FORMER Anglican Dean of Newcastle Graeme Lawrence has been charged with sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy in the Hunter region in the early 1990s.
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Mr Lawrence, 75, was arrested at a Kotara home on Tuesday morning and charged at Waratah Police Station with four counts of aggravated sexual assault and aggravated indecent assault.
He was granted conditional bail to appear at Newcastle Local Court on December 7.
His arrest followed a referral from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to Newcastle City Local Area Command in 2016. Strike Force Arinya was formed to investigate allegations of sexual assault.
Mr Lawrence, who retired from the church with civic honours in 2008, was defrocked in 2012 after a church disciplinary hearing.
He became the 13th Anglican Dean of Newcastle after moving from Griffith to Newcastle in 1984.
During evidence to the royal commission Mr Lawrence denied he sexually abused a teenage boy at a church youth camp in the 1990s.
