Salvos ‘brutalised’ children in care

AUSTRALIA
Sky News

The Salvation Army has been found to have failed to protect children from sexual and brutal physical abuse in four homes in NSW and Queensland for almost two decades.

And the Christian charity consistently moved officers alleged to have brutalised boys between the homes in Indooroopilly and Riverview in Queensland and Bexley and Gill in NSW, the royal commission into child sexual abuse has found.

The findings by commission were handed down by the federal government on Tuesday.

They chronicle a list of brutalities at the homes which closed down between 1977 and 1983. Among the 36 findings by the commission is that sexual abuse of the boys in the four homes was often accompanied by physical violence or the threat of physical violence and many boys were sexually abused by other boys.

In most cases, boys in the four homes who reported sexual abuse to the manager or other officer were punished, disbelieved, accused of lying or no action was taken, the commission found.

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