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3 weeks ago
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The archbishop of York is under pressure to resign over the way he handled a sexual abuse case amid revelations that compound a major crisis in the Church of England.
Stephen Cottrell is due to take over temporary leadership of the church in three weeks when the resignation of the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, over his failures to deal properly with abuse takes effect.
A BBC investigation has claimed that when Cottrell was bishop of Chelmsford he allowed a priest to remain in post despite knowing that the C of E had banned him from being alone with children and that the accused priest had paid £10,000 compensation to a sexual abuse victim.
The woman who received the compensation claimed she had been abused by David Tudor as a child. She felt like Cottrell had “spat in my face” by failing to take action when he was told about the payment, she told the BBC File on 4 Investigates.
The Rt Rev Helen-Ann Hartley, the bishop of Newcastle, said Cottrell should stand down. “One archbishop has resigned over a safeguarding failure, and now the remaining archbishop has a very serious matter that calls into question his ability to lead on the urgent change that is required,” she told the Today programme.
“My personal view is that the evidence before us makes it impossible for Stephen Cottrell to be the person in which we have confidence and trust to drive the change that is needed.”
Last month, Hartley was the sole C of E bishop to call publicly for Welby to quit after an independent report into a prolific abuser said he had failed to take effective action. Welby’s resignation has plunged the C of E into a major crisis.
Cottrell, the number two in the church, will take over as de facto leader in early January until a new archbishop of Canterbury is appointed and takes office.
Cottrell was briefed on “longstanding safeguarding concerns” raised about Tudor soon after becoming bishop of Chelmsford in 2010, his spokesperson said. The bishop had been in an “invidious situation” and did not have the legal power to sack the priest, they added.
Tudor was banned from ministry two months ago, after he admitted historical sex abuse allegations relating to two girls. Tudor was a priest for 46 years, in London, Surrey and Essex, and was an area dean on Canvey Island in Essex in 2010.
The BBC reported that in 1988, he was convicted of indecently assaulting three girls and was jailed for six months. The conviction was quashed on technical grounds because the judge had misdirected the jury.
In 1989, Tudor was banned for sexual misconduct by a church tribunal but was allowed to return to ministry after five years. In 2005, he was suspended as police investigated an allegation he had indecently assaulted a child in the 1970s. He was not charged and was allowed back to work under conditions.
From January 2008, Tudor had been working under a safeguarding agreement preventing him from being alone with children or entering schools in Essex. Soon after, he had become an area dean in charge of 12 parishes.
Tudor has not commented in response to the BBC investigation.
Cottrell’s spokesperson said he “completely shares and understands the hurt and frustrations that surround this case, which were frustrations and anxieties that he lived with every day he was in office”.
Hartly said there was a “generation of bishops in the C of E who are very much in the mould of it being an old boys’ club, and that is something that a new archbishop is going to have to deal with.”
The fallout from the C of E’s failures over sexual abuse has been seismic. Last month’s independent report into John Smyth, a charismatic barrister who sadistically beat boys and young men he groomed at Christian holiday camps and Winchester College, was the latest in a long line of reviews and inquiries that have pointed to complacency and cover-up.
Welby, who had known Smyth, failed to act when survivors came forward to disclose the abuse soon after he became archbishop of Canterbury in 2013. Welby said he had no previous knowledge of the abuse claims that surrounded Smyth, who died in 2018.
Welby enraged survivors when he made a jocular farewell speech about his resignation in the House of Lords earlier this month. Victims of Smyth said they were disgusted that Welby did not express remorse for survivors. He later apologised.
