AUSTRALIA
The West Australian
ANNETTE BLACKWELL
April 18, 2014
The appeal of the red shield will have lost its aura of quaint goodness after the second public hearing into how the Salvation Army treated victims of abuse.
It was not only the stories of stomach-churning child abuse that happened years ago that stopped Australia in its tracks this time.
What the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse laid bare over the past three weeks is a 19th century Christian charity struggling to realise it has to come into the 20th, never mind the 21st century.
“They just don’t get it,” said Leonie Sheedy, co-founder of Care Leavers Australia Network.
Sheedy and the members of her organisation have been at the Sydney hearings to support the men and women who had sad, sad childhoods in Salvation Army homes.
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