A Berkeley aged care nurse has faced court accused of the historic sexual abuse of five boys while he was the leader of a local church youth group in the 1970s.
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Warwick Stevenson, now 64, was in his early 20s when he and another leader ran an Illawarra branch of the Scouts-style Church of England Boys’ Society (CEBS) in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The society was established by the Anglican Church in Victoria in 1914 to focus on the spiritual, social and physical development of its members, who were aged between 6 and 16.
However, five former members of the Illawarra club, now aged in their 50s, have claimed Stevenson sexually molested them as children under the guise of teaching them First Aid training.
Court documents reveal Stevenson is accused of taking each of the boys into a room separately and removing their shorts and underwear so they could practice bandaging the groin area.
“Imagine you were bush walking and you tripped over and injured yourself in the balls,” one of the men recalled Stevenson asking him as they sat alone of the room with the door closed.
“I will show you how to bandage yourself.”
The man told police Stevenson then wrapped bandages around his genitals, touching them as he went. He allegedly then had the boy practice on him.
The same man told police he left the club shortly afterwards and didn’t see Stevenson again until running into him and his mother at the Woonona Bulli RSL more than a decade later.
The man said he confronted Stevenson, telling him “I want you to admit to me what you did to me when I was a kid.”
Stevenson allegedly replied “I’m sorry I sexually abused you and all the other boys. I’m not like that anymore”.
Stevenson’s mother allegedly said “don’t hurt my baby”, prompting the victim to respond “your little boy is a monster”.
The man reported the alleged abuse to the Royal Commission in 2017 and it was subsequently passed on to police. As part of their investigation, detectives contacted four other men involved in the club at the same time as the alleged victim.
Each of the men claimed they too had either been sexually abused by Stevenson or coaxed into performing a sexual act on him under the pretense of First Aid education.
Stevenson was arrested this week and charged with five indecent assault offences. The court heard he is already on bail for similar allegations against three boys stemming from the same time period.
He was granted bail on the fresh allegations, which will return to court in May.
