UNITED KINGDOM
News & Star
By Phil Coleman
The Bishop of Carlisle has apologised for the church’s handling of a vicar guilty of child sex crimes.
Perverted Ronald Johns first admitted abusing children in 1993.
But he did not face a criminal prosecution until this year because his boss, the then Bishop of Carlisle, The Right Reverend Ian Harland, chose to transfer Johns from his job as a canon at Carlisle Cathedral to a new post at Caldbeck.
The Bishop did not report the matter to the police.
The Bishop’s decision appears to have been based on the unwillingness of the victims – by then adults – to speak to police themselves and on the report of a forensic psychiatrist who judged Johns was unlikely to reoffend.
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