Anglican Policy on Sex Abuse Flawed: Archbishop Roger Herft

By Simone Fox Koob
The Australian
August 13, 2016

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A former bishop of Newcastle who presided over the diocese while convicted pedophile Peter Rushton was a priest has admitted the Anglican Church’s policy on abuse allegations during the 1990s was “totally unacceptable”.

Roger Herft, now the Anglican Archbishop of Perth, gave evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse yesterday and admitted he took the word of priests accused of sex offences.

“The view that I had of the priesthood was one in which the person who had made the commitment to sacred orders was of such a high calling and calibre they would seek to tell me the truth and seek to be responsive to vulnerable people,” he said. “It was difficult to me to associate that people living by these vows could even begin to associate with this kind of ­offence.”

The archbishop was in charge in Newcastle from May 1993 to February 2005, a time when there were numerous abuse allegations against priests in the diocese.