Last year there were 32,000 cases of child abuse and neglect. In a rare insight, a group of adults who experienced abuse as children discuss what it was like stepping inside the classroom. By Linda Belardi.

Frank's* childhood was brutal and unfeeling, like the military discipline that governed his family home. From a young age, his abusive army officer father beat him repeatedly. His mother, who was emotionally absent, often sent him to school without lunch. School offered little reprieve from a cycle of fear and violence. He had no close friends and his peers relentlessly taunted and physically harassed him. Frank's chronic low self-esteem made him an easy target for school bullies and amplified his own sense of rejection and exclusion at home. "School was a nightmare. There's no other way of...