The Queanbeyan man is suing the Scouts Association of Australia for the sexual abuse he endured from his former Scout master when Mr Farr was as young as 10.

"These things haunt you for the rest of your life," Mr Farr said.

"I still have the same dream ... the day that he first touched me up.

"That doesn't matter how much mental health care you get, that feeling is still going to be there."

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The suit claims the Scouts failed in its duty of care with Mr Farr when he was a child, undergoing horrendous abuse approximately once a fortnight at the hands of Scheeren between 1979 and 1980 around Canberra.

Mr Farr has struggled to pay for his legal costs, his severe depression has left him unemployed and he has recently secured the services of one Canberra law firm after failing to pay costs for another.

But Mr Farr said his financial struggle should be a sign there needs to be more support for victims following the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse.

The ACT government signed onto the national redress scheme earlier this year and has issued a formal response to the commission's findings, saying it will implement more support for abuse survivors.

Mr Farr said this suit would help him but the government should be paying for his healthcare costs.

"It will help me, hopefully financially, be able to seek the professional help that I require," Mr Farr said.

"I can't do that without the finances to do it being unemployed."

Mr Farr's previous lawyers gave notice they would withdraw representing him after he was unable to pay upfront costs, but Mr Farr has since secured the services of Peter Hohnen and Greg Stretton SC at O’Connor Harris.

Mr Farr told police about the abuse in 2003 and Scheeren was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2014. An additional two years were added to Scheeren's sentence in 2016 for crimes he committed on his own nephew.

At the time, the paedophile was the first to be sentenced under historic sex offence laws after the ACT government abolished laws preventing police charging Scheeren for old sex crimes.

Mr Farr is still racked by guilt at not speaking up sooner, believing he could have saved other victims of Scheeren's earlier.

"I know that there's other people in that Scout group that have been molested. The guilt that I felt when another person came forward, that I could have stopped that happening to them, still lives with me to this day," Mr Farr said.

Mr Farr said the suit was part of a "cleansing process" for him.

"You're made to feel so guilty about it for so long and this helps me accept that it happened and move on with it," Mr Farr said.

"You are made to feel like dirt by the perpetrator."

Mr Farr believes his mental health has suffered throughout this suit, having to relive the worst time of his life over and over again, fraying relations with his mother and children.

"I've nearly lost them all because of this," he said.

Mr Farr said the national redress scheme also needs to consider the effect the abuse would have had on immediate family members of the victim.

He was concerned the royal commission had been a "toothless tiger" as the federal government failed to act seriously on the commission's recommendations.

Mr Farr was concerned there were still people out there who were unsure how to pursue their compensation but said it was still important for all victims of child sex abuse to come forward.

"It doesn't matter how small or how large the incident was," Mr Farr said. "Be brave. Come forward."

The Scouts Association of Australia was contacted for comment.