ENGLAND
Devon Live
October 17, 2017
By Anita Merritt
Parishioner calls for Bishop of Exeter to stand in pulpit and apologise for the cover-up that allowed Peter Cranch to repeatedly assault a choirboy
The Bishop of Exeter is being asked to apologise in person to the congregation of a church where a known paedophile was installed as a vicar.
Rev Peter Cranch was known to have abused boys in Cornwall and Devon in the 1970s before the church moved him to All Saints Church in Exmouth, where he went on to subject a choirboy to a horrific catalogue of abuse, sexually assaulting him hundreds of times.
In 2004, Cranch was sentenced to eight years in prison for serious sexual assaults against the boy. Then aged 57, he was found guilty of six charges of assaulting a male under 16, four of a serious sexual assault and two of indecency with a child. The boy had been attacked over a five-year period between 1985 and 1990 at All Saints. The judge accused him of “stealing his victim’s childhood”.
Although the then Bishop of Exeter, Michael Langrish, apologised for the Church’s conduct after Cranch’s conviction, no senior clergy have ever appeared in person to apologise to the All Saints’ congregation, despite a lengthy campaign by parishioner Graham Martin
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