AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net
Allan Kitchingman (see previous posting), still fondly known by some as “Kitch”, was to be the focus of the third “case study” by the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Kitchingman, 81, remains an ordained priest, although relieved of parish duties, despite being convicted for offences against children at the North Coast Children’s Home (see previous posting) in the New South Wales town of Lismore.
It was all going to look very bad for the Anglican Church, known elsewhere as the Episcopalian Church or the Church of England, for the cover-ups associated with his case. When Kitch was first convicted, in 1968, of a “child sex matter” (as the church referred to paedophilia) in Newcastle, his Bishop, James Housden, immediately transferred him to Grafton.
Housden organized the transfer because he was ‘‘anxious to help him [Kitchingman] in every way possible whatever the result of the trial’’. He wrote that Kitchingman had ‘‘a real flair for work among young people”, so he ended up as “chaplain” at the children’s home. There he committed the crimes, in 1975, for which he was convicted many years later.
The cover-up by Bishop Housden was so complete, that the court was not aware of the 1968 conviction, when it heard the case concerning the 1975 offences.
Now, this case alone should have convinced anybody that the Anglican Church was in the same basket as the Catholic Church when it came to cover-ups. It will also be revealed later in the present hearings that it acts the same when considering compensation and support for victims as well.
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