Bexley Boys’ Home

Bexley Boys' Home was a Salvation Army home that was located on the corner of Kingsland Road and Barnsbury Grove at Bexley North, NSW. It commenced as a Probationary Home for Boys in 1915, taking boys referred from the courts. It became a boys' home in 1931. It was renamed the Charles Kolling Memorial Boys’ Home in 1967 and closed in 1979.

In 2015, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Case Study No. 5, looked at allegations and incidents involving physical and child sexual abuse at Bexley Boy’s Home and concluded that it was horrific the level of abuse that many boys at the home had to endure. The abuse occurred in many extreme and perverse ways. For example;

• Boys at Bexley were often "rented out" to strangers who sexually abused them;

• Many victims of the abuse described being bashed with stakes of wood or being severely caned;

• Boys were often forced to have sex with other boys;

• Boys described having their testicles severely squeezed; and

• Boys being locked up in cages for days as part of a harsh regime of discipline.

The most prolific of the alleged child sex abusers at Bexley was a Captain Lawrence Wilson, who was allowed to run the boys' home at Bexley for years in the 1970s despite complaints about his behaviour in the preceding decade at other boys’ home run by the Salvation Army. According to the Royal Commission report, Captain Wilson enjoyed inflicting pain and physical abuse on the boys at Bexley, and it is also alleged that he forced boys to have sex with each other while he watched and sometimes participated.

Moody Law (formerly Artemis Legal) is currently representing clients who were detainees at Bexley Boys’ Home run by the Salvation Army.

We invite former detainees to contact us to tell us confidentially what information they may have, and we will explain what options are available to help with these cases.

Call us or complete the confidential enquiry form below.