AUSTRALIA
Sky News
People who sexually abuse children are not all paedophiles and the Salvation Army would dispute having one in their ranks, a senior official at the church says.
Its former secretary for personnel, Major Peter Farthing, on Tuesday also told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse he did not launch an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse of two women because such inquiries were not ‘second nature’ to him.
The commission has heard that former Salvation Army officer Colin Haggar admitted abusing an eight-year-old girl in a central western NSW town in 1989.
But this did not necessarily make him a pedophile, Mr Farthing said.
‘My understanding is that a pedophile is somebody whose primary sexual orientation is towards children or adolescents, and not all offenders are paedophiles,’ Mr Farthing told the commission.
‘Some people offend in a kind of crime of opportunity – a situational crime.
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