AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun
THE Salvation Army had no procedures or policies to deal with allegations of child sexual abuse when it started to receive a growing volume of claims in the 1990s, a royal commission has heard.
THE situation was “all new to the organisation”, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse was told in Adelaide on Tuesday.
“Remember, we didn’t really know how to handle this,” former Salvation Army employee relations director Graham Sapwell said.
The commission heard how the army first sought legal advice in 1994 but did not take action to put a policy in place until 1997.
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