AUSTRALIA
The Australian
Dan Box
Crime Reporter
Sydney
EVIDENCE given under oath by the Salvation Army’s Sydney leader James Condon about his handling of child sexual abuse committed by another officer was “highly improbable”, the NSW government has said.
The criticism, in a written submission to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, is supported by one of the church’s internal investigators, whose submission states “the evidence given by Commissioner Condon is not plausible”.
The dispute is detailed in documents published yesterday by the commission, which also state there is evidence suggesting more than 100 boys suffered brutal physical and sexual abuse at Salvation Army-run children’s homes across Australia.
This included being beaten, raped or locked in a “cage”, often for weeks at a time, a submission from the commission’s counsel, Simeon Beckett, said.
Senior Salvation Army officers “failed to investigate” allegations of many of these crimes, Mr Beckett said. “Structural, systemic and cultural problems permitted the sexual abuse of children to occur on such a wide scale” and over several decades before 1983.
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