UNITED KINGDOM
National Secular Society

Posted: Wed, 16 Mar 2016

A report by Ian Elliott, an expert in child safeguarding, has found “repeated failures” by clergy and bishops in the Church of England to deal with reports by survivors of child abuse.

A single survivor of child sex abuse told “over 40 members of the clergy during the 1970s, 80s, 90s and 2000s” of sexual abuse he had suffered at the hands of a senior member of the Church of England, but failed to receive an adequate response – including from people in “very senior positions within the Church” and the office of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

As late as 2014 the survivor made another report of the historic sex abuse and found “the response less than adequate.” The Church offered no “real investigation into his disclosures” and “every question arising from the issue of senior…