Senior Church of England leaders covered up damning evidence that a bishop was a predatory sex offender 22 years before he was brought to justice, according to secret documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday.
Lambeth Palace was warned that Peter Ball, a close friend of Prince Charles and who attended his wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005, was a serial abuser of boys and young men shortly before he resigned as Bishop of Gloucester in 1993.
At the time he accepted a caution for gross indecency against a man aged 19, but was allowed to continue working as a cleric until he was eventually jailed last year.
Now it has emerged the Archbishop of Canterbury’s headquarters received at least six letters from other alleged victims detailing ‘potentially criminal’ and ‘totally inappropriate behaviour’ by the former bishop in the early 1990s, but did not pass them on to police until years later.
Details of the letters, all sent to the Church between December 1992 and February 1993, reveal Ball encouraged victims to pray naked, perform sex acts in front of him, and share his bed.
Anglican officials who reviewed the letters in 2009 suggested that had such evidence been given to detectives in 1993, Ball may have been convicted of serious sexual offences rather than merely cautioned. But instead of being made public, the letters were kept in confidential files at Lambeth Palace. It was not until 2012, after several internal inquiries, that the Church finally released documents to police. (more...)
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