Youth group hid sex abuse
- John Swoboda
- Feb 17, 2017
- 2 min read
Type: Media Article
Date:14 Feb 2017
Source: The Press
AUSTRALIA: A youth group set up by the Anglican Church hosted networks of paedophiles who knew of each other’s offending and facilitated the sexual abuse of boys, a royal commission has found.
The abuse often occurred on camps, sailing and fishing trips and overnight stays at rectories and private homes in the 1970s and 1980s as The Church of England Boys’ Society (CEBS) was left to operate autonomously.
In its damning report, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse also criticised former governor general Peter Hollingworth for allowing a priest facing abuse allegations to remain in the ministry.
The report, released yesterday, detailed a series of systematic issues in the operation of the CEBS and Anglican dioceses of Tasmania, Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney.
It found the Anglican Church failed to make the links at a national level about the possibility of organised paedophile networks operating in the youth group.
There was a focus on protecting the reputation of the Anglican Church, dioceses, youth group and individual clergy, with child sexual abuse treated as isolated incidents of ‘‘aberrant behaviour’’, the report said.
Abuse allegations weren’t reported to police and there was a lack of child protection policies in the CEBS, which was attended by boys aged between 6 and 16 years.
The youth group, with limited oversight, focused on promoting physical activities and overnight trips organised by the group’s leaders and other men connected to them.
’’Within this environment, a culture developed in which perpetrators had easy access to boys and opportunities to sexually abuse those boys,’’ the report read.
The report follows public hearings last year that investigated the responses of the CEBS and Anglican Dioceses to child sexual abuse allegations against people associated with the youth group in the 1970s and 1980s.
A number of survivors testified that they believed they were either shared by their abusers or there was, at the very least, awareness between their abusers of each other’s conduct. The commission examined the experiences of survivors of abuse perpetrated by convicted paedophiles Louis Daniels, Garth Hawkins, Simon Jacobs and John Elliot and alleged abuser Robert Brandenburg.
It found Hollingworth’s decision to allow Elliot to remain in the ministry following an abuse complaint was a ‘‘serious error of judgment’’ which focused overly on the priest’s needs. Hollingworth had also failed to take into account advice from a psychiatrist who formed the opinion Elliot was a paedophile with an untreatable personality type, the report said.
Commissioners Jennifer Coate and Bob Atkinson were satisfied the CEBS national council’s only formal response to child sexual offending was to revoke national awards given to offenders.
CEBS has ceased operating in Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania and national camps are no longer held. – AAP
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