UNITED KINGDOM
Virtueonline
By Alan Jacobs
Special to VIRTUEONLINE
www.virtueonline.org
May 25, 2016
In the galling history of homosexual sexual abuse and establishment cover up of that abuse in the Church of England, have been two important cases in recent months, those of Bishop Peter Ball and Rev. William Campbell-Taylor. Both call into question the Christian vocation of the Anglican establishment and its willingness to engage truthfully with the gay abuse issue among its clergy.
The first case represented a staggering catalogue of multiple concerns of sex abuse against boys and vulnerable young men by Bishop Peter Ball which were raised over years but quietly shelved by the Church as the abuse continued. In the second equally shocking case, William Campbell-Taylor, a vicar in Hackney in the Diocese of London and Councilor in the City of London, attempted unsuccessfully to use an obscure legal provision to prosecute his vulnerable male victim for allegedly causing him “distress and alarm” by the embarrassment of the survivor publicly revealing in Parliament that the priest had asked him for oral sex. Astonishingly, instead of engaging these serious concerns, the Diocese of London admits it employed a private scandal management company, Luther Pendragon Limited, to intervene in relation to the survivors’ meeting in the House of Commons.
Both cases illustrate astonishing betrayals by the Church of England establishment of the most vulnerable, where well-connected clergymen were able to call on both the hierarchy, the police and the Church’s aggressive PR firms, not just to dismiss the abuse allegations but even to actively persecute their victims who had blown the whistle. Phil Johnson, one of Ball’s teenage victims blasted the Church of England in the media for its collusion and silencing of complainants (one of whom committed suicide). There has been similar disbelief and outrage across the international abuse survivor community that Campbell-Taylor who, unable to sue his victim for making true allegations of abuse, nevertheless was able to leverage his position as a chaplain with Hackney Police in London to threaten and attempt to convict his victim for speaking out truthfully, due to the public revelations about his asking for fellatio having allegedly caused “distress” to the priest.
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