|
Salvation Army Major put cigarettes out on boy...
By Janet Fife-Yeomans
Daily Telegraph
April 7, 2014
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/salvation-army-major-put-cigarettes-out-on-boy-7-and-threw-him-in-a-pool-with-bricks-tied-to-his-legs/story-fni0cx4q-1226876757062
Salvation Army Major put cigarettes out on boy, 7, and threw him in a pool with bricks tied to his legs
A SALVATION Army major put out cigarette butts between the toes of a seven-year-old boy, the child sex abuse royal commission has been told.
It happened at the organisation’s Indooroopilly Boys’ Home in Queensland where Major Victor Bennett also woke the boy up in the middle of the night, stripped him naked, tied bricks to his legs and threw in him the swimming pool.
Major Bennett has since died but it is the latest shocking evidence of violence in Salvation Army homes to be revealed in the royal commission sitting in Sydney.
When the man, who was also raped by Bennett in the home in 1966 as a seven-year-old, finally told the Salvation Army what had happened, his file was marked “not proved” next to the claims of the cigarettes and the swimming pool.
Major Daphne Cox, former assistant secretary for personnel in the organisation’s Professional Standards Office, said that while “not proved” usually meant there was no independent witness, she had believed what the former boys said.
However she said that looking back, the cases could have been handled better.
The commission has also heard how Salvation Army officers visited one of their paedophile Sunday school teachers in jail to “support” him.
John Lane, who has since died, was jailed in 1997 in Queensland after he was convicted of rape and indecent dealing offences relating to two girls, one just four years old, the other 10 when the abuse began at the Salvation Army Sunday school at Fortitude Valley.
The two women told the organisation about Lane in 1992 but they were not believed. They went to police in 1996.
One of the women said that when she told Colonel Stan Everitt, then the divisional commander for the Salvation Army in South East Queensland in 1992, he said that Lane was a “Korean War veteran and also a good man”.
In 2006 the women went back to the Salvation Army seeking compensation and wanting to know why nothing was done back in 1992.
Major Cox said that she had apologised to them on behalf of the Salvation Army but agreed that at the time, it was decided not to question Everitt despite the women wanting him to apologise to them personally.
“I think that they just felt it was such a long time ago and he was an old man and they weren’t going to write and ask for this apology,” Major Cox said.
Major Cox, who now mentors new army officers, said that at no stage had the organisation considered reviewing Colonel Everitt’s lack of action in 1992.
The hearing continues.
|