AUSTRALIA
The Daily Telegraph
Royal commission into child sex: former bishop Keith Slater ignored advice to report abuse allegations against North Coast Children’s Home to police
JANET FIFE-YEOMANS THE DAILY TELEGRAPH OCTOBER 27, 2014
THE former Anglican Bishop of Grafton, Keith Slater, has come under fire from the child abuse royal commission for the way he mishandled a litany of claims against the church.
When more than 40 former residents of the notorious North Coast Children’s Home at Lismore came forward seeking help and compensation after being abused by at least 12 priests and members of staff, the Anglican Church denied any liability, despite running the home since 1919.
Bishop Slater had been “advised” by his boss, the head of the Anglican Church Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, to tell the police about any criminal allegations from the children’s home and to seek out other people who had been abused there.
He did not do either, the report into the Anglican Diocese of Grafton response to child sexual abuse at the home, said today.
The report, tabled in Federal parliament, said that the diocese denied responsibility for sexual abuse that took place at the home, which had been established by its local rector on church land.
The commission also found that the diocese did not handle the claims with any sympathy.
Bishop Slater resigned last year as The Daily Telegraph was preparing to run stories with one of the victims, Tommy Campion, after a ‘horrified” church official uncovered the full extent of the diocese’s treatment of the former residents.
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