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(
10.10.2003 )
Salvation
Army apologises to vicitms of abuse
AM
- Monday, 18 August , 2003 08:14:23
Reporter:
Nick Grimm
LINDA MOTTRAM: After the damaging
scandals in the Catholic and Anglican Churches over the abuse of
children, the Salvation Army has now issued an unreserved apology
to those who were victims of abuse while in its care.
Stories
of years of beatings, sexual molestation, and slave-labour type
work conditions, endured by some children in Salvation Army-run
institutions will be detailed tonight by the ABC's Four
Corners program.
Nick
Grimm reports.
EXTRACT FROM SALVATION ARMY AD: The
Salvation Army is a strong supporter of the scouting movement, as
a means of building healthy bodies as well as healthy minds –
ideals that are carried through to their schools for children from
broken homes. For these youngsters, school is home.
VICTIM
1: My number was 68 and every article of clothing or anything that
we owned was put, that number was put on.
VICTIM 2: I was
number 32. Now I'm sorry I'm going to get upset if I hold that for
too long.
NICK GRIMM: Merely a number – just one of
ways that children who were sent to church and State-run
institutions during the 1950s, 60s and 70s found themselves
dehumanised by the system.
For some it was just the start
of the brutality they were to experience.
VICTIM 3: Once he
came up and just punched me right in the side of the head and then
he dragged me and kicked me and punched me all the way to his
office.
VICTIM 4: Absolute mongrels. I can't think of other
words for them and these people call themselves
Christians.
VICTIM 5: And then he would ask me for like a
cup of hot Milo or some biscuits and lollies and of course I said
yes, and then once we got to his room he started fondling
me…
VICTIM 6: The older boys, I think they grew up
with that environment, so they thought it was perfectly normal.
They would prey on the younger boys.
NICK GRIMM: Tonight's
Four
Corners examines
some of the stories of the children who suffered mental, physical
and sexual abuse while living in facilities run by the Salvation
Army.
One such victim even admits it was an ordeal that
later turned him into a child sexual offender as well.
VICTIM
7: I remember I started enjoying some of the stuff that was
happening to me when I was 13. So my mind locked in on
13-year-olds and I couldn't get out of that. To be truthful, I
cannot look at a 13 or 14-year-old and not think, I wouldn't mind
that.
NICK GRIMM: Some victims have sought redress from the
Salvation Army, and a number of financial settlements have been
made.
Salvation Army Spokesman John Dalziel denies it's
hush money.
JOHN DALZIEL: No, we're not trying to muzzle
the victims. We are doing it for their own benefit. It is not
always a good thing to make public a private thing like that. No,
in some cases it does benefit them, and psychologists will
recommend that people do it. But, as I understand it, it is only
rarely that it is a good thing.
The financial amount varies
according to the client concerned, but dollars speak, and we don't
want that to be the criteria. We want the person to be seeking
healing.
NICK GRIMM: Later this year a Senate inquiry will
begin investigating the extent of the abuse meted out to former
wards of the State around Australia.
The Salvation Army
will be just one of the organisations that provided care
facilities who are expected to be asked to make submissions to the
inquiry.
But it's already made a frank admission that it
has betrayed the trust placed in it by Australians over
decades.
John Dalziel again.
JOHN DALZIEL: I feel
that the Salvation Army has betrayed its trust. We have extremely
high regard in Australia because of the superb work that's being
done by so many, both officers, paid staff and especially
volunteers and it's been built up over literally millions of
incidents over the years. And, in these cases we've just been
talking of today, that trust has been betrayed, and to the
Australian public now I apologise.
LINDA MOTTRAM: Salvation
Army Spokesman John Dalziel ending that report from Nick
Grimm.
And that full report can be seen on [Australian] ABC
TV's Four
Corners tonight.
[
Date of first publication on this Website: 10 October 2003 ]
(
10.10.2003 )
[
P r o g r a m...S u m m a r y
]
8.30
pm Monday 18 August
Read the
[television] program transcript
viewers comments
go to the following link:
http://abc.net.au/4corners/content/2003/20030818_homies/default.htm
They were the kids society
didn't want... orphaned or wrenched from broken families, then
shunted off to loveless places called - without irony –
"homes".
Over decades, tens of thousands of
Australian children were sent to state and charitable institutions
to be raised by complete strangers.
Some kids were
identified by numbers, not by their names. Chores were numbingly
routine. Discipline was harsh at best. Many endured extreme
cruelty - emotional, physical and sexual.
This is not
distant history, but the living present.
For these children
are today's middle aged Australians. They live daily with the
painful memories and scars of their upbringing…"the
bitter, lonely years", as one woman tells it.
