AUSTRALIA
Mercury

Rebekah Ison, Australian Associated Press
November 24, 2016

An Anglican bishop says he’s received warnings from parishioners that he is not safe in his own diocese after he revealed claims of his abuse as a young man by senior church clerics.

Newcastle bishop Greg Thompson said cathedral parishioners had turned their backs on him, and screws had been placed in his staff members’ tyres.

He said the message was that he would face public harassment and public shame if he did not “follow what they want me to do,” he told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Thursday.

As bishop of a community plagued by systemic child sexual abuse over decades, he says a national church response is needed as he says the Anglican “house is burning”.