^ Prince Charles with his spiritual advisor – paedophile Peter Ball in 1992
How Prince Charles’s reputation survived devoted friendships with – to date – three paedophiles: Laurens van der Post, Jimmy Savile and an already cautioned offender, Peter Ball.
Peter Ball: Sex offender bishop dies
June 23 2019
A retired bishop who was jailed for a string of sexual offences against teenagers and young men has died.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) said Peter Ball “was able to sexually abuse vulnerable teenagers and young men for decades”.
He was jailed in 2015 after being found guilty of misconduct in public office and indecent assaults.
The Church of England confirmed Ball’s death and offered “prayers and thoughts” for “everyone affected”.
Bishop Peter Hancock, the Church’s safeguarding lead, said: “We have been made aware of the death of Peter Ball and our prayers and thoughts are with everyone affected by this news.”
Ball, of Langport in Somerset, was Bishop of Lewes between 1977 and 1992 and Bishop of Gloucester from 1992 until he resigned the following year.
After his trial at the Old Bailey he was sentenced to 32 months for offences against 18 teenagers and men between the 1970s and the 1990s.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-48738803
dr
Peter Ball: the sinful bishop and a very English cover-up
Times 27/7/18
Paedophile Peter Ball also claimed to be a friend of the Duchess of York.
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sqjvmh
The Duchess of York was also good friends with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein
Cash-strapped Fergie took £15,000 from paedophile billionaire at centre of claims Prince Andrew slept with under-age ‘sex slave’
- Duchess of York struck deal with disgraced tycoon in December 2010
- Came within days of Duke of York flying out to visit Epstein in New York
Pervert Bishop Peter Ball was friends with Jimmy Savile, Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth, Queen’s chaplain, Rev John Robson, Margaret Thatcher, Ian Gow, Chief Justice Lord Berwick, George Pell, Fergie, Duchess of York…
Enoch Powell was friends with Ian Gow
May 1988: Ian Gow, who brought along his friends, Enoch Powell and his wife.
Ian Gow, PPS to Thatcher, was also friends with Enoch Powell. Gow was good friends with Peter Ball who spoke at Gow’s memorial.
Enoch Powell at Gow’s funeral
Northern Ireland was Gow’s political passion. He knew and understood the province as few Englishmen do. From his days of military service he developed a feel for the people of Ulster, and after long years of study at the feet of Airey Neave, John Biggs Davison and Enoch Powell all of whom were romantic heroes to him he became the inheritor of their political mantle in Northern Ireland.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/1990/jul/31/obituaries.jonathanaitken
Christ’s Hospital School where 5 teachers have been jailed for CSA:
Nigella, Lord Nigel Lawson, Tom Lawson
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2005/06/dominic-lawson.html
Tom Lawson
5 May 2015
Tom Lawson, son of Lord Lawson and half-brother of Nigella, was educated at Eton before going to Oxford, and is now deputy head of Christ’s Hospital school in Horsham, West Sussex.
Lord Lawson say Police should stop funding investigations into historical abuse.
22/11/2015
alun;
The current headmaster (since 2016) at Eastbourne College is Tom Lawson, half-brother of Nigela and son of the Tory grandee Nigel who argued that no funds should be ploughed into historical child sex allegations.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/03/talking-heads-the-school-beside-the-sea/ …
Tom Lawson came to Eastbourne College from Christ’s Hospital where no fewer than 5 teachers have been convicted for CSA and where a common punishment used to be to send pupils down to Peter Ball’s house!
- Some students were sent from Christ Hospital School to paedophile Bishop Peter Ball for punishment.
http://www.chforum.info/php/viewtopic.php?t=4549&start=45
Another director of Eastbourne College was Alison ‘Butterfingers’ Saunders (2008 – 2014). Despite the collapse of an unprecedented number of abuse cases during her watch as DPP, she still insists she has done a good job:
Aleister Crowley attended Eastbourne College
10 Dec 1991 – Letter from Peter Ball to Enoch Powell
alun:
The address on that note from Bishop Ball to Enoch Powell is significant: It is the postal address for Eastbourne College, where Peter Ball was on the BOD between 1991 and 1992, a school ravaged by cases of child sexual abuse.
Two retired teachers who sexually assaulted a boy while they taught at his college are jailed for a total of 17 years
- Ex-history teacher Andrew Boxer, 67, was sentenced to 15 years in jail
- Ex-music teacher Graham Jones, 63, was jailed for two years
- Both taught at Eastbourne College, East Sussex, at the time of the abuse, while the victim was a pupil there
Andrew Boxer and Graham Jones were both convicted of several counts of indecently assaulting the same boy between 1988 and 1993, following a week-long trial.
Former history teacher Boxer, 67, was sentenced to 15 years behind bars for seven counts of indecent assault – six at the same address in Eastbourne, East Sussex and another in Cambridge.
The current headmaster (since 2016) at Eastbourne College is Tom Lawson, half-brother of Nigela and son of the Tory grandee Nigel who argued that no funds should be ploughed into historical child sex allegations. https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/03/talking-heads-the-school-beside-the-sea/ …
Yet another director of Eastbourne College (1991 – 2004) was the Duke Of Devonshire Andrew Robert Buxton Cavendish, another close friend of Savile, BigEars and Bishop Ball, seen here giving Savile a silly handshake:
Dame Alun Roberts @ciabaudo
A punishment at Christ’s Hospital School was to be sent down for a few nights at Peter Ball’s house. I wonder whether those sending them down knew what their fate might be? And who were his ‘special friends’?
It would appear Tom Lawson was what is referred to as a ‘safe pair of hands’, stumbling from one paedo school to the next. He also worked at Winchester College for 15 years, where John Smyth QC abused boys:
Charles and the pervert: Prince tells child sex abuse inquiry he was ‘deceived’ by bishop Peter Ball but says he cannot remember who he was referring to when he said ‘I will see off this horrid man’ in letter to disgraced clergyman 21 years ago
EXCLUSIVE: Bullingdon Club 1996- Tom Lawson, the arms dealer’s son and the ‘mayhem’ that took 30 cops to shut down
https://www.byline.com/project/30/article/700
Jimmy Savile acted as a kind of marriage counsellor between Charles and Princess Diana.
Whitehall is ‘covering up the past’: File on Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s marriage, Lockerbie records and MI5 ‘link’ to Belfast lawyer death among documents blocked by government
- The Advisory Council on National Records and Archives released its latest report
- Whitehall is supposed to send files to the National Archives after 20 years
- Officials can block the release of files if they compromise National security
- The number of blocked files has jumped from 4,300 to 5,900 in a year
Jimmy Savile acted as a kind of marriage counsellor between Charles and Princess Diana.
Jimmy Savile caused concern with behaviour on visits to Prince Charles
Not the VSCP@NottheVSCP
Incredibly naive and unwise letters from Prince Charles to Peter Ball. Completely biased and one-sided. Showing only sympathy for the perpetrator. This is 2 yrs after Ball had accepted caution, admitting his guilt!
#iicsa #CSA #CSE #cofe #PrinceCharles
Wouldn’t you think with the sort of emotion he displays here he has inordinate affection for this sado-peado?
Charles and the pervert: Prince tells child sex abuse inquiry he was ‘deceived’ by bishop Peter Ball but says he cannot remember who he was referring to when he said ‘I will see off this horrid man’ in letter to disgraced clergyman 21 years ago
- Prince Charles denied he tried to influence an investigation into Peter Ball
- The royal gave written evidence at a sex child abuse inquiry on Friday
- Ball, the former Bishop of Lewes, sexually abused 18 men during ’80s and ’90s
The Prince of Wales has told a public inquiry he was ‘deceived’ by disgraced bishop Peter Ball and said he ‘cannot shed any light’ on the ‘horrid man’ he referred to in a letter to the paedophile.
Prince Charles was friends with the ex-Bishop of Lewes for over two decades after he accepted a caution for gross indecency.
He only cut ties with him after he was convicted of sexually abusing 18 young men aged 17 to 25 over 30 years in 2015.
The convicted Bishop, 86, was released last year after serving half his sentence behind bars.
In written evidence today, Prince Charles refused to elaborate on a letter he wrote to Ball at the time of sexual misconduct claims, telling him: ‘I will see off this horrid man if he tries anything again.’
Ball had told the Prince a single accuser was behind allegations that led to him having to quit as the Bishop of Gloucester.
In a letter to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse, the Prince said Ball had told him the complaint against him was false and had arisen from someone who had a grudge against him and was ‘persecuting’ him.
In extracts from one letter between the Prince and Ball, Charles says: ‘I can’t bear it that the frightful and terrifying man is on the loose and doing his worst.’
But in his letter to the inquiry on Friday, the Prince, who said he regrets having been ‘deceived’ by Ball, said: ‘I regret that I am unable to shed any light on references made in a letter dated 23rd March 1997 to a ‘horrid man’ or a ‘frightful and terrifying man’.
‘This seems to be a manner of speaking in the midst of a long letter written more than twenty years ago.
‘I do recall that Peter Ball felt that numerous individuals, including his critics in the media, were doing all in their power to disadvantage him unfairly.
‘I suspect, but cannot be certain, that the reference is to this issue in some way.’
The Prince says he did not know about the nature of the complaint against Ball and had not appreciated the meaning of a caution – the acceptance of guilt.
A lawyer for some of the former bishop’s victims has said it was difficult to see that ‘as anything other than willful blindness’.
Ball had previously boasted of being a confidant of Charles, and his court case heard that a member of the royal family was among a host of public figures who supported him when he avoided charges in 1993.
In a statement the Prince of Wales denied he tried to influence the police probe into Ball, as he also revealed the bishop told him he had quit his job over an ‘indiscretion’.
He is not giving evidence in person, and it is instead being read out from a prepared statement.
Today he was pictured meeting the UK’s first F-35 Lightening Squadron at the RAF base in Kings Lynn, Norfolk.
In another letter from the Prince to Ball in 1995 – two years after Ball’s caution – the future king said he wished he could ‘do more’.
He said: ‘I feel so desperately strongly about the monstrous wrongs that have been done to you and the way you have been treated.’
Charles also said he had been told by the then Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey the church was looking at bringing Ball back into public ministry.
In the 1995 letter he said it was ‘appalling’ that the Archbishop, now Lord Carey, had ‘gone back on what he told me’.
