Interview with 2UE’s John Stanley on the topic of sexual misconduct

Archbishop Peter Jensen | 29 June 2002

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“I have removed people from positions”

An interview by 2UE’s John Stanley with Archbishop Peter Jensen on the handling of child abuse and sexual misconduct in the Anglican church

JS: Could I ask you first of all, what’s your response first of all to the going on in Brisbane?

PJ: Thinking about myself in my own situation in a way, if you follow me, my immediate response is sorrow and grief for the victims. This is a terribly difficult thing and there are all sorts of implications if you are a victim of this sort of abuse, for example, can you forgive other people, how are you going to get on with your life and that sort of thing, and whatever happens and whatever we’re talking about it’s the victims that we have to have chiefly in our interests.

JS: Should Peter Hollingworth have done more?

PJ: Well, it might be easy enough for me to say so. I’ve been facing problems in this area myself, as any archbishop will, in the last few months and that’s what I’ve been asking myself. Should I have done more, how could I have handled it differently. It’s hard and I hesitate to draw judgement on others. I might have done things differently now that I see what he did.

JS: Have you in recent times been in situations such as he faced?

PJ: John, I’m sorry to say that the answer to that is yes. The society in which we live has difficulties in all sorts of ways, and the church is not exempt and we have a number of cases that come to my desk, I don’t say huge numbers, but there are cases that come to my desk and I’ve got to deal with them.

JS: The difficulty is, you’re not the Governor General of Australia, and so there isn’t the public scrutiny on you and your position and I guess you’re going to appreciate that as well.

PJ: Well, it is more helpful, I must say, nonetheless, even if the public can’t see what I’m doing I’ve got to be transparent and accountable to my own people and the people who can see what’s going on.

One of the first things I did when I first became Archbishop, John, right at the beginning, was to ask our people - we have a fulltime professional standards person, and I asked him to spend a day with me and we took in expert advice and we looked at our whole procedures. We found some holes in them and we are taking action now to fix those holes. Yes, I just thought from the very begining when I became Archbishop this was a matter where we have to get it right.

JS: You’ve had people who have had to be removed from positions in recent times?

PJ: Yes.

JS: What, suspended or simply removed?

PJ: It depends on the particular matter, and level of it, and all that sort of thing. We have a relationship with DOCS, we have to report certain things to DOCS, to the police, if necessary, and then we have to, for example, warn all the churches that such-and-such a person cannot be used in a leadership position in the church. It just depends on what sort of offence we are talking about.

JS: How many would we be talking about here?

PJ: I think at any given time we’d probably have six or seven things that are on the boil. Some of them will go, now some of them will go back years. We heard about one recently, an ‘alleged’ one, of course we can’t be sure sometimes that these things did take place, but this alleged one went back to the late 60s and we’ve just really heard about it.

JS: So when that came up, did you immediately, because of the seriousness, I assume, of the allegations and I don’t know how much you can say about them, suspend the person or take the person out of any active service?

PJ: It depends what the complaint is, and of course justice has to follow here. That is, you have to be fair to all parties. But we have what are called ‘contact people’ and we advertise their telephone numbers and if you have a trouble, and if any of the listeners want to get in touch with our contact people, ring my office. The person doesn’t talk to me, it’s ‘offshore’. The person then takes the details and gets it all sorted out and sends it in to our Professional Standards Unit. The Professional Standards Unit then starts the investigation and we use, for example, an ex-police officer and other people to investigate. If the thing is very serious and it looks as though there’s some substance in it, we may suspend a person, but normally that wouldn’t happen. It’s then sent to a lawyer with all the evidence. There may be a tribunal, there’s a whole series of steps it passes through. I think one of the difficulties for victims or complainants in this area, John, that we are grappling with is the length of time it takes, because you can’t do these things quickly and once you have made your complaint you think ‘Gee, can’t we get on with it now.’

JS: There’s just a couple of things, in the interview on Monday night, Australian Story - how did you react when you heard Peter Hollingworth saying, you know, that this girl who may have been 14, may have been a bit older, that he implied that she may have seduced the priest who was married and was in that position of care of those girls.

