guy next to me when the guard’s not looking and just grab my knife or fork, whatever is quickest, and stab him wherever I can to kill him or inflict as much damage as I could,” he said.

Mr Kelly believes he would have acted on the impulse if a guard had not started talking.

“He snapped me out of it,” Mr Kelly said.

He claims sexual abuse was a part of the culture, with stories about boys trading their bodies for food.

“I never witnessed it though,” he said.

After six months Mr Kelly was moved back to Gosford Boys’ Home – a reprieve earnt by good behaviour.

“About a month before my release (from Gosford) I was so down and wondered where my life would possibly go,” he said.

“So I escaped from Gosford.”

He moved on to a life of crime.

“Most of the crimes I committed were minor – safe-cracking and breaking and entering to survive,” he said.

In total he served 19 years, five months and six days in institutions and prisons.

“The only thing that saved me was meeting my wife,” he said.

“We met on the Gold Coast after I had served my final five-year jail term.”

Mr Kelly said one of the biggest burdens he now carried was not being able to show her how much he loves her.

“I find it hard to hold her,” he said.

Mr Kelly said even today he’s not one for big crowds.

He has sought help from various experts and psychologists, one of whom told him the only difference between Tamworth Boys’ Home and places such as Norfolk Island or Port Arthur was that Tamworth had never introduced the cat o’ nine tails.

Mr Kelly, who worked as a labourer before he retired, now spends a lot of time working with children.

He has since been reunited with his two younger brothers. His two older brothers have passed away.

Mr Kelly would like to speak to anyone else who experienced the horrors of institutionalisation in Tamworth Boys’ Home during the 1950s and 1960s.

• Contact with Mr Kelly can

be made through The Leader on 6768 1249.