The Anglican Church in Australia has admitted that it tried to silence child sex abuse victims, a Royal Commission inquiry
revealed on Friday.
Some 1082 child sex abuse complaints were made between 1980 and 2015 against 569 alleged perpetrators, including 247 ordained clergy, in
the Anglican Church in Australia, according to their records.
The church did not always protect the children it was entrusted to care for and allowed harm to continue, Anne Hywood, the Church’s general secretary, told the commission during a hearing in Sydney.
“We did not believe those who came forward and we tried to silence them … We cared more about the church’s reputation than those who
had been harmed.”
The average age of the victims at the time of abuse was 11.
The church paid nearly 31 million Australian dollars (23 million US dollars) in compensation to the victims. Hywood said the numbers of abusers and those harmed were appalling.
“We are ashamed to acknowledge that we only took notice when the survivors of abuse became a threat to us,” she told the commission.
Philip Freier, Australia’s most senior Anglican leader and Melbourne Archbishop, said the data was shocking.
“We are deeply ashamed of the many ways in which we have let down survivors, both in the way we have acted and the way we have failed
to act,” he said.
But the data does not indicate the total number of incidents of child sexual abuse in Anglican Church institutions in Australia, the commission’s senior counsel Gail Furness said, since many survivors faced challenges to report abuse to authorities.
