Wrath of husband cuckolded by bishop...who STILL denies affair..., by Adam Luck For, Mail Sunday (October 4, 2014)

Wrath of husband cuckolded by bishop...who STILL denies affair: 'Arrogant' Catholic priest abused his power over my wife, rages City boss in his first interview since the story broke

Simon Hodgkinson still has a sinking feeling in his stomach when he recalls the moment he realised that his suspicions his wife Olivia was having a passionate relationship with a Roman Catholic bishop were true.

The couple had been having marital difficulties and 43-year-old Olivia had moved out of the family home. But last April, when Olivia failed to turn up for choir practice at their local church, Simon decided to visit the substantial home of Kieran Conry, the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton.

Speaking for the first time about the collapse of his marriage and his wife’s illicit relationship, Simon, a successful City executive, explains: ‘I thought it was odd when she didn’t arrive at choir practice because normally she would never miss one. I went to her house to drop some music through her letterbox but she wasn’t at home.

‘By then it was about 10pm and I thought it was really weird. I decided it was time to test my suspicion that she was having an affair.

‘I went up to the bishop’s residence and her car was there. I checked and it was there all night. I was devastated.’

So much so that he has waived his anonymity to tell a quite astonishing – and at times explosive – story that asks questions of the very top of the Catholic Church in Britain.

Bishop Conry, 63, last week resigned from his post after admitting he had been ‘unfaithful to my promises as a Catholic priest’ following an affair with a woman six years ago.

It astonished not just his flock but the whole Church. Much liked, Conry is known to be close to Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the head of the Church in England and Wales, and is perceived to be an influential progressive within Catholic circles.

It is quite a fall.

Yet Conry’s disgrace has brought little satisfaction to Mr Hodgkinson, whose own life, he says, has been left in ruins by the bishop’s behaviour.

He remains furious that Conry has refused to acknowledge the year-long close relationship with his wife – something uncovered by a Mail on Sunday investigation. This, despite love letters apparently written by Conry to Olivia, seen by this newspaper, in which the bishop writes: ‘It’s all right to say that Simon did bad things, but you knew that he didn’t love you.

‘You know (I hope) that I did. And I did, and do.’

Strange as it might seem, Conry technically remains both a priest and a bishop, even though he is no longer responsible for Arundel and Brighton. It is not much of a sanction, says Mr Hodgkinson, for a senior cleric who has admitted breaking his vow of celibacy. At the very least, he expects a serious acknowledgement of wrongdoing from the Church.

Bishop Conry last week said he felt ‘liberated’ knowing he no longer has to bear the burden of his guilt.

But Simon is not letting the matter rest and is determined to pursue a complaint against Conry in an ecclesiastical court.

His legal team are also considering pursuing the Church through the High Court in an attempt to find out what they knew amid concern that the bishop might have conducted a series of relationships with women – and that the authorities turned a blind eye.

Letters seen by The Mail on Sunday suggest at least two relationships involving Bishop Conry in recent years and possibly even a third – although nothing is entirely clear in a saga that only began to unfold in public with his resignation.

The betrayal by a Catholic bishop he regarded as a friend represents a particularly bitter twist for Simon, who converted to Roman Catholicism after falling in love with Olivia and marrying her with the understanding that their children would be brought up in the faith.

The couple, childhood sweethearts who met at a West Sussex boarding school, were married at Arundel Cathedral in 1997. They have two daughters, aged 13 and 11, but by the time the couple went on a pilgrimage to Lourdes led by Bishop Conry in the summer of 2013, the marriage was in difficulties because of Simon’s long working hours.

Simon recalls: ‘I had to come back early from Lourdes because I was starting a new job, but it was clear that Olivia and the bishop got to know each other a lot better on that trip. I have seen pictures of them chatting together on the lawn.

‘I met the bishop at a dinner party later that autumn. He was sitting opposite me, next to Olivia, and mentioned he had been to our house for tea, which, in fairness, I already knew about. Then he was a guest at my in-laws house for Christmas Day for coffee. My wife went to pick him up.’

By Simon’s admission, his marriage was in a state of crisis by the autumn of 2013 and the couple had already begun to see a marriage counsellor. Simon adds: ‘Olivia said she found the marriage really difficult. There was a lack of communication and I was back from work late too often. My perspective was that we had become more like business partners and less like lovers.

‘Then, at the third counselling session in late November, she suggested a separation. I was shocked and asked if she was having an affair, which she denied. I had accepted a lot of her criticisms and had tried to take them on board, but it only seemed to make the situation worse.’

