AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
IAN KIRKWOOD
5 Aug 2016
THE Royal Commission into Institutional Responses To Child Sexual Abuse is inquiring into events in the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle, and a former assistant bishop of Newcastle, Richard Appleby, is being questioned about his statement to the commission.
It’s Thursday afternoon, and the commission has been going since Tuesday morning.
Counsel assisting, Naomi Sharp, has just taken Bishop Appleby through the evidence of others who insist they told him of child sexual abuse by some of the priests in the diocese when he was deputy to the bishop at the time, Alfred Holland.
Ms Sharp: “And you say none of those disclosures occurred?”
Bishop Appleby: “I can just repeat what I’ve said, that had such disclosures been made, I would be absolutely clear in that I would have been appalled and shocked that such behaviour was happening and I would have acted upon it.
“The fact that I have no recollection of it, the fact that I did not report the matter to Bishop Holland, and so on – there’s no evidence of that – I can only say that even though they have said that they did report these matters to me in 1984 and 1987, I do not believe that that is true.”
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