Bishop in Plea to Probe Cover-up

By Michael McKenna
The Australian
February 14, 2015

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THE Anglican Church has expressed­ disappointment that Australia’s royal commission into child abuse appears to have ignored­ its request to investigate the cover-up of the rape and beatings of young boys at one of its Queensland boarding schools in the 1960s.

North Queensland Anglican Bishop Bill Ray said yesterday he now feared the extent of the sexual abuse by former principal Robert Waddington and other clergy at St Barnabas boarding school in Ravenshoe, southwest of Cairns, would remain a secret.

Bishop Ray formally asked the royal commission to use its special powers to investigate the abuse and response of church ­officials to complaints of victims of the late Reverend Waddington, who later rose to become one of the church’s senior clergymen in Britain.

Waddington later abused children in England, and it was revealed that at least three young clergymen he hired and mentored in the north Queensland boarding school were later jailed for child abuse offences at other schools around Australia.