AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Helen Davidson
Friday 3 October 2014
In 1972 a 16-year-old resident of a Sydney boys’ home was charged with buggery after he tried to report to his carers that he had been raped by a supervisor at work.
Peter Solway says he was forced by the home’s administrator to lie to the police and confess to what was then a crime, or be transferred to a notoriously violent detention facility in Tamworth.
As New South Wales moves to join Victoria in allowing people to have their convictions for homosexuality expunged, Solway’s story serves to show how the conviction is often only part of the story, and the bill only one step towards making amends for damaged lives. …
In October 1971, aged 15, Solway was charged with being “uncontrollable” and sent to the Wright house at the Church of England Charlton boys’ home in the Sydney suburb of Ashfield, living
At least two of the four Charlton homes are now believed to have been places of physical and sexual abuse of young boys, for which the governing body of the Sydney diocese of the Anglican church issued an official apology in 2004.
Last year, 73-year-old, Albert John Abel, was sentenced to three years and four months in prison for attacking a 12-year-old boy he abused over several years at the Charlton home in Glebe.
Solway tells Guardian Australia that soon after arriving at Ashfield he and other boys were taken by Charlton’s executive officer, Ray Menzies, on a camping trip to Sydney’s Blue Mountains. Solway says he witnessed Menzies sexually abusing a boy there.
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