Salvos ran 'brutal' homes: report

Daily Mail
March 17, 2015

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/aap/article-2998188/Salvos-brutalised-children-care.html

The Salvation Army promoted officers accused of child sexual abuse in four boys' homes in NSW and Queensland and moved them on to run other homes.

In a report handed down on Tuesday, the child sex abuse royal commission said there were systemic failures in the army's conduct when it ran Indooroopilly and Riverview in Queensland and Bexley and Gill in NSW between 1956 and the early 80s.

Among failures were not reporting up the line in the army, failing to tell police and not keeping records on officers against whom serious allegations were made.

The commission's 101-page report chronicles sexual and physical brutalities at the homes which closed between 1977 and 1983.

"In all four homes public, regular and excessive physical punishment occurred ... Punishment was brutal at times, the commission said.

"At Riverview, one boy was dangled head first into a well. Another was tied to a tree with a chain attached to a metal collar. Others were put into a 'cage'.

"One was forced to crawl around an oval naked holding a chicken in the air while others stood by laughing."

Among the 36 findings is that sexual abuse of the boys in the four homes was often accompanied by physical violence.

In most cases, boys in the four homes who reported sexual abuse to the manager or other officer were punished, disbelieved, accused of lying or no action was taken, the commission found.

In an inquiry last June the commission looked at the careers of five Salvation Army Officers accused of abuse - Victor Bennett and Lawrence Wilson, now dead, and Donald Schultz, John McIver and another man given the pseudonym X17.

McIver worked at Bexley and Indooroopilly in the 1970s, retired in 2004 and was only dismissed as an officer of the army in June during the commission's hearings.

Major Clifford Randall and his wife Major Marina Randall gave evidence of witnessing McIver's brutality at Indooroopilly in 1975 and reporting it to then divisional commander Brigadier Leslie Reddie who disbelieved them.

Their allegations were never investigated neither were complaints about Lawrence Wilson who replaced McIver at Indooroopilly.

McIver who was contacted by the commission denies the allegations, the report said.

Of the five officers, X17 was the only one charged during his time with the Salvation Army but he was released on a good behaviour bond in 1974.

Bennett and Wilson worked at all four homes at different times.

The commission also found serious failings in the child welfare departments of both NSW and Queensland at the time.

Visits by welfare officers to Gill and Bexley were "cursory" and in Queensland from 1973 senior officers at the children's services department were "well aware of frequent sexual activity between many of the Riverview boys including occasions of rape."

But the high regard in which the Salvation Army was held at the time prevented the home's immediate closure, one witness told the commission.

Riverview was shut in 1977.

The Salvation Army said it had fully co-operated with the royal commission and would comment once the full report had been studied.

It also said it encouraged people who were abused in the care of the army to come forward.