PJ: Well, John, the way I reacted was in a sense of disbelief. I wondered whether, you know how TV works, not like good old radio, I just wondered if something had been dropped out or something, because the answer really surprised me, I must say, and I just wondered if a question and answer had come unstuck there, or something. So my response in other words was ‘could I be hearing what I’m hearing?’ And I wonder if the Archbishop had more time to explain himself that he would put it differently.

JS: Should he stay on as Governor General?

PJ: I wondered if you would ask me that question. That’s a terribly difficult question and it’s a decision for him to make in the end, but there are things that need to be cleared up, obviously, and I’m hoping for the sake of all, for himself and for the rest, that they will be cleared up carefully. There is a problem - can I go on a bit John? - with the idea of forgiveness. We know we must forgive other people and when someone comes to us and complains about something - I’m not saying this is true of the Governor General - but we often say ‘well, you ought to forgive the person’. But there’s also the other side of repentance, and that repentance has to be shown in concrete actions. So what I’d want, if there was a person who had really offended, I would want them to give up the office they held - I’m not now talking about the Governor General, I’m talk about a priest - I would want to give up the office they held, in order to show they were truly repentant and to recognise that they couldn’t hold it again.

JS: You couldn’t appoint them to the Sexual Abuse Committee, could you - I’m talking about one of the specific instances.

PJ: Not knowingly, John, one wouldn’t do that knowingly.

JS: The other picture that emerges though - and you’ve talked about a number of cases, you have 6 or 7 on the boil at any one time - you get the impression that within the church, within the Anglican Church and certainly the Catholic Church, that this problem is prevalent. Is it more prevalent within the Church among priests than it is among the general community, or is it just that it’s more sensitive with the Church?

PJ: I don’t know the answer to that. My guess is that it’s prevalent in the community.... On the other hand because we have children’s work and because we are on the whole, trusting people, I think we are sometimes open to exploitation of predators who attach themselves to us, who aren’t really Christians at all, but are simply predators on young people. And one of the things that we have done, and we must continue to do, is to be far more proactive in guarding our young people against anything like that. For example, we are now much more careful than we used to be about the standards required in children’s work

JS: Just to clarify what you are saying, that in relatively recently times in dealing with situations where you’ve had to remove people from positions because of allegations or confirmation that they have been involved in something in the past.

PJ: Yes, I have removed people from positions or asked people or sent a message that they are not allowed to occupy a certain position.

JS: For sexual abuse?

PJ: Some of it is sexual abuse, and it does happen. It’s just an ugly fact. I mean we oughtn’t to be surprised, human beings are sinful creatures and we do make mistakes and we fall.

JS: And going back many years? Because one consequence of recent publicity, say over the last decade, more people are coming forward.

PJ: Yes, we are hearing things going back. Very often, let me say, the people who make the complaints aren’t looking for publicity, they’re not looking for money, they’re looking for healing and we’ve got to try - I making this sound, John, as if I’m an expert at this, and I’ve been a great success of it, I don’t think I have. I’m just saying we’ve got to try and meet them, either meet their just demands for judgement and justice, so that they can receive some sort of healing.

JS: Do you think perhaps, as a result of this controversy - at the moment the focus is on the political aspects and the issue of the Governor General - maybe more people will come forward ... one of the fears you might have?

PJ: No, it’s not a fear.

JS: When I say fears, not fears in terms of the effect it might have on you, but fear that you are going to hear more of that?

PJ: Well, it is and it isn’t a fear. I mean, I don’t want to hear about it at all, but if there are people and particularly in situations now, who have been frightened to come forward, then they ought to come forward and if this publicity has a good effect of exposing situations that ought to be revealed, let’s have them. I have no fear of that. We want those situations resolved.

JS: All right, Peter Jensen I appreciate your candour. Thank you very much.

Peter Jensen, who is the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, and that’s the situation there as the crisis continues around the Governor General, Peter Holingworth.

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