Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Church of England officials 'turned blind eye' to child abuse claims

From Premier-

Clergy and staff from a Church of England Diocese were referred to police in 2015 after church leaders had allegedly "turned a blind eye" to claims of child abuse, an investigation has revealed.

Lincolnshire Police and Lincoln Diocese investigated 25 people over alleged abuse, from a list of 53 names which were passed to officers, with three cases leading to convictions.

The BBC's Panorama said some of the names could have been referred years earlier as part of the Church of England's national Past Cases Review, which examined tens of thousands of church records in 2008 and 2009 to discover whether abuse cases had slipped through the net.

Not all of the names on the list related to child abuse allegations.

Detective Superintendent Rick Hatton, who leads the ongoing investigation, named Operation Redstone, told a Panorama programme being broadcast on Monday: "We whittled it down to about 25 names whereby we either knew that they'd committed offences or there was some issue around risk to members of the public from them.

More here-

https://www.premier.org.uk/News/UK/Church-of-England-officials-turned-blind-eye-to-child-abuse-claims 

and here-

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6972397/Church-England-leaders-turned-blind-eye-child-abuse-claims.html

No comments: