Millionaire Trawled Pinball Parlours for Boys, Abuse Inquiry Hears

By Dan Box
The Australian
February 5, 2014

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/millionaire-trawled-pinball-parlours-for-boys-abuse-inquiry-hears/story-e6frg6nf-1226818674482

QUEENSLAND police were aware of allegations boys held in state care were being flown to Sydney to be abused by a millionaire and a chef in the mid 1970s, a former assistant police commissioner says.

But while police and the state government believed a pedophile network was allegedly abusing boys in Brisbane during 1975, including at least one boy from a Salvation Army home, vulnerable children continued to be placed in the home, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard.

David Jefferies, a former assistant commissioner of Queensland Police, said he had investigated a number of alleged pedophiles said to be "grooming and offending against various boys'', possibly including those from the Indooroopilly home.

He said he had received information a Queensland millionaire, known as JA, flew boys to Sydney to be abused as part of a pedophile ring.

"This JA was certainly known as a millionaire and had, I believe, a construction business, and we certainly had received information about children actually going to his home,'' Mr Jefferies said.

"We were aware that boys in state care and from some institutions had in fact been flown to Sydney.''

The millionaire businessman "frequented pinball parlours and leisure centres where he befriended young males to whom he gave large sums of money and gifts of clothes, jewellery, bicycles,'' the commission heard.

These boys would be taken to the man's "luxurious home'' for weekends or overnight, Mr Jefferies told the commission, or driven by him for trips to other parts of Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

Mr Jefferies said he had a hazy recollection a chef was involved in the allegations, but could not speak to whether the man lived in Paddington, NSW.

Working for Queensland's Juvenile Aid Bureau from 1968 through 1989, Mr Jefferies said he investigated allegations four pedophiles were operating in the northern Brisbane suburbs and the Gold Coast in the early 1970s.

One, JA, was a millionaire, and the other was a schoolteacher known to the commission as JB.

But the prosecution of both men foundered after the two officers leading the investigation were told these suspects would be dealt with by "more experienced detectives'' and neither was ultimately jailed.

He was told to deal with the other two suspects.

"In the event the only convictions that resulted were against the two suspects that ... I dealt with,'' Mr Jefferies said.

In 1975, Roy Short, a former childcare officer with the Queensland Department of Children's Services, had formally reported his concerns about the Salvation Army-run Indooroopilly boys' home and its manager, Captain John McIver.

In a memo to his bosses, Mr Short wrote "for about eight months now various boys have been involved in a male prostitution racket. This involvement came to a head recently when two boys absconded to Sydney with the assistance of the organisers of this racket.

"Captain McIver has been aware of the existence of the boys' involvement with homosexuals for some time and it has become evidence that his attitude and actions have been reinforcing the whole issue,'' the memo said.

Due to these concerns, as well as fears over the use of punishment beatings on the children, Mr Short said the Queensland government tried to limit the number of children sent to the home, a response commissioner Peter McClellan described as "passive''.

Mr McIver, who was suspended by the Salvation Army last week "in light of evidence tendered to the Royal Commission, is not expected to give evidence at the hearing.