Russell Butler (63) died yesterday morning, just weeks after telling his story to the Otago Daily Times in May.
He had described an experience as a 10-year-old Catholic boy in 1966, when he was lashed 54 times with a leather strap by Sister Mary James while a pupil at St Mary's Primary School in Mosgiel.
''I got 54 off her. Fifty-four lashes, my mates counted,'' he said at the time.
"The first six were on the hand and then - I don't know if I protested not to have any more or whatever - but the other 48 just landed wherever they landed."
The beating left the young Mr Butler with "bruises or marks all over my body".
When he got home and his mother saw the results, she erupted.
He recalled her on the telephone, complaining to the local parish priest and threatening to go to then-Catholic Bishop of Dunedin, John Kavanagh.
"He [the priest] must have talked her down," Mr Butler said.
Instead, he was sent back to class with his older sister to clear out his desk, then pulled out of the school and transferred to another.
He recalled an earlier incident, as a 5-year-old, when another nun refused him permission to leave class and go to the toilet.
"I ended up wetting myself, and being taken out into the toilets, and I had to go out and play in the playground wearing girls' bloomers. That's what they put on me.
"It doesn't sound like much, but I can still recall not wanting to go into the playground."
Mr Butler decided to go public after receiving his cancer diagnosis - and the last rites from a priest - earlier this year.
He also made contact with the royal commission into historic abuse in state and faith-based care and had his account added to the record.
Mr Butler had been living at home still and was at his mother's house when he died yesterday.
