AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
January 30, 2014
Paul Bibby
Court Reporter
Dozens of alleged rapes and indecent assaults against boys at a Salvation Army home in southern Sydney that were reported to police years later never came to court because of the victims’ fading memories and investigators’ reluctance to “fish for victims”, the royal commission into child abuse has heard.
The revelations came as the commission’s investigation into Salvation Army boys’ homes in NSW and Queensland focuses on the Bexley Boys’ Home, operated from 1915 to 1979.
The commission has heard a series of alarming allegations of abuse at the home, much of it involving Captain Lawrence Wilson, who was accused not only of raping and assaulting the boys, but of sending them to the homes of other Salvation Army officers to be raped and assaulted.
One boy, referred to as FV, was allegedly sent by Captain Wilson to the home of a Salvation Army couple. The woman forced him to have sex with her and then the man indecently assaulted him.
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