AUSTRALIA
9 News

A former Baptist pastor says he didn’t report a girl’s allegations that she had been sexually abused by a church youth worker because he didn’t know a 14-year-old was considered a child.

In December 2002, then Senior Pastor Steven Chard and his wife Jill were approached by a 16-year-old girl at the church in Greenacre in Sydney’s west.

The girl, who can’t be named, told him she had been having sex with the church’s then youth group leader Wayne Paul Mason. On one occasion this was without consent, a court was told.

The teenager later told Mr Chard she had spotted Mason kissing another underage girl.