UNITED KINGDOM
International Business Times
By Tom Mendelsohn
March 19, 2016
A Canadian law professor has settled for £40,000 ($57,900) in damages from the Church of England for abuse she suffered at the hands of a vicar 40 years ago. Julie Macfarlane, who teaches at the University of Windsor, Ontario, was preyed upon by a priest at the age of 16 in the mid-1970s while undergoing a religious crisis in Chichester. The abuse continued for a year, before she left for university.
She made a complaint to the Australian branch of the church in 1999, as the minister had moved there. He resigned when he discovered he would be subject to a disciplinary hearing.
However she did not make her legal claim until 2014, once she heard about the abuse scandal in the diocese. This initially led lawyers representing the CofE to claim that she could not make her claim as it the abuse had happened so long ago.
She claimed that she was “ripped to shreds” by a psychiatric expert appointed to assess her claim when she did eventually come forward in a gruelling two-hour examination. She also said that the church had tried to claim that she had consented to the relations.
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