ANGLICAN Archbishop Phillip Aspinall is ‘‘ambivalent’’ about his decision to write a character reference for paedophile priest Louis Daniels before his sentencing in 1999, a royal commission heard.
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The Archbishop of Brisbane told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse on Thursday he ‘‘felt a sense of obligation’’ to Daniels when he wrote the reference.
The inquiry heard Archbishop Aspinall first met Daniels as a child when he enrolled in the Tasmanian branch of the Church of England Boys Society that Daniels was heavily involved in.
Archbishop Aspinall first served as a priest at St Mark on the Hill in Launceston, and was appointed as an Archdeacon in Tasmania in 1997.
He was later appointed as Adelaide Assistant Bishop and then as the Archbishop of Brisbane in 2002.
Archbishop Aspinall said he saw Daniels regularly though his teens and early adulthood, and viewed him as a friend and mentor.
He said writing the reference for Daniels was a complicated thing for him.
‘‘I think what I did at one level was the proper thing,’’ he said.
‘‘I gave the information about the person that I had based on my experience with this person from a young child into my adulthood.’’
Archbishop Aspinall said in hindsight he would give much greater consideration to the pain writing a reference could cause victims of sexual abuse before agreeing to do so.
He said a third factor was ‘‘the way in which I have either dealt with or not dealt with my own deep personal sense of betrayal by Daniels’’.
‘‘I think when I wrote the reference I still felt some kind of obligation to him given that he had been a mentor and such an influential person in my life for so many years,’’ he said.
‘‘I think at a personal level I have wrestled with that sense of betrayal and I suppose at some level I still do.’’
Daniels was convicted of sexual abuse of one boy in 1999, and convicted of sexual offences against another six boys in 2004.
Archbishop Aspinall told the inquiry he had no recollection as to whether sexual abuse victim BYF told him he had been raped by convicted paedophile priest Garth Hawkins in 1982.
Previously BYF told the inquiry he had disclosed the abuse to Archbishop Aspinall, a fellow member of the Youth Synod.
BYF said Archbishop Aspinall, then the diocesan youth and education officer, dismissed his claims as rubbish.
Archbishop Aspinall said he had no recollection of Hawkins making sexual advances or inappropriate comments to BYF at an earlier party at Hawkins’ East Devonport Rectory, or at his Triabunna Rectory in 1982.
Following the East Devonport party in 1980, Archbishop Aspinall said BYF told him he thought Hawkins had made ‘‘some sort of advance towards him’’, but said Archbishop Aspinall said he did not take it as a serious incident.
BYF also told the inquiry Archbishop Aspinall ‘‘volunteered’’ him to sleep in Hawkins’ bed in 1982 when a group of people were staying at Hawkins’ Triabunna Rectory.
Archbishop Aspinall said he had no recollection of Hawkins saying someone should share his bed with him, but could not rule out the possibility he had suggested in jest that BYF should share the bed.
He denied deliberately volunteering BYF to sleep with Hawkins.
The inquiry continues until Friday.
