BishopAccountability.org
	Baroness Set to Carry out Vicar Abuse Inquiry Evening Telegraph January 4, 2011 http://www.northantset.co.uk/news/Baroness-set-to-carry-out.6678754.jp A retired senior judge has been appointed to look into how two vicars were allowed to continue to work in churches following serious sex abuse allegations. Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss has been appointed by the Diocese of Chichester to carry out a review looking into how Colin Pritchard and Roy Cotton were allowed to work in East Sussex churches. Pritchard was vicar of St Barnabas in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, until 2007, despite having been first reported to police for sex offences against boys in Northamptonshire a decade earlier. In 2008 Pritchard received a five-year prison sentence at Northampton Crown Court after he pleaded guilty to sexually abusing two boys in the 1970s and 1980s, when he served as parish priest at St Andrew's church in Wellingborough. Cotton was alleged to have been involved in these offences but died two weeks before Pritchard was arrested in 2006. A spokesman for the Diocese of Chichester said: "The review aims to ensure that the diocese addresses the need to secure the highest standards of safeguarding within the scope of the diocesan policy."
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.