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Adelaide archdiocese denies abuse inquiry delay

The Archdiocese of Adelaide has denied allegations by the global head of the Traditional Anglican Communion that Adelaide’s Archbishop Philip Wilson and vicar-general Monsignor David Cappo failed to investigate a 2008 written complaint itemising a decade of sexually abusive behaviour by three Catholic priests – including one still running an Adelaide parish.

Archbishop John Hepworth, the head of an estimated 400,000 traditional Anglicans who split from the Anglican Communion in 1991 and who in 2007 expressed a desire to reunite with the Catholic Church, began his clerical career as a Catholic priest, being ordained in Adelaide in 1968.

In revelations published by The Weekend Australian, Archbishop Hepworth said his decision to leave the Catholic Church in 1972 and become an Anglican had been driven by more than a decade of sexual exploitation by older seminarians and priests that began with his grooming for homosexual sex at the age of 15 at Adelaide’s St Francis Xavier Seminary; the abuse continued, he said, until he decided to leave Australia and the Catholic priesthood at the age of 27.

In written statements provided to the archdiocese in 2008, Archbishop Hepworth details his youthful feelings of deep confusion and guilt over “sexual experiences that fed at the same time my need for friendship and acceptance” as well as his sense of “being trapped” by warnings from superiors that any talk of sexual experiences would disqualify him from the priesthood.

The statements name three priests who sexually abused him. Two of them are now dead: Fr John Stockdale, who died on New Year’s Eve in 1995 in a cubicle at a notorious “men-only” club in Melbourne; and Fr Ronald Pickering, who avoided prosecution for sexually abusing a string of teenage boys by fleeing to Britain. In 2001, the head of the Melbourne archdiocese’s Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse, Peter O’Callaghan, QC, wrote that Pickering “had a proclivity for child abuse”.

The third, according to Hepworth’s statement, one night in 1969 during a walk wrestled him to the ground and forced him into sex, and remains a senior cleric in the Adelaide archdiocese.

The archdiocese said in its statement that an investigation into the allegations had been “on foot” since 2007 when Archbishop Hepworth first notified the archdiocese.

“However, at the specific request of Archbishop Hepworth, the Church took no steps to progress the matter until he decided he was ready to formalise his complaints.”

That decision was only made by Archbishop Hepworth in February, the statement said,  “and ever since that time the matter has progressed in an orderly way”.

“If there has been any delay, therefore, it is because Archbishop Hepworth specifically chose not to deal with the matter until then.  It would have been irresponsible, and contrary to Church practices, to ignore Archbishop Hepworth’s wishes in this regard ... it is wrong to suggest that any delay has been other than at the request of Archbishop Hepworth himself.”

The report in The Weekend Australian contrasted the alleged tardiness of the Adelaide response to that in Melbourne, where Mr O’Callaghan processed Archbishop Hepworth’s complaint against Pickering in just over 12 months.

However, the Adelaide archdiocese’s statement said it was not appropriate to compare the responses, since in Melbourne the accused were already dead.

“It is important to recall that these events are said to have occurred almost 50 years ago and that alone makes an investigation of this sort very complicated. As well, unlike the Melbourne investigation, there is an obligation on the Archdiocese of Adelaide to accord all parties concerned with natural justice and procedural fairness.  Further, the priest concerned has categorically denied the allegations and therefore all of the issues need to be examined carefully.”

The Hepworth statements mention two of Archbishop Wilson’s episcopal predecessors in Adelaide: Auxiliary Bishop Philip Kennedy, who “warned me that if any of his friends were implicated, I would be destroyed”, and a meeting at whichArchbishop James Gleeson told him to leave the archbishop’s office.

At a March 2010 Mass for the Adelaide diocese’s deceased bishops, including James Gleeson and Philip Kennedy, Archbishop Wilson noted in his homily that bishops, being human, made mistakes.

“You know, becoming a bishop is a very dangerous thing, because in discipleship bishops have the responsibility for governance. That means they have to make decisions, and that means they have to give to the church what is the closest element of their lives, their total dedication and their love,” he said.

“And there is the danger, because it is always possible to make a mistake and because bishops are human, they do make mistakes. They have to ask the forgiveness of the Lord, they have to move forward and sometimes have to ask the forgiveness of people, because of the way in which they failed in their responsibilities.

“But this extraordinary role which is given to them is one that comes to them not because of their worthiness, but because of their discipleship of the Lord and their willingness to be co-operators with the Lord in the care of God’s people. It is all about love, and so in their humanity with their limitations, bishops are meant to be the ones who stand as the icon of Christ, the shepherd the lover of his people in the midst of the local church which is committed to God, committed by God to their care.”

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