He said it was clear the Archbishop was ‘frightened of the press – what he calls ‘public perception’.’
Another letter from Charles the following year referred to the process of getting a Duchy of Cornwall property for Ball and his brother Michael, Bishop of Truro.
It said: ‘I long to see you both settled somewhere that suits you and gives you peace and tranquility – and not too far from here so you can come over more easily.’
The pair rented a Duchy property between 1997 and 2011.
Charles’s letter to the inquiry added: ‘My heart goes out to the victims of abuse and I applaud their courage as they rebuild their lives and, so often, offer invaluable support to others who have suffered.
‘I wish I could do more’: What the prince wrote to his friend the bishop as allegations swirled around
Sept 1993, Ball to Charles
Life continues to be pretty nasty for me for, it seems that my accusers still want to continue their malicious campaign. Luckily they are beginning to show some of their fraudulent plans.
Dec 1994, Charles to Ball
I saw the Archbishop the other day and he told me he is trying to bring you back to a public ministry. I do hope this will be all right and suit you, if and when it happens….
Feb 1995, Charles to Ball
I wish I could do more. I feel so desperately strongly about the monstrous wrongs that have been done to you and the way you have been treated. It’s appalling that the Archbishop has gone back on what he told me, before Xmas, that he was hoping to restore you to some form of Ministry in the Church.
I suspect you are absolutely right – it is due to fear of the media….If it is any consolation, the Archbishop has written me a letter (between you and me) in which it is also clear that he is frightened of the press – what he calls ‘public perception’, which in fact, perception of events and characters based entirely on lies, invention, speculation and sensation.
Dec 1995, Ball to Charles
The young man who accused me keeps on harassing. The last was a few weeks back with a fax, threatening to say more, when he has agreed not to and ending with the words ‘Your never forgiving rnbbrother in Christ’. That is both vile and blasphemous and oh that the police and CPS had seen and known from the beginning the nature of the young man. How I wish the Archbishop or someone would tell them.
April 1996, Ball to Charles
And I can honestly share the pain of it all having tried to break the crippling and unchristian powers of the ecclesiastical set up, and then being deserted in my hour of need.
June 1996, Charles to Ball
…I am so glad that [X] has been in touch as I requested. I pray the Duchy will be able to find something suitable for you both in due course, but it may take a little time to locate it! I long to see you both settled somewhere that suits you and gives you peace and tranquility – and not too far from here so you can come over more easily…
March 1997, Charles to Ball
[X] tells me that your house has been bought successfully – it looks rather nice – and I only hope the rent won’t be too bad!
I can’t bear it that the frightful, terrifying man is on the loose again and doing his worst… I was visiting the vicar… and we were enthusing about you and your brother and he then told me that he had heard that this ghastly man was up to his dastardly tricks again…. I’ll see off this horrid man if he tries anything again.
Aug 2001, Charles to Ball
I do however firmly believe that one day people will be forced to signing your resignation deed but, as you have been advised, I daresay that the establishment will close ranks and you will get nowhere. But how outrageous that now these people say sorry – and only in private….
Dec 2001, Charles to Ball
I saw [ ] the other day…he mentioned that you were thinking of going to the Archbishop and seemed a bit anxious about it… I daresay by now you will have approached the Archbishop but in your letter you so kindly asked me whether I had any objections – something which you certainly didn’t need to do.
The only thing I would say is that unless you really need to go to the Archbishop of Canterbury – for financial reasons particularly – I would have thought it might be better to let sleeping dogs lie…
Oct 2009, Ball to Charles
I am now nearly a broken man, because of what the Church has put me through after seventeen years of serving in retirement. They have smashed me with the bully of an assessor -…from a Child Protection Officer and no pastoral care, except two nice letters from the Archbishop. Suddenly, I am not allowed to baptise, or go to any parish without informing the Church Warden that I had a caution all those years back…
Ball included a letter that set out he was being risk assessed.
May 2010, Ball to Charles
…the horror that has come to me from the Bishop of Chichester with the Archbishop’s obvious hand in it. I have been told that I may not minister at all when we move, nor may I worship anywhere without signing a Declaration for the Protection of Children.
May 2012, Ball to Charles
Writes to say that the police are re-opening the investigation and are to question him. He says: ‘I thought it had been fully examined twenty years ago.’
July 2012, Ball to Charles
Life is ‘almost unbearable. I am being pursued and persecuted. In ways which it would not be discreet to enlarge on, though I am sure that you can guess their source and virulence’.
Dec 2012, Ball to Charles
Ball wrote to thank the Prince of Wales for phoning him, writing in the letter that the affair of twenty years ago had been ‘stirred up’ again by Lambeth.
‘It remains a source of deep personal regret that I was one of many who were deceived over a long period of time about the true nature of Mr Ball’s activities.’
He also said, in the six-page statement read by counsel to the inquiry Fiona Scolding, that he had not appreciated the meaning of the caution and that at the time the word of a bishop was generally seen as trustworthy.
He said he did not realise the truth of what had gone on until Ball’s conviction, adding that his main source of information until then had been the bishop himself.
Dismissing any suggestion he had ever tried to interfere in the police investigation into Ball, Charles said it was possible his name had been taken ‘in vain’.
In his statement, dated July 10 this year, Charles said: ‘At no stage did I ever seek to influence the outcome of either of the police investigations into Peter Ball and nor did I instruct or encourage my staff to do so.’
Ball, the former bishop of Lewes and Gloucester, is too ill to give evidence in person, the inquiry has heard.
But in a statement he referred to his relationship as having been one of ‘support and respect’.
Ball said: ‘I would strongly resist any suggestion that in some way I could bring pressure to bear on him to act on my behalf and have certainly never made a request for him to do so.’
On Monday the inquiry heard there had been lengthy discussions between Charles’s lawyers and the inquiry in which his legal team initially argued that the future king could not be compelled to produce a statement.
Clarence House has since said Charles was willing to help the inquiry and had voluntarily answered all questions asked of him.
Richard Scorer, a specialist abuse lawyer at Slater and Gordon who represents a number of Ball’s victims, said Charles’s explanation that he was not aware of the meaning of a caution left his clients ‘dissatisfied’.
He said: ‘Prince Charles had access to the best legal advice that money can buy and, as a man in his position, a particular responsibility to check the facts.
‘It is difficult to see his failure to do so as anything other than wilful blindness.
‘His evidence, together with that of Lord Carey, the then archbishop of Canterbury, and other establishment figures who have given evidence this week, will do little to dissuade survivors from the conclusion that the British establishment aided and protected Ball and even now have failed to give a transparent account of their actions.’
Charles said in the six-page letter dated July 10 this year that it was his ‘deep regret’ that he and others had been ‘misled’ by Ball.
Elsewhere in his evidence, Charles said Ball had been invited to his home to give holy communion a number of times, from 1993.
He said: ‘Peter Ball occasionally wrote to me in respect of private, often spiritual, matters.’
Referring to his knowledge of the complaint against Ball, he added that in the 1980s and 1990s there was ‘a presumption that people such as Bishops could be taken at their word and, as a result of the high office they held, were worthy of trust and confidence’.
He said at the time ‘there was on my part a presumption of good faith’.
The inquiry is examining how the Church of England handled allegations of sexual abuse and has previously focused on the Diocese of Chichester – where Ball and several other convicted paedophile priests once officiated.
Ball accepted a caution for one count of gross indecency in 1993 and resigned due to ill health.
Prince Charles’ full statement to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse
Extracts from correspondence between Prince Charles and Peter Ball
Peter Ball to Prince Charles
8/12/95 “The young man who accused me keeps on harassing. The last few weeks back
Prince Charles to Peter Ball
16/02/95 “I wish I could do more. I feel so desperately strongly about the monstrous wrongs that have been done to you and the way you have been treated. It’s appalling that the Archbishop has gone back on what he told me, before Xmas, that he was hoping to restore you to some form of Ministry in the Church. I suspect you are absolutely right- it is due to fear of the media…If it is any consolation, the Archbishop has written me a letter (between you and me) in which it is also clear that he is frightened of the press – what he calls “public perception” of events and characters based entirely on lies, invention, speculation and sensation.”
Prince Charles to Peter Ball
11/12/94 “I saw the Archbishop the other day and he told me he is trying to bring you back to a public ministry. I do hope this will be all right and suit you, if and when it happens…”
Peter Ball to Prince Charles
16/11/93 “Life continues to be pretty nasty for me for it seems that my accusers still want to continue their malicious campaign. Luckily they are beginning to show some of their fraudulent plans.”
https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/6147/view/ANG000334.pdf
In extracts of letters published today by the inquiry, the Prince told Ball his accuser was a “frightful, terrifying man” who was “up to his dastardly tricks again.”
The Prince adds in the letter to Ball in 1997: “I’ll see off this horrid man if he tries anything again.”
The Prince also accuses Lambeth Palace – the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury – of being “frightened of the press” for forcing Ball to resign his ministry.
In fact, it was clear it was Peter Ball – not his accuser – who was lying to the Prince.
No charges were brought, and he took his own life shortly before an investigation into sexual abuse allegations spanning some 30 years was reopened in 2012.
Charles denies trying to influence inquiry into sex abuse bishop
27 July 2018
Prince Charles has denied that he tried to influence a police investigation into disgraced bishop Peter Ball.
In written evidence to a child sex abuse inquiry, the heir to the throne said claims by a former police officer that he “came under pressure” as a result of interest from himself were “untrue” and argued there was “a gap between rumour and fact”.
The Prince of Wales also revealed that following his resignation as bishop of Gloucester, he had sent Ball’s and his brother “small gifts of money” and also assisted them in getting one of his Duchy of Cornwall property’s.
He said: “It remains a source of deep personal regret that I was one of many who were deceived over a long period of time about the true nature of Mr Ball’s activities.”
The written statement from Charles was read out during the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) investigation as it examines how allegations against the former Church of England bishop were handled.
Now 86, the former bishop of Lewes and then Gloucester was jailed for 32 months in October 2015 for sexually abusing 18 young men over 30 years. He was released in February last year after serving half his sentence behind bars.
https://news.sky.com/story/charles-denies-trying-to-influence-inquiry-into-sex-abuse-bishop-11451079
Lauren Alder Ⓥ@LaurenAlder
Imagine the fear and loathing at @ClarenceHouse – what happened to Butler-Sloss? Le Ponce was promised this would never happen…first Savile, now this..we need a D notice now….
