Inquiry may cut number of abuse cases against Uniting Church

The child sex abuse royal commission is considering dramatically cutting the number of abuse victims recorded at the hands of the Uniting Church.

The child sex-abuse royal commission has investigated reducing the number of offences counted against the Uniting Church.

The child sex-abuse royal commission has investigated reducing the number of offences counted against the Uniting Church.

The commission wrote to the church two months ago seeking additional information on offending rates, with the church submitting markedly fewer cases than originally raised.

The church’s royal commission task group executive officer John Cox wrote to the commission suggesting the offending rates be cut from more than 2500 allegations or incidents of child sex abuse to 430 child sex abuse cases.

Of these cases there have been 102 claims for financial compensation or redress.

Mr Cox said the church’s initial data provided in March had included all allegations, complaints and incidents that the church was aware of, regardless of whether the complaints had been accepted or substantiated.

The initial 2500 allegations of abuse sparked wide debate because of the Uniting Church’s smaller number of followers in Australia compared with the Catholic Church.

Mr Cox said that once the Uniting Church was given the same definition of abuse as the Catholic Church, a new analysis was conducted of wrongdoing and there was a reclassification of the data.

The commission heard there were 4444 Catholic abuse claimants and 4756 reported claims and had instigated the dialogue with the Uniting Church about its statistics, sources said.

Matters previously included in the abuse but then taken out of the statistical scope by the Uniting Church included abuse committed by children against children, alleged offending by family while children were on leave, alleged abuse by foster carers and potential indicators of abuse such as children exhibiting sexual behaviour.

``The initial data provided by the (Uniting) Church included all allegations, complaints and incidents the church was aware of, whether or not they had been accepted or substantiated,’’ Mr Cox said in a letter to the commission.

He said that on October 3 the commission provided the Uniting Church with the same definition used by the Catholic Church when calculating offending.

Professor Des Cahill, a former adviser to the sex abuse royal commission, said the original Uniting Church figure was too high.

The royal commission heard there were 1082 complaints of child abuse in the Anglican Church between 1980 and 2015.