AUSTRALIA: CHURCH TO DEFROCK DISGRACED BISHOP

By Greg Roberts

The Australian, 28 July 2004

The Anglican bishop at the centre of the child sex abuse controversy that forced the resignation of Peter Hollingworth as governor-general is to be formally stripped of his holy orders.

A church tribunal headed by Queensland Supreme Court judge Debra Mullins has unanimously resolved that Donald Shearman, 77, be defrocked for seducing a teenage schoolgirl boarding at an Anglican hostel at Forbes in western NSW in the mid-1950s.

Church sources said the unprecedented defrocking will be performed by Brisbane Archbishop Phillip Aspinall in the Darnell Room of St Martin's House - part of the St John's Cathedral complex in central Brisbane - on August 25.

In a parallel development, NSW police have begun investigating the first formal complaint against Mr Shearman by his victim. Religious historian and head of religious studies at the University of Queensland, Philip Almond, said he had not heard of a bishop being defrocked in comparable circumstances anywhere.

"This is indeed exceptional," Professor Almond said yesterday. "This is clearly being done to emphasise how seriously the diocese intends to deal with behaviour of this kind."

Archbishop Aspinall confirmed yesterday that he had received the six-member tribunal's findings, but said it would be inappropriate for him to comment until the process had concluded.

A suggestion by Dr Hollingworth in 2002 that the underage victim had initiated the sexual relationship with Mr Shearman sparked a national outcry, and a church inquiry into his handling of sex abuse complaints while archbishop of Brisbane. The inquiry's report was highly critical of Dr Hollingworth and led to his resignation last year as governor-general.

Mr Shearman, who failed to respond to the so-called Articles of Association served on him by the tribunal and refused to attend its hearings, has previously admitted the relationship with his student but said he was unsure how old she was at the time. The victim has claimed the then priest began sexually interfering with her when she was 14, and this progressed to sexual intercourse when she was 15 before he expelled her from the hostel.

In the complaint now being investigated by police, the woman claims Mr Shearman told her at the time she was not too young to have sex because the teenage Juliet, in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, was a partner in "one of the great romances of history". Mr Shearman could not be reached for comment yesterday at his Deception Bay home north of Brisbane.

As Brisbane archbishop, Dr Hollingworth was present at a 1995 meeting attended by the woman and Mr Shearman. Mr Shearman later offered to relinquish his holy orders, but Dr Hollingworth rejected the offer. Instead, Dr Hollingworth wrote to the woman suggesting that her allegations had caused great distress to Mr Shearman and his wife, Fay.