InquiryCSA Verified account @InquiryCSA
Mr O’Donnell, from Slater and Gordon is making a final submission:
“Here is an abuser (Peter Ball) at the very heart of the establishment, he was selected by the executive and he had the judiciary, the legislature and the monarchy behind him.”
Mr. Nigel Giggin QC closing submission to the #AngilcanHearing from the Archbishops Council:
“No one on the facts that were known at the time should have thought that Peter Ball could be described as, and I quote “a wonderful priest and bishop.”
We are now hearing a read statement from HRH The Prince of Wales.
I want to begin by applauding the your work to ensure the abuse of children is properly investigated and appropriate measures are taken to ensure they are protected.
Over the years I have had, and continue to have, many interactions with the clergy of the Church of England, and of other faiths, often on a daily basis.
I first became aware of Peter Ball in the 1980’s when I heard him preach. At that time, he came across as an interesting and engaging person
Peter Ball occasionally wrote to me in respect of private, often spiritual matters. On each occasion I naturally replied as I believe that to be the polite thing to do.
Peter Ball told me he had been involved in some form of ‘indiscretion’ which prompted his resignation as the Bishop of Gloucester. The matter was described by him as ‘closed’. When this exchange took place I did not know the nature of the complaint.
I was certainly not aware at the time of the significance or impact of the caution Peter Ball had accepted, or indeed sure if I was even told about it.
I occasionally send the brothers small gifts of money, as I do for many people in need, and Peter Ball’s interest in becoming a tenant of a Duchy of Cornwall property then arose.
Probably late in 1994, I recall seeing the then Archbishop and of Canterbury at an event, and taking the opportunity to ask, among other issues, about Peter Ball as he had lately been my local Bishop.
Other than this conversation, I do not recall any specific conversations regarding Peter Ball, although I was aware that Peter Ball himself was keen to persuade the church to restore him to some form of ministry in the church.
I remember the Archbishop was supportive of Peter Ball and thought him a good man and priest.
“In conclusion, I would like to state that, throughout my life, my position has occasionally brought me into contact with prominent people that have subsequently been accused of wrongdoing.
“Rather than rushing to public judgement I have always taken the view that the judicial process should take its course.
“It follows that I ceased contact with Peter Ball once the judicial process was completed and he was found guilty of serious offences against young people.”
“My heart goes out to the victims of abuse, and I applaud their courage as they rebuild their lives and, so often, offer invaluable support to others who have suffered.
“It remains a source of deep personal regret that I was one of the many who were deceived over a long period of time as to the true nature of Peter Ball’s activities.”
We are now hearing extracts from letters between HRH The Prince of Wales and Peter Ball. These extracts are available on our website.
InquiryCSA Verified account @InquiryCSA
A letter is now being read which was sent from Lord Lloyd of Berwick to Mr Murdock: “He (Peter Ball) is the most upright, gentle and saintly man, I find it difficult to accept such an awful fate has befallen such a man.”
We are now hearing from Lord Berwick regarding a telephone call he made to Wayne Murdock, SIO in the Peter Ball case from Gloucestershire police.
Judge phoned officer during bishop Ball inquiry
A senior judge and close friend of a bishop accused of sex offences telephoned the detective handling the case in the middle of the police investigation, a public inquiry was told yesterday.
Lord Justice Lloyd, now Lord Lloyd of Berwick, an appeal court judge who became a law lord, called Wayne Murdock, then a detective inspector. “I said to him, ‘You do realise that I’m the investigating officer’,” Mr Murdock told the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).
Mr Murdock also criticised Lord Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, for not passing letters from Peter Ball’s victims to the police and said a private investigator hired by the church came close to perverting the course of justice.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/judge-phoned-officer-during-bishop-ball-inquiry-jxrkd9gd8
Ms Scolding is now discussing with Lord Berwick his support of Peter Ball returning to the church ministry. He thought it acceptable to go back to the ministry as he had resigned as a bishop and could not be left with nothing to do for the rest of his life.
Lord Berwick provided a character reference for Peter Ball. He also wrote a letter to the DPP. He said: “I was not intending, in any way, to influence decisions.”
http://mandatenow.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Lord-Justice-Lloyd-.pdf
“I got to know Ball Peter Ball very soon after he became Bishop of Lewes, because I wast hen the chairman of the Chichester Diocesan Board of Finance, and, accordingly, I would meet Peter Ball at meetings of the Bishops’ Council. But I got to know him well when he became our nearest neighbour in Berwick. He was a very remarkable – he had very remarkable gifts, spiritual gifts….I liked him very much. We then became very good friends, and we still are.”
Nobody’s Friends
In 2018 the club was subject of a question in the IICSA hearing into abuse in the Church of England. Lord Lloyd had sent a letter of influence in the Peter Ball case to Archbishop Carey prefaced with the phrase “May I presume on a brief acquaintanceship at dinners of Nobody’s Friends?”[17] When asked about the club in his evidence to the Inquiry, Lord Lloyd described Nobody’s Friends as “simply a club, half consisting of the clergy, members of the clergy, and half consisting of members of the laity, which dine together probably twice a year, very often in Lambeth Palace.”
The IICSA counsel pointed out that the Daily Mail had once described it as “centred on a strong core of bishops, ex-Tory ministers and former military top brass, a highly secretive, all-male group representing Britain’s most entrenched professions and institutions.” Lord Lloyd replied, “That’s a typical Daily Mail description of something they don’t particularly like, but I can assure you that Nobody’s Friends is a perfectly ordinary dining club…” The same article that IICSA drew upon in the hearing indicated that Prime Minister Tony Blair had been keen to join the club in 2003.[18][19][20]
Stephen Parsons commented in an influential blog, following the IICSA hearing, that the forum Nobody’s Friends provided for influence in the Peter Ball case suggested a “toxic masculinity” in the Church of England. He went on to say:
A men-only dining club that meets regularly at Lambeth Palace, known as Nobody’s Friends, appears to be a gathering for socially very well-connected Anglicans. Although originally high church in its origins, the club provides an opportunity for a privileged church group to network and sometimes lobby those in authority in the Church …… The Nobody’s Friends dining group has been described as ‘private’ rather than a secret group, but it still represents an exclusive world of male privilege within the heart of the Anglican establishment. When Bishop John Bickersteth once revealed that his appointment to Bath and Wells followed his being ‘spotted’ at a Nobody’s dinner, we began to get the feeling that the values of our church may incline towards corporate and institutional interests rather than a personal morality based on the Sermon on the Mount.[21]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobody%27s_Friends
Gilo writes: Safeguarding the Secrets part 1 – Nobody’s Friends
I was recently given a copy of Nobody’s Friends 1800-2000, a biography and historical diary of the Lambeth Palace dining club which featured in the Peter Ball hearings at IICSA. It emerged at the Inquiry that Lord Lloyd of Berwick had cited their mutual membership of the secretive club to Archbishop Carey in one of many ‘letters of influence’ in support of Ball. Nobody’s Friends is a gathering which quietly fosters establishment links between church and Westminster (mostly the Tory bits of it) and meets in the Guards Room at Lambeth Palace. Newly elected members ‘justify’ themselves during congratulatory speeches which honour any advancement in the various pecking orders (episcopal, judicial, political) of its members. It undoubtedly offers a fulcrum of patronage to any senior cleric lucky enough to be elected member, who might aspire to a mitre.
Membership has included many bishops and archbishops, headmasters from a sprinkling of top schools, various Archbishop’s Appointments Secretaries, Prime Minister’s Appointments Secretaries, Leaders of the House of Commons and House of Lords, Tory peers, Admiralty figures, judicial figures and church lawyers. Such heavyweights as Sir Michael Havers (later Lord Chancellor), Lord Pym, Douglas Hurd, Lord Justice Bingham (former Master of the Rolls) have graced its tables. Several of the senior clerics on the board of Ecclesiastical have also enjoyed membership, and one of the headmaster directors of the church’s insurer. The current club President is believed to be Sir Philip Mawer, who was on the directors board of Ecclesiastical when he was also at same time Secretary General of Synod.
Jonathan Fletcher, Archbishop Welby’s friend and a regular participant at the Iwerne camps from the early 1950s has been a member since 1983. His father, Lord Fletcher, was also a member. The club seems to have had a culture of nepotism in which the scion of ennobled members themselves become elected members.
But another name kept ringing bells. Sir William Van Straubenzee, Tory minister in Northern Ireland under Heath and later a prominent Synod member and Church Estates Commissioner, became a member in 1973. In 1988 he was elected Vice President of the club, and in 1991 elected President of Nobody’s – a position he held until his death in 1999. Clearly very well connected, his London home was a grace-and-favour apartment in Lambeth Palace in the Lollard’s Tower. This pied-à-terre gave name to a group of Tory wets, the Lollards, who met there during Thatcher’s premiership.
Straubenzee was cited in government files in relation to abuse at the Kincora boys home in Belfast. Sir Anthony Duff sent an MI5 dossier on Straubenzee to Sir Robert Armstrong (now Lord Armstrong) in 1986. Kincora may have have been run under the watchful eye of the secret services who used it as a ‘dirty tricks’ blackmail operation, although the findings of the Hart report (Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry HIA Inquiry 2014-2016) disputed this. The involvement of MI5 in Kincora has never meaningfully been investigated. And although three men who shared in the running of the home were prosecuted and jailed in the 1980s – figures from the political and establishment worlds named in connection with the abuse and trafficking of boys from this and other homes in Belfast did not face questioning.
Armstrong himself was also a member of Nobody’s from 1984, and may be still as far as anyone knows. It’s unlikely that other members had awareness at the time when the senior mandarin from Number 10 received this intelligence from MI5. Armstrong appears to have remained tight-lipped, although it is recorded that these files were passed to the Prime Minister. So two men, one of whom had grounds from the security services to suspect possible abuse activities by the other – both toasted the club’s customs and membership alongside assorted archbishops during coffee and mint thins. It’s a disconcerting image.
Equally as disconcerting, there seems to be no indication that the Church of England shared this information with IICSA. Nor following the Peter Wanless and Richard Whittam QC Review when the material from the Cabinet Office first came to public light in 2015 after their report.
