Child sexual abuse case referred by Bangor diocese to police in 2020

Martin Shipton

The Church in Wales has confirmed that they referred an allegation of sexual abuse of a child in the diocese of Bangor to the police in 2020, the S4C news programme Newyddion has reported.

In a statement to the programme, North Wales Police said it had received a report from an adult five years ago of an alleged sexual assault that happened a few years earlier when the complainant was in their early teens.

They say their safeguarding department referred the allegation to the police.

The Church says that the complainant spoke to the Church but no further action was taken as the complainant did not want the matter to go any further.

Turbulent 

The latest revelation comes after a turbulent period for the Church and the Diocese, which includes the sudden retirement of the former Archbishop of Wales Andy John, who is also the Bishop of Bangor, last Friday. There is no suggestion that Andy John himself has misbehaved.

A summary of two reports was published at the beginning of May which outlined concerns about the blurring of sexual boundaries, excessive alcohol consumption and safeguarding and governance weaknesses in the diocese and Bangor Cathedral.

The Church did not want to publish the full reports for confidentiality reasons.

It later emerged that six serious incident reports were referred to the Charity Commission regarding Bangor Cathedral and Diocese over a period of about eighteen months.

Reviews

Last week, the Church in Wales confirmed that a series of reviews and inspections would take place. They said that would include a governance review of the Church in Wales and an inspection of all the country’s cathedrals to ensure that safeguarding procedures are diligently followed.

The Representative Body of the Church in Wales has called on the diocesan authorities and Bangor Cathedral to comply with a wide range of basic reforms including in the areas of financial management, safeguarding, human resources and processes for whistleblowers.

An External Safeguarding Audit of all Welsh cathedrals will be commissioned to ensure that appropriate procedures and protocols relating to safeguarding are diligently followed.

The trustees of the Church in Wales have also warned that the funding of the diocese and Bangor Cathedral for the future is “completely dependent” on them being happy that suitable management and funding procedures are in place as well as administrative procedures to ensure effective governance.

This comes as the Children’s Commissioner for Wales called on the Welsh Government to do more to oversee safeguarding within religious organisations.

Rocio Cifuentes told Newyddion: “This case raises the same questions I have raised many times with the Welsh Government regarding the lack of safeguarding supervision in religious bodies.

“We are not confident that the government is taking the need to have a stronger body seriously.

“At the moment, there is no body that has the powers to intervene in matters regarding protection in religious bodies. Nobody has those powers and that is a problem.”

The Welsh Government said: “We have clear expectations that organisations in Wales will follow Welsh safeguarding procedures and register all allegations of abuse to the appropriate authorities in good time.

“We continue to focus on implementing the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, and it is expected that there will soon be a public consultation on our 10-year strategy on preventing and responding to child sexual abuse.”