Commission Hears of Hungry Boys Eating Grass at Salvation Army Home

The Guardian
January 28, 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/28/commission-hears-hungry-boys-eating-grass-salvation-army-home

The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse heard on Tuesday how boys at one Salvation Army home ate grass and raw potatoes because they were so hungry.

Raymond Carlile, who was seven when he and his younger brother were sent to a Salvos home at Riverview in Queensland in the 1950s, also told the inquiry that children who had wet the bed were made to sleep on a veranda with just a lattice frame between them and the elements.

His brother, who had a kidney removed before he was sent to the home, endured the punishment. They were so hungry his brother ate grass.

"I tried to encourage him to eat the potatoes", said Carlile, who recalled how he found raw potatoes stored under the veranda and ate them.

Carlile said he witnessed boys being caned until they bled. He said Salvation Army officer Lieutenant Laurence Wilson was the most brutal.

"Lieutenant Wilson glorified in punishment. He used to froth at the mouth," Carlile said.

In his opening statement to the commission, counsel assisting Simeon Beckett said evidence would identify Wilson, who died in 2008, as the most prolific of the alleged child sexual abusers in the Salvation Army eastern territory.

Beckett said 15 known victims of Wilson had been identified. Wilson raped boys, forced them to have sex with one another, flogged them and threatened them with further punishment if they disclosed their treatment to anyone.

The commission has identified five officers of the Salvation Army about whom there are serious allegations. Three are still alive.

Wilson served in all four of the homes being examined by the commission – the Alkira boys home at Indooroopilly and the Endeavour training farm at Riverview, both in Queensland, and the Bexley Boys Home in Sydney and the Gill Memorial home in Goulburn, NSW.

Wilson was summarily dismissed from the Salvation Army in 1961 but accepted back in 1966 and went on to run homes in NSW.

The Salvation Army has made a number of ex-gratia payments to victims, ranging from $50,000 to $100,000.

Kate Eastman, senior counsel representing the Salvation Army, told the hearing: "The Salvation Army feels deep regret for every instance of child sexual abuse inflicted on children who were in our care.

"We are grieved that such things happened. We acknowledge that it was a failure of the greatest magnitude."

The hearing continues.