Four
Corners explores how the childhood experience of "the
homies" continues to intensely affect their lives. In some
tragic cases the abuse appears to have bridged generations...
yesterday's sexually abused child becomes today's
paedophile.
Reporter Quentin McDermott finds it's not just
the homies who are yet to come to terms with their childhoods. To
this day, the people and the organisations that ran the homes
struggle to face the past.
"The Homies" was first
broadcast on [Australian] ABC TV on Monday 18 August, 2003.
[
Date of first publication on this Website: 10 October 2003 ]
(
10.10.2003 )
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
FOUR CORNERS
Investigative
TV journalism at its best
The Homies
Four Corners
explores how the childhood experience of "the homies"
continues to intensely affect their lives.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT, REPORTER:
Scattered around Australia are crumbling structures that once
housed the children society didn't want. These were children's
homes, run by the most respectable bodies in the land - States,
charities, churches, the Salvation Army. But for many older
Australians, the memories are intensely painful.
TRISH
PASCOE: The bitter, lonely years.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Why
do you call it that?
TRISH PASCOE: Because they were
bitter and lonely. That's the only thing I can use to describe it.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Some homes were well-run. In others,
abuse turned children into angry, sometimes criminal, adults.
MAN IN SHADOW: To be truthful, I cannot look at a 13- or
14-year-old and not think, "I wouldn't mind that".
BEVERLEY FITZGERALD, PRESIDENT, QLD CHILDREN SERVICES
TRIBUNAL: Its repercussions are enormous and they ripple out to
every facet of a person's life, and we have to start looking at
that.
JOHN DALZIEL, THE SALVATION ARMY: That trust has
been betrayed and to the Australian public now, I apologise.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Tonight on Four Corners, the secret
history of the extraordinary cruelty inflicted on children in
care.
NEWSREEL: The Salvation Army is a strong supporter
of the Scouting movement as a means of building healthy bodies and
minds - ideals that are carried through to their schools for
children from broken homes. For these youngsters, school is home.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, tens of
thousands of boys and girls from broken homes were dispatched to
institutions around Australia.
(PHOTOGRAPH LABELLED
'INDOOROOPILLY')
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: The damage some homes
caused is still there in the lives of middle-aged Australians like
Lewis Blayse.
LEWIS BLAYSE: It was out in the middle of
nowhere, which is where most of these places were - out in the
middle of nowhere.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Lewis Blayse went
into care in 1950 when he was five months old. His parents simply
couldn't cope.
LEWIS BLAYSE: My mother was about
fifth-generation Australian, uh...English, Welsh. Year 6
education, uh...schizophrenia. My father came out as a refugee
during World War II from Yugoslavia. The whole village was shot,
eventually. Uh...he became a canecutter. He had two years
education.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Lewis Blayse's fate was
typical of an age when large numbers of children were
institutionalised through no fault of their own, with no choice
where they went. Placing them in a home run by a church or charity
was seen as a safe, inexpensive option.
BEVERLEY
FITZGERALD: Children placed in care was usually an economic
motivation rather than a child development or child nurturing or
child protection, and that the state found often the cheapest way
to look after children.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Life in the
hundreds of institutions around Australia was ordered and
impersonal. At the age of nine, Lewis Blayse was sent to
Indooroopilly - a Salvation Army home in Queensland where boys
were referred to by numbers.
LEWIS BLAYSE: I was number
32. I'm sorry. I'm going to get upset if I hold that for too long.
Number 32.
WALLY McLEOD: I was sent to Indooroopilly,
supposedly for psychiatric treatment, of which I never got.
BARRY MASLEN: I was deemed a juvenile delinquent, and my
single mother at the time couldn't cope with me.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: Wally McLeod and Barry Maslen share memories of life in
care. Their stories of life at Indooroopilly tally with Lewis
Blayse's accounts.
WALLY McLEOD: You would get up, you
would have breakfast, you would collect a lunch wrapped in rag,
with dry mince, and you would be marched to school with an officer
in a line of three rows.
LEWIS BLAYSE: The lining up,
the...the whistles, the toilets, the lights-out time. You know, it
was just military and...and your bunks are sort of like, you know,
this far apart. No...not...no personal possessions. Spartan.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: The chores were as nothing compared
with the discipline handed out by the officers in charge.
LEWIS
BLAYSE: If you spoke in your own language, you got six cuts on
each hand. If you spoke during meals, six cuts on each hand. If
you stepped out of line, 'cause you had to line up everywhere, six
cuts on each hand.
