AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times
Rachel Browne
A “network of sexual perpetrators” used an Anglican church youth group to prey on young boys over a period of decades from the 1970s to the 1990s with church leaders failing to report allegations, a royal commission has found.
In a scathing assessment of Anglican authorities, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found leaders, including former Brisbane archbishop and governor-general Peter Hollingworth, failed to protect children.
The report into Anglican youth group, the Church of England Boys’ Society, and the Dioceses of Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Tasmania, comes a year after a public inquiry heard harrowing accounts of abuse by clergy and lay people.
The commissioners found the Church of England Boys’ Society (CEBS), which still operates in parts of Australia under the name the Anglican Boys’ Society and Boys’ Ministry Australia, provided a number of paedophiles with easy access to children between the 1970s and 1990s.
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