To think Justin Welby Archbishop of Canterbury must resign/be charged TW CSA.

You’ve got your facts wrong. It was reported to the police by the church in 2013. And 2014. And also to the Charity Commission. Welby was told it had been reported, believed there was a police investigation, and deliberately kept his distance so as not to prejudice that investigation. In reality the report was made through the wrong police channels and the police failed to realise the seriousness and escalate internally, and the church was not active enough pressing the matter with them. But Welby was under the impression that it had been properly referred to the police, and acted accordingly.

Strikes me that it’s only pedophiles that don’t find pedophilia repugnant and unbearable. Any decent man would take immediate action to stamp it out and bring these monsters to justice. Surely. I can think of no other reason to tolerate it.

Makes one wonder how he got the job in the first place. Check his hard drives.

Yes in the HoL too. He's lost that ability and undermines anyone else from talking from religious pov

Why is it that these wokesters who lecture the public most about social justice have the most rotten skeletons in their closet? This guy has been going on non stop about slavery reparations and immigration plans being evil and nazi like.

I'd say this is strained yes

www.thetimes.com/article/5cedf6f1-94f0-4e55-a428-2c3d270a93a8?shareToken=776a1c72ea4a898a83bfdf7219185ee0

The bishop of Newcastle is calling for Welby's resignation, but it reads to me like she's mostly interested in damage limitation for the church.

The church has surely already lost all credibility as a 'moral voice'.

It’s pretty clear that the Church was not the only organisation to fail here

This is true, @Greenbike, though in fairness the police's job will hardly have been made any easier by the church leaders' long and depressing hsitory of covering up and deflecting wherever possible

It's also true however that police don't try to claim the same kind of moral authority as the church, neither do they enjoy the same privileges on the back of clamiing it

Thanks, saved me a google there!

@username7891

Agreed.

@Greenbike

Thank you for such a detailed response. The police yet again, seem to have failed abused children. And in a wider context, all authorities involved have failed the vulnerable.

He shouldn’t have the chance to resign, he should be sacked and he should be charged with enabling CSA

@username7891

The report is at the link below. The 2013 chronology begins on 174.

https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2024-11/independent-learning-lessons-review-john-smyth-qc-november-2024.pdf

Clearly you’re right that they reported it in the wrong way. Welby should have investigated the initial report to the police. He would have discovered that an individual liaison officer in Cambridgeshire Police had been told, rather than a formal report being made to the Met or Hampshire Police. He seems to have taken it on trust that the police had been informed formally, whereas actually the report was informal. He was told of “the importance of not contacting anyone given police are involved” (Makin Report p.174). As you say, this was wrong. One police officer had been told, and apparently did very little. In 2014 Cambs police decided not to conduct a full investigation, and communicated this decision to the church (p.176).

The chronology in the report contains several instances of contact between the church and the police on this from 2013 onwards.

In 2014 a Serious Incident Report was also filed with the Charity Commission. They did nothing.

Also in 2014 a senior officer in Thames Valley Police was sent a copy of the internal church report on the issue (the Ruston Report) by a Church safeguarding official. TVP apparently did nothing (page 194).

On page 194 the report states that “a total of five police forces were told of the abuse between 2013 and the end of 2016.”

The church officials involved seem to have been under the impression that the police were investigating. In reality the police were doing very little, possibly because they had been given the information informally in various ways, rather than formally in a written referral, or possibly because of their own failures, or both.

This is a report commissioned by the Church of England into their own actions. It was not the author’s job to criticise other parties, such as the police or the Charity Commission. But they were all told, repeatedly, albeit imperfectly, and until 2017 they did little or nothing. It’s inevitable that the media will focus on Welby, because the report makes no comment on the actions of the other organisations beyond noting the facts. But it’s pretty clear that the Church was not the only organisation to fail here.

Here’s a link to the petition on change.org started by three members of the General Synod, calling for Welby to resign. Please sign.

https://chng.it/jL5vkYRmt9

I have knowledge of this man and this news doesn't surprise me. He is not a man of God and isn't fit to lead the Church of England

Charles was also friends with Laurens van der Post

Yes but we were told years ago that thorough investigations had been made and a robust safeguarding system put in place that was apparently a model for safeguarding globally.

