Salvation Army Abuse Survivors Call for States to Commit to Compensation

By Christopher Knaus
The Guardian
December 6, 2016

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/dec/07/salvation-army-abuse-survivors-call-for-states-to-commit-to-compensation

Vlad Selakovic, a survivor of abuse at the Salvation Army-run Bayswater boys’ home in Victoria, leads a protest outside the child abuse royal commission in Sydney on Wednesday. Photograph: Christopher Knaus for the Guardian

Survivors of the Salvation Army’s notoriously cruel children’s homes protested outside the royal commission on Wednesday, calling for states, territories and institutions to sign up to the national redress scheme.

The Salvation Army is before the royal commission for the final time this week, following earlier hearings examining children’s homes in Eden Park, Box Hill, Bayswater and Nedlands between the second world war and 1990; and Gill, Bexley, Riverview and Indooroopilly between 1993 and 2014.

The commission has heard harrowing stories of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse in the homes, and that a culture of fear made children too scared to report or resist their mistreatment.

Some children were threatened with physical harm when they came forward, and the reports of others were simply ignored, the royal commission heard.

Salvation Army leaders, including national commander Floyd Tidd, will on Wednesday be called to give updated evidence on the steps taken to protect children and improve the organisation’s handling of complaints.

Members of the Care Leavers Australasia Network (Clan) were waiting for the army leadership outside the royal commission hearing room in Sydney.

One Salvation Army abuse survivor, Vlad Selakovic, told Guardian Australia he was there to make sure the truth was told.

Selakovic was sent to Bayswater boys’ home in Victoria for several years in the early 1970s.

He was given a number, 89758, and constantly told he was worthless. That, he said, sealed his fate, and he “graduated” from the home to other youth institutions, and then to jail.

“Being belittled and degraded and put down and consistently told you were worthless and were never going to amount to much, because you were so young, you believed it,” Selakovic said. “Not only did you believe it, but you lived it.”

The group is calling for all states, territories, institutions and charities to opt in to the federal government’s national redress scheme, which would compensate survivors.

Selakovic, who was recently made the group’s president, said he was sceptical about the Salvation Army’s claims that it truly supported the national redress scheme.

Clan’s executive officer, Leonie Sheedy, called on state governments to commit to the scheme, singling out Western Australia and South Australia.

“We were the states’ children, and they need to own up to their history, their child welfare history, and they need to contribute,” Sheedy said.

The royal commission hearing began at 10am on Wednesday. Counsel assisting Gail Furness, SC, said that the commission would hear that the Salvation Army’s eastern territory, one of the organisation’s two regional divisions, had reinvestigated a number of reports of abuse against former officers.

“As a result, eight retired officers have been dismissed from the Salvation Army and their names removed from the roll,” Furness said.

One officer resigned before he was dismissed, she said, and another died.

The eastern territory had taken steps to improve its child protection systems, she said.

It had reformed its professional standards office, formed a national professional standards council to develop uniform redress principles, set up a roundtable of independent experts to examine why the abuse had occurred, changed its policies and procedures for responding to reports, and brought in independent investigators to assess abuse claims.

The commission’s first witness was Tidd, and he is expected to be followed by Colonel Mark Campbell, who is in charge of the eastern territory.

Tidd has previously said he is supportive of a national redress scheme. He reiterated that support on Wednesday morning, and said he would soon meet with the federal government to discuss the scheme.

“The two territories are both committed to national redress, and continue to work to that end,” he said.

The Salvation Army plans to merge the two territories and create a nationally consistent response to child protection.