During 27 January to 5 February 2016, the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse held public hearings.
The royal commission examined "the systems and policies within the CEBS and the four Anglican dioceses, in relation to youth camps and activities, and raising and responding to concerns and complaints about child sexual abuse".
"After a great deal of consideration over the past 22 years I acknowledge unreservedly that my actions were misguided, wrong and a serious error of judgment and that I genuinely regret it", he said.
[5] A 2019 investigation into the activities of CEBS activities in the Sutherland Shire of Sydney between the late 1960s until 2013, also in relation to youth camps named "Rathane" as well as "Chaldercot" and "Deer Park" located in the Royal National Park facilities of the Anglican Church in the Port Hacking River region resulted in the arrest and conviction of a leader of the Church of England Boys Society.
[6] In 2015 an apology was issued jointly by the Anglican Church of Canada dioceses of New Westminster and Calgary for failing to report to the police in 1994 a written confession of child sexual abuse by priest Gordon Goichi Nakayama.
[8][9] In 2021 the Anglican Church of Canada and the National Association of Japanese Canadians jointly announced the establishment of a $610,000 healing fund to be used to address the legacy of Nakayama's sexual abuse.
[11][12][13] In the 1970s concern was raised over Jeremy Dowling, a lay minister and employee of the Diocese of Truro, and a member of the general synod from 1977.
[14] In 1993, Peter Ball, who had co-founded a monastic community called the Community of the Glorious Ascension with his brother Michael Ball in 1960, was the suffragan Bishop of Lewes in the Diocese of Chichester from 1977 to 1992 and then the diocesan Bishop of Gloucester from 1992 to 1993,[15] resigned after admitting to an act of gross indecency with a 19-year-old former novice at the monastery, and accepting a formal police caution for it.
[26] The Meekings Chichester past cases review report was made public in February 2012 and the next day, the Church of England issued a rare public apology in response to the report's damning description of the way the church handled Cotton and Pritchard and failed to protect and care for people abused by them.
[23][27] In March 2012 two retired Chichester vicars, Gordon Rideout and Robert Coles, were arrested based on information from the past cases review and the Butler-Sloss report.
[14] A few days later the Bishop of Durham said at a church synod that the 2003 abolition of defrocking may have been a mistake; it had been abolished over concerns about wrongful convictions.
[44] Bavin had also allowed a convicted paedophile priest, Father Michael Gover, to carry on working for the church on his release in 1990.
[46] In March 2016, the "first independent review commissioned by the Church of England into its handling of a sex abuse case" issued a 21-page report by Ian Elliott, a safeguarding expert.
It said that Welby's office failed "to respond meaningfully to repeated efforts by the survivor throughout 2015 to bring his case to the church leader’s attention".
[citation needed] Speaking on behalf of the church, Sarah Mullally, Bishop of Crediton, said that Welby has made "a personal commitment to seeing all the recommendations implemented quickly".
Bishop Mullally "is drawing up an action plan to implement the report's proposals, covering education and training, communication and structural change".