These latest revelations rather undermine the credibility of those apparent efforts. Exactly the same situation in the Catholic Church,

JW has to go.

Wasn't Charlie's beloved Lord Mountbatten a suspected paedophile. With that and his adoration for Savile, I doubt he can see the wood for the trees.

Charles has form himself for supporting paedophiles

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/14/friendship-with-prince-charles-made-paedophile-bishop-peter-ball-impregnable

Prince Charles told Ball in a letter in February 1995, two years after the bishop had accepted the police caution, which was read to the inquiry: “I wish I could do more. I feel so desperately strongly about the monstrous wrongs that have been done to you and the way you have been treated.”

There was no cover up or failure to inform the police from 2013 onwards

Bearing in mind the decades of covering up which had already happened, to say nothing of the usual clerical practice of minimising wherever possible, that may not be a safe assumption to make @Greenbike

... Welby became Archbishop in 2013

He did indeed, but succeeding to the highest role does nothing to alter the responsibility he carried long before that, except perhaps to move him still further from any possibility of consequences for failure

There may well be other tests to come if someone proves that he's lied about knowing nothing about this before 2013, but time willl tell and of course there'd always be the get-out of claiming that he needs to retire for health reasons

@Greenbike

The above article says:

It also highlights the report’s finding that while Welby did follow church protocol when he was advised that allegations had been passed to police in 2013, this information turned out to be incorrect as no formal police referral was made, finding that Welby failed in his “personal and moral responsibility” to ensure they were being robustly investigated. Smyth’s abuses continued until his death in 2018.

The article also says that people in the church knew about the abuse for decades. We don't know how much Welby knew, he could have heard rumours and he was criticised for showing a lack of curiosity.

Yes, I think so.

Even if we accept his claim that he knew nothing until 2013, when he couldn't have done much directly, his response was poor, he didn't meet with the victims until years later.

But it's also questionable if he really know nothing.

I think it is fair to say - sometimes a person can have heard rumors in these situations, but it's almost impossible to do anything if no one will come forward officially. You can't take action based on rumors. So perhaps he had heard something but there was no way to take action.

But even so, I think the look of the whole thing is so terrible that he should resign. It's not just about him personally, it's about the institution.

Disclaimer - I think JW is a flagrant careerist and a shitty ABC, who doesn't really care about preserving the institution so long as he preserves his career, and that underlies everything he has taken in this job. And he is a shitty priest to boot. So I'd be happy to see him go.

One thing a lot of posters on this thread are missing (not just the poster I’ve quoted) is that the Church did report this to the police in 2013. It was reported to Cambridgeshire police by a church official there, and they then passed it on to Hampshire police. This is all in the Makin report, which very few posters on this thread seem to have actually read.

A lot of the criticism of Welby in the press is around inaction post 2013, but the Makin report is clear that the church leadership were deliberately cautious and inactive after that date so as not to compromise a police investigation. Clearly they were too cautious and a lot of victims were rightly frustrated and angered by this. And it’s also clear that they could have been much more vigorous in trying to impress on the police how serious this matter was, and more energetic in giving them information. Clearly also many people missed repeated opportunities to inform the police for decades before 2013, and that failure is very serious. But there was no cover up or failure to inform the police from 2013 onwards. Welby became Archbishop in 2013.

“Let’s pray Justin Welby does not become a scapegoat … His resignation may be appropriate but there are many others who should also be held to account.”

This is the thing, Welby and this abuser are the tip of the iceberg and like the Catholic church, I doubt covering up paedophiles is just a problem in the UK.

Mass paedophilia has been going on for decades with people in power, including the clergy, using children's homes and schools as their own private harams.

This particular paedophile subjected children to horrific brutality from what I've read, he was particularly sadistic. People are calling for Welby to resign because the predator continued to abuse until 2018, five years after Welby was officially made aware of it.

I'm not sure what kind of devout Christian sleeps at night knowing there's a prolific abuser out there terrorising children.

They need sunshine on all this, an investigation into it, no doubt it goes back years, in order to prevent it. The UK needs a law where not reporting a predator leads to prosecution and the church needs to sack anyone who colludes with predators.