AUSTRALIA
Australian

DAN BOX
Crime reporterSydney
@DanBox10

The Anglican Archbishop of Perth warned two youth leaders they would face legal action if they continued to complain about ­alleged child abuse committed by a senior priest, a royal commission has heard.

Archbishop Roger Herft “was more interested in standing up for (the alleged abuser) than listening to the issue,” one of the youth leaders said in a witness statement tendered to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Robert Wall told the commission he met Archbishop Herft in about 1994-95, when he was the bishop of Newcastle, in NSW, to report the allegations against Graeme Lawrence, the dean of the city’s cathedral.

Mr Lawrence, who was ­defrocked in 2012 after having group sex with a teenager, has been identified in evidence to the commission as part of a “Gang of Three” church officials who protected…