SOME southeast Queensland Anglican schools faced closure under the weight of
court-awarded damages payouts on sexual abuse cases, Anglican Archbishop
Phillip Aspinall said yesterday.
The diocese was hit in December by a record $834,800 payout to a former
schoolgirl at the Toowoomba Preparatory School who was sexually assaulted by a
boarding master.
Dr Aspinall said the Brisbane diocese was facing as many as 50 other sexual abuse lawsuits, most relating to alleged incidents at Toowoomba Prep, St Paul's at Bald Hills on Brisbane's northside and Churchie.
The schools are run as separate businesses and any closure through bankruptcy would not affect other Anglican schools.
While Dr Aspinall insisted Brisbane would not go the same way as Canada's Caribou diocese which had to wind up its affairs late last year when its litigation damages bill exceeded its assets, he admitted the flood of lawsuits could force some difficult decisions.
"I guess there is a danger of schools closing should there be sufficient volume of damages awards made," Dr Aspinall said.
The archbishop said several Canadian dioceses had been "very hard hit" by the legal repercussions flowing from hundreds of lawsuits brought by native American students at church-run residential schools. The national church in Canada also has been forced to close down a number of programs.
"Now, we're not at that point yet but there are some similarities . . . in the financial impact of damages awards," he said.
Insurance covers the church for compensatory damages but not for punitive damages -- which in the Toowoomba Prep case amounted to $400,000.
Solicitor Stephen Roche, of the Brisbane legal firm Shine Roche McGowan, said he believed insurance would cover most of the diocese's costs and that talk of schools closing was "a diversionary issue".
"I think the talk of them having to dig deep into pockets is scaremongering to evoke sympathy for the church," Mr Roche said.
"But if an organisation has allowed sexual abuse to occur on school children over a long period of time without anything being done about it, perhaps it's a good thing if the school does close down." The legal firm is acting on behalf of 24 plaintiffs, 22 of them former students of St Paul's.
Neither Churchie headmaster David Scott nor St Paul's head of school Margaret Goddard could be contacted for comment.
Dr Aspinall also revealed he was considering deposing a priest in his diocese from Holy Orders; the ultimate sanction the Anglican Church can impose on clergy.
"That has not happened (yet). I am considering it at the moment in relation to one matter, one person," he said.
This comes as the Australian Anglican bishops are attempting to formulate a national screening and tracking procedure to make it more difficult for priests accused of committing sexual offences in one diocese to move unobtrusively to another.
Dr Aspinall admitted there had been holes in the past in the church's system of restricting such priests.
"A priest who was found to have done the wrong thing in one place could approach another bishop somewhere else and express interest in a new appointment," Dr Aspinall said.