Archbishop Admits Child Protection Failure

The Australian
August 12, 2016

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The Anglican Archbishop of Perth, Roger Herft, has agreed children were put at risk during his time as bishop in the NSW diocese.

He was in charge of the Newcastle diocese from 1993 to 2005. On Friday he said for the first half his tenure there was no framework in place to deal with abuse allegations and after that he kept the problems at a distance because he was advised to do so. The archbishop said there was a “niggle” in his soul after a 1998 meeting with Deirdre Anderson who was head of a committee dealing with misconduct and with Paul Rosser QC then deputy-chancellor of the diocese.

Notes of the meeting were shown on Friday at a royal commission examining the Anglican diocese’s responses to numerous allegations of child sex abuse by clergy across three decades.

Commission chairman Peter McClellan asked the archbishop if at the 1998 meeting Ms Anderson’s concerns about a rule that required a complaint to be made in writing was her saying this was putting “children at risk”.

The archbishop agreed it was.