Adult Reception of Children’s Sexual Abuse Complaints Actually Helped Cases Prosper More – Australian Anglican Church

If parents and adults had paid more attention in the previous years to the complaints of children that they have been sexually abused by members of a religious church or community, the burgeoning number might have already been nipped right in the bud early on.

Philip Freier, Melbourne Anglican Archbishop, told a Victorian inquiry into how the churches handled sex abuse, said it is most unfortunate children's grievances were not being heard, at worst just plainly disregarded.

"Children were frankly disbelieved; disbelieved by their parents, they were disbelieved by the adults around them when they raised complaints," Archbishop Freier said.

Since 1955, the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne said it has dealt with 46 cases of child abuse. But Mr Freier said the numbers could be more because records were poorly kept.

"Sometimes they were even punished for having raised a question about the conduct of another adult working in a position of trust. So where that has happened, that's been an awful thing."

''As you look backwards you can see broadly as a culture we've not readily listened to children when they've made complaints.''

''There have been opportunities for people who wanted to breach the trust of children to do that and often for children's accounts of that trust being broken, being disbelieved.''

Claire Sargent, the Anglican church's independent director of professional standards, noted that of the 46 recorded complaints, 12 were reported to police while 20 were not.

''If someone has knowledge they are required to report that,'' Ms Sargent told the inquiry, noting the church's policy was to always report current allegations of child sex abuse.

But asked why the church's record keeping on child abuse allegations were inadequate before the 1990s, ''I can't comment on why that might have been,'' Ms Sargent said.

''We've always had high expectations and I expect that as a culture, churches generally, and community organisations have not had the necessary checks and balances,'' Archbishop Freier said.

The Melbourne Anglican diocese had 685 clergy, 295 lay ministers and 65 other employees.

Archbishop Freier told the inquiry there had been at least 10 financial settlements since 2003 over child sexual abuse covering $268,000.

Personally, Archbishop Freier said he would want to report each and every child sexual abuse.

"We would not want to be part of any conspiracy of secrecy, but there are some circumstances where victims don't welcome the intervention of other authorities."