LONDON (ENGLAND)
Leading Britain’s Conversation
February 12, 2021
By Lindsey Alder
A police officer has told LBC a priest convicted of child sex abuse was only caught when information held by the Catholic church was eventually brought to them by his victim.
Joseph Quigley was jailed for more than 11 years in January for abusing a teenage boy whilst working in the clergy in the West Midlands.
He was a priest in Warwick and working as a private tutor when he carried out the attacks between 2006 and 2009.
The victim, who was under 16 when it happened, reported it to the Archdiocese of Birmingham in 2012 but the full details were not passed onto police – despite an earlier allegation about him to the church in 2008.
It took him another 6 years before he had the courage to come forward to the police himself.
Lead investigator DS Abigail Simpson from Warwickshire Police said examining the church’s safeguarding file on Quigley was eye-opening.
“Certainly for us it was a pivotal point in the investigation as there was a lot of evidence found within those files that really…supported that these offences had occurred and that Mr Quigley did have an unhealthy sexual interest in young people”.
“I think if the police had been notified at the time these offences were reported (2012), then absolutely we could have investigated earlier.
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