Senior
defense staff knowingly allowed recruits as young as 15 to be humiliated
in initiation rites including being held down while boot polish was
smeared on their genitals during the 1960s at one naval base, the report
said.
During the 1970s and 1980s, teenage
apprentices at an army base were severely sexually and physically abused
by more senior apprentices after management failed to address a
bullying culture, the report added.
The
report was published by a Royal Commission into institutional responses
to child abuse, an inquiry which has held hearings for more than three
years into abuse at churches, schools and government agencies. It will
hand down its final list of recommendations to the government in
December.
Aside from abuse of new recruits, the
Australian Defence Force's (ADF) cadet program, which admits children
as young as 13, has recorded 154 incidents of abuse since 2001, the
inquiry has heard.
The Royal Commission found
the ADF Cadets training and policy manuals have had the wrong
information on the age of consent since at least 2000, which increased
the risk of child sexual abuse.
The ADF manuals
stated that the age of consent was 14 years, the inquiry said, when it
is over 16 in Australia, depending on the jurisdiction.
The
ADF said in an emailed response to Reuters that it has reformed its
youth safety policies and has zero tolerance for abuse. However, it did
not comment on the findings of abuse in the inquiry.
It now
subjects all defense staff including civilians and contractors who
interact with those under 18 to a Working With Children background
screening check, the ADF said.
Reporting by Alison Bevege; Editing by Byron Kaye & Shri Navaratnam
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