I was abused by clergy: Anglican Bishop Greg Thompson tells of abuse as 19-year-old

By Joanne Mccarthy
Sydney Morning Herald
October 26, 2015

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/i-was-abused-by-clergy-anglican-bishop-greg-thompson-tells-of-abuse-as-19yearold-20151026-gkiz2x.html

Anglican Bishop the Right Reverend Greg Thompson Photo by Ryan Osland

Anglican bishop Greg Thompson has spoken about being groomed by an Anglican bishop and senior clergyman in the 1970s and later sexually abused, after an historic diocese apology on Sunday for the "shameful" treatment of abuse survivors in the past.

The Newcastle bishop said he was an impressionable 19-year-old when the two men singled him out, made him feel special and used his strong faith and their shared religion as the cover to sexually abuse him.

His allegations against the two men, now dead, were revealed to NSW Police and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse earlier this year.

Bishop Thompson said he did not reveal the information before the diocese synod at the weekend because he wanted the vote on an historic apology to be a genuine response from clergy and senior diocese parishioners, and not a response to him personally.

"I couldn't have spoken about the need for an apology if they'd known I was a survivor," Bishop Thompson said.

"I wouldn't have known if the response was for me or survivors. I didn't want it to be just about me or any one particular survivor."

He felt stronger after the synod supported an apology, without dissent, in which the diocese apologised "for the shameful way we actively worked against and discouraged those who came to us and reported abuse".

"We are ashamed to acknowledge that we only took notice when the survivors of abuse became a threat to us."

A recorded interview of Hunter Anglican priests Bob Peattie and Les Forester was played at the synod in which they revealed they had been sexually abused as children, and the consequences of the abuse in their lives.

Both men suffered anxiety, depression, problems with authority, concerns about masculinity, and the constant and unanswerable question about what they would have been like if the abuse had not occurred.

Reverend Beattie admitted there were periods in his life that included "continual thoughts of suicide" when "If I'd had a gun I would have shot myself on numerous occasions".

Bishop Thompson said the diocese had spent years trying to address its dark history, and his predecessor Bishop Brian Farran and other reformers had been "undermined" in their attempts to change the diocese's culture about child sexual abuse.

He said he left the diocese in the 1970s because of the abuse he experienced and returned to the area 18 months ago, to be confronted by the royal commission preparing to hold a major public hearing into the Hunter and the Anglican diocese's sexual abusers.

Bishop Thompson said he was clearly affected by what had happened to him as a 19-year-old.

"There will be people who'll discount what I say because of what has happened to me. They'll believe that everything I do is because of some kind of working out of my experience.

"It's true, but it's not the only reason I'm doing it."