AUSTRALIA
The Australian
DAN BOX THE AUSTRALIAN JANUARY 29, 2014
A SALVATION Army captain raped young children in his care, sent boys to other adults’ homes to be sexually assaulted, and oversaw a children’s home where members of the public entered the dormitories at night to commit further abuse.
The man, Lawrence Wilson, was one of five Salvation Army officers who allegedly abused dozens of boys at four children’s homes in Queensland and NSW, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard yesterday.
The five worked together or succeeded one another at the homes between 1957 and 1975, the commission heard, with Wilson on at least one occasion allegedly helping one of the others move between states to avoid jail.
Many of the children they allegedly abused had been abandoned or taken from their parents for their own protection before being sent to the homes, where they often went hungry and shoeless, and were subjected to routine cruelty, the commission heard.
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