(UNITED KINGDOM)
The Argus [East Sussex, UK]
July 6, 2025
By Oliver Murphy
An inquest has been opened into the death of a former Church of England priest who raped a six-year-old boy.
Ifor Whittaker, who was serving as a prisoner at HMP Littlehey, near Huntingdon, died at Peterborough City Hospital on March 31.
An investigation launched by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman is ongoing.
The 80-year-old admitted to raping a child in the vestry of St John the Baptist Church, in Sedlescombe, East Sussex, in the late 1990s.
Whittaker was jailed for life in November last year after admitting rape and gross indecency while serving as a priest under the name Colin Pritchard.
Handing down his sentence, Judge Gary Lucie described the former priest as a “predatory paedophile”, adding the offence had been “an egregious breach of trust”.
He was already serving a 16-year sentence for abusing a boy between 1987 and 1991 after he was convicted in trial in 2018.
Whittaker had also previously been jailed for five years in 2008 for the abuse of two children in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, between 1979 and 1983.
Area coroner for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Simon Milburn opened the inquest on Thursday (July 3) at Peterborough City Hall.
At a brief hearing, Mr Milburn said Whittaker “was a serving prisoner at the time of death” before revealing a provisional cause of death of multi-organ failure and sepsis.
The coroner also noted coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes as “contributing” to the former priest’s death.
Mr Milburn adjourned the inquest to be dealt with in the form of a written decision on August 4.
By Oliver Murphy Reporter @theolivermurphy
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