BARRY MASLEN: I ran away from home with
another boy. And...the police caught us at Eumundi and drove us
back to the home. On the way back, they asked why we ran away, and
we told them and they said they would look into the matter, but I
don't think they ever did because nothing changed. When we got
back to the home... Um...we were caned 6 times on each hand - 6
times on the knuckles - and 18 times on the backside - bare...bare
behind.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Sometimes the pain endured was
as much psychological as physical. Lewis Blayse was one of the
cleverest boys at Indooroopilly, and he helped organise an escape
attempt. When the boys were caught, he had to watch while his
mates were brutally punished.
LEWIS BLAYSE: Boys had been
escaping, which is part of what you do in boys' homes, and when
they brought them back, you know, they were sort of stripped
naked, beaten with a bloody rubber hose over a vaulting horse, and
we all had to stand around and watch. You know, it was,
like...ridiculous. It just got worse and worse - you know, beating
people...you know.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: That's completely
unacceptable, isn't it?
JOHN DALZIEL: Absolutely. There is
no justification for it whatsoever in any circumstances and, even
at the time, the Salvation Army did not condone that.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: Lewis Blayse lives alone in a ramshackle house in the
country. His years in children's homes left him with
post-traumatic stress disorder. Like so many former state wards,
he's a loner. His marriage has broken down, even though his wife
Sylvia remains his greatest supporter. On one thing they both
agree - the emotional price paid by them all has been high.
SYLVIA BLAYSE: There's been a lot of screaming, a lot of
fighting, a lot of throwing glasses on the floor, a lot of
breaking furniture. That's as violent as we ever got, really. But
there's been so much anger in our family. That's really, I guess,
the main effect.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Has Lew ever tried to
harm himself?
SYLVIA BLAYSE: Yes, he's tried to suicide a
number of times.
LEWIS BLAYSE: If anybody is to be
compensated, I'd say it was my family, because they, you know...
You compensate a breadwinner if he's killed at work or something.
If they're psychologically killed...the family should still be
compensated.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: In the 1950s and 1960s in
Queensland, some boys like Wally McLeod, who the authorities
thought wouldn't benefit from a school education, were dispatched
instead to a Salvation Army training farm called Riverview. The
boys worked from 4:00 in the morning in the dairy, milking cows.
BARRY MASLEN: If you spoke while you were milking, we were
flogged with a stockwhip. The stockwhip was used exclusively in
the dairy.
WALLY McLEOD: I still have dreams of seeing
blood coming from boys' backsides, as we were...we were strap...we
were hit from the...we were naked from the waist down when we were
punished.
LENEEN FORDE, COMMISSIONER, FORDE INQUIRY: They
were maybe more brutal times, but certainly that was not
acceptable at any time. To horsewhip a child, for goodness' sakes,
no.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Leneen Forde is one of Australia's
foremost experts on the abuse of children in state institutions.
Four years ago, the former Queensland governor delivered a
landmark report into the State's institutional homes. Her
investigations came to be known as the Forde Inquiry.
LENEEN
FORDE: We had a job to do, and so we had to keep in control and...
But the staff on the inquiry - we were all affected by these
terrible stories that we heard, and all had the feeling that it
could have happened to any one of us or to anybody.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: Homes run by many institutions were criticised. One was
Riverview, which had a punitive regime.
WALLY McLEOD: All
boys would be marched into the recreation room. The boy or the
boys that were in trouble would be called out into the centre.
They would be made drop their trousers and underpants, bent over
with hands touching the toes and they would be given anything up
to 10 to 15 of the cane or the strap. And if you left that
position, you got extra.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: How would you
describe the officers who carried out these punishments?
WALLY
McLEOD: Absolute mongrels. I...I can't think of other words for
'em, and these people call themselves Christians.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: There are even more serious allegations. Barry Maslen
says he was sexually abused at Riverview.
BARRY MASLEN:
While this particular officer was on night duty, he used to come
into the dormitory and...he used to pick different boys, but when
he chose me, he'd sit beside the bed and he'd rub my leg,
eventually working it up, his hand up underneath my pyjama
trousers, and fondle my penis. And then he would ask me if I would
like a cup of hot Milo or some biscuits or lollies - which is
something that was never, ever given to us, and, of course, I said
yes. And then once we got to his room, he started fondling me
again and I was sodomised and I had oral sex performed on me. And
that's how I acquired the name of one of that particular officer's
bum boys.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Barry Maslen recalls that
there were four other boys who were liable to be abused whenever
the officer was on dormitory duty.
Did you talk about it
together?
BARRY MASLEN: Yes, we did.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: Did you talk about taking any action against him?
BARRY MASLEN: Well, we did, but...we were just frightened
of getting the retribution of...of being flogged.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: Was he a flogger?
BARRY MASLEN: Oh, yeah.
