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	Sex Abuse Claim Traps Church in Tangled Web By Gavin Simpson West Australian September 26, 2011 http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/opinion/post/-/blog/talkingpoint/post/89/comment/1 It is unlikely that Pope Benedict XVI could have envisaged just what lay ahead when he issued an historic invitation to disaffected Anglicans to embrace Rome while keeping some of their own traditions. The move to set up quasi-dioceses within the Catholic fold for Anglican converts has become a tangled web. It involves a twice-married, one-time Adelaide Catholic priest who became an Anglican but then joined a breakaway group opposed to liberal moves, such as the ordination of women. Rising to become the Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, Archbishop John Hepworth led negotiations with Rome which could result in his return to the papal fold, taking many of his group's 400,000 members with him. But controversy has erupted over the archbishop's claims he was sexually abused by fellow Catholic priests when he was a young man. Two of those priests are now dead. He has also alleged another priest, who is now in charge of an Adelaide parish, also abused him when he was a young priest. The mess became very public when crusading independent South Australian senator Nick Xenophon used parliamentary privilege to name Monsignor Ian Dempsey as that priest. Senator Xenophon's move has caused widespread concern as well as some heartache for Archbishop Hepworth, who apparently has yet to make any formal complaint to police about the allegation against Monsignor Dempsey, who has categorically denied it. Senator Xenophon has been accused of acting irresponsibly, knowing that the allegation could possibly destroy Monsignor Dempsey's life without any legal processes having been undertaken. Archbishop Hepworth has noted that the Traditional Anglican Communion's bid for unity is deeply intertwined with his own personal circumstances. It is, he says, why he wants the allegations regarding the abuse resolved, and not to become a distraction to the process. He claims the abuse began when he was a seminary student and also took place after he had been ordained. He also claims that after having been warned by one of the group who preyed on him not to reveal what had happened, he went to see the Archbishop of Adelaide, a visit which led to his leaving the church and eventually joining the Anglicans. "I began to tell him my story," he said in a recent ABC radio interview. "He said to me, 'If that's what you've come here to talk about, get up and go now.' And I just got straight up and walked out." Several decades later, he decided to approach the Archdiocese of Adelaide again, and also Melbourne, as the deceased priests had been based in Victoria, with his story. He has mixed feelings about his story then being taken up in the way it has by Senator Xenophon. "I'm not happy with the way things have turned out," he told the ABC. "I've always upheld the South Australian law that prevents naming people until they're either charged or come to court or convicted. I made this clear to Nick Xenophon. But I also made clear that he was a senator and he had his own conscience and his own set of rules and he had to be true to that." The controversy has caused Adelaide's high-profile vicar-general, Monsignor David Cappo, to resign as chairman of the national Mental Health Commission, amid claims he failed to appropriately deal with the abuse allegations. Monsignor Cappo has, however, rejected any suggestion that he or the church handled the complaint with anything other than due diligence. The saga has taken another twist with claims that the real reason Archbishop Hepworth left the Catholic Church was because he had been accused of financial mismanagement in the affluent parish of Glenelg in Adelaide. And reports have surfaced of action in a Ballarat court over misusing the funds of an Anglican parish after he joined the Ballarat diocese. Archbishop Hepworth has acknowledged the Ballarat story and says he regrets his action which was the result of his "going to pieces" as a result of a marriage break-up. "I had paid a personal account from the church fund in an act of desperation," he told the ABC. "And there was a court case. And there was no conviction. But yes, I did that." But he denies the allegations relating to his time in the Glenelg parish and says they are "a continued repetition of the stuff used to blackmail me". As the process for unity with Rome continues, conspiracy theories are circulating. One is that the episode is being used by Catholic conservatives as a way to attack dioceses and bishops they regard as under liberal influences, such as Adelaide. The theory goes that they want to paint Adelaide as unable to resolve the sex abuse allegations in an attempt to show the church needs firm, uncompromisingly conservative control. Liberal Catholics who regard groups such as the Traditional Anglican Communion as ultra-conservative malcontents, point to the whole controversy as an example of why the idea of absorbing a big group of conservative converts disaffected from their own church is a bad one. In the sometimes ruthless world of church politics, it is difficult to know who is right and wrong about possible power plays. But with personal reputations at stake, the situation certainly needs to be resolved soon.
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