AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
No evidence to support Salvation Army officer’s claim he confessed act of child sex abuse to police, royal commission told
April 15, 2014
Paul Bibby
Court Reporter
A senior Salvation Army officer who says he went to police to confess the sexual abuse he inflicted on a young girl but was told nothing could be done, has had serious doubt cast on his claims.
An investigator hired by the Salvos told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Monday that Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Haggar allegedly assaulted the girl three times, not once as the officer had claimed, and that there was no direct documentary evidence that the police confession ever took place.
The revelations came from a former detective, John Greville, who joined the Salvation Army’s professional standards office in January, and was charged with investigating Colonel Haggar, who had admitted to sexually abusing an eight-year-old girl on one occasion in the state’s central west in 1989.
Mr Greville told the commission on Monday that, upon taking up the job, he discovered that files in relation to Colonel Haggar were in chaos, and that it appeared the matter had never been investigated.
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