Salvos Say Sorry for Years of Abuse

By Tim Dornin
The Australian
October 9, 2015

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/salvos-official-to-front-royal-commission/story-fn3dxiwe-1227562745265

THE Salvation Army has pledged to review all compensation payments made to victims of sexual and physical abuse after apologising for the treatment of children taken into its care across three states.

FLOYD Tidd says the abuse that continued over many years constitutes the "darkest chapter" in the history of the Salvation Army and will forever be a source of shame.

He says he has been moved and distressed by stories from survivors detailed at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

"Each of you were blameless, all of you were just children. You had a right to feel safe," he said during his evidence in Adelaide on Friday.

"For the physical, sexual and emotional abuse you suffered while you were in our care ... I am profoundly sorry."

Commissioner Tidd said he understood many victims simply wanted an apology and an acknowledgment of what happened to them.

But, he said, here too the Salvation Army had failed them.

"Too often we treated you as claimants and not survivors of abuse," he said.

"I know for many of you that my words will seem too little and too late, for the truth of the matter is we betrayed your trust."

The royal commission has been examining abuse from 1940 to the 1980s at four homes run by the Salvation Army at Box Hill and Bayswater in Melbourne, Eden Park in the Adelaide Hills and Nedlands in Perth.

All those homes are now closed.

Between 1995 and 2014 the army received 418 claims for compensation and paid out almost $18 million.

But Commissioner Tidd said a review of all settlements was under way, with a focus on those who settled without legal advice, where police action had been taken or where new evidence had become available.

He expected to reopen some of those claims.

Commissioner Tidd said, as the royal commission had recommended, it was important that all payments were a "tangible recognition of the seriousness of the injury and hurt suffered".

He said the Salvation Army was committed to "walk the walk and not just talk the talk".

In other evidence on Friday David Reece, 62, told how the Box Hill home was known as "Hellsville" by the boys who lived there in the 1960s and was staffed by brutal officers and barbaric teachers.

Mr Reece said one staff member, Willem Willemsen, who was later found guilty on abuse charges, took every opportunity he could to sexually assault him and would also hit him with sticks and straps.

"We used to call Box Hill Hellsville," Mr Reece said.

"That is what it was to us, complete hell."

The hearing continues on Monday.