AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
JOANNE MCCARTHY
July 5, 2016
THEY were some of the most respected men in the region.
Now the culture that supported powerful Newcastle Anglican Church child sex offenders, and failed to respond to allegations of abuse, will be revealed at a public hearing of the royal commission established after a Hunter-led campaign.
On Tuesday the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse announced Case Study 42 into Newcastle Anglican diocese.
A two-week public hearing at Newcastle Courthouse from August 2 will consider how the diocese responded to allegations of child sexual abuse made against clergy and lay people including former Dean of Newcastle Graeme Lawrence, teacher Gregory Goyette, priests Andrew Duncan, Bruce Hoare, Graeme Sturt, Peter Rushton and Ian Barrack, and church worker James Michael Brown.
It will also inquire into St John’s Theological College at Morpeth, one of the Anglican Church’s most significant Australian priest training institutions, but also the subject of a warning to the church in 2009 about an apparent “significant over-representation” of child sex offenders from its ranks.
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