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Allegations
of Abuse in Institutions |
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The Presbyterian Church
needs to practise more of the compassion and caring that it preaches and
willingly help expose any sexual abuse which may have occurred at a
Wellington children's home operating under its auspices, writes The
Marlborough Exprees in an editorial. To date, neither the
church nor Presbyterian Support has accepted any responsibility over the
allegations from at least 14 former residents of a Presbyterian Support
children's home in Berhampore that they were sexually abused during the 1950s
and 60s by the home's head of social services, Walter Lake. Police were about
to charge Lake, an OBE and justice of the peace, with multiple sex crimes
when he died in November last year. The church claims it
had no control over the home's management while the support group refused to
deal with the alleged victims if they hired a lawyer or went public with
their claims, both of which some complainants have now done after initial
approaches to the two organisations were rejected. Alleged victims claim
they told both the support group and the church of the abuse but neither
organisation adequately responded. Eventually they took their claims to
police who found such a strong similarity in a large number of the complaints
that they prepared to prosecute. One complainant was 13
when she was allegedly sexually assaulted by Lake. When she reported the
assault to a matron at the home, she says she was called a liar and sent to
bed. The same woman says she also alerted a senior Presbyterian Church
minister to the abuse but nothing happened. She laid a complaint with police
in 1985, but Lake denied the allegations and was not prosecuted. She continued her
battle and in 2001 took her allegations to Presbyterian Support, being told
be them to lay a complaint with police. She did, but once again there was
insufficient evidence for police to act. Persevering, she made
her allegations public last year, generating more than a dozen similar
complaints against Lake from other former home residents. Fourteen formal
complaints were made against Lake and during interviews police found
sufficient similarities to start preparing a case for prosecution. The Presbyterian Church
has tried to disassociate itself from the allegations by claiming the
children's home was not under its control, while the Presbyterian Support
group claims it's not liable for the alleged crimes either. Until now ? when
it is in the public spotlight ? neither group has shown a willingness to
fully investigate and address the allegations. Lake is dead but the
claims will not go away and both the church and support group must address
them. The two organisations may be separate legal entities, sharing a common
heritage, but in the minds of many members of the public they are
inextricably linked, aside from the fact that the church helped appoint the
board which ran the children's home. Evidence from one complainant is also
that a minister of the church was made aware of the alleged abuse, making it
a church responsibility from that moment on. That neither the church
nor Presbyterian Support have acted to determine the truth of the allegations
is a shocking indictment on supposedly Christian organisations, more
concerned about protecting reputations than caring for their flock. |
