This time from The Courier:
The Anglican archbishop at the centre of controversy in Federal Parliament over alleged sexual abuse faced a Ballarat court on theft charges 30 years ago, it was revealed yesterday.
Independent South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon this week used parliamentary privilege to name a priest accused of sexual abuse against Archbishop John Hepworth of the breakaway Traditional Anglican Communion more than 40 years ago.
A decade after the alleged abuse took place, Archbishop Hepworth was charged with misappropriating funds from an Anglican parish in Sebastopol.
He pleaded not guilty in a Ballarat court to the misappropriation of $1200 and said the magistrate failed to find a verdict.
He said he used the funds to pay for his son’s baptism party.
‘’My marriage was breaking up. I was really gone to pieces. And yes, there was a court case. I pleaded not guilty. The magistrate refused to find any verdict. And that was the end of it,’’ he said.
‘’I was trying to stop the marriage breaking up. My then wife wanted a big party and I could not afford it.
‘’The [Anglican] diocese brought [the charge] because I had wrongly used … [a parish account] and regretted it afterwards … I had paid an account intending to pay it back.
“It was as common as that. And it was wrong.’’
Archbishop Hepworth later left the Anglican church and lived in Europe.
It was reported that further allegations of financial irregularities faced the Archbishop during his time in a South Australian parish.
Archbishop Hepworth denies these allegations.
He told The Age he believed his detractors were using the information to smear him as he calls for action from the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide over the alleged sexual abuse which has generated another round of unwanted controversy.
The Courier contacted the registrar of the Anglican Diocese of Ballarat yesterday, but he declined to comment and said the incident was long before any of the current diocesan leaders were in place.
Calls and emails to Archbishop John Hepworth were not returned yesterday.
I must confess that these (ongoing) revelations are all extremely embarrassing. If anything, the Archbishop has exposed himself.
Yes, the old glass house comes to mind! He should have just manned-up, and moved on! Again, this whole issue looks putrid from every angle!
Looks to me as if he already knows what Rome’s verdict is regarding his status in an Australian Ordinariate – hence a friendly parliamentarian has lobbed a legal-consequence free cocktail in the Australian Parliament, something Hepworth couldn’t do himself outside Parliament without legal consequences. It seems that, if Hepworth’s abandoning the church and his priesthood, his marriage, his divorce, his remarriage have caused Rome to decide they may be better without him as Ordinary or even as a simple priest in the Ordinariate, he’s decided to take a couple of Catholic priests down with him. He’s complained of tardiness in having his claims investigated – but this was entirely of his own doing it seems since it’s clear he wanted to keep the threat of exposure of alleged sexual abuse alive while he cut the best deal for himself he could regarding the Ordinariate. I’ve had the feeling that his line has been to the Church ‘If you overlook certain irregularities in my past and make me Ordinary, I’ll overlook certain unfortunate episodes in my life also”. His pain seems to have been contained for decades. It only resurfaced when negotiations regarding the Ordinariate surfaced also.
Maybe I think the worst of people. Mea Culpa, if so.
We have been given to understand that Nick Xenophon attended Law School with Arcbishop Hepworth, and they have been friends of long standing…………………………………………