AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
By JOANNE McCARTHY Sept. 22, 2013
AN ‘‘organised ring’’ of paedophiles, believed to include Anglican and Catholic clergy, used a Sunday afternoon ‘‘children’s Christian program’’ in the 1970s to sexually abuse boys at a church-run boys home in Wallsend.
‘‘These men just came, got the boys, used them, and put them back,’’ said a Hunter woman whose husband has told a private hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse that he was sexually assaulted by multiple offenders at Woodlands boys home.
The United Protestant Association has issued an unreserved apology for the ‘‘tragedy’’ of what occurred to child sex victims at Woodlands, where some of the smallest and youngest boys were targeted by the Sunday group.
‘‘From what the victims have told us, these men changed from week to week, suggesting a larger, organised ring,’’ UPA general manager Steve Walkerden and after-care support worker Graham Hercus said in a joint statement on Friday in response to Newcastle Herald questions.
‘‘We are aware of a group of men who did come to the home in the 1970s for a number of years on a Sunday afternoon, ostensibly to conduct a children’s Christian program, but who routinely took smaller boys into downstairs rooms in the building and abused them.’’
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