Terrible.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: The last occasion Barry
Maslen was abused was at Christmas time. Decades later, the
emotional damage done to him by the experience continued to cause
havoc.
BARRY MASLEN: One particular Christmas, my wife
said, "Why do you make Christmas so hard for us?" And I
couldn't tell her, and she said, "Well, either you tell me or
we're out of here." So I just wept and wept and wept and I
told her, 'cause I had it bottled up inside me for...for...nearly
40, 45 years - 40-odd years.
DR WAYNE CHAMLEY, BROKEN
RITES: They cannot hold down jobs, they have major problems with
alcohol, they are major users of public housing. Many are on the
streets. They trust no-one. They're the classic loners that we see
in society.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Lewis Blayse, Wally McLeod
and Barry Maslen have all taken their complaints to the Salvation
Army. None of them is satisfied with the outcome. Lewis Blayse
hasn't been compensated by the Salvation Army for the
psychological trauma which he says he suffered at Indooroopilly.
Wally McLeod was offered $5,000, rejected it, and eventually
accepted $20,000.
What did you feel about the fact that
they offered you $5,000 to start with?
WALLY McLEOD: It
was humiliation to the...humiliation to the very best. I was
devastated.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Barry Maslen lodged a
complaint five years ago. The Army's divisional commander, happy
that Maslen was now a born-again Christian, told him that the
blood of Jesus would cleanse him of his sense of dirtiness and
filthiness, and gave him a sincere apology. But when the complaint
was passed on to Sydney headquarters, the Salvation Army offered
him 10 sessions of counselling.
BARRY MASLEN: I think it
was an insult, to be quite honest.
JOHN DALZIEL: There's
first of all counselling that takes place so that we can work
through the issues, and we don't promise any more at that stage,
but as the counselling unfolds and other issues become evident,
then we offer help based on that. And if there have been expenses
in the past, we offer help with those expenses and, um...even to
the tune of legal expenses.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Shouldn't
the Salvation Army be making restitution?
JOHN DALZIEL:
Where we can make restitution, we have done, and there have been a
number of cases where we've done that...but we don't offer carte
blanche up front, a fee. That...that's an insult too. What we say
is, "We want to work with you on this process."
(PHOTOGRAPH LABELLED 'KALIMNA')
QUENTIN McDERMOTT:
It wasn't only home boys who were abused. In 1959, Trish Pascoe
arrived at a correctional facility for girls in care in Queensland
called Kalimna, which was also run by the Salvation Army. Trish
Pascoe was already traumatised. Three younger sisters had died at
a very young age, both parents were alcoholics, and her father had
been abusing her for years.
TRISH PASCOE: From the time I
was about 11, the abuse got really bad for a year - worse than it
ever been when I was a little younger, and I used to go out Friday
night and Saturday night when he was drunk and sit around in parks
and down by the river and stuff like that, waiting for him to go
to sleep. And the police picked me up one night and said what am I
doing sitting there? Of course, I wouldn't tell 'em. Then, the
next day they said, "You're going to court," and I said,
"What have I done?" and they said, "You know what
you've done." And I thought they meant...what I'd done.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: So, Trish, let me just ask you this -
so you thought you were being punished for what your father had
done to you?
TRISH PASCOE: (Tearfully) Yes.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: As soon as Trish Pascoe arrived at Kalimna, she was put
into solitary confinement.
TRISH PASCOE: I was locked up
in a tiny little room. Well, I thought it was two weeks - it
might've been a bit less, but I thought it was around about two
weeks.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Why did they lock you up?
TRISH PASCOE: Well, when I asked her why she was locking
me up, she said so I'd know what it was like and I wouldn't play
up or do anything wrong.
BEVERLEY FITZGERALD: A child
comes into an institution and it's almost like an orientation
session - "This is how we do business here. You are
powerless, we are in authority, you will now knuckle down and stop
this wickedness and become a good child."
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: For someone who's been abused at home, who's run away
from home, who's picked up by the police, is then sent to Kalimna,
locked up as soon as she arrives - isn't that a profoundly
damaging thing to do to her?
JOHN DALZIEL: I think, if
it's done in the way you describe, it would be. I would hope it
was never done like that, but if it was, then the Salvation Army
can only offer apologies to girls that suffered that.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: Veronica Girle shared Trish Pascoe's experience of
solitary confinement. In her case, she says, she was locked up for
months because she wouldn't own up to stealing two salt shakers
which were found in her locker.
VERONICA GIRLE: It was a
pitch-dark room the size of an average bedroom with a mattress on
the floor, no potty, no water, dark - very dark. They'd bring a
tray in three times a day, and those three times a day, you were
marched out to the toilet, which was just around the corner. One
minute to have a...go to the toilet, four minutes, like, for your
shower. Of course, coming out of a dark room only three times a
day after five and a half months, you know, you go pretty crazy,
which I did do.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: You're telling me you
spent five and a half months...?
