It's how it used to be done. A lot of people joined at 15 or 16 and made good careers out of it. Though it is horrifying that anybody was abused in this way, there are also hundreds or even thousands of us who are extremely glad we were given the chance to join up as boys, and had very good careers as a result of it.
I don't know what went wrong in these cases - but it looks like something very serious did go wrong. There were a lot of cases where it went very right as well.
They no longer take people as young as that, but you can still join the Australian Defence Forces at 17, when you're still legally a child.
Glad you’re here to give us this kind of background, mate!.