Anglican Church Failed to Pay Child Sex Abuse Survivor Agreed $1.5m Settlement

By Christopher Knaus
The Guardian
September 29, 2017

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/sep/30/anglican-church-fails-to-pay-child-sex-abuse-survivor-agreed-15m-settlement

The royal commission’s public hearing into Brisbane Grammar and St Paul’s school on 3 November 2015. Photograph: Getty Images

The Anglican church failed to pay a child sexual abuse survivor an agreed $1.5m settlement, prompting allegations it has treated him with disdain.

The church, however, says the failure to meet Thursday’s payment deadline was inadvertent, and urgently moved to transfer the money after being alerted to the error on Friday.

The survivor, who asked for anonymity, sued the Anglican church’s Brisbane diocese in late 2015 for horrific abuse he suffered at St Paul’s school in the 1980s, at the hands of convicted paedophile Gregory Robert Knight.

Mediation occurred in July, and the case settled, with the Brisbane diocese to pay 28 days after it was given the necessary charges from law firm Shine Lawyers. Shine told the church on multiple occasions that the date it was required to pay was 13 September.

The church, however, told Shine the payment date was two weeks later, on 28 September.

But the church still failed to meet the later date, despite warnings from Shine of fresh legal action if the money did not arrive.

The survivor has suffered hugely since the abuse, self-medicating with drugs and alcohol in an attempt to deal with severe psychological trauma.

“[The case] been a traumatic part of my life, the whole thing ... I was really excited on the day it all finished. It was finished, regardless of what the outcome was, I just wanted it to be behind me,” the survivor told Guardian Australia.

“And now I just feel like it’s just always there, every day I wake up. It doesn’t even feel real,” he said. “It’s extremely hard. It’s just this continual thing, like this cloud, hanging there, waiting.”

Shine special counsel, Roger Singh, launched a new action in the Queensland supreme court on Friday, in an attempt to force the church to make the payment.

But a spokesman for the Anglican diocese said the error had been remedied as soon as the church was alerted.

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“The church urgently authorised payment within hours of learning of the transfer error,” he said.

“It is disappointing that Shine Lawyers is seeking to use an anomaly to generate publicity for financial gain.”

Singh said the handling of the payment by the Anglican church “smacks of arrogance” and treated the survivor “with disdain”.

“I’ve been involved in scores of claims involving the Anglican church, and a leopard never changes its spots,” he said.

“It begs the question, have they learned anything from the royal commission and its outcomes? Their conduct has done nothing other than to cause [the survivor] further distress and anguish.”

But the church has accused Shine of using the case to generate publicity.

“You have to wonder why Shine Lawyers launched legal action the day after the deadline was missed and ran to the media instead of simply picking up the phone to the church,” the church spokesman said.

“There was already a rock-solid, legally-binding settlement in place. No legal action was necessary and their actions appear to be motivated by the pursuit of publicity.”

Knight’s case, explored at length in the royal commission, demonstrated fundamental failings in the handling of abuse allegations.

Prior to arriving at St Paul’s in 1980, Knight was found to have abused children at a school in South Australia.

Despite the school’s knowledge of the abuse, Knight was allowed to leave with his teaching registration active and moved to Brisbane Boys’ College, where he was again accused of abusing children. He left Brisbane and applied for a job at St Paul’s.

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The St Paul’s headmaster was warned about the man’s “attitude to boys”, but failed to exercise the appropriate caution, the royal commission found. Numerous allegations of abuse were made against Knight while he was at St Paul’s. The only action the school took was to accept Knight’s resignation in 1984. Its then headmaster provided him with a positive reference, which Knight used to gain employment at a Darwin school. There, he again abused a child, crimes for which he was later convicted.

The impact of abuse on the survivor has been profound. He describes the following years as a “classic case of post-traumatic stress”.

“I self-medicated through drugs, mainly drugs, and alcohol to a lesser degree. They were the one thing that I had some sort of relief, it gave me a place where I could breathe or something like that,” he said. “The last 30 years have been horrific, really, for my family, my extended family.”

The settlement will be used to build a better life, he said. It would be used to continue psychiatric help, and invest in a future for his children.

The church’s behaviour, he said, had made him question its public claims to have changed.

“I don’t think the church has changed at all,” he said. “If this is supposed to be a smooth process to the ending of it, I hate to think what the opposite of that would be, because it’s been horrible, it really has.

“Not even a phone call, or anything, just an explanation or something like that would be nice, you know?”