VERONICA GIRLE: Almost
five and a half months.
JOHN DALZIEL: I could only imagine
that it was done as a punishment rather than as a treatment.
Doesn't justify it. I'm just saying that's the only reason it
would've happened.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Veronica Girle and
other women from Kalimna told the Forde Inquiry about the long and
arduous hours spent working in the laundry.
VERONICA
GIRLE: We had to iron starched...very stiff, starched uniforms,
and they were really stiff. They had to rattle when they were
finished ironing, and they had to have no creases, and you had to
do so many a day.
TRISH PASCOE: We just ironed from the
time we got there in the morning till it was time to finish in the
afternoon.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: How many hours?
TRISH
PASCOE: Oh, at least eight and a half.
DR WAYNE CHAMLEY:
Children were put into a situation where they were doing unpaid
work 30, 40 hours a week. They were supposed to be getting an
education. They were not getting any education at all. And these
child slaves were just given nothing and at 18 years of age, shown
the door - "Out you go, we've got someone else to replace you
in the factory or the laundry or out on the farm."
JOHN
DALZIEL: The real purpose of that laundry was as part of that
custodial sentence that, um...it was more or less expected that
the Salvation Army would implement by the State Government.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Were the girls who worked in the
laundry paid?
JOHN DALZIEL: No, they weren't.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: Were the boys working on the farm paid?
JOHN
DALZIEL: No, they weren't.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: After the
Forde Inquiry, a group of former Kalimna residents lodged
complaints with the Salvation Army. The Army didn't accept
Veronica Girle's account of her solitary confinement, but it gave
her, and several others, ex gratia payments of $10,000 - with
secrecy clauses attached.
VERONICA GIRLE: To me, it wasn't
the money. I wasn't after the money. It was the fact that they
should come clean and say, "OK, we did this to these kids."
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: So what did you do next?
VERONICA
GIRLE: Well, when they wrote to me and told me they'd talk to me
in town, um, I did accept compensation - 'hush money', as I will
call it - to be quiet.
JOHN DALZIEL: The Salvation Army is
not into hush money at all.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: But the
effect of it is to stop them, some of them, talking about those
stories.
JOHN DALZIEL: Well, we've never suggested they
can't talk about the stories. We've just suggested that we would
like them to keep confidential the payments that were made to
them, that's all.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: In the 1950s, 1960s
and 1970s, the Salvation Army took charge of 30,000 children in 35
homes around Australia, and it wasn't alone in keeping what went
on inside those homes secret.
JOHN CLEARY, AUTHOR,
'SALVO!': The Army were like all the churches and government
institutions. I mean, you were in a society which was in denial
about sexuality, um, sexuality was repressed. Kids didn't talk
about it, adults didn't talk about it. "Children should be
seen and not heard." I mean, I have no doubt that, um, you
know...that you're talking about a period in which repression
was...was the initial instinct.
JOHN DALZIEL: Especially
amongst male officers, there was this feeling that tough love was
the best love that could be given because it allowed, uh, the
young boys to experience for the first time something that was
consistent in their lives. There's no getting round it - that
there were a significant number of officers who were tough, but
they were never authorised to use corporal punishment.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: Well, how did they get away with it?
JOHN
DALZIEL: Often because the person in charge either did it
themselves or turned a blind eye to it.
(PHOTOGRAPH
LABELLED 'BEXLEY')
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: But does the
Salvation Army have more to answer for than its fair share of
horror stories from the Forde Inquiry? In NSW, Kevin Marshall
entered the Salvation Army's Bexley Boys' Home when he was six,
because his mother couldn't look after him. A few months later,
she committed suicide.
KEVIN MARSHALL: I was called into
the chapel one morning and told that my mother was dead, um,
wasn't coming back to see me. I broke into tears - quite
traumatic, obviously. After a while, I was told just to shut up
and get on with life, and that was it. Nobody told me what
happened to my mother, where she was buried, what arrangements
were made for her, nothing. It took me, I think, years. It wasn't
until the mid-'80s I managed to track down where her remains were
cremated and found out what happened to her.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: As was the custom in Queensland's Salvation Army homes,
life at Bexley was strictly regimented.
KEVIN MARSHALL:
The showers were, now I think back, I think, extremely bizarre.
You'd basically line up in front of your locker, on command, you
would strip down to completely naked and then you would file out
into the bathroom. Basically you'd line up naked under the guise
of one or two Salvation Army personnel and go through a footbath,
and then stand in line and go through a shower with seven other
boys.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: This man, who doesn't want to be
identified, spent ten and a half years at Bexley. He was left
there by his mother when he was five.
