AUSTRALIA
The Australian
RHIAN DEUTROM
The Australian
February 16, 2017
Former governor-general Peter Hollingworth has been found to have misled an inquiry about his knowledge and involvement in the handling of child sexual abuse allegations at two exclusive Brisbane private schools.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse yesterday released two reports into various responses by the Anglican diocese of Brisbane, and Brisbane Grammar and St Paul’s Anglican School, to allegations of child-sex abuse against staff members.
The reports found Dr Hollingworth, who was the archbishop of Brisbane and later governor-general, had been told by his assistant bishop, John Noble, of a case of sexual abuse by convicted pedophile priest John Elliot at the Church of England Grammar School in 1993.
After meeting with Elliot’s alleged victim, the report found, Dr Hollingworth allowed the convicted pedophile to “remain in the ministry as rector of Dalby until he turned 65, when he would retire”.
“Dr Hollingworth’s decision to permit Elliot to continue in the ministry was a serious error of judgment which focused overly on Elliot’s needs to the exclusion of those of (the victim) and his family and of the need to protect children more generally,” it concluded. In a previous inquiry, commissioned by Brisbane Archbishop Philip Aspinall in 2002 and known as the “Brisbane inquiry”, Dr Hollingworth was asked to account for his version of events.
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