Woodlands Boys Abused by 'Christian' Paedophiles
By Joanne McCarthy
AN ‘‘organised ring’’ of paedophiles, believed to include Anglican and Catholic clergy, used a Sunday afternoon ‘‘children’s Christian program’’ in the 1970s to sexually abuse boys at a church-run boys home in Wallsend. ‘‘These men just came, got the boys, used them, and put them back,’’ said a Hunter woman whose husband has told a private hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse that he was sexually assaulted by multiple offenders at Woodlands boys home. The United Protestant Association has issued an unreserved apology for the ‘‘tragedy’’ of what occurred to child sex victims at Woodlands, where some of the smallest and youngest boys were targeted by the Sunday group. ‘‘From what the victims have told us, these men changed from week to week, suggesting a larger, organised ring,’’ UPA general manager Steve Walkerden and after-care support worker Graham Hercus said in a joint statement on Friday in response to Newcastle Herald questions. ‘‘We are aware of a group of men who did come to the home in the 1970s for a number of years on a Sunday afternoon, ostensibly to conduct a children’s Christian program, but who routinely took smaller boys into downstairs rooms in the building and abused them.’’ The late Anglican priest Peter Rushton – acknowledged by the Church in 2010 as a sexual abuser of children – and ‘‘volunteer carer’’ and convicted child sex offender Robert Holland, are believed to have taken boys from the home or to have had links with Woodlands. A third ‘‘volunteer carer’’ at Woodlands was quietly convicted of child sex offences more than a decade ago. A man and woman will appear in court in coming weeks charged with serious child sex offences against Woodlands boys they took into foster care in the 1970s. The UPA confirmed it investigated allegations that another ‘‘volunteer carer’’ from Germany sexually abused about 10 boys in the 1970s before leaving Australia in the 1980s to return to Germany, where he is believed to be living. The wife of the former Woodlands boy who has detailed his abuse to the royal commission wept as she spoke about the powerlessness of orphaned and vulnerable children at the home, some as young as four years old. ‘‘It was like buying a bottle of milk to them [the sex offenders]. If you don’t like it, put it back. Get another one, put it back,’’ she said. ‘‘If the boys reported what happened, they were flogged. My husband can still hear it today, the screaming of the boys when they were taken downstairs and flogged for saying what had been done to them.’’ The woman recalled visiting Woodlands with priest Peter Rushton. ‘‘Rushton went there all the time and got boys out,’’ the woman said. ‘‘We’d go for choir and when we’d leave in his car we’d have one of the boys with us. He died and got away with it.’’ A man who was at the home in the 1960s has told the royal commission he was 13 when he was repeatedly raped by a driver who visited Woodlands. When he reported the first rape to a matron he received a ‘‘backhander across the face’’. A few days later he reported the sexual assault to his teacher and school principal, who contacted Woodlands and was told: ‘‘It is just a lonely little boy looking for attention’’. ‘‘When I got back to the home, I got a tanning,’’ he told the royal commission. The UPA has paid compensation and provided support to a woman for repeated sexual assault over a six-year period at the association’s girls home, Ellimatta, at Maitland in the 1970s. Mr Walkerden and Mr Hercus said the offender was believed to have been a casual gardener. The UPA was ‘‘fully supportive of every effort to bring to light what is clearly a shameful and disgusting part of Australia’s recent history’’, they said in their statement on Friday. ‘‘We unreservedly apologise to those who were harmed as a result of the time spent in a UPA home. We are committed to open communication with any former children who lived at Woodlands or any other home run by UPA. ‘‘We have a dedicated after-care worker who is able to offer access to records. UPA is willing to make reparation payments to those who were abused. ‘‘We have reported all known matters to police and work co-operatively with them.’’ The abuse of children as young as four and the lifelong impacts of that abuse were a tragedy, Mr Walkerden said. UPA received the first abuse allegations at Woodlands in 1998, and has paid settlements to some victims. More hearings later this year THE Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, launched by former prime minister Julia Gillard in response to a Newcastle Herald campaign last year, held its first public hearings in Sydney last week. Those hearings focused on how paedophile Steven Larkins came to continue working within the Scouts movement and then be appointed to the Hunter Aboriginal Children’s Services Corporation. Three more public hearings have been scheduled for later this year. They will examine child sex abuse allegations in relation to the YMCA and a children’s home run by the Anglican Diocese of Grafton, and will also look at the operation of the Towards Healing process in the Catholic Church. Though the UPA is not listed for mention in this year’s public hearings, allegations of child sex abuse at Woodlands Boys Home at Wallsend are among the hundreds of submissions made to the commission and have been detailed in private hearings.
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