Governor general in new sex scandal

Beleaguered Peter Hollingworth, the Queen’s representative in Australia, was under more pressure today, amid reports that he wrote a letter saying an alleged child sex abuse victim initiated a relationship with the alleged abuser.

Reports of the letter, said to have been written last week, come a day after a court dismissed a civil rape case against the Governor General.

Hollingworth has been under pressure to resign as the country’s nominal head of state because of the accusations that he raped a woman 40 years ago. The woman, Rosemarie Anne Jarmyn, died in April, reportedly due to suicide, and her surviving relatives withdrew the lawsuit.

He has also been facing calls to quit over his mishandling of paedophile cases while he was Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, the capital of Queensland state, in the 1990s.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation today broadcast details of the letter it says Hollingworth wrote to the current Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, Phillip Aspinall, and the family of a child alleged to have suffered sexual abuse while in an Anglican school in Queensland state.

The alleged abuse occurred in the 1990s while Hollingworth administered the school.

The letter is said to refer to the then 14-year-old pupil as the person “who started a relationship” with an authority figure at the school. The relationship is believed to have continued into adulthood.

Hollingworth’s spokesman Andrew Reynolds said the letter was written to show the girl’s family that Hollingworth had discussed the case with Aspinall, and not to infer blame.

“Apologies if the language used in the letter offended,” he said. He did not release a copy of the letter.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper said that prime minister John Howard’s office had sought a copy of the letter.

Hollingworth has admitted to “errors of judgment” in his handling of paedophile cases while archbishop, but has defied the calls to resign.

He temporarily stepped aside from his post earlier this month after details of the rape allegations first became public. He vowed to fight the claims until they were dropped yesterday.

Howard has stood by Hollingworth throughout the controversy, agreeing that he should step down temporarily while the lawsuit made its way through Victoria state’s Supreme Court.

Although independent for more than a century, Australia has retained the Queen its head of state.