AUSTRALIA
The Newcastle Herald

December 21, 2017

By Joanne McCarthy

AUSTRALIA’S largest Pentecostal Christian church has denied any knowledge of child sex allegations against a predatory church youth leader who was jailed only days before the church was criticised in the child abuse royal commission final report.

Christopher Laban Bridge, 69, of Yarramalong – a prominent member of the Generation City Church at Hamilton – was jailed on December 13 for sexually assaulting four boys at Assemblies of God churches in Dubbo and the Hunter in the 1970s and 1980s.

He moved to the Hamilton church in the mid 1970s after a Dubbo victim’s parents reported Bridge’s sexual assaults to Dubbo Assemblies of God pastor, the late Jack Allsopp. No action was taken after the report, a court was told.

Australian Christian Churches (the former Assemblies of God) said it had no record of any child sexual abuse allegations…