A child patient at a former hospital in Co Antrim was repeatedly raped by a staff member and was once gang-raped, the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry has heard.
The man was aged seven when he was admitted to the state-run Lissue House in Lisburn for "intensive therapy".
Now aged 47, the visibly upset witness told the inquiry yesterday that a male member of staff raped him two or three times a month and he was gang-raped by three men.
The staff member was questioned by police and denied the allegations.
However, the witness accused him of "telling bare-faced lies".
He claimed staff at the psychiatric and paediatric hospital turned "a blind eye" to abuse of patients.
The man said he was frightened to tell other staff about the alleged abuse.
He said he came from a violent household and his father would have "killed" him if he had told his parents about the abuse.
When counsel for the inquiry told the witness the staff member was "very upset" by the allegations, he replied that his "life has been destroyed by Lissue".
"It was supposed to protect children. All my dreams and aspirations have been destroyed… It's a daily struggle for me," he said.
"I think about death all the time. I struggle every day for my three beautiful daughters."
He said when he heard Lissue was closing in 1999 he "prayed to God that it would burn in flames".
The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry has already heard claims that children being treated at Lissue were locked in padded cells and put in strait jackets - claims staff denied.
On Tuesday, a man claimed he was beaten with a metal spoon and left to stand in his own urine, aged just two.
He said he was subjected to the abuse in the early 1950s.
A total of 10 former patients have said they were sexually and emotionally abused, including two from the former hospital’s paediatric unit.
Some former patients claim they were abused by staff while others said they were abused by older patients.
No member of staff has ever been prosecuted over the allegations.
Claims of sexual, physical and emotional abuse at two children’s psychiatric hospitals – including Lissue – were first revealed in The Irish News in 2011.
Six nurses at Lissue House and Forster Green hospital in Belfast were accused of abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Three independent reports into the allegations, compiled since 2009, were never made public until the investigation by The Irish News.
Later claims emerged that members of the security forces were among those who abused young girls at Lissue during the 1970s.
In the wake of the revelations a police investigation into the case was reopened.
