Revered Bishop George Bell was a paedophile – Church of England

Dr George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester

A former Church of England bishop revered as a peacemaker – and granted the closest thing Anglicanism has to a saint’s days – was a paedophile, the Church has acknowledged.

George Bell, who was bishop of Chichester for 30 years until his death in 1958, sexually assaulted a child, who is still alive, in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

The Church of England has issued a formal apology to the victim, who wishes to remain anonymous and has asked even for their gender not to be disclosed, and settled a legal claim for compensation.

The victim first came forward in 1995 but the complaint was effectively ignored by the then Bishop of Chichester, Eric Kemp, who died in 2009.

It was not until the victim contacted the office of the current Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, two years ago that the allegations were finally investigated properly.

Bell is the second bishop from the Diocese of Chichester to have been acknowledged as a sexual predator, just over two weeks after Peter Ball, the former Bishop of Lewes, was jailed for abusing 19 young men.  (more...)

Revered Bishop George Bell was a paedophile – Church of England