AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
November 28, 2013
Catherine Armitage
Senior Writer
A national register of abuse incidents used by the Anglican Church to screen clergy appointments is seriously deficient and so out of date that scores of names may be missing from it.
But the church’s most senior figure, Phillip Aspinall, appears powerless to effect change in the nation’s 23 dioceses, telling the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse: ”The Anglican Church makes federal politics look like kindergarten.”
The royal commission on Wednesday heard there was ”gross non-compliance” in the Grafton diocese in dealing with abuse claims.
Archbishop Aspinall has echoed the Catholic Church’s call for a mandatory national compensation scheme for child sex abuse, saying this would ensure parity for victims ”not just between Anglican dioceses” but across all community organisations ”so that we don’t have different classes of victims”.
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