Bishop Bill Ray calls for fresh look at abuse cover-up

ANGLICAN Bishop Bill Ray has called for an investigation into the cover-up of abuse at a boarding school in the 1960s.

ANGLICAN Bishop Bill Ray has called on Australia’s royal commission into child abuse to hold public hearings and use its special powers to investigate the cover-up of the rape and beatings of young boys at a north Queensland boarding school in the 1960s.

The north Queensland Bishop yesterday said he feared the ­extent of the sexual abuse by former principal Robert Waddington and other clergy at St Barnabas boarding school in Ravenshoe, southwest or Cairns, would remain secret unless the commission investigated.

School files are missing, believed to be have been thrown down a disused mineshaft in 1990.

Bishop Ray’s call comes two days after a church-ordered inquiry found a systematic cover-up by church officials, including the former Archbishop of York, now Lord David Hope, of 1999 and 2003 complaints of Waddington’s abuse in Queensland and Britain. Waddington was principal at Ravenshoe for almost a decade before returning in 1970 to ­England where he rose to become the head of education for the church in Britain and later dean of Manchester.

A joint investigation by The Australian and The Times prompted the British inquiry after revealing the mishandling of the complaints and that at least six boys and a young clergyman were sexually abused and beaten by Waddington.

Bishop Ray said he had referred the case to the royal commission after last year’s newspaper investigation but now believed it should go to a hearing.

“I believe the royal commission has the powers to work through some of these issues in a way in which a church-based inquiry doesn’t have the same authority,” he said.

Bishop Ray said he had heard almost nothing from the commission, which has declined to comment on whether it would investigate St Barnabas.

The call has been backed by Queensland victim Bim Atkinson, who made the first complaint about Waddington in 1999, which was dismissed by the church.