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Archbishop says 'alarm bells should have rung' over abuse allegations

Guardian
August 29, 2016

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/29/archbishop-says-alarm-bells-should-have-rung-over-abuse-allegations

The Anglican archbishop of Perth, Roger Herft, arrives as a witness at the royal commission in Newcastle to give evidence related to his time as archbishop of Newcastle from 1995 to 2005.
Photo by Darren Pateman

The Anglican archbishop of Perth says alarm bells should have rung over allegations a senior New South Wales clergyman had his “own group of boys” and had abused a priest’s son.

The royal commission heard that archbishop Roger Herft, who was head of the Newcastle diocese between 1993 and 2005, was alerted to a child sex complaint relating to four men in 2003.

One of the men was senior clergyman Peter Rushton, who had been accused of abusing a boy around the same time and had previously come to the archbishop’s attention when removalists found what they thought was child sexual abuse material at his home five years previously.

On Monday Herft told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse he was “deeply fooled” by Rushton, who he thought had “changed”.

“After the pornography matter, I found his whole demeanour had changed,” he said. “Deep in my heart I felt he had repented.”

Rushton is also said to have been at the heart of a paedophile ring of clergy and lay church workers who preyed on children at St Alban’s, a boys home at Cessnock.

He died in 2007 without ever facing child sex abuse charges but the diocese acknowledges he was an offender.

The removalists eventually retracted their statement about the child sexual abuse material but Herft still thought the priest had an adult pornography addiction.

The commission heard another alleged priest offender, known as CKC, was represented by the diocese’s deputy chancellor at the time, Paul Rosser QC.

Herft told the commission he and the church had failed CKC’s alleged victim CKA “miserably” by allowing Rosser to be involved in the case and not providing pastoral care.

“The anguish that CKA had already gone through would have been further accentuated,” he said.

CKC’s original trial was halted but the commission has heard he may face a retrial.




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