AUSTRALIA
The Australian
DAN BOX THE AUSTRALIAN FEBRUARY 05, 2014
SALVATION Army officers believed child victims of sex abuse were “money-grabbing” when they started to come forward during the late 1990s to describe their treatment in boys’ homes run by the Christian organisation.
Giving evidence yesterday to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Salvation Army major Marina Randall described the reaction to such allegations among other senior officers in 1999.
“There was this feeling that was expressed more by a sigh or a look or maybe even a side word or two that these complaints couldn’t have been real and that they were just attempts at money-grabbing,” she said. The commission is investigating the widespread physical and sexual abuse of children at four Salvation Army-run institutions in Queensland and NSW between 1957 and 1975.
Ms Randall and her husband worked at one of these homes, Indooroopilly in Brisbane, during the early ’70s and did report mistreatment by some of the staff, the commission heard.
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