Despite judicial interest in these matters, the suffering of victims and survivors, and the need for transparency – the Church of England did not seem to offer this information to these inquiries? Presumably many current Nobody’s Friends, including many bishops, have copies of this rare publication. It did not occur to any of them, nor to the club Treasurer, that this might be helpful information – not least because it might shed light on the culture of protectionism afforded by these private clubs.
Another Lambeth Palace dining club offers a deeper picture of privilege and protection. In 1993 a former chairman of the Nikaean Club and head of Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge went to court for abusing a boy between the ages of 14 and 16. Canon (later Bishop) Christopher Hill, also a member of the Nikæan Club, accompanied Patrick Gilbert to court. Gilbert was also able to brandish a character witness letter from another Nikaean member – former Archbishop of Canterbury, Donald Coggan. Gilbert, who was also secretary of the wine committee at The Athenaeum, admitted a previous conviction for indecent assault on two 13-year-old school boys in 1962. Despite this and despite the seriousness of the charge, and almost certainly owing to the protecting influence of a Lambeth Palace dining club, he received a suspended sentence and sympathy from the judge for the considerable stress he had endured. As the judge explained, he decided not to jail the bachelor because of his health and ‘very severe punishment’ he had already undergone through loss of reputation. Both Hill and Coggan were also members of The Athenaeum. It’s not who you know… but who you dine with.
Returning to Nobody’s it is oddly disturbing that its members are likely to have their own copies of this book, and many older members will remember Straubenzee as President of the club. They will have presumably been aware of media reports in recent years of the mention of Straubenzee in secret service reports to the Cabinet Office.
A culture of ‘say nothing unless asked’ is a culture still reluctant to move on from subtle complicity and subterfuge. This mindset has already led to the current existential crisis of the bishops and senior ‘management’ of the Church. The time for keeping of secrets Luca Brasi-style to protect the reputation of a Lambeth Palace eliterie should long be over. The Church should no longer entertain disposition to this kind of omerta. A church with secrecy riven in its bones is not a church with a healthy and redemptive future. It is hardly worth the candle.
Incidentally I was interested to find that two senior figures I had told of my abuse – were both members. Stephen Platten, former Bishop of Wakefield, and John Eastaugh, former Bishop of Hereford.
With no little irony, I give the last word of this essay to Lord Lloyd. When questioned at the Inquiry, his description of Nobody’s Friends was that it was a “perfectly ordinary dining club”.
http://survivingchurch.org/2019/08/20/gilo-writes-safeguarding-the-secrets-part-1-nobodys-friends/
The Aegis connection? Nicholas Soames was always on hand to give the paedophile Harvey Proctor a leg-up in times of need:
7/ Another Western Goals man, Robert McFarlane was involved in ContraGate and on the board of Aegis, Soames’ defence company. Soames (Wardrobe with Little Key) is of course a close friend of Denby mate Proctor and likely facilitated his St. (V)Ermin’s PR conference.
8/ While McFarlane was busting sanctions, Denby was in trouble with the Iranians and Denby friend Bee Carthew was making references to Weinberger and North, Harvey Proctor was being invited to Reagan’s second inauguration.
The Aegis connection? Aegis does tend to attract persons of a certain ilk. Here is Tim Spicer, the company’s CEO until 2012:
Ranjan Balakumaran@financialeyes
Aegis got a $300m US Department of Defence contract to co-ordinate all the mercenaries in Baghdad. The American contractors hit the roof when they found out Spicer had won the contract.
One of Spicer’s soldiers was done for murdering a Catholic teenager in Northern Ireland. Very rare for a serving soldier.
The Aegis connection? And here is Nicholas Soames on the board of the same company as David Mellor, the man who sat in on meetings with Leon Brittan but couldn’t remember being there:
https://companycheck.co.uk/company/01779800/ABELA-HOLDINGS-UK-LIMITED/companies-house-data …
The Aegis connection? Nicholas Soames, the Wardrobe with the Little Key, is a close friend of both Prince Charles and the paedophile Harvey Proctor. He is also chairman of the Aegis defence company and sits on the Queen’s Privy.
1982 Sydney Morning Herald
The Aegis connection? Did Soames wittingly mislead the inquiry into the death of Diana?
Letter, Baroness Buscombe to Nicholas Soames MP, attaching article by the readers’…
| eference: | LEV 2/CC5G/Z |
|---|---|
| Description: | Letter, Baroness Buscombe to Nicholas Soames MP, attaching article by the readers’ editor of The Observer and PCC Guidance note on the Data Protection Act, Journalism and the PCC Code |
| Held by: | The National Archives |
| Legal status: | Public Record |
| Closure status: | Closed Or Retained Document, Open Description |
| Access conditions: | Closed For 100 years |
| Record opening date: | 13 September 2113 |
The Aegis connection? In the year 2113: Nicholas Soames, a man surrounded by murky secrecy:
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/e0d1a75fcc7f45448a2934d1df5c5beb …
Letter, Sir Christopher Meyer to Nicholas Soames MP
| Reference: | LEV 2/VG2/Z |
|---|---|
| Description: | Letter, Sir Christopher Meyer to Nicholas Soames MP |
| Held by: | The National Archives |
| Legal status: | Public Record |
| Closure status: | Closed Or Retained Document, Open Description |
| Access conditions: | Closed For 100 years |
| Record opening date: | 13 September 2113 |
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/a7133740e9ff4bc196ba91be09bb6478
The caller told the Princess “Well accidents can happen” and she was “very pale” after the conversation.
Miss Simmons said the Princess told her the caller was Conservative MP Nicholas Soames.
Mr Soames, the grandson of Winston Churchill, has previously told the inquest that the suggestion was “grotesque and preposterous”.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject of sinister phone calls, I wonder who this one was involving Spanker Proctor and how they got hold of the photos?
^ Harvey Proctor’s benefactor – The Duke of Rutland is
also in the Epstein little black book…
The Aegis connection? Chairman Soames and Princess Diana:
Anthony John Leslie Lloyd, Baron Lloyd of Berwick, Kt, PC, DL (left) with Sir John Birch Director of Aegis
One of Prince Charles closest friends, Nicholas Soames is chairman of Aegis
The Aegis connection? Despite Bishop Ball’s seriously perverted character, Lloyd of Berwick still fawns over him:
In 1969 Lloyd was appointed Attorney-General to the Prince of Wales, serving until 1977.
He was made a Privy Counsellor
He held the office of Deputy Lieutenant (D.L.) of East Sussex in 1983.
He is a former member of the Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved.[10] In 2005 he became chairman of the parliamentary Ecclesiastical Committee which examines draft measures presented to it by the Legislative Committee of the General Synod of the Church of England.[11]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Lloyd,_Baron_Lloyd_of_Berwick
In 2008/09 Ms Wood notes that Peter Ball did not have a risk assessment while he was working in Bath & Wells. She conducted a past cases review in 2009. She described a “disturbing pattern of behaviour” from Peter Ball.
Ms Wood raised concerns in 2008/09 that a 17 year old who was attending school, who Peter Ball to masturbate in front of him. The file notes said it was no offence, but it was an offence of gross indecency.
IICSA Day 4 Transcript
Prince Charles aide asked police if anything could ’embarrass’ him during inquiry into paedophile bishop
25 July 2018
An aide to the Prince of Wales contacted police in 2013 to ask about “embarrassing” material it may have collected during an investigation into a paedophile bishop, the independent child sex abuse inquiry has heard.
A member of the Prince’s staff contacted the chief constable of Sussex Police to ask whether information gathered during its investigation into Peter Ball, the former bishop of Lewes and of Gloucester, could “be embarassing to Prince Charles or the monarchy in general”.
Ball, now 86, was convicted in 2015 of misconduct in public office after admitting the sexual abuse of 18 young men.
According to the evidence of Detective Chief Inspector Carwyn Hughes, who worked on the investigation, the disgraced bishop had a “long-lasting friendship” with the Prince of Wales and the pair had exchanged several letters.
The contact was made after Peter Ball’s brother Michael Ball sent a letter to the Prince.
On Wednesday the officer told the inquiry he examined the police’s records to see if they had collected any material which could “damage the reputation of Prince Charles”, and did not find any.
Calling the contact “highly unusual” on account of the prince’s status, he said it prompted him to consider whether the prince could be a witness in the inquiry.
He insisted that Prince Charles was not treated differently from “the man on the street”, and that while he would have been notified if there was any relevant information, this would also have been the case for a member of the public.
“If there was evidence in the investigation that was of relevance to the person on the street, they would also be a potential witness,” he said, adding that he felt “no pressure” and did not feel the investigation had been influenced as a result of the contact.
The inquiry also heard that pre-charge publicity around Bishop Ball encouraged 12 victims to come forward to police.
The Inquiry is due to hear read evidence on Friday from the Prince of Wales, who maintained contact with the bishop after Ball was cautioned in 1993 for gross indecency.
He is expected to say in his statement that he did not know the caution involved an admission of guilt.
On Wednesday morning the inquiry heard from Wayne Murdock, formerly of Gloucestershire Police, who had presided over the earlier inquiry, which ended with the caution.
Mr Murdock said that he believed the outcome of his investigation could have been different had then-Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey handed over letters sent to Lambeth Palace by victims and their families.
“He knew we were carrying out an investigation, and for some reason he withheld them,” he said.
On Tuesday Lord Carey admitted that the letters should have been handed over, but added that he had “assumed the police were investigating this thoroughly”. The inquiry continues.
Donna Birrell@BBCDonnaB
Another extraordinary day @InquiryCSA we hear a former Bishop @DioTruro may have perverted the course of justice and that Prince Charles’ staff officer asked Sussex Police in 2013 if they had any embarrassing information about the Prince of Wales.(They said No.) @churchofengland
Peter Ball’s defence solicitor wrote to the Crown Prosecution Service saying he had received 1284 letters in support and to consider the impact of a prosecution on @churchofengland @InquiryCSA
Cassandra Cogno@CassandraCogno
Just like Dame Butler “we don’t want to give the press a bishop” Sloss …
Janet Cope, Jimmy Savile’s secretary, showing his files – letter from Prince Charles next to a clipping about the Cleveland Inquiry
According to the BBC, investigating officer Detective Inspector Wayne Murdock is said to have discussed with Ball’s legal team in the documents “the need to prevent a scandal in the press, especially as Peter was a frequent visitor to Sandringham and is friendly with Prince Charles”.
