Peter Hollingworth ‘misled inquiry over child-sex abuse knowledge’, by Rhian Deutrom, Australian (February 16, 2017)

Former governor-general Peter Hollingworth has been found to have misled an inquiry about his knowledge and involvement in the handling of child sexual abuse allegations at two exclusive Brisbane private schools.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse yesterday released two reports into various responses by the Anglican diocese of Brisbane, and Brisbane Grammar and St Paul’s Anglican School, to allegations of child-sex abuse against staff members.

The reports found Dr Hollingworth, who was the archbishop of Brisbane and later governor-general, had been told by his assistant bishop, John Noble, of a case of sexual abuse by convicted pedophile priest John Elliot at the Church of England Grammar School in 1993.

After meeting with Elliot’s alleged victim, the report found, Dr Hollingworth allowed the convicted pedophile to “remain in the ministry as rector of Dalby until he turned 65, when he would retire”.

“Dr Hollingworth’s decision to permit Elliot to continue in the ministry was a serious error of judgment which focused overly on Elliot’s needs to the exclusion of those of (the victim) and his family and of the need to protect children more generally,” it concluded. In a previous inquiry, commissioned by Brisbane Archbishop Philip Aspinall in 2002 and known as the “Brisbane inquiry”, Dr Hollingworth was asked to account for his version of events.

In a letter drafted by his solicitors, Dr Hollingworth claimed he had “no reason to believe that the incident was anything other than a single, isolated and distant occurrence”, despite having commissioned a psychiatrist’s report on Elliot stating otherwise.

The royal commission found yesterday that “Dr Hollingworth agreed in oral evidence ... that his solicitors’ letter ... was misleading insofar as the word ‘isolated’ was used. This evidence was inconsistent with the other evidence before the royal commission that Dr Hollingworth was aware Elliot had abused more than one boy.”

The commission also revealed that Dr Hollingworth claimed he was unaware of allegations of child sexual abuse made against pedophile Kevin Lynch until after his death in 1997, a claim the report concluded was false. It found that, despite victims telling senior staff members at Brisbane Grammar and St Paul’s that they had been abused by Lynch, no action was taken to deal with the complaints.