Two Arrested in Anglican Child Abuse Investigation

AFP
March 6, 2012

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Child protection detectives had been investigating the allegations for six months (AFP/File, Geoff Caddick)

Two men in their 70s were arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of sexual abuse of young men and children as police investigate claims of abuses by Church of England vicars decades ago.

Sussex police said that child protection detectives had been investigating the allegations for six months after a confidential review by former top judge Elizabeth Butler-Sloss of abuse claims in the Diocese of Chichester.

The arrests come two days after the Church of England said it was "deeply sorry" for allowing a convicted paedophile to be ordained as a priest in the same diocese in 1966.

A 73-year-old man was arrested near Eastbourne on Tuesday on suspicion of nine sexual assaults on young people in West Sussex, Barkingside and Hampshire between 1965 and 1972.

The second man, aged 70, was arrested in Eastbourne over the sexual assaults of three young men in West Sussex in the 1970s and 1980s.

Three of the sexual abuse claims had previously been reported and investigated, but none was taken to a criminal trial, police said. The others had emerged in the course of the latest inquiry.

Bishops have faced tough questions as to why action was not taken earlier to stop abuse in the area, after a growing scandal that echoes those exposed in the Roman Catholic church.

Detective Chief Inspector Carwyn Hughes said: "Although they have been arrested on the same day the cases against the two men are being treated as separate enquiries at this stage. The offences were allegedly committed at different times and in different places from each other. "The re-investigation of these cases has taken six months. This is a very complex enquiry, in the course of which many people, all now adults, have had to be traced, together with other witnesses and records from a wide variety of sources. "There are no allegations of recent or current offending and police emphasise that there is nothing to suggest that any children are currently at risk."

She added that the diocese was co-operating fully with police.