AUSTRALIA
The Guardian (UK)
Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Tuesday 28 January 2014
The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse heard on Tuesday how boys at one Salvation Army home ate grass and raw potatoes because they were so hungry.
Raymond Carlile, who was seven when he and his younger brother were sent to a Salvos home at Riverview in Queensland in the 1950s, also told the inquiry that children who had wet the bed were made to sleep on a veranda with just a lattice frame between them and the elements.
His brother, who had a kidney removed before he was sent to the home, endured the punishment. They were so hungry his brother ate grass.
“I tried to encourage him to eat the potatoes”, said Carlile, who recalled how he found raw potatoes stored under the veranda and ate them.
Carlile said he witnessed boys being caned until they bled. He said Salvation Army officer Lieutenant Laurence Wilson was the most brutal.
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