You are here
WIKIPEDIA DELETES ACCOUNT OF BISHOP BENNISON'S ASSISTANT OVER SEX COVER-UP
By David W. Virtue
www.episcopalian.org
8/6/2007
The editors of WIKIPEDIA, the online encyclopedia, have deleted the account of Barbara Alton, personal assistant to Pennsylvania Bishop Charles Bennison, for vandalism, saying she repeatedly tried to delete information about a sex scandal involving his deposed brother.
The Wikipedia editors cited a "conflict of interest re: Charles Bennison" and said repeated efforts by her to edit out Bennison's cover-up of his brother's sexual abuse of a minor as their reasons for deleting her account.
Following VirtueOnline's breaking story, which may be accessed at: http://tinyurl.com/2jo8kt the Wikipedia editors suspended Barbara Alton's account three times. Every time she was allowed to return, she frantically tried to delete information about Bennison's sex cover up. Each time she was suspended again. Ref: http://tinyurl.com/26jg8j
The Wikipedia editors finally deleted her account last week: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=User:Barbaraalton
In May VOL broke the story that Bennison's cover-up had been ordered expunged from Wikipedia on orders from Mrs. Katherine Jefferts Schori, The Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop. At that time, Alton claims she was told by Mrs. Schori to remove the sexually explicit references to the bishop's cover up.
Bennison faces both ecclesiastical presentment and civil fraud charges. The ultra liberal bishop goes to court in September.. The Rev. John Bennison, Bishop Bennison's brother, was forced from his parish and resigned from The Episcopal Church when sexual allegations emerged in the Diocese of California. He avoided prosecution because of the Statute of Limitations. At the time of the abuse, he was sharing a home with his brother Charles. The scandal came to Philadelphia when family members of the abused girl presented their case in a series of town hall type meetings around the diocese. The sex abuse scandal eventually found its way into the widely read on line encyclopedia.
People searching for "Charles Bennison" on google.com are immediately confronted with a very exhaustive section on the scandal. The first thing to come up is a history of the sex scandal, which apparently caught the attention of the Presiding Bishop's office.
Here is an example: "Exec Asst to Bishop Bennison again deleted inflammatory and libelous text. 17:26, 21 May 2007 Barbaraalton External Links - The links about scandals must be deleted per order of the Presiding Bishop in her address to ECCP in New York available on podcast. She requires us to focus on the mission of the church." Alton then removed all the references, many of them related to VirtueOnline stories about the bishop's behavior.
VirtueOnline sent the Wikipedia sections to Mrs. Schori, but has not received a response. Click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Bennison&action=history
The request to delete various entries regarding Bennison and the sex scandal go back to November 2006 and take up several pages in Wikipedia.
END
