Abuse survivors are maintaining a push for Peter Hollingworth to be defrocked despite the former archbishop’s decision to cease practising as a priest, urging the Anglican church to “finally do the right thing”.
Hollingworth last week announced he would voluntarily cease practising as a priest, handing back his permission to officiate after a continued outcry over his failures to act on pedophile priests while Brisbane archbishop in the 1990s, before his time as Australia’s 23rd governor general.
His decision came weeks after a convoluted and protracted church complaints body handed down its decision, finding he engaged in multiple instances of misconduct but should be allowed to continue in his priestly duties regardless.
The decision met fury from survivors and campaigners, who say the punishment did not reflect the grave findings made against Hollingworth.
In deciding to hand back his permission to officiate, Hollingworth acknowledged his continuing role in the church was a “cause of pain to survivors” and said he wanted to end the distress.
But Beth Heinrich, an abuse survivor whose complaint against Hollingworth was central to the church’s internal complaints process, has written to the church’s professional standards committee, warning it against considering the decision as a “satisfactory outcome”.
Heinrich and other survivors are calling on the committee to press ahead with an appeal against last month’s decision. She wants Hollingworth to be defrocked.
“I ask you to appeal to the board to finally do the right thing and depose Hollingworth of Holy Orders,” she wrote. “To allow a priest of the Anglican faith to remain so after refusing on innumerable occasions to support victims of sexual abuse is a scandal.”
The decision against Hollingworth found he had committed misconduct over his handling of abuse complaints against two clergy members, John Elliot and Donald Shearman, whom he allowed to remain in the church despite knowing they had sexually assaulted children.
It also found he had made unsatisfactory and insensitive comments about Heinrich during a 2002 episode of the ABC television program Australian Story. The 2002 comments appeared to blame Heinrich for her abuse. Hollingworth has previously denied that was his intention.
The decision shows that the professional standards committee had not previously pressed for a revocation of holy orders. The final decision did not recommend the lesser step of removing his permission to officiate, finding that he posed no unacceptable risk of harm by continuing in his priestly duties, despite the misconduct.
“For some, that misconduct demonstrated fundamental defects in his character such as to render him unfit to hold Holy Orders,” the professional standards board found.
“For others, his grave errors stemmed from failures of understanding rather than moral deficiencies. We believe that the second view is correct.”
The decision, and the suggestion that his errors arose from a lack of understanding, frustrated survivor groups, who wrote to the church pointing out that Hollingworth had signed a 1995 document acknowledging his awareness of the harms caused by pedophiles.
Hollingworth was approached for a response.
His lawyer, Bill Doogue, has previously contested the significance of the 1995 document for the board’s findings, telling the Australian: “A full and fair reading of the board’s findings would show that there was expert evidence that Dr Hollingworth had engaged in a lot of learning after he resigned as governor general [in 2003] and developed a deeper understanding of the effects of child abuse.”
