UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph
Dame Moira Gibb to oversee behind-closed-doors review in case handling of Peter Ball case in Carey era
By John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor 23 Feb 2016
A new inquiry is to investigate how much senior figures in the Church of England including the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey knew about the activities of the sex abuser bishop Peter Ball.
It follows claims the Church covered up the full extent of its knowledge of the abuse for two decades.
Dame Moira Gibb, a former council chief executive, is to chair an independent review, ordered last year by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, into how the Church of England responded to the case of Ball, who resigned in disgrace as Bishop of Gloucester in 1993.
Ball, now 83, was jailed last year after pleading guilty to abusing 18 young men, including teenagers, in Litlington, East Sussex, in the 1970s and 1980s during his time as Bishop of Lewes.
Ball accepted a police caution for gross indecency and resigned from his position as Bishop of Gloucester after one victim went to police in the early 1990s.
But it meant he avoided more serious charges until the case was finally reopened 20 years later.
The Rev Vickery House, Ball’s deputy helping run a Church gap-year scheme for young men testing out a possible “call” to ordination was also jailed for sexual offences in a separate case. …
Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, which has campaigned on the issue of clerical abuse, said the inquiry must also investigate allegations that whistleblowers were effectively silenced.
“The inquiry is woefully incomplete unless the terms of reference make specific reference to establishing the extent of historic and current bullying by senior figures in the Church of alleged victims and whistleblowers,” he claimed.
“This bullying has led to a suicide and considerable psychological harm beyond the abuse itself.
“They must also specifically establish the extent to which church officials sought – or encouraged others – to intervene with the CPS, the police and dissuading complainants from reporting to the police.
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