Salvation Army Boy’s Home Abuse Victim Refuses Apology, Inquiry Hears

The Guardian
March 28, 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/28/salvation-army-boys-home-abuse-victim-refuses-apology-inquiry-hears

The Royal Commission heard evidence from a man who had suffered abuse at the Riverview Training Farm in Queensland in 1971. Photograph: Jeremy Piper/AAP/Royal Commission

A man kept in solitary confinement in a boy's home run by the Salvation Army, in which he was made to sleep where he defecated, has vehemently refused to accept an apology for the abuse he suffered, the Royal Commission into Institutional Abuse was told on Friday.

“If I see one of those uniforms come within a metre of me, you'd better be there ... okay, just keep them away from me,” the man said when asked if he would accept an apology from the Salvation Army for the abuse he suffered at the Riverview Training Farm in Queensland in 1971.

“If I see that Gestapo come near me ...,” he added.

The man, identified as JE, spent 12 days at Riverview when he was 15 after he and his brother were transferred from the Westbrook Farm Home for Boys, where they were sent after being arrested for joyriding.

“The abuse I suffered from the officers at Riverview was physical, psychological and racial,” he said. “I remember being locked in a small room in solitary confinement for fighting with some boys who were ‘wog-bashing’ me.”

There was no light, no toilet, not even a bucket, he said.

“You had to sleep on the same floor you'd been forced to go to the toilet on,” he said.

JE would be given a piece of paper to clean it up. He was kept in solitary confinement for three days.

He and his brother plotted to escape. His brother was caught but JE and a friend swam the swollen Bremer river. They were caught by Broadbeach police and JE was sent back to Westbrook.

He said he was angered by a letter from the Salvation Army in 2008 which stated the organisation had never heard of solitary confinement at Riverview, and that they would have to check it out. He was also furious when he received a letter from Major Peter Farthing, the head of the Salvation Army's personal injuries complaints committee, which said the organisation was sorry that his “experiences at Riverview were so unpleasant”.

“To me it sounded like a letter you get from a hotel when you complain about a room. I did not consider it an apology – not by a long shot,” he said.

In 2008, Salvation Army representatives offered JE $20,000 in compensation, after initially offering just $10,000. He said that if he did agree to meet with Salvation Army representatives in the future, he would insist that they wear plain clothes and come with a “genuine and open heart”.