1,100 complaints of child abuse made against Australia’s Anglican church
SYDNEY: The head of Australia’s Anglican Church expressed sorrow and shame after a government report published yesterday said close to 1,100 people had filed child sexual assault claims against the church over a 35-year period.
The interim report, which said most children were aged around 11 when they were abused, came a month after a high-level inquiry into child abuse was told the Australian Catholic church had paid A$276 million in compensation to thousands of victims since 1980.
The report, which was published by the same inquiry, the Royal Commission Into Child Abuse, said the complaints identified 569 Anglican clergy, teachers and volunteers as alleged abusers.
A royal commission is Australia’s most powerful kind of government-appointed inquiry and can compel witnesses to give evidence and recommend prosecutions.
The current royal commission had previously heard that seven percent of Catholic priests working in Australia between 1950 and 2010 were accused of child sex crimes, but few were pursued.
The commission’s latest report said 1,082 people had lodged complaints between 1980 and 2015 about 1,115 alleged incidents while they were under the care of the Anglican church.
Another report published by the inquiry last month said the Catholic church had paid compensation to about threequarters of complainants.
“It tells us that any processes we had in place did not prevent abusers working in our church, as clergy and lay leaders and, in the roles most trusted to care for our children, as teachers and youth workers,” church general secretary Anne Hywood told the inquiry.