AUSTRALIA
The Australian
JUNE 24, 2014
NSW Police are investigating claims of child-sex abuse at a Salvation Army boys’ home the church has described as the “greatest failure” in its history.
The investigation focuses on allegations of abuse at the Gill Memorial Boys’ Home in Goulburn in country NSW, and in particular against one officer, who cannot be named.
The case is among more than 160 referred to various police forces across the country by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which is due to publish its first interim report next week.
Evidence before the commission shows nine children allege they were abused by the officer, who in August 1974 pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting one boy at the Gill home.
A separate 1996 prosecution was abandoned due to the officer’s apparent ill health, Salvation Army barrister Kate Eastman SC told the commission, but “these matters appear now they may have been revisited’’.
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