AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
By JOANNE McCARTHY Aug. 26, 2014
NEWCASTLE Anglican Bishop Greg Thompson has urged the federal government to fully fund the royal commission into child sexual abuse as the diocese faces a major police investigation and a royal commission investigation back to the 1950s.
In an extraordinary interview on Tuesday the bishop confirmed the Anglican Church had already paid compensation to sexual abuse victims of a late former Newcastle bishop for offences against children in another state.
It was ‘‘more than likely’’ there were serial perpetrators in the Hunter Region’s past who were ‘‘aware of one another’’, and ‘‘people of significant influence’’ in the Church had failed to respond to child sexual abuse allegations when they were made, he said.
The diocese provided tens of thousands of documents to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in July in response to a summons issued within months of Bishop Thompson taking up his position in February.
The correspondence of every Newcastle Anglican bishop back to 1953 had been handed to the royal commission, which is also investigating St John’s theological college at Morpeth, and St Alban’s children’s home at Cessnock.
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