AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net
Four Salvation Army Boys’ Homes will be the focus of the next hearings of the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse beginning on 28th January. Two of the Homes were in Queensland. Riverview (http://lewisblayse.net/2013/06/14/riverview-salvation-army-boys-home-or-unfinished-business/), near Ipswich, and Alkira, in Brisbane.
The word “Alkira” is aboriginal for “bright and sunny” which, needless to say was exactly what it was not.
While this author was in Alkira, another man, Wally McLeod, was in both of them, Riverview and Alkira, at about the same time as this author. Wally is one of the people hoping to give evidence at the hearings. He must be allowed to do so, and on his terms.
There is no point in the Commission arbitrarily choosing those who will have a say, or how.
Wally McLeod was 12 years old when, as an orphan, he was sent to the Alkira Salvation Army Home for Boys at Indooroopilly in western Brisbane in 1960. He says he was regularly caned and flogged. “Just talking at the meal table was enough to get you caned and sometimes flogged. Even talking after lights out that could earn you a flogging. I can’t say I had ever drawn blood but it has happened to other boys.” He describes it as a hell-hole run by so-called Christians.
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