AUSTRALIA
The Australian
DAN BOX THE AUSTRALIAN APRIL 16, 2014
THE Salvation Army officer leading its response to the child abuse royal commission personally recommended another officer be reinstated by the church despite him having confessed to sexually abusing a young girl.
Major Peter Farthing told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse yesterday that he counselled the officer, Colin Haggar, for 18 months after he had admitted assaulting the eight-year-old.
In 1992, two years after Haggar was stood down by the Salvation Army, Mr Farthing wrote to the then-commissioner, saying “he has worked very hard to rectify his problems and has made excellent progress”. “Therefore I personally believe it would be appropriate for him to be re-accepted for officership,” the letter said.
Mr Farthing, the Salvation Army’s former secretary for personnel, who has handled dozens of other cases of child abuse, told the commission yesterday “at that stage there was still, I think, often an assumption that forgiveness was almost like an obligation”.
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