AUSTRALIA
ABC News
By Candice Marcus
The South Australian Government was aware of allegations of physical and sexual abuse at a Salvation Army-run boys’ home from as early as the 1940s, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard.
The commission is examining four Salvation Army-run children’s homes in South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia.
On the first day of the hearing the commission was given graphic accounts of former residents of the Eden Park Boys’ Home at Wistow in South Australia of the abuse they had endured there.
Current Families SA and Education Department deputy chief executive Etienne Scheepers has given evidence of his review of the Government’s historic knowledge of allegations at the home.
He said there was documentary evidence to show the state government’s Child Welfare and Public Relief Board knew about allegations of physical and sexual abuse at the home in the early 1940s.
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