MAN IN SHADOW: We
were each allocated a number from the day we went in, and every
article of clothing or anything that we owned was put...that
number was put on.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: What was your
number?
MAN IN SHADOW: My number was 68.
(FOOTAGE
OF ANOTHER MAN WORKING IN WORKSHOP)
QUENTIN McDERMOTT:
This man, too, doesn't wish to be identified. At the age of 10, he
was living rough with his older sister and 9-year-old brother
after being abandoned in Sydney by their mother. He was picked up
by the police, and the two boys were separated from their sister
and taken to Bexley, where, he says, his younger brother was raped
by an older boy on his first night.
SECOND MAN IN SHADOW:
The second night I was there, I was bashed by, um...by one of the
officers there. And, um, yeah, welcome to the real world.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Were the officers physically violent
towards you?
KEVIN MARSHALL: They were. Yes, they were.
Um...again, looking at it as an adult, I suppose it's probably the
quickest way of dealing with boys who don't respond to words,
but... Yeah, they were. You were bashed, you were hit, and at an
early age. I remember being hit about the head, bashed on the arms
and the face as well when I was six.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT:
According to all three men, this kind of cruelty was typical of
officers each of them can vividly remember. One in particular
stands out - Captain Lawrence Wilson.
MAN IN SHADOW: I had
a reputation of having a very fiery tongue, and Wilson didn't like
people being called names, so he asked one of the other boys who
the main name-caller was, and he told him it was me. And at that
stage I hadn't done anything wrong, but I was called up to the
office and I was thrashed from head to toe with a cane, only
because this boy had said I was the main name-caller.
SECOND
MAN IN SHADOW: I was in the dining room and I laughed, and he told
me to stop laughing and I couldn't. And then, um, eventually he
come up and just punched me right in the side of the head. I fell
to the ground. Then he dragged me, kicked me and punched me all
the way to his office, caned me about 18, 20 times, threw me out
in the corridor and told me to go.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT:
Bexley Boys' Home in the 1970s was presented as a happy, caring
environment. But as in the Queensland homes, the abuse there
wasn't only physical. Kevin Marshall remembers a parade of men and
older boys preying on the younger children.
KEVIN
MARSHALL: When I was younger, some of the people that'd come in
would either try to target you or get you into a room between the
two dormitories or in the laundry. Some older boys grew up with
that environment so they thought preying on younger boys was
normal.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: What did they do to you?
KEVIN MARSHALL: Um...tried to sodomise me. Tried to make
me perform oral sex on them, fondle my genitals, have me fondle
their genitals. There were also places where, if you were out of
the home - a camp or somewhere - people there would try doing
things.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: The most serious allegations
are that the home's senior officer in 1974, Captain Wilson, was
himself responsible for sexual abuse. Four Corners has spoken to
one of Wilson's alleged victims who wants to move on with his
life, but allowed us to talk to his psychologist - a man who, in
his early career, had extensive experience with kids needing care
from the state.
MARK BLOWS, PSYCHOLOGIST: When the
children were sent to a Salvation Army home, we used to say,
"Thank God for the Salvos," because we thought they were
going to be treated better than in the state homes. I was wrong.
This story really shocked me. Very soon after he went to that
place at a young and tender age, under the age of eight, he was
actually put across a desk... He described the desk to me, the
grains of the desk. And an attempt was made to penetrate him - to
rape him. Before that, he'd received a caning, and then he was
succoured and...as if comforted...then placed across the desk. And
that sort of thing happened a number of times, and it always
happened in that very sadistic context.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT:
Who raped him?
MARK BLOWS: The...man who was in charge of
the Salvation Army home.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Captain
Wilson?
MARK BLOWS: Yes.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: That
was his story?
MARK BLOWS: That Captain Lawrence Wilson,
yes.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Do you believe him?
MARK
BLOWS: Yes, yes, I believed him. We spent three years together
checking and rechecking and going through this, and unravelling
the effects of these experiences.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: The
man who made these allegations would eventually be paid a
substantial sum by the Salvation Army as part of a secret
settlement. More than 20 years after these events, Captain Wilson
was arrested and charged with a number of sexual offences relating
to his time at Bexley. In an interview with detectives, Wilson
described himself as a 'disciplinarian', but vehemently denied any
sexual assaults. At his trial, the men who complained about Wilson
were cross-examined, with the suggestion they were colluding in
their stories.
What did it feel like to be told you were
making it up, or not remembering it properly or lying?
