Vicar Convicted of Stealing Church Funds Goes on Run

The Guardian
July 23, 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/23/vicar-goes-on-the-run-as-he-is-convicted-of-stealing-church-funds

Church of England vicar Simon Reynolds left the court for lunch and never came back. Photograph: Dave Higgens/PA

A Church of England vicar convicted of pocketing thousands of pounds handed over as fees for weddings, funerals and graveyard memorials has gone on the run. Simon Reynolds, 50, went out for lunch and did not come back, an official at Sheffield crown court said. The jury later came back and convicted him on all charges, she said.

Reynolds, of Farnham, Surrey, was accused of keeping fees handed to him by bereaved families and engaged couples when he was the priest in charge of All Saints Church in Darton, near Barnsley, South Yorkshire. He should have handed over the money – estimated at ?24,000 – to the diocese and the parochial church council, the court heard. South Yorkshire police said a warrant had been issued for Reynolds’ arrest and officers were actively searching for him. It said in a statement that he had been convicted of four counts of theft, despite his absence at court.

Opening the case for the prosecution last week, Tom Storey told the jury it was Reynolds’ responsibility to hand over the fees for weddings and funerals to the diocese. Storey said an investigation by the church, then the police, showed he had passed on only a fraction of what he should. The prosecutor said the offences, allegedly committed between 2007 and 2013, were a “significant breach of trust”.

Reynolds was accused of four counts of theft. The first three related to fees that he should have sent to the Wakefield Diocesan Board of Finance, for marriages, funeral and churchyard monuments. The fourth related to fees for monuments that should have gone to the parochial church council. The defendant denied all the charges.

Storey told the jury of eight men and four women how Reynolds received a stipend as payment for his work at All Saints and another nearby church in the village of Cawthorne. The prosecutor explained how suspicions about Reynolds began after he left Darton, in March 2013, to take up a new post in Surrey. A church warden thought it was “irregular” that a cheque from a stonemason relating to a churchyard monument was made out personally to the former vicar.

Storey said: “It was discovered that in some years the defendant had not paid any fees for weddings or funerals over to the Diocesan Board of Finance. The impression this created was that he had not conducted any weddings or funerals at the church for those years.”

But he said records of separate fees received for weddings and funerals by the parochial church council and also the church’s marriage and burial books showed that services had “clearly taken place”. Storey said the church treasurer, Anthony Warden, worked out that in 2008 there were 18 weddings in the parish and that Reynolds had conducted eight of these.

He said the diocese should have received a fee of ?150 for each wedding – a total of ?1,200. But, the prosecutor said, the defendant only handed over ?555. He said Mr Warden concluded that there was a ?4,594 shortfall in fees for weddings over Reynolds’ period at the church. “The prosecution say that it is a reasonable inference that this shortfall was money which the defendant received but which he never declared or remitted and, therefore, that he kept it for himself,” Storey said.

Storey said Warden set about trying to estimate the amount of fees that would have been handed over for funerals, which was difficult due to different amounts being charged for different types of service. He said this research led to a total figure of ?14,600 that should have been handed over in respect of weddings and funerals combined. The prosecutor said: “In addition, Mr Warden estimated that, over the term of the defendant’s office at Darton, a total of some ?9,726 should have been paid to the church in relation to burial and cremation plaques or monuments.”

The Archdeacon of Pontefract, the Venerable Peter Townley, told the jury that “the one thing that was never a problem” with Reynolds was his administration of his parish. The archdeacon said dealing with fees for weddings and funerals was “very much in the bloodstream of every parish priest”. He added that it was “as integral to our makeup as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John”.