AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
JOANNE MCCARTHY
30 Aug 2016
ROYAL commission chair Justice Peter McClellan accused solicitor Robert Caddies of leading “coordinated opposition” to Newcastle Anglican Bishop Greg Thompson during an explosive few minutes of evidence after a group of senior Newcastle Anglicans complained to the royal commission about the bishop in April.
In extraordinary letters sent to Sydney Archbishop Glenn Davies and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the group that included Mr Caddies and former Newcastle Lord Mayor John McNaughton, questioned Bishop Thompson’s “unsubstantiated” claim he was groomed and sexually abused by two senior clerics, including the late Bishop Ian Shevill.
The bishop revealed the abuse in a Newcastle Herald article in October, 2015.
“If the allegation were correct, Bishop Thompson apparently took no action at the time, and until recently, to report the supposed abuse, thus potentially exposing younger members of the diocese to the danger involved,” the Newcastle group wrote in a letter to the royal commission in April that was revealed on Tuesday, on the 11th day of a public hearing into Newcastle Anglican diocese.
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