A FEMALE Anglican priest whose son was sexually abused by a trainee priest at St John’s Theological College at Morpeth said she had a conflict of interest after her son disclosed to her in 2002.
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“In a sense you can get into conflict of interest. One, I’m a priest and two I was a mother,” the woman, known as CKR, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Friday during a hearing into Newcastle Anglican diocese.
“You have obedience to your Bishop, and I couldn’t be obedient to my Bishop” once her son disclosed he had been abused, she said.
She was also “very dependent upon the Bishop’s approval … to continue practising the ministry” she loved.
CKR spoke angrily about the diocese’s responses after she raised concerns about priest Ian Barrack even before her son told her Barrack had sexually abused him while they lived at the theological college in the late 1990s.
In the late 1990s she spoke to Newcastle Archdeacon Bruce Hoare, who was responsible for trainee priests at the college, after Barrack gave her teenage son a wind-up toy of a man having sex with a sheep.
She told the royal commission Reverend Hoare laughed about the toy until she responded angrily.
CKR gave evidence Reverend Hoare spoke to Bishop Roger Herft about the toy, and the two clergymen decided she should give it back to Barrack and tell him she was not happy about it and thought it was highly inappropriate.
CKR was highly critical of behaviour at the college and its operations.
“You had people running off with other people’s wives and disappearing off college. I mean, it was, I couldn’t believe all this stuff was happening on this college and there didn’t seem to be much control in the place,” she said.
CKR’s son CKU, 32, spoke of being groomed by Ian Barrack from the age of 12, and being allowed to sleep over at Barrack’s house at the college because his mother thought Barrack’s wife was there. The sexual abuse started from when he was 14.
“When I was being abused by Ian I did not know how to feel. I was numb and confused. I felt like it was a dream. I did not know it was wrong. Ian treated it like it was completely normal and I felt confused,” CKU said.
CKU made a statement to police in 2002 but Barrack was not charged until 2005. He was jailed for two years.
