AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph
JANET FIFE-YEOMANS THE DAILY TELEGRAPH JUNE 24, 2014
THE Salvation Army has sacked an officer accused of being a notorious child abuser — six months after giving him a silver star award.
Major John McIver was dismissed last week and allegations against him, including raping a boy, have been referred to the police, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse was told yesterday.
The Salvation Army has also sacked a second officer, Lieutenant Colonel Colin Haggar, 25 years after he admitted sexually assaulting a girl aged eight. Mr Haggar was sacked after the incident but reinstated in 1993 with former Salvos chief of personnel Major Peter Farthing stating in the commission as late as April this year that sexually assaulting an eight-year-old girl did not make Mr Haggar a paedophile. There have been 19 Salvation Army officers named as perpetrators of abuse, counsel Kate Eastman told the commission in final submissions.
Mr McIver, who has denied all claims, was not suspended until January when the commission began hearing evidence he had sexually and physically abused boys from 1974 at the Akira Salvation Army home for boys at Indooroopilly in Brisbane.
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