In a separate document released by Gloucestershire Police in response to an Freedom of Information request, Mr Murdock writes that after a meeting at Lambeth Palace, it was suggested that “any form of Church investigation instigated by the Archbishop of Canterbury would be ‘fairly low key and private’.”
He said the Church had displayed a “considerable amount of naivety” over the case as it took no action when advised in early September 1992 of “irregularities” concerning Ball.
Gloucestershire Police received messages of support for the former clergyman from MPs, former public school heads, JPs and a Lord Chief Justice, and Mr Murdock said: “According to defence sources they claim to have in excess of two thousand letters of support for Bishop Peter Ball, including letters from Cabinet ministers and Royal Family.”
InquiryCSAVerified account @InquiryCSA
InquiryCSAVerified account @InquiryCSA
Mr Hughes carried out an investigation into Lord Carey following the Peter Ball sentencing considering whether any legal action was to be taken as there were letters not disclosed to the police from Carey.
craftymuvva@craftymuvva
This should have made headline news this evening. I bet it didn’t:
Ms McNeill is now asking whether it was unusual to receive a call from the Prince of Wales office regarding Operation Dunhill. Mr Hughes has confirmed that it was indeed unusual for this call to have been made.
Operation Dunhill began as a direct result of the safeguarding officer at Lambeth Palace raising concerns about Peter Ball following a church initiated review of files.
https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/7087-2/
A man who was 12 when he alleges he was abused by the former bishop of Lewes was among those who came forward, according to a spokesman for Sussex police’s Operation Dunhill
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/nov/15/police-further-complaints-retired-bishop
Mr Hughes on the delay of the CPS decision on charges of Peter Ball: “There was a growing theory that there had been some sort of establishment cover up.”
We are now looking at a case conference with the CPS, where Mr Hughes was made aware of a letter sent to Peter Ball regarding his police cautions.
Inquiry counsel Fiona Scolding QC is hearing evidence from Mr Wayne Murdock, formerly of Gloucestershire Police
Mr Murdock states that it’s not true to say that he would cease the investigation if Peter Ball would accept a caution. These matters needed proper investigation. ‘I wouldn’t cut corners’
Mr Murdock, when showed notes from PB’s solicitors on meeting – that he would supply them with notes of the investigation – said ‘Rubbish … I would be knocking on the door of perverting the course of justice, and I would not do that’ – watch live:
Mr Murdoch: ‘I made it clear [at the meeting with PB’s legal team] that I would report back to the DPP, the offer of the caution, and I clearly made no promises… I certainly did not recommend a caution.
Mr Murdock wrote a 633 page report to the Crown Prosecution Service which contained all witness statements and at the end, Mr Murdock, as SIO could give his views, opinions and summarise what he believed what offences should be charged.
Mr Murdock’s report recommended the DPP considers charges of gross indecency and indecent assault. and also wish to consider additional offences which resulted from the police investigation – Offences under section 18 of offences against the person ACT (sec 18 is GBH)
FSQC – You say in your report that you invite the CPS to consider that Peter Ball has been less than truthful [in his evidence] – and has been quite calculating in the manner in which he presents himself.
FSQC: You also flag to the CPS that the reputation of the Church would suffer if PB was prosecuted-that didn’t really matter did it? Mr Murdock: It’s my job to point out the risks to the CPS the decision lies with them whether or not to prosecute.
Credne’s Cod Peace @CrednesCodPeace
It’s quite strange that one of the best mate’s with many paedophiles including Jimmy Saville is allowed to get away without giving verbal evidence or being cross examined. Long live the monarchy, we like our feudal lords & masters.
Prince Charles tried to keep links to paedophile bishop Peter Ball private
July 24 2018
Prince Charles argued that information about his connection with Bishop Peter Ball was “private and confidential”
The Prince of Wales staged a lengthy legal fight against demands from a public inquiry for him to provide evidence about his long friendship with a paedophile Anglican bishop, it has emerged.
Lawyers for Prince Charles protested that requests for evidence from the child abuse inquiry about his connection with Bishop Peter Ball were beyond its powers, unfair and a breach of the prince’s human rights by seeking to obtain “intensely private and confidential” material.
Alexis Jay, chairwoman of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), issued a statutory notice requiring the prince to provide evidence but met continued resistance from Clarence House.
When the prince’s evidence was submitted last week the inquiry was surprised that it came in the form of a letter to Professor Jay rather than a formal witness statement “finalised with a statement of truth and signed”.
Richard Scorer, solicitor for six of Ball’s victims, told an inquiry hearing that the prince’s refusal to provide a statement in the usual way “will feed concerns that the letter is less than entirely frank about his relationship with Peter Ball”.
The Times revealed last week that the prince’s draft evidence admitted that he maintained a friendship with Ball, 86, former Anglican Bishop of Gloucester, for more than 20 years after the cleric accepted a police caution for gross indecency in 1993.
The prince invited Ball to his Highgrove home and to royal occasions, gave him “small gifts of money” after he was forced to resign his ministry and helped to arrange a Duchy of Cornwall house for him to live in.
His evidence said he did not understand that a criminal caution involved an admission of guilt and did not cut contact with Ball until he was convicted and jailed at the Old Bailey in 2015. The prince expressed “deep personal regret” that he had been deceived by the bishop.
The investigation of the Ball case is part of the IICSA’s wider inquiry into the handling of child abuse cases by the Church of England.
The inquiry counsel Fiona Scolding, QC, said the IICSA had heard from 32 men who were victims of grooming, abuse and sexual exploitation by the bishop when they were teenage boys or young adults.
At the time of the initial police inquiry into Ball in 1992-93, police and prosecutors received 24 letters from prominent figures — including senior clergy, MPs, an appeal court judge and public school headmasters — lobbying on his behalf.
Ball exploited his royal and establishment connections in a voluminous letter-writing campaign in which he pressed, with success, for his return to Church duties. He was given permission to officiate at services and between 1996 and 2002 preached at 25 schools.
William Chapman, counsel for some of Ball’s victims, said the cleric had been able to “call upon the willing assistance of the establishment — including the heir to the throne”.
He told Professor Jay and the inquiry panel: “These establishment helpers claim they were duped by Peter Ball. You will have to consider whether that is credible — given what they must have known or could easily have found out about Peter Ball. Prince Charles has many advisers, he only had to ask what a ‘caution’ meant.”
Mr Scorer also argued that the prince could have inquired about the accurate legal position concerning Ball. “Prince Charles apparently decided not to seek clarification of the legal position. To my clients, this extraordinary lack of curiosity looks like wilful blindness,” he said.
Ms Scolding said that the format of the prince’s eventual evidence “was not what had been requested” but the IICSA was satisfied that it did answer the questions put to Prince Charles.
She said: “The last sentence of the letter does make clear that the material set out within it is true. The inquiry considered that this complies with the requirements of a statement of truth and that the letter received contained all the evidence required.”
Ms Scolding said the inquiry had withdrawn the statutory demand for the prince to provide evidence and had “adjusted its requests in some respects”. She added, however, that the IICSA “did not resile from its demands the need to obtain this evidence or accept the contention that the prince should be treated in a way that was different from any other witness”.
The prince’s evidence will be read at the inquiry on Friday but he will not be called to answer questions.
A Clarence House spokesman said: “The prince made it clear that he was willing to help the inquiry and voluntarily answered all the questions asked in the form of ‘free flowing text’ as requested by the inquiry itself. The final submission includes a statement of truth in common with all witness statements.
“The legal exchanges, which have been extensively referred to by the inquiry’s solicitors, were necessary to ensure clarity regarding both the structure, relevance and content of the statement. Once resolved, the inquiry raised no objection to the format of the prince’s submission.”
Lord Carey to face questions
Lord Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, faces intensive public questioning today about his handling of the case of the disgraced bishop Peter Ball.
Lord Carey, 82, will appear at the child abuse public inquiry to explain why he wrote to senior police and prosecutors in support of Ball when the Bishop of Gloucester as he was then was under criminal investigation in 1993. When he was lobbying on Ball’s behalf, the former archbishop was aware that Lambeth Palace had received further allegations of sexual misconduct against Ball. Only one letter was passed to the police.
The peer will also be asked to explain why he tried to rehabilitate Ball after his criminal caution by giving him permission to conduct church services.
The inquiry was told yesterday that in 2014 Lord Carey again wrote to officers claiming that the bishop had “served the church with great distinction”.
InquiryCSAVerified account @InquiryCSA
A letter from Peter Ball to Lord Carey in 1994 he asks for £10,000 to help with legal funds. In the letter, Peter Ball describes allegations as a “little nuisance”.
Ms Scolding QC asks do you think it was appropriate to give a bishop who had been found guilty of gross indecency discretionary funds? At the time we felt that Peter Ball needed help, after careful scrutiny of his finances Lord Carey responds.
Ms Scolding QC asks Lord Carey why Peter Ball was allowed to attend Stowe School and Radley College in 1996/97. He says he thought there would be proper supervision. Ms Scolding also notes there is no evidence schools were warned about Ball’s previous behaviour.
Daisy Law@theDaisyLaw
What, like the supervision which the church undertook by their conspiracy to cover up his crimes against children? Carey is looking like a fellow poacher rather than a gamekeeper trying to protect the flock. Corruption & shady networking are phrases which come to mind.
alun:
Surely I-Don’t-Carey must have been aware of this:
@craftymuvva
For a man that wrote numerous letters proffering his opinions on political matters to the PM (this proving his continued interest and knowledge of current affairs), Charlie is certainly very selective about what he knew…
Linda Woodhead @LindaWoodhead
IICSA … on the Peter Ball scandal: hears of the extraordinary lengths to which Prince Charles’s lawyers went to wiggle out of complying with IICSA’s request that the Prince give a witness statement to the Inquiry like everyone else. Even invoking European convention HRights!
William Chapman, counsel for survivors @InquiryCSA : “Were they really as ignorant as they claimed about the nature of Peter Ball’s activities? Prince Charles has many advisers, he only had to ask. So did the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
Under current @churchofengland procedures Peter Ball is still able to call himself, Bishop, with the title, Right Reverend”
Prince Charles refused to give formal statement to sex abuse inquiry
23 July 2018
Prince Charles refused to provide a formal witness statement to the child sex abuse inquiry, lawyers told a hearing on Monday.
