Paedophile Priests: Church Re-examines Files Dating Back 60 Years

By John Bingham
The Telegraph
August 17, 2013

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10248599/Paedophile-priests-church-re-examines-files-dating-back-60-years.html

Very Rev.Robert M Waddington, Dean of Manchester

The Archbishop of York, the Most Rev John Sentamu, ordered the review as he acknowledged that previous inquiries could have missed important evidence because only files relating to those still living were examined.

It comes after an independent inquiry, overseen by Judge Sally Cahill QC, into the Church’s handling of evidence that the late Robert Waddington, a former Dean of Manchester, abused choirboys and school pupils, got under way.

It will investigate claims that the Province of York effectively covered the case up by failing to alert the police while Waddington was still alive.

Dr Sentamu has now ordered a separate review of personnel files dating back at least as far as 1950 in search of evidence against other clerics who have since died.

Last month the Church’s General Synod voted to issue a formal apology to the victims of sexual abuse for failing to take their complaints seriously.

The Archbishop said: “The damage done by the sexual abuse of children is immense, and the passage of time does not in itself bring healing.

“Where young people are shown to have been betrayed by individuals in a position of trust and by the institution’s failure to protect them, it is for the Church to acknowledge the hurt which has been done, to offer a full apology, and to prove, so far as is possible, that policies and practices are improved such that the same systemic failure could never be repeated.”