Being a priest on the island of Crete, I am far from the centre of things in the Church of England; I rather revel in being the priest of a peripheral congregation in the diocese no one remembers is part of the Church of England (that would be the Diocese in Europe). Nevertheless a number of people here on the island – admittedly UK citizens living here – have asked what I thought about the recent resignation of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury. These queries have come from both regular members and people who have never been to the Anglican Church here on Crete.

My response is, “He had to.” It is a question of competence. There is no excuse for a bishop or anyone else in a position of authority to tolerate a sex offender in a position of trust in the church; it is a necessary competency to be able to act decisively to prevent harm, deal with abusers, and provide redress for victims.

My experience in the Anglican Church of Canada is that, even if there are good reasons for the police or the Crown not to go forward with criminal charges and a trial, the church authorities nevertheless should make its own investigation of the facts, determine any required discipline and action to prevent the individual from harming others, and generously support the victims of abuse.

• If they hear rumours, or receive a formal complaint, they must be investigated. In the Church of England each diocese has a Safeguarding Officer and a Diocesan Safeguarding Team, with responsibilities for prevention, training, and responding to allegations. There is also a National Safeguarding Team with responsibility over National Church Institutions.
• If it is an alleged criminal offense, it must be referred to the police.
• And one’s responsibility does not stop there – it must be followed up.

Now, I served in Canada for thirty years before coming to the Church of England six years ago. The church cultures around safeguarding and discipline are a little different. In Canada, upon receiving a formal, written complaint about sexual misconduct, the diocese I worked in would initially determine what kind of category the abuse was.¹

• If it was criminal and involved sexual assault, or abuse of children, it was always referred to the police, while not abdicating any responsibility to pursue church procedures. The individual was invariably suspended pending the outcome of the situation (if employed, suspended with pay). The vast majority of such formal complaints were upheld, and the person’s employment or volunteer position was terminated; if ordained, the individual lost their license and the permission to officiate. Indeed, in most cases the person was advised not to dress as a minister when on the properties of the church, and some clergy were invited to relinquish their orders, or were formerly considered to have abandoned ordained ministry by their misconduct.
• Sexual Exploitation involved sexual relations between two adults but was not criminal, the critical question being whether this was a fiduciary relationship, and could consent be meaningfully given. Was one of the persons in a relation of trust with the other, or was there a power differential? For example, a priest is in a fiduciary relationship with any parishioner or someone who comes to the church for help. If the priest then uses that relationship to satisfy his or her own perceived relational needs (such as sex), then that is exploitation of a position of trust. This was also true of choirmasters, youth leaders, and others in positions where power could be exercised. Following a formal complaint, the alleged offender was suspended pending determination of the facts. The fundamental issue is whether consent can be meaningfully given.
• If it was harassment or bullying of a sexual nature, this was sexual harassment. While a person might be suspended, generally they were cautioned about interaction with the alleged victim, and resolutions were found through professional mediators.

Now, here’s the problem as I understand it. Justin Welby, when he became Archbishop of Canterbury in 2013, was informed of a host of complaints against John Smyth, a barrister who ran the Iwerne Camps for teenage boys from English “Public Schools” (i.e. expensive private boarding schools), often at Winchester College, where they were presented with a series of talks on the gospel from a conservative Evangelical perspective. The goal was to turn the young male elite of the nation into Evangelical Christians, so that, when they inevitably advanced in business, the church, and government, they would be Evangelicals in prominent places. As the Wikipedia article on Smyth notes, “An independent review published in 2024 concluded that he subjected more than 100 boys and young men to “traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual attacks” over a period of four decades.” The Iwerne Trust was made aware of the abuse in the early ’80s, but did not refer it to the police for thirty years. He attempted to be accepted as a candidate for ordination in the late ’70s and early ’80s, but was refused, leading many to think that the abuse he perpetrated was known to Church authorities. Likewise, he had qualified as a Lay Reader in the Diocese of Winchester, and thus licensed to preach and lead worship services as a non-ordained person, but this ceased in the early ’80s – again, did someone remove him as a Lay Reader because of whispered rumours? After Smyth was confronted with the allegations he moved to Zimbabwe in 1984 and South Africa in 2001, and continued his abuse there. He died in 2018 having never faced any kind of charges. His own son said his father was “the most prolific abuser connected to the Church of England.” Ironically, this abuser was a campaigner against human rights for LGBTQ+ persons and acted as a barrister for Mary Whitehouse in lawsuits around blasphemy and gross indecency.

Welby’s error in 2013 was that he personally did not ensure that the allegations were followed up. There are a couple of reasons he may have failed in this. First, he was all too content to let others handle it in a confidentiality that passed over into secrecy, when he should have been on top of it and ensuring transparency about the complaints and prompt redress for the victims. A second reason may be that he personally knew Smyth and considered him “charming” and “delightful”. Indeed, Welby himself attended an Iwerne Camp as a teen from Eton, and volunteered at them for three years in the ’70s. He says he never heard any rumours about Smyth, despite being involved in the camps and the Iwerne Trust as a teenager, a businessman, and and divinity student. He did not expose Smith, nor did he contact his episcopal colleagues or the police in Zimbabwe and South Africa, to where Smith had moved, of the danger that he presented. This failure is the reason he had to resign.