The inquiry is currently hearing evidence relating to abuse carried out by Peter Ball, the former bishop of Lewes and of Gloucester, who knew the prince and exchanged letters with him.
Lawyers for the Prince of Wales used human rights law to object to block efforts to compel him to send a witness statement in the format used by the inquiry, instead sending a signed letter.
Fiona Scolding, lead counsel to the investigation into the Anglican church, said that his lawyers had previously argued that compelling him to give evidence was outside its powers.
Ball was convicted in 2015 of misconduct in public office after admitting abusing 18 teenagers and young men between the 1970s and 1990s.
His abuse had first been reported to the church in 1992, but police and CPS decided to give him a caution, and he was stripped of his role as bishop.
He was later allowed to officiate at events including at schools and confirmations.
Ms Scolding said there would have been “no doubt” about what the inquiry’s lawyers were asking for, as they sent a template for the document and used the word “statement” five times in one letter asking for the document to be signed.
“Despite lengthy correspondence, including assertions from the Prince’s solicitors that the Inquiry’s requests for evidence were outside its powers, i.e. ‘ultra vires’, there was never any suggestion at any point that the statement would be provided by letter,” she said.
The inquiry made several attempts to compel the lawyers to provide a witness statement with a formal statement of truth, which is essentially equivalent to swearing on oath.
The prince’s law firm Harbottle & Lewis also tried to argue that asking for a witness statement was “unfair”, and constituted a request for “intensely private and confidential” personal data.
Following “lengthy and extensive correspondence” an agreement was reached and the inquiry has decided to treat the letter, which ends with a sentence saying that its contents are true, as equivalent to a witness statement, she said.
The Prince will not give evidence in person but will have the statement read out at the hearing on Friday.
Earlier in the hearing Richard Scorer, of law firm Slater and Gordon, who is representing victims and survivors, expressed “surprise and concern” at the decision.
“This will inevitably raise concerns that the letter may be less than entirely frank about his relationship with Peter Ball and that it contains matters to which he s reluctant to attach a formal statement of truth,” he said.
The prince’s statement is expected to say that he was “not aware at the time of the significance or impact of the caution that Peter Ball had accepted”, including the fact that a caution involves admission of guilt.
On Tuesday the Inquiry is expected to hear evidence in person from former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, who was found in an independent inquiry last year to be among senior church figures who “colluded” with Peter Ball.
Earlier in the day the inquiry heard that the church was dealing with a “turbulent” period in 1992, with Lord Carey raising the “constitutional crisis” caused by the Prince’s split with Diana, Princess of Wales, as well as the decision to allow women to be priests.
William Chapman, a lawyer from Switalskis, also representing victims and survivors, told the inquiry that there had been concern that gay clergymen would be outed by a full criminal investigation, ending their career in the church.
A Clarence House spokesman said: “The prince made it clear that he was willing to help the Inquiry and voluntarily answered all the questions asked in the form of ‘free flowing text’ as requested by the Inquiry itself.
“The final submission includes a statement of truth in common with all witness statements. The legal exchanges, which have been extensively referred to by the Inquiry’s solicitors, were necessary to ensure clarity regarding both the structure, relevance and content of the statement.
“Once resolved, the Inquiry raised no objection to the format of the prince’s submission.”
Elizabeth Butler Sloss, 1st IICSA chair, member of the establishment protected Bishop Peter Ball
Establishment ‘rallied to help ex-bishop later jailed for abuse’
Prince Charles and Lord Carey among powerful backers of Peter Ball, abuse inquiry told
23 July 2018
Members of the establishment, including the heir to the throne, the then archbishop of Canterbury and a senior member of the judiciary, rallied to the support of Peter Ball, a Church of England bishop accused of sexual abuse, an independent inquiry has heard.
“The story of Peter Ball is the story of the establishment at work in modern times,” said William Chapman, representing survivors. “It is the story of how the establishment minimised the nature of Peter Ball’s misdeeds … and silenced and harassed those who tried to complain.”
One survivor told the inquiry the C of E’s response to his disclosure of abuse amounted to “enduringly cruel and sadistic treatment”.
The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse is examining how the church handled allegations. A five-day hearing this week is scrutinising the church’s response to claims of sexual abuse against Ball, a former bishop of Lewes and then Gloucester, who was jailed in 2015.
Ball was able to call upon the “willing assistance of members of the establishment”, said Chapman. “It included the heir to the throne, the archbishop and a senior member of the judiciary, to name only the most prominent.”
Between them, they provided Ball with money and accommodation, legal advice, a private detective, references and approaches to the police and the prosecuting authorities.
“The alacrity and the extent of the response by Peter Ball’s friends to one of their own in trouble was impressive. It makes a horrible contrast to the way Peter Ball’s victims were treated,” Chapman said.
He told the inquiry: “These establishment helpers claim they were duped by Peter Ball … But you will have to consider if it is credible, given what they must have known or could easily have found out about Peter Ball, whether they were really as ignorant as they claimed they were about the nature of Peter Ball’s activities.
“Some claimed they did not know what a caution meant. Well, Prince Charles has many advisers; he only had to ask. So does the archbishop of Canterbury.”
Ball’s friends were willing to “add their weight” against the due criminal process. “They went far beyond the normal obligations of friendship.”
Allegations were first made against Ball in 1992, but he accepted a police caution and resigned his position as bishop. An independent review of the case commissioned by the C of E and published last year found evidence of collusion and a cover-up at the highest levels.
Richard Scorer, also representing survivors, said that Ball found in his fellow bishops the “perfect accomplices, prepared to turn a blind eye to his abuse over many decades”.
None bore greater responsibility than Lord Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, Scorer said. “We fear that when we hear from him this week, the usual litany of excuses will be trotted out,” he said, adding that Carey must give a “transparent account of his actions”.
Prince Charles’s assertion that he did not understand the significance of a caution was “frankly astonishing”, he said. The prince has access to “the best legal advice that money can buy,” Scorer added.
The prince chose not to clarify the legal position. “To my clients, this extraordinary lack of curiosity looks like wilful blindness,” he said.
In her opening statement, Fiona Scolding, senior counsel to the inquiry, said that Ball’s “fall from grace was a huge shock to the church”.
She added: “He was a very senior clergyman with enormous spiritual authority. He also had power and charm.”
People inside and outside the church had attested to Ball’s charisma and oratorical brilliance. She said that power had been “further enhanced by his cultivation of influential friends both within and outside the church”.
As an example, Ball had told people after his arrest that four cabinet ministers had offered him a “bolthole from the press”.
“He did not stint from mentioning those friends in prominent places when he thought it would assist his cause,” Scolding added.
She told the hearing of a scheme set up by Ball for young men interested in religious life that gave him the opportunity to groom them for sexual abuse and exploitation. The men were encouraged to pray naked, and engage in massage and spanking. One, Neil Todd, who first made allegations against Ball, killed himself in 2012.
Scolding said that Ball, now 86, was too unwell to give evidence either at the inquiry or by video link. But in one of two statements he had submitted he made an apology and said he had “neither been open nor shown penitence in the past”.
The hearing heard from three survivors who described their abuse by Ball. One, the Rev Graham Sawyer, who has waived his right to anonymity, said: “The sexual abuse that was perpetrated on me by bishop Peter Ball pales into insignificance when compared to the enduringly cruel and sadistic treatment that has been meted out to me by officials, both lay and ordained, in the Church of England.”
He described the culture within Anglicanism as an “ecclesiastic protection racket – and anyone who seeks in any way to threaten the reputation of the church and institution has to be destroyed”.
Safeguarding should be taken out of the church’s hands he said, as “it cannot police itself with any credibility”.
At the start of proceedings, Alexis Jay, the chair of the inquiry, said she had ordered an investigation into the leaking to the media of the Prince of Wales’s letter.
She said the leak was a “very serious breach of confidence by someone with direct access to information in this investigation” and promised “firm action” should the source be uncovered.
Scolding said a suggestion reported by the Times that the timing of the statement, to be read on the final day of this week’s hearings, was to prevent the prince being called for cross-examination “could not be further from the truth”.
She said: “There is no requirement for him to attend in person as his evidence, whilst important, is not of central relevance to many of the issues raised by this case study.”
The hearing continues.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey admits ‘fobbing off’ sex abuse victims
July 24 2018
A former Archbishop of Canterbury has admitted “fobbing off” victims of sex abuse who complained about a paedophile bishop.
Lord Carey of Clifton said Lambeth Palace failed to deal properly with letters sent by victims and their families after the arrest of Peter Ball in December 1992.
Ball, then the bishop of Gloucester, was arrested following disclosures by Neil Todd, who had been a pupil on his scheme for young men considering a monastic life, that Ball had sexually abused him.
Lord Carey also admitted that the church had “mishandled” the case, after the inquiry heard evidence that many of the letters had received holding responses and victims had been forced to follow up to gain a proper reply.
“We have been fobbing people off. They should have had direct replies. We should have carried on our enquiries and dealt with it in a much more serious and adult manner than we did,” he admitted.
The inquiry also heard that a “personal message” from the former Archbishop had been sent to the diocese of Gloucester in January 1993, several weeks after the allegations had been received, expressing a hope that the ongoing police enquiry would “clear his [Ball’s] name”.
He also wrote to the chief constable of Gloucestershire and the director of public prosecutions in 1993 on Ball’s behalf after the bishop’s psychiatrist told him that he was suicidal, and wrote to Ball himself telling him “you are in my prayers”.
Lord Carey, who was Archbishop of Canterbury between 1991 and 2002, oversaw Ball’s return to ministry and the payment of thousands of pounds to the bishop, including money for holidays, which came from his own discretionary funds, used to support church leaders in need.
The inquiry also heard that Ball was given the role as Bishop of Gloucester in 1992 after then-appointments secretary to the Prime Minister Sir Robin Catford wrote a glowing letter recommending him, including mentioning that he was a “squash blue” at Cambridge and that he had a “quite extraordinary sparkling personality” and was “loved and revered by everyone who crossed his path”.
Donna Birrell @BBCDonnaB
Powerful evidence by Rev Graham Sawyer, victim of Peter Ball : “ It is an ecclesiastical protection racket… anyone who threatens the reputation of the Church has to be destroyed. That is the culture within Anglicanism.”
