Former governor-general Peter Hollingworth has been deemed “fit for ministry” by the Anglican Church, provided that he extends regret to the child sexual abuse victims who suffered during his tenure as Brisbane archbishop in the 1990s.
Dr. Hollingworth’s treatment of abuse cases while serving as archbishop has been under review by the Anglican Church’s Professional Standards Board, which is deciding whether to defrocket him.
One abuse survivor accused the body overseeing the process, Kooyoora, of making the investigation too confidential and “uninviting and non-transparent.”
The public and the media were not permitted to attend the four-day, beginning on February 6, hearing.
In the Brisbane diocese, where Dr. Hollingworth served as archbishop in the 1990s, numerous charges of abuse suffered at the hands of Anglican clergy and teaching personnel were made against him in 2018.
After several discoveries regarding his handling of sexual abuse charges against priests and teaching personnel while he was the archbishop of Brisbane, Dr. Hollingworth resigned from his position as governor-general in 2003.
In spite of the fact that paedophile priest John Elliot had confessed to Dr. Hollingworth that he had sexually molested two boys, a 2002 investigation by the Anglican Diocese of Brisbane revealed that Dr. Hollingworth had permitted Elliot to work until his retirement.
Dr. Hollingworth committed a “serious error of judgment,” according to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and disregarded a psychiatrist’s opinion that Elliot was a “untreatable” paedophile who posed a risk of reoffending.
In the months that followed the publication of the study, Melbourne Archbishop Philip Freier decided to grant Dr. Hollingworth another license to preside, angering survivors.
A sexual assault survivor was informed five years ago by a former Kooyoora head of professional standards that there was “more than enough justification to prove unfitness to hold Holy Orders.”
