A boy who told a Salvation Army officer he had been sexually abused by another boy was later raped by the officer, an inquiry has been told.

A man, identified as ES, said he ran away several times from a Salvation Army Training Farm at Riverview in Queensland when he was a teenager but was always brought back, either by the farm manager, Captain Victor Bennett or police.

Mr Bennett who has since died, is one of five officers against whom the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard numerous allegations.

The commission is holding a public hearing in Sydney into what happened at four homes run by the Salvos in NSW and Queensland in the 60s and 70s.

ES said on Wednesday he was locked in a cage on the veranda at Riverview - some times for weeks.