AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
Rachel Browne
Social Affairs Reporter
The Salvation Army has denied that sexual abuse was widespread in the organisation, despite more than 100 survivors coming forward with horrendous tales of suffering allegedly endured at the hands of officers.
Kate Eastman, SC, the lawyer representing the Salvation Army, asked the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse not to make a finding of widespread sexual abuse within the organisation at a submissions hearing on Monday.
She said that two officers had been dismissed over abuse claims, including Major John McIver, who was sacked last week. Mr McIver has also been referred to the police over allegations he physically and sexually abused boys in two Salvation Army homes in the 1960s and ’70s.
Colin Haggar, the officer who attempted to shrug off his sexual assault of an eight-year-old girl in the 1980s by saying, “It wasn’t that serious … I only fingered her”, has also been dismissed.
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