Ex-detective doubted Salvo on abuse

Sky News
April 14, 2014

http://www.skynews.com.au/national/article.aspx?id=967351

A former NSW detective says he formed the view a Salvation Army officer was not truthful when he said he only committed one offence against an eight-year-old girl.

John Greville has been contracted by the Salvation Army's Professional Standards Office to investigate historical allegations of abuse.

On Monday Mr Greville, who has worked with the Wood Royal Commission and the NSW Ombudsman on child protection, said he was asked in January to look into the case of Colin Haggar, a Salvation Army lieutenant colonel who was director of a Sydney crisis shelter for women and children.

The commission has heard Haggar was dismissed from the Salvation Army in 1990 after he confessed to the sexual assault of an eight-year-old girl in a central western town in NSW. In 1993 he was re-admitted to the army and promoted.

Mr Greville, who has not yet concluded his internal investigation, told a child abuse inquiry on Monday he could find no evidence that a proper investigation had ever been conducted by the Salvation Army.

He said he had recently interviewed JH, the mother of JI who was abused by Colin Haggar in 1989. He also interviewed JI.

He told the commission JI had not disclosed the full nature of the allegations until he spoke to her - that she had been abused three times by Haggar.

When pressed by counsel for the Salvation Army, Mr Greville said even though the investigation was ongoing, he had formed the view that Colin Haggar had admitted to only one offence when he first confessed and later in 2007 when he was risk-assessed by psychiatrist Dr Bruce Westmore.

Dr Westmore's advice was that on Haggar's account of the facts, he was a very low risk to children and he was allowed to continue as an officer.

Mr Greville also said he told the head of the Salvation Army's eastern territory, Commissioner James Condon, that Haggar's statement that police had failed to act when in 1990 he turned himself in, was 'ludicrous'.

When asked if in the course of his investigation he had seen any documentation that stated the nature of the act that Haggar had admitted, Mr Greville said: 'There was no such document in the files.'

'I found no evidence of any questions being asked of officer Haggar or the victim or the victim's family.'