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

[MrsRobinsonsHandprints]

Justin Welby knew in 2013 about a prolific child abuser.

He did nothing

"I personally failed to ensure that after disclosure in 2013 the awful tragedy was energetically investigated."

He is not resigning, he should be bloody charged with aiding and abetting. The abuser was allowed to move to Africa and continue to abuse.

This is the Archbishop of Canterbury.

https://news.sky.com/story/archbishop-of-canterbury-justin-welby-considered-resigning-over-appalling-barrister-abuse-scandal-13250363

Our dear king was also pally with Savile. You couldn't make it up really.

It's just awful.

Paedophiles getting away with it again and being enabled by those in power.

Scum.

Its the same old story, cover up and then deny knowing anything.
It is so frustrating how people get away with it.
The same with the SS who knew about that Baby P a few years back that was killed but the abuse was ignored. What happened to that head and all the people involved.
Also the NHS heads that were told about about Lucy Letby.The head of the post office and the awful people that treated the sub post master like shit when questioning them. These people should all pay for their so could ignorance. It makes my blood boil it is so unfair.

So called.

No need for sarcasm.
A lack of replies does not indicate a lack of interest or a presence outrage.
Just no response to your post

He should be sacked along with anyone else who knew and didn't act.

Agree with you OP, utterly disgraceful

Too little, too late, they only did this because it’s high profile.

For years they’ve known this is going on and they’ve done nothing. I could name another peodophile vicar whose victims reported him in the 70s and 80s and he was just moved to a different parish. He got sent down for thirteen years for the rape and abuse of four boys about ten years ago and judging by the online comments afterwards it was a standing joke that you should avoid him visiting you in your tent on camping trips. It was commonplace but the priority was to protect the church.

@Nettleteaser101 - this is very different to the issue of Baby P. The social worker and the DCS you are referring to didn't sit on privileged information and not report it. There were systematic issues that mean the whole professional network around Baby P made the wrong choices but it's not that they sat there thinking the child was being abused, doing nothing and hiding this information.

In relation to this matter, a failure to report such a significant safeguarding matter when you are in such a position of trust and responsibility should absolutely result in him being sacked, in any other role in local authorities/public sector I think it would. I would also have thought if he lived his faith he would recognise he was complicit and would resign. I'm sadly not surprised neither is happening.

Ellmau · Yesterday 22:26

TBF Welby didn't know until 2013, 30 years after JS was allowed to move to South Africa.

Well, there's no paper trail until than, but as Welby worked at the Bash Camps, it's seems likely that he ought to have had at least an inkling:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14065981/Pressure-grows-Justin-Welby-resign-Archbishop-Canterbury-ignoring-sex-abuse-Church-Englands-prolific-abuser-targeted-100-children-young-men.html

I used to work with a guy who had been involved in all of this at school and then in his gap year. I could never figure out if he was a victim or a nonce himself. From what he said a lot of these chaps were quite heavily brainwashed. He drank heavily and then always touched up other people’s wives, we were living abroad at the time so people just brushed that sort of thing under the carpet. Nasty. Welby should be sacked.

He should be sacked, and so should ALL the clergy who presumably reported it up the line and considered that discharged their responsibility . In 2013 there was no excuse for not doing taking the accusations to the police.

How on earth he can say “I thought about resigning ….” Presumably just like he “thought about” reporting the sexual pervert and “thought about” whether it was a good idea to pack him off to Africa.

Sadly it’s a history of poor judgement and he needs to be sacked and shamed.

Here's todays Times piece

https://www.thetimes.com/article/5cedf6f1-94f0-4e55-a428-2c3d270a93a8?shareToken=125317610b361a4408b8b67a9ecd9f47

To be sure, the CofE shouldn't be allowed to make welby a scapegoat while letting those who more actively involved in cover-ups off the hook. But are they dealing with those effectively?

This quote makes me quite angry Surely we are Christian and forgiving is our responsibility. Oh fuck off. It's up to the victims of the abuse to decide whether or not to forgive the perpetrators, cover-uppers, people who turned a blind eye.

Interesting that the Church considers forgiveness its first priority, and not the safety of vulnerable people who come into contact with them.

I am a big fan of Welby but this is very poor.

HOWEVER, I don't think a lot of people realise how endemic CSA was in the church until around 15-20 years ago. Moving parishes was the normal approach, casually documented in parish council meetings etc.

I strongly suspect that if all historical cases were investigated, and all priests who were involved/had meetings about them were held to account, there would be literally no priests over the age of 60 left in the church. Which is basically all priests. Maybe that should happen, I don't know. But you can't overstate how normalised this was.

That’s true, although almost everyone involved in the initial cover up is now dead. That’s part of what makes Welby’s failure in 2013 so egregious. There could have been actual prosecutions then but now it is too late.

From what he said a lot of these chaps were quite heavily brainwashed.

Was/is some of the ongoing problem that (as i understand it) part of the raison d'être of these camps was to identify and mould future church leaders? Obviously many of the abused are leading on the exposure of the abuse but are there men in positions of power and influence who were damaged and corrupted by their experiences?

There are. At least one bishop was a victim of this abuse.

Interesting too that they appear to have forgotten that repentence is supposed to come before forgiveness, and so far we seem to have seen very little

Not to worry though ... should any real action on this come anywhere near Welby I'm sure he'll rustle up some pretence of real regret

“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.

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.

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.

@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.

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