AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
February 4, 2014
Paul Bibby
Court Reporter
Boys living at a Queensland Salvation Army home in the 1970s were allegedly enticed into a paedophile ring run by a wealthy businessman who sexually abused them, and then flew them to the Sydney home of a ”top chef” who assaulted them again, the royal commission has heard.
One of the boys allegedly never came back. One of his friends reportedly said he had ended up ”at the bottom of Sydney Harbour”.
The revelations came from a now-retired Salvation Army officer who blew the whistle on the physical and sexual abuse inflicted on boys at the Indooroopilly boys home in Brisbane where he worked as a ”house parent” from 1972 to 1975.
The school is one of four in Queensland and NSW being examined as part of the commission’s investigations into abuse within the Salvation Army and its response.
The whistleblower, Major Clifford Randall, told the hearing boys would abscond from the home for days at a time and return with stories of participating in a child abuse racket in Brisbane and in Paddington in Sydney.
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