Ball was able to call upon the “willing assistance of members of the establishment”… it included Prince Charles, the archbishop and a senior member of the judiciary…they provided Ball with money and accommodation, legal advice, a private detective, references and approaches to the police and the prosecuting authorities.
Peter Ball (right) and his twin brother Michael Ball, pictured in 1989
Bishops were ‘perfect accomplices’ for ‘nauseating’ Peter Ball, IICSA hears
23 July 2018
PETER BALL found the “perfect cover” for his sex-offending in the Church of England, and the “perfect accomplices” in fellow bishops who turned a blind eye to his actions, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA) has heard.
The details of the abuse carried out against vulnerable adults by Mr Ball, the disgraced former Bishop of Gloucester, during his ministry were heard on Monday at the start of a week-long hearing being conducted by IICSA, as part of its investigation into the extent to which the Anglican Church failed to protect children from child sex abuse.
The first hearing, in March, used the diocese of Chichester as a case study (News, 9 March). This week is to focus on the repeated failures of the police, Crown Prosecution Service, and the Church to identify, prevent, and prosecute abuse carried out by Ball over several decades, the lead counsel to the Anglican investigation, Fiona Scolding QC explained.
Ball received a three-year sentence in 2015, having admitted to a series of indecent assaults and the abuse of 18 young men aged 17-25 (News, 7 October 2015).
The offences included praying naked with vulnerable young people who had joined the monastic-community scheme Give a Year to God, which Ball had founded and run in Littlington, East Sussex, in the 1980s, when he was Bishop of Lewes.
Summarising the evidence received by the Inquiry, which included more than 100,000 documents, Ms Scolding said that Ball had admitted to being naked with, caressing, anointing, and physically assaulting young men, who would sleep in his house, sometimes in his bed, and with whom he would prayer naked, embrace, and masturbate. The victims were told that these practices were an expression of humiliation, penitence, and devotion to Christ.
One of his victims was the late Neil Todd, who was repeatedly abused during the 1980s and ’90s, and who later took his own life. His allegations brought about the police investigation in 1993, which resulted in Ball accepting a police caution, thereby admitting his guilt.
Ms Scolding also quoted several senior clerics who had held Ball in high esteem, most of whom had “flooded to defend him” after the police investigation and, latterly, his conviction. It had become clear in the Chichester hearing that abusers were required to “manipulate and charm” everyone around them, not just their victims, she said.
Among his defenders was Michael Ball, his twin brother and a former Bishop of Truro, who repeatedly urged Lambeth Palace to restore Peter Ball to ministry during the 2000s in what has been described in evidence as “manipulative” campaign which drew on connections with senior figures, including the Prince of Wales.
A lawyer representing six survivors of Ball, Richard Scorer QC, said that in the Church Ball had found the “perfect cover” for his offending.
“If a charlatan with an insatiable appetite for abuse wanted to secure a continuous supply of vulnerable young victims, there was no better way of achieving this than by founding a religious order not subject to any external supervision, and by making his victims participation in the abuse a religious duty obligated by their oath of absolute obedience.
“Not for the first time, theology and religious ritual provided the ideal mask for abuse, with the evil of what Peter Ball did being compounded by his nauseating claim that the abuse was spiritually uplifting.
“Most of all, however, Peter Ball found in his fellow bishops in the Church of England the perfect accomplices, prepared to turn a blind eye to his abuse over many decades, to collude in the lie that the abuse of Neil Todd was an uncharacteristic aberration, to cast doubt on his guilt, to smear his victims, and to rehabilitate him.”
Mr Scorer also criticised Prince Charles for not making efforts to check the position of Ball in 1993, after the bishop accepted a caution. “This extraordinary lack of curiosity looks like wilful blindness. . . He failed in that responsibility and therefore failed the victims.”
At the start of the hearing, the chair of the Inquiry, Professor Alexis Jay, expressed her disappointment at the “serious breach of confidence” after the content of a draft witness statement of Prince Charles was leaked to the press last week (News, 13 July).
The statement from Prince Charles had been disclosed to core participants on 9 July, Professor Jay said. “The panel is disappointed by the leaking of the draft statement. Deliberate leaking of information to the media before evidence is made public by the Inquiry not only undermines the ability of the Inquiry to get to the truth, but can also erode confidence in the Inquiry at all levels.”
Peter Ball preached at over 25 schools between 1996 and 2002.
Sussex police documents, released under an Freedom of Information (FOI) request, indicate Ball associated with other sex offenders in the clergy and that he was investigated in 2008 for being part of a suspected paedophile ring.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-36767415
The police files also suggest Ball covered for and helped other priests accused of sex abuse, including:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-36767415
Norma Moore @Mousehole1
Esther Baker @Esther9982
I do wonder if the lawyers acting for the CP’s ought to challenge the lawyers running the @InquiryCSA on the basis that they are now accepting the accused (and their reps) words rather than truth seeking as their powers allow?
Recent examples of this would be a) allowing royalty to not give pertinent evidence because he’s royalty. B) inaccurately issuing a statement that I am under investigation for PCJ, and only removing it at the insistence of the police – because an ex-MP said it so it must be true
Peter Ball was a governor of both Lancing College but also the wider Woodard Group, which is a group of Anglican boarding schools
Peter Ball appointed to the Anglican Scouting Fellowship
In January 1996 Lord Carey agreed that Ball should be permitted to preach at a public school, provided that the school were made aware of possible hostile press interest. He further agreed in March that Ball could conduct confirmations and preach at two more schools. Ball was still the President of the Anglican Fellowship in Scouting and Guiding 17 and the Archbishop agreed that he could attend their Annual General Meeting and celebrate the Eucharist at their headquarters in Gilwell
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Peter Ball developed a scheme called “Give a year to God”. He set this up informally with the approval of Bishop Kemp.
Archbishop George Carey had Robert Alston on his staff from 1999-2002.
Richard Alston (left) and brother Robert Alston
Robert Alston’s brother is Richard Alston (convicted child rapist)
Richard Alston’s partner was PIE leader Peter Righton
1992
At the time of eter Ball’s caution:
1990-94 Peter Ball Chaplain at Ardingly College
https://youtu.be/RUPX9N6H4P8?t=229
Robert John Alston, (right) retired British diplomat. Alston was educated at Ardingly College and New College, Oxford. He is Chairman of Governors at Ardingly College (2005 – 2010). He served as British Ambassador to Oman between (1986–1990)
Paul Righton attended Ardingly College from 1940 to 1944
Righton’s Ardingly College obituary – with mention of Richard D Alston (G1953-63)
Dame Alun Roberts@ciabaudo
“Evil bishop drove me to suicide”- Telegraph article about Ball’s abuse was published 14 Mar 1993 in the Sunday Telegraph
If he didn’t know, he’s hardly fit to be King …
2006 Prince Charles and Camilla with evil Bishop Ball
Richard Scorer: My clients accept the Prince of Wales (Prince Charles) has many interactions with Church of England clergy. However our clients do not accept that he claims he was not aware that a caution means an acceptance of guilt.
Scorer claims senior leaders in the Church knew of Peter Ball’s offending but Lambeth Palace did not hand over letters to police: http://ow.ly/M5yK30l4wJe
Mr William Chapman: There’s a reluctance to trust the secular authorities to handle the matter and a willingness to forgive and reintegrate Peter Ball, no matter what he’d done
Elizabeth Hall, Nat Safeguarding Advisor, recommending a further review of Peter Ball information which should involve trying to find all files/documents
Both Michael Ball and brother Peter Ball were not shy about using the name of the Prince of Wales to seek to influence others. Bishop Michael Ball wrote to Lord Carey in Dec 1992 saying that his brother was receiving support from 2 Cabinet Ministers and Prince Charles Peter Ball often mention their friendship.
On 8 March 1993 Peter Ball received a caution for one count of gross indecency against Neil Todd. He resigned immediately. Peter Ball alleged to the Church of England shortly that he either did not wish to resign, and accepted a caution to avoid a trial.
“This Inquiry has been provided with details of allegations made by a total of 32 individuals. These all relate to an alleged abuse of power by Peter Ball for the purposes of his sexual gratification.”
The former Bishop of Lewes, Peter Ball was convicted of two offences of indecent assault, and an offence of misconduct
Peter Ball admitted when pleading guilty that he received sexual gratification from the deliberate manipulation of vulnerable young men, that the contact was consistent with grooming and that he abused his position as a Bishop in the Church of England
In January 1996, Ball was permitted by Archbishop Carey to preach at a particular public school and, to conduct confirmations at other specific schools later on in that year
(1) Why he was permitted to return to ministry in this fashion? (2) Why did no-one think to carry out some kind of risk assessment? (3) Whether or not senior clergy simply thought that Peter Ball’s pleas of innocence should be believed?
2006 Peter Ball former Bishop of Lewes with his good friends Prince Charles and Camilla at a memorial for her father Bruce Shand
Paedophile Peter Ball remained a confidant of Prince Charles right up until 2012
Although it took him time to accept the facts, the Prince has now cut the cleric out of his life. It was a difficult decision because Ball had become a spiritual advisor to the Prince
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-36767415
The Aegis connection? What a constellation! A paedophile bishop advising BigEars after Diana’s death, Jimmy Savile, Britain’s most prolific paedophile, pulling strings, and Nicholas Soames with his crystal ball, warning of Diana’s pending death! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3265742/Jimmy-Savile-Prince-Charles-close-friendship-sex-abuse-bishop-Peter-Ball.html …
Watch: http://ow.ly/Ibhh30l4x9a #Anglicanhearing
“Evil bishop drove me to suicide”- Telegraph article about Ball’s abuse was published 14 Mar 1993 in the Sunday Telegraph
2005 The wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Shand attended by evil Bishop Peter Ball
Peter Ball ‘preached at the funeral of Camilla’s father’s in 2006, which indicates his standing in their household.’
If Prince Charles didn’t know, he’s hardly fit to be King …
similarly…
Daily Telegraph March 1993
and this
InquiryCSAVerified account@InquiryCSA
Both Michael + Peter Ball were not shy about using the name of the Prince of Wales to seek to influence others. Bishop Michael Ball wrote to Lord Carey in Dec 1992 saying that his brother was receiving support from 2 Cabinet Ministers + the PoW. PB often mention their friendship.
