AUSTRALIA
The Australian
REBEKAH ISON AND JAMIE MCKINNELL
Australian Associated Press
April 6, 2017
The response of Perth’s outgoing Anglican Archbishop to child sexual abuse allegations was “weak, ineffectual, and showed no regard for the need to protect children”, the royal commission has been told.
In submissions published on Thursday, counsel assisting Naomi Sharp said Archbishop Roger Herft had mishandled complaints about senior and domineering priests Graeme Lawrence and Peter Rushton when he was head of the Newcastle diocese between 1993 and 2005.
“His response was weak, ineffectual and showed no regard for the need to protect children from the risk that they would be preyed upon,” she told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in the submissions.
“It was a failure of leadership.”
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse held hearings into the Newcastle Anglican diocese last year.
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