AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Helen Davidson
@heldavidson
Tuesday 17 March 2015
The Salvation Army failed to protect young boys from sexual, physical and psychological abuse by officers and employees in four of its homes over decades, the royal commission has found.
The findings in a report released on Tuesday follow public hearings into abuse at four Salvation Army boys’ homes in NSW and Queensland from 1956 until their closure. Documentary evidence from the homes at Indooroopilly, Gill, Riverview and Bexley suggested the abuse stretched back to the 1940s.
The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse examined how the Salvation Army responded to allegations and evidence it received of child abuse – sexual and otherwise – by officers and staff, including five named Salvation Army officers, and other resident boys.
The Salvation Army had earlier revealed that 115 of 157 complaints received by January 2014 related to sexual abuse of former residents of these four boys’ homes.
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