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Protecting Paedophiles From the Pulpit: The Naivety of Peter Hollingworth

Before we get underway with this story, it’s important to note that Peter Hollingworth did not actually commit any crime personally to warrant his appearing in a book of Australian crimes. But it does indeed appear that the former Governor-General of Australia defended – or in the very least did little about – a succession of abhorrent criminal acts that took place under his watch. These crimes destroyed the lives of a number of young Australians, stealing their innocence in the most despicable of ways – paedophilia.

Prime Minister John Howard appointed the recently retired Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane Peter Hollingworth to be the nation’s Governor-General on 22 April 2001. It was a controversial decision – it was the first time a clergyman had ever been accepted in such a lofty position, though by that stage Hollingworth already had a long line of credentials to his name, including being appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1976, and being named Victorian Father of the Year in 1987 and Australian of the Year in 1992.

But just six months after Hollingworth was named our 23rd Governor-General, allegations surfaced that Kevin Guy – the Senior Boarding School Master at the Anglican School in Toowoomba, Queensland – had raped or sexually abused as many as 80 young girls between the years of 1987 and 1991.

Making the situation even worse was the fact that the school’s headmaster and the Diocese decided to let their lawyers sort things out, rather than going directly to their aggrieved flock. It has also been alleged that the school’s business manager contacted the Diocese directly, requesting that the story be kept from the school’s council. Shockingly, the majority of the parents of the children who had been molested were not even told of the allegations.

The police were informed about Kevin Guy, though, and they charged him with multiple counts of child abuse. Then, on the day that he was scheduled to appear before the judge, Guy took his own life.

The headmaster of the Toowoomba Anglican School allegedly later sent a letter of condolence to the parents of each of his pupils, telling them of the ‘tragic death’ of Kevin Guy. The letter went on about how deeply the deceased Senior Boarding School Master would be missed, and spoke of the great amount of effort he had put into the school. There was no mention of the innocent young girls that he had sexually abused.

But one of those victims wanted something done about it all. She wrote directly to the then Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, Peter Hollingworth, asking for his help. The girl’s psychologist and the school nurse also wrote to Hollingworth, but the future Governor-General didn’t respond to any of the correspondence.

Much later in the scandal, Hollingworth was asked why he failed to answer their letters. He said that he had stayed out of it all because he had been informed that there was nothing to investigate. To the best of his knowledge, no cases of abuse had come forward. There was no questioning about why Kevin Guy had committed suicide.

But that wasn’t the only time Hollingworth’s name would be linked to sexual abuse charges against minors. It came out in 2002 that he had given the go-ahead on the appointment of Canon Ross McAuley to a Church Sexual Abuse Committee, despite the fact that he knew the choirmaster had been accused of the repeated sexual abuse of a teenage boy two decades earlier.

When Hollingworth was called on the matter, he said that he had known McAuley for a long time and that he had previously asked him about the allegations. He also said that he spoke to the teenage boy involved, and that McAuley had assured him that he was innocent of the claims. McAuley gave him an unconditional guarantee of this.

Basically, Hollingworth believed his friend rather than the teenager. To him, McAuley’s assurance was enough for Hollingworth to decide not to pass the information on to the committee. But when the other members heard about the accusations against McAuley, they were justifiably horrified.

Anglican priest John Elliott was another paedophile with connections to then Archbishop Peter Hollingworth, who let him continue as the rector of a parish even though he knew that he had been tampering with young boys. One of serial offender Elliott’s many victims finally spoke out in 1993. By then a young man, he told his parents about the sexual abuse he had suffered at the hands of Elliott for three years. Elliott had been working as the financial manager of the Anglican Church Grammar School in Brisbane and went on to join the ministry. He eventually became a rector in rural Queensland.

When Elliott heard that one of his victims had spoken out against him, he went to his boss Hollingworth and admitted that he was guilty. Hollingworth organised a meeting between Elliott, the young man and himself. He heard directly from the victim about how he had suffered for three tortuous years. He heard the victim explain that Elliott was a serial paedophile who had abused many other boys while acting as the minister of the Anglican churches in Bundaberg, Dalby and Nanango.

The victim’s story was harrowing to say the least, and Hollingworth took action – to a point. Elliott was told to apologise to the young man and his family. He also underwent a damning psychiatric evaluation, and had to go through the indignity of telling his wife what had happened. And that was enough for Hollingworth, who not only decreed that Elliott could remain a priest, but he insisted that he remain at Dalby. After all, it would look suspicious if the local rector left after only having been there for a year. It wasn’t Hollingworth’s wisest decision.

The law finally caught up with Elliott nine years later, in 2002, when he pleaded guilty to 28 sex charges – including 10 counts of sodomy – and was jailed for seven years and six months. The other 18 charges were for indecent dealing, and dated back to the early 1970s in Wide Bay, Queensland – before he joined the Anglican priesthood. They involved five boys between the ages of 10 and 13. Elliott’s sentence was increased in February 2003 when he pleaded guilty to the case that Hollingworth had swept under the rug a decade earlier.

By this time, of course, Hollingworth was acting as Queen Elizabeth II’s representative in Australia. Our Governor-General was big enough to admit that he had made a ‘serious error of judgement’ when he let a known paedophile remain in the position of Rector in the Church of which he was then Archbishop. He apologised personally to the family involved, and agreed that he should have handled the issue differently.

Hollingworth was quite rightly condemned in public for the way he handled at least six separate serious sexual abuse matters while he served as Brisbane’s Anglican Archbishop. But there was still trouble in store for him.

Donald Shearman was a married Anglican priest who had an affair with a 14-year-old girl who was in his care in the mid-1950s. Shearman went on to become the most senior bishop in his Church. Hollingworth had been aware of the affair since 1995, but he appeared to find no problem with it. Indeed, he later went on television to defend Shearman, turning the tables and accusing the young girl of soliciting the priest.

It was 18 February 2003 when Hollingworth appeared on the ABC’s Australian Story program and declared:

The great tragedy about this situation is that the genesis of it was 40 years ago and it occurred between a young priest and a teenage girl who was under the age of consent. I believe she was more than 14. I also understand that many years later in adult life, their relationship resumed and it was partly a pastoral relationship and it was partly something more. My belief is that this was not sex abuse. There was no suggestion of rape or anything like that. Quite the contrary, my information is that it was, rather, the other way around.

But the evidence provided by witnesses, as well as hundreds of letters written by Shearman during his tenure as both a priest and bishop, told a very different story. When these were produced on the episode of Australian Story, it became clear to the world that Governor-General Hollingworth didn’t have any insight on the matter whatsoever. It was an embarrassment to the Church and the country.

The facts were that Shearman had seduced a 14-year-old girl. He then proceeded to make her life a misery for more than 40 years – even after she miscarried their child. The whole time, Shearman was married and bringing up his own children. Shearman was defrocked in 2004. The people of Australia felt Hollingworth deserved a similar fate.

After it was announced that 76 per cent of Australians – including the majority of local politicians, with the notable exception of Prime Minister John Howard – wanted Peter Hollingworth out of the position of Governor-General, he resigned from the post on 25 May 2003, admitting that he ‘got it wrong’. ‘In accordance with my oath of office,’ he continued, ‘I bear no ill will to anyone. The rest I leave to God and the judgement of history.’

It’s still too soon to see how history will judge Peter Hollingworth – former Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane and disgraced Governor-General of Australia – and God is yet to issue a statement on the matter.