AUSTRALIA
The West Australian
By Annette Blackwell, AAP
Updated November 22, 2013
The former registrar of the Anglican diocese at the centre of a child abuse inquiry has admitted lying about church finances to Richard “Tommy” Campion, who had started a group claim against the church.
Pat Comben, a former Queensland education and environment minister, said when he became registrar at Grafton in 2004, he didn’t find the financial position as bad as he’d been led to believe.
During his time as registrar former residents of the North Coast Children’s Home in Lismore began to come forward with horrific tales of abuse at the hands of clergy and workers at the orphanage.
Mr Comben, a former clergyman, on Friday told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse he found money “squirrelled away” at the diocese – $50,000 here, $100,000 there in different accounts.
About $2 million was available at the beginning of 2006, he said.
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