The trial and sentencing of Peter Ball, a retired bishop, for sex offences against 18 adolescent boys is an act of justice very long and shamefully delayed. The last of the offences for which he is being punished took place in 1992 and at the time he was merely cautioned. The most shocking aspect of the case is the widespread support he received from the old establishment.

His immediate superior, Eric Kemp, then the bishop of Chichester, wrote in his memoirs that: “The circumstances which led to [Ball’s] early resignation were the work of mischief-makers.” According to the Crown Prosecution Service, letters and phone calls in favour of this abuser were sent to the police by MPs, JPs, public school headmasters, and an unnamed member of the royal family. Immediately after Ball first accepted a caution, he was lent a cottage that belonged to the Prince of Wales. It was on an estate where Ball lived undisturbed until the case against him was reopened as part of a more general investigation of the rottenness of the Chichester diocese under Kemp.

What were they thinking? In all this extraordinary collection of the great and the bad was there no one who thought that the victims deserved more consideration than the perpetrator of the abuse? One answer is that Ball was widely considered an exceptionally holy man; in fact much of his abuse took place in the context of supposedly spiritual disciplines such as naked cold showering. Excess of charisma and sexual appetite are often closely linked, especially in a religious context. Another may be the confusion which at the time surrounded homosexual attraction. The first of the offences for which Ball has been convicted took place only 10 years after gay sex between consenting adults was legalised and, given the age of the victims, would have been illegal even if they had consented. A misplaced sense of solidarity led some people of liberal inclinations to overlook crimes they should never have tolerated.

The greatest change between then and now is the slow emergence of a sexual ethic based on consent to replace the old one based on duty. This is not complete yet and may never be. Consent is the right test in theory, but its absence is notoriously hard to apply in court; the tangles of the human heart cannot be combed out by pretending that sexual dealings can work like clear commercial contracts. But the new ethic at least allows us to see the very great wickedness of the solidarity among the old establishment which allowed Ball his respectable life for so long.