New Child Sex Case Hits Australian Church

Australia's Anglican church has been thrown into fresh controversy after the author of an influential report on paedophilia within the Tasmanian church pleaded guilty to child sex charges.

Michael Crowley, a former teacher and head of Tasmania's branch of the Australian Psychological Society, admitted to starting a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl when he was a 31-year-old teacher in 1974.

His victim said she had gone to police out of "disgust at the hypocrisy" of his co-authoring a 1998 report into sexual abuse in the Tasmanian church.

The church yesterday continued to stand by that report, which documented claims of abuse as far back as the 1960s. "We believe the inquiry was conducted in a thorough and independent way," said the Bishop of Tasmania, John Harrower.

"At the time the church appointed Dr Crowley he was a person in good professional standing in the community. However, we would not have appointed Dr Crowley, knowing what we know now."

Tasmania's director of public prosecutions, Tim Ellis, told the court Crowley had begun "grooming" his victim, who has not been named for legal reasons, when she was 12. He wrote love letters to her, rented a private postbox for her and initiated a secret phone call code, the court was told.

Mr Ellis said the affair later developed into a sexual relationship in which Crowley took explicit photographs of her. The girl became pregnant aged 16 before having an abortion. "My whole life has been about coping," she said in a statement to the court in Hobart.

Crowley pleaded guilty after Mr Ellis agreed to drop other charges alleging that he had had sex with the girl when she was 13.

The prosecutor told the court that members of the clergy had known about Crowley's offence in the 80s, but did not challenge the decision to commission him to write the report. "I'm stunned by their attitude," said Steve Fisher of Survivors Confronting Child Abuse and Rape. "The Tasmanian church has clearly learnt nothing."