Anglican Church strips former government minister of holy orders over role in sex abuse scandal

By Greg Stolz
Courier-Mail
July 16, 2015

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/anglican-church-strips-former-government-minister-of-holy-orders-over-role-in-sex-abuse-scandal/story-fnn8dlfs-1227443362227

A FORMER state government cabinet minister has been defrocked by the Anglican Church over his role in the church sex abuse scandal.

Pat Comben, who served as education and environment minister in the Goss government, was ordained as a deacon by controversial Brisbane archbishop and former governor-general Peter Hollingworth after retiring from politics in the mid 1990s.

In 2013, he gave evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse over the abuse of orphans at the North Coast Children’s Home in Lismore.

As registrar of the Anglican Church’s Grafton diocese, Mr Comben was the first to hear of the allegations and was central to the hardline approach taken against 42 people seeking apologies and compensation for beatings and rapes.

The royal commission heard that as the number of claimants increased, the diocese disputed liability, pleaded poverty despite having almost $200 million in assets and cast doubt on some of the claims.