Tied by his ankles and suspended down a well because Salvation Army officers at the boys home thought he was trying to escape.
Why you may ask, would anyone want to “escape” from the Salvation Army? Well as it turns out, it seems to be that these boys home were not places of safety, but places of rape, brutal beatings and torture.
Between the late 1950s and 1977, these homes saw some of the worst atrocities you could imagine for young boys.
Beatings with straps, canes and planks until children bled. Boys chained to a tree by their necks. One officer, Mr Wilson raped boys, forced them to have sex with one another, flogged them and threatened them with further punishment if they disclosed their treatment to anyone. They would also send boys who were under their care in the homes, to the homes of adults to be sexually assaulted.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse began its investigation at a public hearing in Sydney on Tuesday into what happened at those homes - the Alkira Home for Boys at Indooroopilly and the Endeavour Training Farm at Riverview, both in Queensland, as well as the Bexley Boys Home in Sydney and the Gill Memorial Home in Goulburn, NSW.
The worst offender, Mr Wilson has since passed away, as has Victor Bennett.
Russell Walker, John McIver, Donald Schultz need to be brought to book and punished for these hideous crimes. Shockingly, John McIver, is still an officer in the Salvation Army.
Now the Salvation Army is a wonderful establishment, but that doesn’t mean that they can get away with turning a blind eye to this abuse. John McIver and the rest of the living abusers must be fired, or at the very least suspended until this investigation has been concluded. We love you Salvation Army, but we cannot accept that these men are still officers in your ranks. We demand you take action against them while this investigation is running.