KEVIN
MARSHALL: Oh... (Sighs) ..rather comical, really. You know, it's
par for the course. It's what you were told as a kid - "You
must be lying. This doesn't happen. These are good people."
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Is it all true?
KEVIN MARSHALL:
It is all true. It is all true.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: While
the criminal case took its course, lawyers representing three old
Bexley boys prepared to sue Wilson and the Salvation Army for
damages in the civil courts. The Salvation Army's lawyers had
already negotiated a secret deal with the witness who had told his
story to psychologist Mark Blows - paying him a substantial sum.
After the payment was made, Wilson was acquitted by the jury in
his criminal trial, and walked free.
MAN IN SHADOW: I
believed in the...the justice system that unless a person is 100%
guilty or found guilty, then they're innocent until proven, only
for the fact that as kids, we were guilty until proven innocent.
And I'm still disappointed in the verdict, but that was the...the
jury's decision and I just got on with life.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: Now, the men we've interviewed from Bexley say they
were beaten and bashed by officers in the home. Do you accept that
this did take place?
JOHN DALZIEL: Yes, we do.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: Some of the men say they were sexually abused by older
boys, by volunteers and even by the captain who was in charge. Do
you accept that this abuse took place?
JOHN DALZIEL: We
accept that it's very likely it did, but we have no proof that it
did.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: When Captain Wilson came to trial,
what was the Salvation Army's attitude?
JOHN DALZIEL:
That, uh...we would not support him in any way, and that if
victims needed support, we would help them.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: Did you expect Captain Wilson to be acquitted?
JOHN
DALZIEL: No, we didn't.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: What was your
reaction when he was?
JOHN DALZIEL: Um...we were
surprised.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Dealing with these matters
in court a quarter-century later highlighted the difficulty former
home boys and girls face in bringing alleged abusers to justice.
LENEEN FORDE: The trouble is the people that were abused
have a hard time in court. They're not really first-class
witnesses in most cases and, er...and the juries have a doubt as
to whether they should really convict the person, and that's very
unfortunate.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Following Wilson's
acquittal, the Salvation Army's lawyers strongly resisted the
civil claims of the three Bexley men who had not yet been
compensated, arguing that the statute of limitations would prevent
them from pursuing the action for damages.
JOHN DALZIEL:
That's the first time I've heard that, and they should not have
said it, because, as I've previously stated, we have no statute of
limitations applying to victims of the Salvation Army.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: Well, your lawyers have quoted the statute of
limitations in defence of the Salvation Army's position.
JOHN
DALZIEL: Well, the Salvation Army makes it clear that we will
never close the book on anyone that has gone through our care as
long as they live, and I believe we've demonstrated that with the
people that we've been helping.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Seeing
the statute of limitations as a major obstacle, the three men
agreed to settle the case.
How much did they pay you?
MAN IN SHADOW: They paid me $85,000.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: The practice of secret payments to former inmates
wasn't new to the Salvation Army. In 1966, Kerry Gormley was in
care in a cottage in a Salvation Army home in Western Australia.
One of the cottage parents was Alan Smith. Kerry Gormley remembers
one morning in particular.
KERRY GORMLEY: He came early in
the morning to wake me up and he said, "Well, look, you don't
have to get up just yet. You can get up later." And he sat on
the bed and he was patting my hand, and, um, his erection was
actually showing out of his pyjamas, and he was trying to get my
hand to...touch him, and, at that time, I...I didn't want that. I
fought back. Um, you know, there was times when he used to come
back in the evenings and...and literally sodomise me.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: 30 years later, Alan Smith, lying low in Tasmania, was
arrested and flown back to Perth to face the courts. The Salvation
Army had already dismissed him back in 1974 after he confessed to
abusing three young men. Astonishingly, they had then rehired him
in 1979.
How on earth can you justify that?
JOHN
DALZIEL: Now...I can't. Though you must understand that the
Salvation Army believes in, um, rehabilitation...for all people,
so the way in which it would have been justified by the Salvation
Army leaders at that time is that - one, he has confessed and
admitted all his faults, he has stated he will never commit them
again, and the Salvation Army will make sure that he's never, ever
employed in any way near children or even in the same State in
which the events took place. Now, I'm not justifying it. It
shouldn't have been done and was wrong, but that is the way in
which it was justified at the time.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT:
Because he pleaded guilty, Smith was sentenced without the need
for a trial. As in New South Wales, several financial settlements
were negotiated and the victims were asked to sign confidentiality
agreements.
Why do you think they did that?
KERRY
GORMLEY: To stop us from talking - like I am now to you.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: Are you trying to muzzle the victims?
