UNITED KINGDOM
Christian Today
Ruth Gledhill
A senior Church of England priest who was deeply sexually and emotionally abusive to young boys escaped prosecution when he was alive, possibly because of a failure to act against him when the first complaints were made, according to a report today.
The Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu said it was a matter of “shame” and “deep repentance” that the abuse had occurred. The inquiry by Judge Sally Cahill QC found that the former Archbishop of York, Lord Hope of Thornes, did not act on information he was given about abuse by Robert Waddington, former Dean of Manchester, who is now dead.
The 125-page report makes chilling reading and illustrates how a respected churchman could at the same time groom the young boys he had access to while cultivating an illusion of goodness in front of almost everyone else.
Throughout his long career as a paedophile, during which senior clergy praised him as someone with “a special gift with boys”, children were abused in Australia, where Waddington also worked, and in England. He would treat his chosen boys like young adults and give them the pet name of “mon petit”. There were also reports of boys being taken away by him on holiday, and of “boys frolicking with little clothing on.”
Judge Cahill concludes that it is a “possibility” that Waddington might have faced prosecution had any investigation been made into allegations against him in 1999, 2003 or 2004. The last victim identified was in the 1990s but as late as 1999, when the first complaint was made to Lord Hope, Waddington had access to the choirboys’ cloakroom at York Minster.
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