THE Church of England has always put its own reputation above the needs of victims of sexual abuse. 

Twenty-odd years ago it asked the former high court judge Elizabeth Butler-Sloss to investigate allegations of an Establishment cover-up of child sex abuse in the church. 

Amazingly, she decided that it was more important to protect the reputation of the church over providing justice for the victims.

She kept allegations about a bishop out of the public domain because the “press would love a bishop.” 

When later she was appointed to lead the government’s major review of child sex abuse allegations she again kept allegations about a bishop out of a report on a paedophile scandal because she “cared about the church.” 

Now a new report, the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) has discovered that things are just as bad, if not worse, today with a disgraceful failure of leadership by the former archbishop of Canterbury George Carey. 

The inquiry concluded that the archbishop had defended a guilty bishop right up until he eventually went to prison.

The report also found that Prince Charles — an old friend of paedophiles like Jimmy Savile — also came to the defence of one of the abusing bishops as he battled the accusations.

Quite simply the bishop lied and the archbishop of Canterbury and Prince Charles, titular head of the church, believed him and to protect the reputation of their church they turned their backs on his accusers. 

Bishop Peter Ball was finally jailed in 2015, more than 20 years after allegations were first made against him. Ball accepted a police caution in 1993 and resigned as bishop but was allowed to continue officiating in the church, allowing him to continue in contact with young people.

Prince Charles even went so far as to buy a country house through the Duchy of Cornwall for his close friend Bishop Ball to live in after he resigned as a bishop.

Strangely Prince Charles was not summoned to give evidence in person under oath like all the other witnesses coming before the inquiry. 

He was allowed to submit a six-page written document and was therefore not able to be questioned on his behaviour in the case.

In his written statement, the prince denied he had sought to influence the outcome of police investigations. 

He wrote to Ball in February 1995, saying: “I wish I could do more. I feel so desperately strongly about the monstrous wrongs that have been done to you and the way you have been treated.”

Meanwhile Neil Todd, who made the first complaint against Ball to the police in 1992, killed himself in 2012.

It wasn’t just Prince Charles who defended Ball. The archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002 George Leonard Carey consistently took the side of bishop Ball showing him compassion that was not extended to the bishop’s victims.

Throughout, the church’s response to allegations of abuse by Ball and others in the diocese of Chichester was marked by secrecy, prevarication and avoidance of reporting alleged crimes, the report said.

Disclosures of abuse were handled inadequately by the church, and responses failed to display an appropriate level of urgency or appreciation of the seriousness of allegations made. 

During the inquiry’s public hearings last year, senior clergy squabbled about responsibility for failing to deal with past sexual abuse.

Child protection was compromised with perpetrators, about whom there were allegations or even convictions, being provided with unrestricted access to children and young people, the report found.

Apologies given by Justin Welby, the present archbishop of Canterbury, and other senior church figures over the CofE’s failures were “unconvincing,” the IICSA report said.

Bishop Ball is just one example of how a senior member of the clergy was able to sexually abuse vulnerable teenagers and young men for decades. 

The IICSA report recommended amending the 2003 Sexual Offences Act to include clergy among those defined as being in a position of trust. 

Such a move would criminalise sexual activity between clergy and a person aged between 16 and 18 over whom they exercise pastoral authority. It is amazing that such acts are not already illegal.

William Chapman, representing survivors, told the IICSA: “The story of Peter Ball is the story of the Establishment at work in modern times.”

Ball had been able to call upon the “willing assistance of members of the Establishment. It included the heir to the throne, the archbishop and a senior member of the judiciary, to name only the most prominent.”

Richard Scorer, a specialist abuse lawyer who acts for a number of victims, said: “We may never know the true harm caused by Prince Charles’s intervention and support for Ball, but welcome the fact that the IICSA did not shy away from highlighting his role in this scandal.

“This report is a damning indictment of years of church cover-up, facilitation of child abuse and denigration and dismissal of victims. It rightly criticises senior church figures for serious failings, but it also exposes alarming cultural and structural problems in the Church of England.”

Sadly the case of bishop Ball is not unusual. Two former bishops of Lincoln failed to act at the time when informed of alleged abuse.  

The BBC’s Panorama revealed the names of 53 Lincoln diocese clergy and staff that were passed to police — amid concerns about the handling of past abuse allegations — years after they could have been.

The eventual police investigation led to three people being convicted. Lincoln diocese acknowledged past matters had not been handled well.

In one of the cases where a former bishop of Lincoln, the late Kenneth Riches, failed to act, Panorama found that he was told in 1969 about abuse carried out by Roy Griffiths, deputy head teacher at Lincoln Cathedral School. 

Griffiths kept his job there until the following year when another boy complained about his abuse of pupils.

Neither Lincoln Cathedral School nor Lincoln diocese informed the police at the time, and Griffiths was able to get a job at another Anglican school the same year. It would be another 45 years before Lincoln diocese informed Lincolnshire Police about Griffiths.

Another former bishop of Lincoln, Robert Hardy, failed to act in the 1990s when one of his diocesan employees admitted to him he had “touched up” a female in the past, saying it had been a one-off. 

The employee, John Bailey, was director of education for Lincoln diocese at the time, and had abused three girls between 1955 and 1982.

He approached the bishop after the family of one of his victims wrote to him at the diocese, telling him of the ordeal he had caused their daughter, but Bishop Hardy did not contact her family to find out any more details.

Bailey was finally jailed in 2017. He admitted 25 counts of indecent assault against the three girls.

The Church of England carried out a Past Cases Review between 2007 and 2010. After looking at 40,000 files, the church concluded that only 13 cases of abuse or alleged abuse required further action to ensure everything had been done to protect children.

Three years after the Past Case Review had concluded, the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, publicly ordered his own investigation of alleged abuse cases involving dead clergy from York diocese. 

The York review identified 32 cases, which included allegations of abuse against young boys and young girls but the diocese of York has never made public the results, and neither have other dioceses.

The church had told all its dioceses to exclude files relating to dead clergy — burying sins with the priests nor to talk to survivors of abuse. 

So here in 2019 the Church of England cares more for its reputation than young victims who have been, and are still being, abused by clergy.