Salvation Army Commander Accused Girl of Lying in Sex Case

By Sarah Crawford
Daily Telegraph
March 29, 2014

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/salvation-army-commander-accused-girl-of-lying-in-sex-case/story-fni0cx12-1226867991183

Salvation Army victim Cheryll Eldridge leaves the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse. Photo Jeremy Piper Source: News Corp Australia

A SALVATION army commander asked a woman if she was lying when she revealed years of sexual abuse at the hands of her Sunday school teacher, including being raped at age 10.

Envoy John Lane was sentenced to jail in 1997 for indecently dealing with the woman, known as JG, and abusing another girl, JD, from the age of four at the Fortitude Valley Salvation Army Corps in Brisbane in the 1970s.

The two women went to police after receiving no satisfaction from the head of the Salvation Army in southeast Queensland, Colonel Stan Everitt who asked them: “Are you sure you are not lying?”

The women told the child sex abuse royal commission that Colonel Everitt warned them not to call police or go to the media about Lane.

After Lane was jailed the Salvation Army gave JG $80,000 and JD $40,000 but Colonel Everitt has never apologised for his handling of the original complaint. JG and JD were told he was too old and frail to deal with it.

JD told the commission she was born into the Salvation Army but the organisation turned its back on her.

“I was a little girl going to church and a predator got me ... when people come forward they should be believed,” she said.

Another woman, Cherryl Eldridge, told the commission that during 12 years at a Salvation Army’s girls home in Queensland she was “ humiliated, hungry and unloved.”

Ms Eldridge said at Horton House in Toowoomba she spent hours locked in a cupboard and was beaten.

When Ms Eldridge applied for compensation she received $7000. After a protracted battle Ms Eldridge accepted $40,000 she describing it as “shut-up money.”