AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
THE Anglican Church has warned the royal commission into child sexual abuse not to assume multibillion-dollar church assets can be sold to compensate abuse victims.
The warning comes in a submission to the commission from the titular head of the Australian church, Brisbane Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, and two senior church officials.
They were responding to a finding by Simeon Beckett, counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, that the Anglican Diocese of Grafton had enough assets to settle abuse claims from former residents of an orphanage at Lismore in northern NSW.
From evidence presented at a public hearing in November, Mr Beckett found the diocese put its own financial interests above the needs of abuse victims.
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