AUSTRALIA
Queensland Times
Jessica Grewal | 21st Jun 2014
COUNTLESS children at an Ipswich Queensland boys’ home were raped, tortured and forced to live in filth under the watch of the Salvation Army and the State Government, the royal commission into child sexual abuse is expected to find.
A damning submission from counsel assisting the inquiry into four of the Army’s boys’ homes – Riverview near Ipswich, Alkira at Indooroopilly and two others in NSW – calls on the commission to find cultural problems within the Salvation Army structure allowed the systematic abuse of children to occur “on a wide scale and over a considerable period of time”.
The inquiry had looked at five predators – Victor Bennett, Lawrence Wilson, Donald Schultz, John McIver and an officer known only as X17 – were allowed to move around all four homes despite allegations of child abuse.
Describing the failure as “a very dark period in the history of the Salvation Army”, Simeon Beckett said victims, many of whom were already vulnerable and grieving the loss of their parents, were forced to live in homes where the “authoritarian nature … widespread and excessive use of physical punishment created a climate of fear … and provided officers and employees who wanted to sexually abuse children sufficient cover to escape detection”.
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