In the New Year the Hodgkinsons tried to make a fresh start and moved into a new family home in Sussex, but it was to prove short-lived. Simon said: ‘In late January I had a car crash and when Olivia came back from a trip she told me that she wanted to move out. The flashpoint came about 12 days later when she discovered I had taken legal advice. She wanted to hit me, but didn’t. It was completely out of character. I just didn’t recognise her.

‘That day she put a deposit down on a house that she obviously had been looking at the week before. I was completely devastated. We had just moved into a new family home. I had spent a lot of time trying to get everything right for everyone and the first thing she does is to move out.

‘When we sat the children down and explained, they were really upset. They started hurling cushions and crying. I found it very upsetting indeed.’

He added: ‘By that point I felt that someone was influencing her. Her moving out just didn’t stack up. When Olivia left, she changed her mobile number, and I gave her old number, which I paid for, to my daughter. A friend suggested I check the phone records for clues as to what was going on.

‘When I got the itemised bill, it was obvious that there was an extraordinary pattern. It was clear this was an obsessive relationship because calls were taking place between two numbers from 6am to 11pm most days. The sheer volume of calls was extraordinary. In an odd way I felt relieved because I had found out what the problem was and felt that I could clear this up.

‘I called the phone company and explained I was worried because this was my daughter’s number and there were safeguarding issues. They said they would find out who the number belonged to. When they later told me it belonged to Kieran Conry, I had to ask them to repeat the name several times. I was in complete shock.’

The confirmation of the bishop’s name left Simon in an agonising situation. As a Catholic himself, was he expected to turn the other cheek? And who in the Church could he turn to for help when his love rival was a powerful clergyman?

Simon said: ‘I thought the bishop was someone who was honest and liberal. He is a man who has trained marriage counsellors – and is someone I had seriously thought of turning to for advice in relation to my own marriage.

‘Now, because he was such a powerful public figure, I could not go to anyone in the Church. I wanted to protect my family, I wanted to protect the children but I did not know what to do.’

After his discovery of his wife’s relationship, a shocked and heartbroken Simon employed a private eye, who discovered Olivia had spent the night with Conry on eight occasions in April and May. A subsequent Mail on Sunday investigation showed she had stayed overnight a further three times.

Simon turned to Graham Baldwin, whose charity Catalyst helps people who have been the victims of cults, religious groups and abusive therapists. Together they went to see the Catholic Vicar General, Martin Hayes, last March.

Simon says: ‘He told me the Catholic Church does not do its own internal enquiries and it goes through a public tribunal, which I did not want at that stage. I had hoped it could be resolved in private. He then suggested I confront the wife with the evidence in a counselling situation but I was reluctant to do that. I decided to wait and see.’

Far from blaming his estranged wife, Simon firmly points the finger at Bishop Conry.

‘The power imbalance is obvious,’ he says. ‘Bishop Conry was in a position of authority within an institution she loves and adores. He can justify just about any action to her because of who he is.’

Four months ago, The Mail on Sunday confronted the bishop and Olivia about their relationship, but both denied it. The bishop initially claimed Olivia had stayed for two nights and that several women had stayed at his detached property in Pease Pottage, West Sussex. He insisted none of these had been sexual relationships.

Simon says: ‘I asked Olivia if she was having an affair with the bishop but she claimed that it was all made up.’ In the wake of the denials, Simon’s lawyer Clare Kirby wrote to the bishop in July.

Simon says: ‘It was an opportunity for him to state what was going on. He did not respond at all. He refused to engage so we sent a second letter to him, which he also sent to the papal nuncio, the Vicar General and Cardinal Vincent Nichols. We have heard nothing from any of them.’ Bishop Conry’s resignation has done nothing to ease Simon’s pain.

‘The thought of losing my wife to someone who has behaved so irresponsibly is awful,’ he says. ‘He has abused his authority to the extent that he has allowed a married woman and mother of two children to sleep in his house and he has been completely blind to the emotional impact on the people affected by this.

‘For someone in his position to create that much emotional distress without really noticing or thinking about the consequences and then failing to explain himself is arrogant. The love letters confirm to me this is a very serious statement from the bishop to my wife about his feelings and they seem genuine. It looks as if the Church was aware of this relationship for a long time and did not do anything about it.

‘I also think it seems odd that the bishop should decide to resign because of this older relationship only after we have been in contact with him legally about his relationship with Olivia. It looks like a damage limitation exercise for me.’

Simon’s lawyer is set to lodge a complaint with the Catholic authorities citing that the bishop stands accused of breaking Canon law, which notes that ‘clerics… are bound to celibacy’ and must ‘shun completely everything that is unbecoming to their state’.

Simon says: ‘His professional conduct as a cleric needs to be challenged. Hopefully we can set a marker down and see if Church law is sufficient to judge his behaviour.

‘I hope it will do some good after all this pain. But it will not bring back my wife.’