CANTERBURY (UNITED KINGDOM)
Anglican.ink - AnglicanTV Ministries [Webster FL]
March 8, 2025
By Anon
STEPHEN Cottrell, the current Archbishop of York who is also caretaker Archbishop of Canterbury following Justin Welby’s resignation, is now in a maelstrom of historic safeguarding scandals engulfing the Church.
The central allegation against Mr Welby is that abuse carried out for decades by Christian camp leader John Smyth was known about and not acted upon by senior figures within the Church. The former archbishop bowed to pressure and resigned after a damning report concluded that had he formally contacted police when he had the opportunity, five years before Smyth’s death, a trial might have been possible.
As a result of the same report, ten clergy were named last month as facing possible disciplinary action over safeguarding failures. They include George Carey, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002. The review said he had, as principal of Trinity Theological College in Bristol, been informed of Smyth’s abuse and been sent a copy of an earlier report produced 42 years ago – “but he denies seeing it”.
Lord Carey resigned from the ministry in December after the BBC contacted him about separate allegations that he allowed a priest, who had been banned over sexual abuse claims, to return to the priesthood.
Mr Cottrell, inset, himself has been under pressure over accusations of not acting quickly enough in his former role as Bishop of Chelmsford over the priest, David Tudor, who was allowed to remain in post despite having been barred by the Church from being alone with children and having paid compensation to a sexual abuse victim.
Mr Cottrell has said he inherited a “horrible and intolerable” situation and “acted immediately” when fresh complaints were made about the priest in 2019, adding that he had “no legal grounds” to suspend him before then.
Separately, Mr Cottrell has also faced allegations – which he rejects – that he bullied members of a committee to secure John Perumbalath’s appointment as Bishop of Liverpool. Perumbalath resigned last month following media coverage of sexual assault and harassment allegations against him, which he also denies.
Others facing possible disciplinary action include the Reverend Sue Colman, wife of the Colman’s mustard heir Sir Jamie Colman. The report by safeguarding professional Keith Makin concluded that Mrs Colman, associate minister at St Leonard’s Church in Oakley, near Basingstoke in Hampshire, was aware of Smyth’s abuse before being ordained and noted that she and her husband visited Smyth in Africa in the 1990s and funded the Smyths through a personal trust.
Others named by the Church’s ‘national safeguarding team’ include the retired former Bishop of Durham Paul Butler, Reverend Roger Combes, Reverend Andrew Cornes, Reverend Tim Hastie-Smith, Reverend Hugh Palmer, Reverend Paul Perkin, Reverend Nick Stott and Reverend John Woolmer.
John Smyth is said to have subjected his victims to traumatic attacks across five decades in three different countries and involving as many as 130 boys and young men in the UK and Africa. He died aged 77 in Cape Town in 2018 while under investigation by Hampshire Police.
Survivors of Smyth have questioned why others named in the Makin report, including Mr Welby and the current Bishop of Lincoln, Stephen Conway, are not also facing disciplinary action.
In a statement released on behalf of some, they said: “It is unclear, for example, why Archbishop Justin Welby, who resigned over his ‘personal and moral’ failings, is excluded.”
Mr Conway, who was Bishop of Ely in 2013 when he was briefed on Smyth’s abuse, has previously apologised and said he recognised “there were further actions I could have taken following my reporting of the disclosures” but that he felt he had followed safeguarding practice at the time.
After Mr Welby’s resignation, Julie Conalty, the deputy lead bishop for safeguarding, admitted that in some ways, the Church is “not a safe institution” and that it had an “institutional problem where we are not putting victims and survivors at the centre”.
Alexander Kubeyinje, the Church’s national director of safeguarding, said: “We must not forget that at heart of this case are the survivors and victims who have endured the lifelong effects of the appalling abuse by John Smyth. We are truly sorry.”