Complaints in Bathurst Diocese Detailed in Child Sex Abuse Report

Western Advocate
March 22, 2017

http://www.westernadvocate.com.au/story/4548553/bathurst-diocese-complaints-revealed/

Eighteen complaints made in the Bathurst Diocese are included in a report released on Friday into child sex abuse complaints in the Anglican Church in Australia.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse Analysis of Complaints of Child Sexual Abuse Received by Anglican Church Dioceses in Australia report breaks down the complaint figures in each diocese.

It details child sex abuse complaints received by each diocese between January 1, 1980 and December 31, 2015, though the alleged abuse does not have to have happened during that specific time period.

The report shows that of the 18 complaints in the Bathurst Diocese, 22 per cent involved alleged physical abuse.

It also shows 75 per cent of the complainants in the Bathurst Diocese were male and 25 per cent were female.

Half the complainants in the Bathurst Diocese were under the age of 13, according to the report, and the decade that was the subject of the highest number of complaints in the Bathurst Diocese was the 1950s.

The complaints survey was produced with the “full co-operation and assistance” of representatives of the General Synod of the Anglican Church, according to the report’s introductory notes.