Government report says 1,100 complaints of child sex abuse made against Australia’s Anglican Church
The head of Australia’s Anglican Church expressed sorrow and shame after a government report published on Friday said close to 1,100 people had filed child sexual assault claims against the church over a 35-year period.
Anglicans have been truly shocked and dismayed [by] the scope of our failure to tackle child sexual abuse within the church
The interim report, which said most children were aged around 11 when they were abused, came a month after a high-level inquiry into child abuse was told the Australian Catholic Church had paid A$276 million (US$212 million) in compensation to thousands of victims since 1980.
The report, which was published by the same inquiry, the Royal Commission Into Child Abuse, said the complaints identified 569 Anglican clergy, teachers and volunteers as alleged abusers. There were another 133 alleged abusers whose roles at the church were not known.
Melbourne Archbishop Philip Freier said he felt a “personal sense of shame and sorrow” at the way the church had apparently silenced victims.
“Anglicans have been truly shocked and dismayed [by] the scope of our failure to tackle child sexual abuse within the church,” Freier, the church’s primate, said in a statement on its website.
A royal commission is Australia’s most powerful kind of government-appointed inquiry and can compel witnesses to give evidence and recommend prosecutions.