I am not sure that Welby understands this. While he accepted responsibility and resigned, the impression one gets, especially from his tone-deaf valedictory speech in the House of Lords, is that he saw himself as being the one who takes the fall for the good of the church – a vicarious victim to the systematic abuses of the Church of England. Those of us who pay attention to such things have yet to receive the comprehensive statement about why he did not act more appropriately in 2013. It looks like a reckless disregard for ensuring that the complaints were properly dealt with – and that is his personal failure, not just the result of a systemic problem.

Do others need to resign over similar neglect? People have pointed to Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, who as Bishop of Chelmsford in the 2000s allowed a priest, David Tudor, who had been charged with sexual assault back in 1988, to continue in ministry in a parish – and indeed, was made an honorary canon after serving as an area dean. Despite he having paid compensation to a victim – an effective admission of abuse – Tudor was allowed to work in the church. Supposedly there was a safeguarding agreement in place that mitigated any threat, but (surprise!) he was subsequently found guilty of sexual misconduct with two more women, and was banned for life after an ecclesiastical trial (finally). At least seven more people have come forward alleging misconduct. While he was acquitted at trial in 1988, the church authorities are not obligated to treat this as a sign of innocence, but rather simply that the Crown prosecutor did not convince a judge that there was sufficient evidence to convict and imprison the man. Now, there is a huge difference between imprisonment – the loss of one’s liberty – and losing one’s office – a matter of employment; instead of using the same standard of proof necessary to imprison Tudor, the Bishop should have erred on the side of caution and refused to license the man.

I have read somewhere that some bishops feel that they have their hands tied because of the rules around the tenure of clergy in the Church of England and the inability of the Church Discipline Measures to allow a bishop to act decisively in the absence of a conviction. This may be so, but this just suggests that clergy have more rights than are justified. Frankly, my advice to Cottrell, had he asked it back when dealing with Tudor, would have been to withhold a license from Tudor regardless of what legal advice he was given. If Tudor felt he was truly wronged he could complain to the church courts, and I wonder whether any Chancellor would have felt it was morally right to put an abuser in a position of trust.

Now, I know that this kind of mitigation did happen decades ago. When I was an archdeacon in the Diocese of British Columbia I helped negotiate a settlement with a victim of sexual abuse in the late 1950s; in that case, as far as I can tell, the priest was moved and simply told to behave. Before I attended Bishop’s College School in Lennoxville, Quebec, a chaplain there in the 1960s, Harold Forster, abused a number of boys, and whenever found out the man simply moved from one elite boarding to school to another (including Harrow and Eton), until he was killed in a train accident in England. As well, I knew of any number of clergy in the ’70s and ’80s who were moved or obliged to resign because of allegations. The Canadian churches have had to deal with the legacy of genocide perpetrated under the “Indian Residental Schools” which were paid for and established by the Canadian federal government, but operated by the churches; among the crimes perpetrated were sexual and physical abuse of children by clergy and laity working there. But all of that was then, when coverups, denial, and minimising were the norm across society. 2013 is the recent now – there is no excuse for quietly covering up abuse, or mitigating a scandal.

Well, there are, unfortunately many other stories like this in the Church of England. Those in leadership need to understand that this is the biggest crisis in the Church of England in a century. The Church of England is facing increasing secularism in England and an ongoing drop in attendance. The news reports around this are devastating, and just as sexual abuse scandals have devastated the Roman Catholic Church in the USA and Ireland, and is contributing to the decline of Southern Baptists in the States, so this underminds the mission of God in the Church of England. Due attention to safeguarding, discipline, and the needs of the abused is essential to the gospel, not something to hope others are dealing with.

Now, I am sure Justin Welby and Stephen Cottrell are otherwise good people, and they do indeed have many competencies, as I have witnessed as a member of the General Synod of the Church of England. Justin Welby leaves behind several good initiatives – the Community of St Anselm at Lambeth Palace, The Difference Course, and the maintaining of ecumenical relations with the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communions. Cottrell is an inspiring preacher and a deeply spiritual man. However, it is a necessary competency for any bishop that they follow up on complaints and deny the privilege of ministry to those who have abused that trust. For having failed in that regard, Welby was right to resign, and it may well be the case that Cottrell – and some others bishops, too – need to go.

1. I do need to say that the Anglican Church of Canada (“ACC”) does not have a National Safeguarding Policy, a policy that is the same in every diocese, every Ecclesiastical Province, and all parts of the General Synod structure. In my time in the Diocese of British Columbia we used a slightly modified version of the Sexual Misconduct Policy of the Diocese of Toronto, and it was jointly administered by the Canon for the Sexual Misconduct Policy” and the Diocesan Archdeacon (which was me between 2004 and 2013). It is a robust policy that, unfortunately, has been used hundreds of times across Canada. It requires complainants to make formal, written complaints. The bishop of the diocese can also make a complaint about a perceived abuse if she or he feels it necessary. The policy was not as comprehensive as the Church of England Safeguarding policies, as it focused only on sexual misconduct and not the variety of types of abuse. However, the dioceses of the ACC has been more effective in disciplining clergy and laity, partly because clergy are considered employees and bishops there have more power. In the Church of England the focus is more on whether an individual is an immediate threat to the well-being of vulnerable people. Thus, it is possible that an individual, if they have a safeguarding agreement, might continue in ministry despite admitting sexual assault or exploitation. ↩︎