AUSTRALIA
Sky News
The Pentecostal movement needs a hotline for senior pastors to report child sex abuse allegations to the executive, a retired church leader says.
Chris Peterson was senior pastor of a small church in Queensland when Jonathan Baldwin, a former youth pastor, was jailed for eight years for indecent treatment of a child under 16 and one count of sodomy.
At a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hearing on Thursday, Pastor Peterson said he accepted some responsibility for not passing the information up the line to the state and national executive of the Australian Christian Churches (ACC).
ACC is the umbrella body to which more than 1000 Pentecostal churches are affiliated.
It credentials pastors but the local churches are autonomous and expected to deal with abuse cases themselves. They can arrange insurance cover through the business arm of the ACC.
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