Boys Caged, Tethered, Raped by Salvation Army Officers and Older Boys at Children's Homes

By Emily Bourke
ABC - PM
January 29, 2014

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2013/s3934320.htm

[with audio]

MARK COLVIN: The Child Abuse Royal Commission has heard evidence about how a vicious bullying culture at Salvation Army boys' homes was passed from adults to children: so younger children were assaulted by older boys as well as those in charge.

Several former residents have told how they were sexually assaulted but were too ashamed or too afraid to speak out because they weren't believed - or worse, they were physically and sexually abused by Salvation Army officers.

The inquiry also heard that one boy was tethered to a brick, thrown into a pool and was then forced under the water by a Salvation Army captain. Another boy was caged in a cell on a veranda for weeks at a time.

And a warning: some of the detail and language contained in this story may be distressing.

Emily Bourke reports.

EMILY BOURKE: At the Salvation Army boys' homes in Indooroopilly and Riverview, children were referred to by number, not name.

WALLY MCLEOD: My number was 14 at Indooroopilly, and 36 at Riverview.

EMILY BOURKE: Wally McLeod was among the boys whose clothes, shoes, and personal things were confiscated.

WALLY MCLEOD: I remember the day I was first placed in Indooroopilly. I went there with a bag full of clothes, and a small money box which was nearly full. The bag and the money box were both taken from me on that day and I never saw them again. My grandfather had given me a fountain pen and pencil set that I really cherished, and that was taken from me while I was at school. I never saw that again.

EMILY BOURKE: Boys were humiliated in punishment parades, and named and shamed during church sermons on Sundays.

Violence was a given: floggings with leather straps, stockwhips, and horse harnesses, canes with a split end ripped through skin and caused blood blisters.

WALLY MCLEOD: I was required by a Salvation Army officer at Riverview to remove all my clothing from the waist down, including my underpants, and to bend over and touch my toes in order to be hit repeatedly. On one occasion I counted 24 hits to my backside.

EMILY BOURKE: Accounts of night-time sexual abuse were detailed by the witness known as 'FP'.

FP: After the lights went out 'round seven o'clock every night, Lieutenant Spratt would come out of the room in the dark so no one would see what he was doing. Whenever I heard his door open, I thought to myself, “I hope he's not coming to my bed.” When I heard him go into someone else's bed I felt relieved that he had left me alone for the night.

I tried to explain to the new boys, when the Salvation Army officers were not watching me, to let them do what they wanted to do to you, because if you don't you're going to have to cop something that you don't want.

EMILY BOURKE: But FP also told the Royal Commission about daytime abuse from, not only Salvation Army officers charged with caring for the children, but from other older boys in the home.

FP: They were much older than I was and much stronger than I was.

SIMEON BECKETT: Did you ever tell any of the officers at Riverview about what had occurred?

FP: You'd have to be kidding wouldn't you? Tell them officers? No way in the bloody wide world! I'd get flogged for telling lies.

EMILY BOURKE: The late captain Victor Bennett has been identified by the Royal Commission as an alleged perpetrator of child abuse - both physical and sexual.

Counsel assisting Simeon Beckett guided witness ‘EE’ through evidence about his brother, who was tethered to a brick thrown in a pool.

EE: My brother would tell me Major Bennett used to push his head under the water. Well, he said he was tied to a brick, he was thrown in…

SIMEON BECKETT: All right, so who was it that pushed him into the pool?

EE: Well, Major Bennett threw him into the pool. Every time he got up he was pushed under water again.

EMILY BOURKE: But some of the most disturbing testimony was presented by the former resident known as 'ES'.

ES: There was a little piece on the end of the veranda, tall thing and it had a cage on it, with a cell on the end of it and a steel floor on the bottom of it.

SIMEON BECKETT: So he would punish you inside or outside that?

ES: He'd take you and kick the living shit out of you.

SIMEON BECKETT: So when he took you there, and you say 'kick the living shit out of you', what did he actually do?

ES: He just punched into like as if you were a man, you know, he'd give you a hiding like as if you were another man. Sometimes you got whacked with something, sometimes you got whatever, you know, or…

SIMEON BECKETT: Did it happen on a few occasions or on a lot of occasions?

ES: (Snort) Happened nearly every day for me.

SIMEON BECKETT: Were you locked in that cell at any stage?

ES: Yep, quite regularly.

SIMEON BECKETT: How long for?

ES: Sometimes a day, sometimes, you know, like a week, sometimes it was a couple of weeks.

SIMEON BECKETT: A couple of weeks?

ES: Sometimes, yeah.

EMILY BOURKE: The cage punishment was just one of many, as ES explained.

ES: One of the punishments I had was to cut Lantana down on the riverbank. And, anyway, this was where this other boy was that sort of started molesting us, and I went back up, but he was sort of like, Bennett's pet type thing.

SIMEON BECKETT: And you went and told Bennett about it?

ES: Yes

SIMEON BECKETT: And what did he say?

ES: He sexually molested me.

That only happened the once but another time I ran away from there, and because I soiled my trousers running along, you know, I was so scared and when I got back to there, he laid me on the ground and got a hose and turned it on full bore and stuck it in me backside and filled me up with water and all this water come rushing out and all the boys were standing around there laughing their heads off. You know, and he was encouraging them to laugh, you know.

EMILY BOURKE: 'ES' has told the inquiry he received no schooling at Riverview, and to this day, he can't read or write.

MARK COLVIN: Emily Bourke.