UNITED KINGDOM
The Northern Echo
Bruce Unwin, Chief Reporter (Durham) / Thursday 8 October 2015
A FORMER senior clergyman in the North-East has denied charges of historic indecency relating to two male teenagers.
George Granville Gibson, a former Archdeacon of Auckland, in County Durham, is to stand trial in the New Year on eight counts arising from complaints made by the alleged victims, over incidents said to date from the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The retired cleric, whose posts with the Church of England included heading several parishes across the region, before serving as Archdeacon of Auckland, one of the leading five posts with the Diocese of Durham, between 1993 and 2001.
More recently, he served as an acting pastor at St James the Great Church, in Darlington.
He is accused of sexually assaulting a male in his late teens on at least four occasions, in 1977 and 1978.
Further similar offences are said to have been committed on a boy aged under 16, between late 1979 and 1983.
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