JOHN
DALZIEL: No, we're not trying to muzzle the victims. We are doing
it for their own benefit. It is not always a good thing to make
public a private thing like that. Now, in some cases it does
benefit them and psychologists will recommend that people do it,
but as I understand it, it is only rarely that it is a good thing.
Um...the financial amount varies according to the client
concerned, but dollars speak, and we don't want that to be the
criteria. We want the person to be seeking healing.
(QUENTIN
McDERMOTT AND KEVIN MARSHALL WALK TOWARDS THE GATE AT BEXLEY)
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Kevin, you must have very mixed
emotions indeed coming back here.
KEVIN MARSHALL: Very
strong emotions, very stressful. As a matter of fact, I've jumped
out of aeroplanes at night-time, and that's less stressful than
coming back here today.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: What about
leaving?
KEVIN MARSHALL: That feels good. Walking back
from here and getting towards the gate, I can feel the tension
leaving my body - heavy pressure off my chest and shoulders.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: The damage done in these homes lives
on.
KEVIN MARSHALL: A particularly harrowing case, just
recently, when, unfortunately, my wife and I lost our little boy.
He died, and when we had the ceremony, the thing that went through
my head was, apart from looking after my wife, was that there are
people who will laugh at me or hurt me because I'm at a very low
point in my life now. And that's what I felt. Now sitting here,
thinking about it dispassionately, I can say, "That's
ridiculous. That won't happen." But at the time, the emotions
going through my body, I reverted back to being younger. And I
think, surely, being told, you know, "Look, shut up. Your
mother's dead. So what?" has something to do with that.
SECOND MAN IN SHADOW: It affects me sleeping, affects my
work. I always take jobs where I'm on my own, not with other
people. I've lost a lot of jobs because of my aggression, because
of all this. And...you have nightmares from it, but you live with
it every day.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: There's another, even
darker, consequence of abuse. This man says he started being
abused by older boys at Bexley when he was nine, and that, later
on, Captain Wilson abused him, under the gaze of giving him a
medical examination. Eventually he himself started abusing the
younger boys.
MAN IN SHADOW: I remember I started enjoying
some of the stuff that was happening to me when I was 13. So my
mind locked in on 13-year-olds and I couldn't get out of
that...that thought.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Did that ever
change?
MAN IN SHADOW: No.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: It
hasn't changed to this day?
MAN IN SHADOW: To be truthful,
I cannot look at a 13- or 14-year-old and not think, "I
wouldn't mind that."
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: When he left
Bexley, he continued his association with the Salvation Army.
MAN IN SHADOW: I ran away to Adelaide and, not knowing
where to turn, I turned to the Salvation Army, because that was
all I knew.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: In 1994, he was arrested
for sexually assaulting several young adolescents and sent to jail
for four and a half years, where he underwent a sexual offenders'
therapy program.
MAN IN SHADOW: I have to stay away from
what's called my danger points.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: What
are your danger points?
MAN IN SHADOW: Being anywhere
around 13-year-olds and 14-year-olds.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT:
Do you recognise now that what you did was wrong?
MAN IN
SHADOW: Oh, shit, yes!
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Are you sorry
you did it?
MAN IN SHADOW: Yes, I am. I wish I could turn
back...back time, but you just can't do it.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: This man says he was sexually abused and he then became
himself an abuser. Do you, does the Salvation Army, accept some
responsibility for that?
JOHN DALZIEL: It certainly
accepts the fact that people who are abused become abusers.
Whether they become sexual abusers is not something on which we
have any resolution at the moment, but we do know that abused
people become abusers, yes.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Well, he
became an abuser. He became a sexual abuser.
JOHN DALZIEL:
Yes.
QUENTIN McDERMOTT: Do you accept some responsibility
for that?
JOHN DALZIEL: Yes, we do.
QUENTIN
McDERMOTT: Later this year, a Senate inquiry will start hearing
the stories of former state wards from around Australia. The
Salvation Army will be just one of the bodies invited to answer
for the way they treated children in their care.
How do
you feel for these men and women who were abused?
JOHN
DALZIEL: I feel that the Salvation Army has betrayed its trust. We
have extremely high regard in Australia because of the superb work
that's been done by so many, uh...both officers, paid staff, and
especially volunteers. And it's been built up over literally
millions of incidents over the years, and in these cases that
we've just been talking of today, that trust has been betrayed.
And to the Australian public now, I apologise.
LENEEN
FORDE: Not just the Salvation Army - other church groups too, you
know, they...they have to realise that there's a...it's a moral
issue for them. I mean, what would Christ have done?
For
more information, expert opinions, and viewers' comments go to the
following link:
http://abc.net.au/4corners/content/2003/20030818_homies/default.htm
[
Date of first publication on this Website: 10 October 2003 ]
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