LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Telegraph
July 11, 2019
By Gabriella Swerling
The Archbishop of Canterbury banned a “vulnerable” abuse victim from cathedral grounds after treating his case with “casual indifference”, an independent inquiry heard.
Details of the incident emerged for the first time today and occurred in 2011 when the Most Rev Justin Welby was Dean of Liverpool Cathedral.
The man had alleged he was sexually abused by an unidentified offender who was linked to the Cathedral.
However after alleging that Archbishop Welby had dismissed his claims of abuse, the man appeared outside the Cathedral “angry and upset” before he swore at staff and “threatened security with violence”. As a result, he was banned from the grounds.
Giving evidence to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), the Archbishop admitted “there were a number of things I got wrong on this” in relation to the encounter.
This came as he backed a “mandatory reporting” law for the first time and said that he was “utterly horrified” by historic failures to protect victims from abuse within the Church of England.
Mandatory reporting would require people who work with children, including priests, to face punishment if they fail to pass suspicions of child abuse on to statutory authorities.
Yesterday the IICSA was shown an email exchange dated July 6, 2011 between Archbishop Welby – while he was still a Dean – and the alleged unidentified victim.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.