Bishop’s child sexual assault labelled ‘bit of a hiccup’

[IwantToRetire]

Church brushed off Anthony Pierce’s assault on 15-year-old as ‘homosexuality not paedophilia’

Anthony Pierce, now 85, was jailed last year after pleading guilty to five counts of indecent assault on a child under the age of 16 between 1985 and 1990, while he was a parish priest in Swansea.

It has now emerged that, when told about a separate assault on a 15-year-old altar boy in 1990, church leaders said it was evidence of “homosexuality not paedophilia” because his victim was male.

Allegations that Pierce sexually assaulted the teenager were covered up by the Church in Wales, which allowed him to rise to Bishop of Swansea and Brecon, a post he held between 1999 and 2008.

Article continues at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02/26/bishops-child-sexual-assault-labelled-hiccup-by-church/

I’m an atheist but I hope he thinks he will burn in hell. And everyone who enabled him.

Technically it isnt paedophilia, so in that they are correct.

However, it is paederasty and rape. So I am not sure that their "defence" is quite the shut down they think it is.

All in all, I would love to be a fly on the Pearly Gates when he tries to explain that to St Peter.

How do you get to that conclusion. He raped a child. He's a pedophile.

Because Paedophilia is sexual interest in pre pubescent children. Paederasty is sexual interest in young males. The victim was 15. I was merely commenting on their use of the dictionary definition of Paedophilia as a way to detract from the crimes he committed.

It was factually correct in one way, factually incorrect in that it didnt mention the Paederasty or the rape, so it implies that the victim was giving (or able to give) consent.

As the age of consent is 16 he'd be considered a paedophile by most people. And the boy would be considered a child in law

The Church in Wales are awful, look at this from the Telegraph article:

"If our people and processes have failed victims and survivors of abuse in the past, we intend to take responsibility for that fact and to fully apply the lessons which have been learned."

Note the IF at the beginning, no sign of WHENEVER.

Awful awful awful.

There is a fixed clinical diagnosis for pedophilia, as it is a psychiatric disorder. It is attraction to prepubescent children (under 13s). Attraction to young adolescents (11-14) is a different disorder, hebephilia.

I do think using the correct word matters. Both crimes are appalling. A hell of a lot of men would count as hebephiles and most of them wouldn’t think there was anything wrong in it either.
Paederasty- I had no idea that was only applied between a man and a youth.

The church was so blinkered, classic example of baby and bathwater. ‘Poor man’s one of those ho mo sexuals, you know. Mustn’t shame him for being the way God made him.’ Swinging so hard away from bigotry they fail to recognise abuse.

I also note that former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was involved in the not reporting of the allegations of abuse against Anthony Pierce (the subject of this thread) much as he was involved in the not reporting of the allegations of abuse against Bishop Peter Ball.

Rowan Williams apologises as review finds 'catalogue of failures' in Anthony Pierce abuse case

Williams was given a file of information about Pierce when he became Archbishop of Wales, failed to read it, and then KEPT THE FILE when he was made Archbishop of Canterbury and took it with him to Lambeth Palace. I have no words.

Pierce of course was responsible for his own actions but the Church as an establishment enabled him.

I am sorry to harp on but this is so so upsetting. These highbrow, ivory-towered men, happy to let children be abused by one of their own.

I deliver basic safeguarding training in my setting. The material we use is so, so clear about the harms and responsibilities. I suspect it was developed using the words of survivors and also of those who made excuses for failing to act.

I just effing hope that as time passes, the number of egregious historic breaches like this diminishes because the various systems and trainings take effect. Otherwise, what the hell is the point? We spend hours and hours on tackling this! I mean, there will always be abusers, unfortunately, and there will probably always be apologists. But the various systems are supposed to be belt and braces to keep people safe. If they aren’t…

It's unlikely to have been a 'little hiccup' to the boy this man made use of, and I doubt any waffly bollocks are doing anything much in reparation to the damage to his life.

Which you would think the church might care about.

There are papers commissioned by several governments since Victoria Climbe's awful case, as to why all the safeguarding work and training so carefully developed and made compulsory for many hasn't really had much effect on preventing disasters or ending the behaviours that caused them.

Did people ask the difficult questions? Well no, not usually.
Did people think the unthinkable? No, they wanted to be nice.
Did people get overfocused on the needs and dominant voice of adults involved? Yes, frequently.
Were they at all groomed successfully by this adult into not presenting any inconvenient barriers to their actions against the victim? Yes, often.
Were people who could and should have intervened not willing to do so due to the behaviours of difficult adults involved, or to carry the can for having challenged them? Yes, all the time.

It wasn't child sexual abuse because it was homosexual?!

Does all that reading Latin make the Church think it's Ancient Rome still?

It drives me nuts.

I see it all the time in more things than I care to consider.

I am so twitchy now around people who are ‘popular’ or ‘successful’. I am not seeing abuse in my environments, but I do see power and influence at work. I’m very suspicious of it all.

And actually there was a comment recently about people coming and going- redundancies. A lot of middle aged women have been made redundant or chosen to leave, some of them feeling unappreciated or under appreciated. We are keeping an eye on it. But it occurs to me that being hard to impress may be why sceptical middle aged women like me are under appreciated.

Again, not abuse, but the environment where abuse could be overlooked because of influence, success, hierarchy. We need the thorns.

So much of the Church response to this (and others of course) is so wrong, and have been for years, and in their heart of hearts I suspect many know this.

But I suspect that a large part of the response is the usual male rights perspective. What they want is considered the "norm" and anyone objecting is some sort out outlier or a trouble maker.

Seriously just saying a bit of a hiccup

And the apparent believe that gay sex has not age limits or boundaries.

Now where have we heard that before.