Condoning abuse

More safeguarding failures in the Church of England

Last month, Justin Welby was forced to resign as Archbishop of Canterbury, in the wake of the Makin Report on safeguarding failures in the Church of England. The report had highlighted the Church’s systemic failure, over several decades, to support adults who had been abused as children by John Smyth, or to prevent Smyth from abusing yet more children.

In his farewell speech to the House of Lords on 5 December, Welby shocked survivors of Smyth’s abuse by joking about it, and implying that his diary secretary was the only one to be pitied:

“It is often said - and it is a cliché to say it but, hey, I’m the archbishop still - that if you want to make God laugh, make plans. Well, on that basis next year I will be causing more hilarity than anyone else for many years, because the plans for next year were very detailed and extensive. And if you pity anyone, pity my poor diary secretary who’s seen weeks and months of work disappear in a puff of a resignation announcement.”

Not content with just one ‘joke’ at the survivors’ expense, he went on to deny personal responsibility for the cover up and to joke about the fate of a previous Archbishop :

“There comes time when you are technically leading a particular institution or area of responsibility where the shame of what has gone wrong, whether one is personally responsible or not, must require a head to roll. And there is only, in this case, one head that rolls well enough.I hope not literally: one of my predecessors in 1381, Simon of Sudbury, had his head cut off and the revolting peasants at the time then played football with it at the Tower of London. I don’t know who won. It certainly wasn’t Simon of Sudbury.”

The Bishop of London, sitting beside the Archbishop, had her head in her hands while she listened to Welby’s jocular insensitivity.. The male bishops seated behind them laughed. It was a powerful illustration of the deep splits within the Church of how seriously it should treat safeguarding and the abuse of children.

A survivor of Smyth’s abuse, commenting on Welby’s speech, criticises not just Welby’s flippancy, but his complacency in suggesting that systemic safeguarding failures have been addressed. He refers to similar failures in the case of Canon Andrew Hindley, who was allowed to remain in post at Blackburn cathedral for years after being assessed as a risk of “significant harm” to children, and was given a six figure payoff by the Church.

“Safeguarding may look better on paper”, this survivor suggests, “but the culture of inaction and self-preservation remains deeply entrenched.” He asks ”How many more lives will be destroyed before real change happens?” He concludes that “The church cannot continue to apologise and promise to learn lessons while failing to act.”

The present Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, is due to take over from Justin Welby as the interim Archbishop of Canterbury. The Bishop of Newcastle, Helen-Ann Hartley, who alone among the bishops publicly called for Welby to resign, has also suggested Cottrell should resign, after today’s revelations about Cottrell’s safeguarding failures when he was Bishop of Chelmsford in the 2010s.

Stephen Cottrell and David Tudor

Cottreell’s safeguarding failures concern David Tudor, a charismatic priest with a history of sexually abusing children over many decades. Tudor had been found guilty in 1988 of indecently assaulting three girls, for which had served time in prison. He was temporarily banned from serving as a priest, but in i993 the then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, removed Tudor from a caution list and allowed him to serve as a priest again, though he was supposed not to be alone with children. It was only two months ago, 37 years after the first abuse allegations, that Tudor finally admitted having sexually abused children, and it was only then that the Church of England finally sacked him.

‘Jessica’, a survivor of Tudor’s sexual abuse, describes on BBC’s File on Four radio programme the abuse she had suffered since the age of eleven:

“He wanted to put his hand on my crotch, and then he wanted to put his hand down my pants. It was just really overwhelming, but there was no escape … He’d make me kneel in front of him and perform oral sex, and then punch me repeatedly in the head while reciting bible verse …. I couldn’t believe that God would let that happen. I was absolutely traumatised”

‘Debbie’ was sexually abused by Tudor over a two year period, starting when she was thirteen. She describes how she, and other girls, were groomed by him:

“He was a little bit like a pied piper character. He had lots of children around him. He was perceived to be very cool, and very charismatic. He would have gatherings and discos at his church house where he lived and kids would really enjoy going there and being in his presence. I was 13. He showed me a lot of attention and he made me feel very special. He told me that I needed to keep our friendship between us - things that happened, the intimacy between us - he said that he would be in trouble and I would be in trouble too.”

Cottrell, like Carey, was instrumental in enabling Tudor to continue in the priesthood. He failed to act when he was briefed, on becoming Bishop of Chelmsford in 2010, about Tudor’s appalling record of abuse. Cottrell kept Tudor, a priest in his diocese, in post. He continued to keep Tudor in post when he learned in 2012 that Tudor had paid £10,000 to Jessica (she had taken Tudor to court when the police wouldn’t press charges). Cottrell accepted legal advice that Tudor’s payment didn’t admit liability, so he took no action. As Jessica said, “Nobody would make a payment if they haven’t got something to hide.”

Not only did Cottrell fail to remove Tudor when he learnt of the £10,000 payment, he promoted Tudor in 2015, to be an Honorary Canon of Chelmsford cathedral. It was only after another abuse case came to light in 2019, nine years after he became Bishop, that Cottrell suspended Tudor.

At Tudor’s trial in 1988 at Guildford Crown Court, the Bishop of Croydon had told the court that Tudor had “the utmost integrity.” Tudor’s defence lawyer had painted the three girls who were his accusers that they were “twisted little liars.” As Debbie explained: “He had a lot of support. When he was found guilty at that court case people were crying, they couldn’t believe it. And despite him being found guilty of those crimes, the abuse of me and of other girls too, people were sitting on his side still.” Now, 36 years later, she says “I’m really angry at the Church. It’s very clear to me they sit on the side of a paedophile.”

Helen-Anne Hartley, Bishop of Newcastle , believes that Cottrell’s promotion of an abuser reflects a Church of England culture that “normalises charisma over actually drilling into what’s really going on.” She believes that Cottrell’s failure to act on the information about Tudor that was available to him demonstrates a lack of the moral authority that is needed to lead the Church.

Julie Conalty. Bishop of Birkenhead and Deputy Lead Bishop for safeguarding, disagrees that Cottrell should not be appointed, because, she implies, most senior clergy are just as unsuitable: “If not Stephen Cottrell, then who? Because a number of senior clergy have failed with regard to managing safeguarding cases over the years.”

Footnote

When, for an earlier substack post, I was reading about John Smyth’s abuse of schoolboys at a religious retreat in the Dorset countryside, I remembered a time in my teens when I went on a religious retreat in the Dorset countryside. I knew I hadn’t been abused by Smyth, but I did wonder, momentarily, if I had come across him at the retreat. It soon became clear that what I remembered took place a decade before Smyth started his abuses. And that the retreat I went on was not at Iwerne, the site of Smyth’s abuses, but 17 miles away at a Franciscan Friary in Hillfield.

My Friary experience was odd. The promised quiet time at dinner, listening to a reading by one of the friars, was far from the spiritual experience I had anticipated. It was from a history of the second world war, written by a right wing historian who before the war had been a Nazi sympathiser.

Thankfully I experienced no abuse on the retreat. Indeed my time there was a welcome escape from the abusive environment at my school. I did notice, though, when I was googling to check where my weekend retreat had taken place, a Yorkshire Evening Post article from 2015. The article was about a monk in Leeds who had been arrested for possession of images of children being abused. They were aged between three and sixteen. He avoided prison, by agreeing to attend a sex offenders treatment programme, and moving from Leeds to Hillfield Friary in Dorset. His living there, it was claimed, would not bring him into contact with children.