Cassandra Cogno @CassandraCogno
Will we be told the 2 cabinet ministers didn’t understand a caution as an admission of guilt too? Or will they never be mentioned again
Gilo @seaofcomplicity:
That tiny handful of letters (I believe there were 2000+) shows the extent to which the great and the good brought undue influence to bear. Why write such letters … unless intending to influence judicial proceedings? There cannot be any other reason.
And Carey quietly sat on 6 letters from parents and victims – letters which had they gone to police in mid 90’s would almost certainly have led to prosecution. This was a cover-up involving lambeth palace archbishops, bishops, and other assorted figures.
Gibb Report said Lord Carey “set the tone for the Church’s response to Ball’s crimes and gave the steer which allowed Ball’s assertions that he was innocent to gain credence”. But will IICSA find anything more than this? In 5 days and with so few witnesses.
Prince Charles assumed bishops did not lie https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/prince-charles-assumed-bishops-did-not-lie-3thjg9qg7 … “There are questions about why he provided a sex offender with a Duchy of Cornwall house…whether Charles really didn’t understand the gravity of Ball’s conduct, which had been front-page news when he resigned”
I didn’t know bishop was a paedophile, Prince Charles protests https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/i-didnt-know-priest-was-a-paedophile-princecharles-protests-g3fx96df9 … (he did not understand that the clergyman’s caution for gross indecency involved an admission of guilt)…. Yeah, right.
During his time in Lewes, Ball got to know Savile well and he was the bishop’s principal entree into the Waleses’ household
Peter Ball was propelled into the royal circle by two people, I understand. One was prebendary Willie Booth, a former chaplain at Westminster School, who’d taken over from Caesar. The other was Jimmy Savile.
During his time in Lewes, Ball got to know Savile well and he was the bishop’s principal entree into the Waleses’ household. After his appointment to Gloucester was announced, Ball became a regular visitor to Highgrove and was held in such high regard that Charles attended his enthronement.
Charles, meanwhile, must surely have been advised to keep Ball at arm’s length — just as he had been advised to distance himself from Jimmy Savile.
‘The Prince did receive letters from the public complaining about Savile,’ says a senior aide. ‘But the writers were dismissed [by him] as jealous or mad.’
Prince Charles kept in touch with ex-bishop later jailed for abuse
Prince told inquiry he was deceived by Peter Ball, who called him a ‘loyal friend’
20 July 2018
Prince Charles maintained contact with a former bishop who was later jailed for abusing young men and occasionally gave him money because he was deceived over the man’s crimes, he has told the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse.
In a written submission to be read at the inquiry next week, the Prince of Wales has said he did not understand that Peter Ball’s caution for gross indecency in 1993 involved an admission of guilt, according to a report in the Times.
In the statement, described as a draft, Charles said he had “decades of correspondence” with Ball and occasionally sent him “small gifts of money, as I do for many people in need”.
The former bishop has described the prince as a “loyal friend”.
Ball was invited to give Communion at Highgrove, the prince’s home, preached at the funeral of Bruce Shand, the Duchess of Cornwall’s father, in 2006 and lived in a Duchy of Cornwall property from 1997 to 2011.
Charles said the bishop told him he had been involved in an “indiscretion” and that an individual with a grudge had been persecuting him.
The prince added: “I was certainly not aware at the time of the significance or impact of the caution … Whilst I note that Peter Ball mentioned the word in a letter to me in October 2009, I was not aware until recently that a caution in fact carries an acceptance of guilt.”
He expressed “deep personal regret” that he had been deceived by Ball.
Next week’s hearings at the inquiry are to investigate “whether there were inappropriate attempts by people of prominence to interfere in the criminal justice process after [Ball] was first accused of child sexual offences”.
Ball, 86, the former bishop of Gloucester, was sentenced to 32 months for charges relating to 18 teenagers and young men between the 1970s and 1990s when he was bishop of Lewes. He admitted one count of misconduct in public office and two counts of indecent assault relating to two young men.
Ball was first accused in 1993 by Neil Todd, who tried to kill himself three times as a result of his abuse, and went on to do so in 2012.
Sussex police investigated Todd’s claims, and six other victims came forward. But support flooded in for Ball from within the establishment and he was never charged. Instead he received a caution for gross indecency, resigned his post as bishop and was allowed by Carey to continue officiating at church services.
Last year, an independent review of the C of E’s handling of the Ball case, conducted by Dame Moira Gibb, found senior church figures colluded with the accused bishop over a 20-year period. The report said: “The church appears to have been most interested in protecting itself.”
George Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, will also give evidence to the inquiry, in person and including cross-examination. He resigned his position as an honorary assistant bishop after being criticised in the Gibb report. His “permission to officiate” was reinstated earlier this year.
A Clarence House spokesperson said on Thursday: “IICSA has asked the Prince of Wales if he could help the part of their inquiry that deals with Mr Peter Ball. Whilst the prince made it clear that he was unaware of Mr Ball’s behaviour, he indicated that he was happy to volunteer context on his contact with Mr Ball if that would help.”
The spokesperson also referred to findings in the Gibb report, which said it had found no evidence “that the Prince of Wales or any other member of the royal family sought to intervene at any point in order to protect or promote Ball”.
@ciabaudo
The Rev Barry Kinsman or ‘Mr. Padstow’ as he was known locally was found dead in the sea off Padstow. Now why would a man of the cloth be worried about the coverage given to the Savile inquiry and of it spreading to Cornwall?
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2013/07_08/2013_08_07_ThisIs_PadstowExPriests.htm …
Obituary: KINSMEN. – On 31 December, the Revd Barry Kinsmen:
Truro Diocesan Adviser in Religious Education (1979-95);
Priest-in-Charge of Little Petherick (1980-81); St Issey (1980-81); Rector of St Issey with St Petroc Minor (1981-95); 72.
Barry Kinsmen may have known Jimmy Savile through the Ball brothers.
Kinsmen (Truro Diocesan Adviser in Religious Education (1979-95) would have known Bishop Michael Ball as Truro Bishop (and Peter Ball who was friends with Jimmy Savile) Peter Ball resigned as Bishop of Gloucester in 1993 after he received a police caution for gross indecency.
It has now emerged he replaced his identical twin Michael, then Bishop of Truro, at services and official duties on an unknown number occasions in the 1990s.
The Diocese of Truro has appealed for information from churchgoers to investigate what happened when the two men were together in Cornwall between 1993 and 1997.
Of course, affordable housing is always an important issue, but what did Kinsman know about abuse in Cornwall, after all he was a leading light at the Padstow Echo and a former head teacher.
Let’s stay in Padstow for a while because it’s such a nice place and home to eccentrics such as Ed Prynn and his ladyfriend Glynis, whose spiritual mentors were Billy Graham (friend of croaker Cliff Richard) and Jimmy Savile:
On March 5th, 1993, the paedophile Bishop Ball was notified by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) that despite “sufficient admissible, substantial and reliable evidence”, it was prepared to deal with the matter out of court.
Bishop Bollox wasn’t the only nonce being protected down Cornwall way: It took 40 years for ex-copper Daniel Bryant, who was closely associated with the Azimuth Trust which in turn links to many other paedophiles, to be brought to justice. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/paedophile-police-officer-daniel-bryant-2341683 …
In October 1985 Daniel Bryant was pictured in the North Devon Journal receiving the British Empire Medal for services to youth from the Lord Lieutenant of Devon, the Earl of Morley, at a ceremony in Exeter.
Paedophile police officer Daniel Bryant brought to book FORTY years after abusing boys
He now faces jail after admitting abusing a string of boys in the 1960s, 70s and 80s
6 OCT 2013
Daniel Bryant served as a constable over three decades and was honoured for his youth work – but led a secret double life as a predatory pervert.
Russel first reported Bryant in 1987 but was told the allegations were uncorroborated, even though a second lad had also alleged abuse.
Bryant continued as a PC in Devon and Cornwall Police’s juvenile bureau for another five years until he was suspended when a third victim came forward in 1993.
Just a year later, aged 44, he retired on a medical pension on the grounds of ill health. He avoided prosecution until this year when he was finally charged.
Police surf club coach Danny Bryant took advantage of weekends away to commit abuse
On leaving the force Bryant became a leading figure in a club for the competitive sport of surf lifesaving, where he worked with many more children.
Bryant admitted ten indecent assaults, against five boys between 1969 and 1985, at Taunton Crown Court in August.
Russel was preyed on by Bryant after joining a police lifesaving club run by the pervert. Following one vile assault he quit the club but was tormented by flashbacks.
Gallingly, the following year Bryant was awarded the British Empire Medal for his youth work.
Daniel Bryant – a director of Surf Life Saving Great Britain.
His family took out a private prosecution but police refused to reinvestigate until eventually a probe was launched in February. Bryant pleaded guilty.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/paedophile-police-officer-daniel-bryant-2341683
Bryant helped run a Surf Life Saving GB club affiliated at Saunton Sands in the 1980s when Russel Dawson said he was abused a number of times.
Esther Pearson, chief executive of Surf Life Saving GB (SLSGB), said the organisation had been unaware of the allegations until it received a letter from Mr Dawson on 19 October last year.
A police officer continued to work with children at a force lifesaving club following accusations of child abuse, a BBC investigation has found.
Danny Bryant was jailed last November for abusing boys between 1974 and 1985, including at Devon and Cornwall Police Surf Life Saving Club.
Derek Fisher, the former police boss of Bryant and the then secretary of the Devon and Cornwall Police Surf Life Saving Club, told BBC Inside Out South West that he took action to remove Bryant immediately from the club in 1988 after an accusation was brought to his attention.
He said Bryant “took no further part in that club from that time on”.
However, BBC Inside Out has found evidence that Bryant was part of the club until 1993:
- Devon and Cornwall Police correspondence in October 1989 showed Mr Fisher inviting Bryant to an award ceremony at the club
- Further correspondence shows Bryant retained an organisational role in 1991
- Minutes from 1992 show Bryant was listed as club captain
- In the same year when Diana Princess of Wales opened the clubhouse, Bryant was part of the reception committee
- In 1993, Bryant became the new chairman of Saunton Sands Surf Lifesaving Club after the original club was disbanded
Bryant also held a senior role with Surf Lifesaving GB until 2012 and in the previous year was awarded one of the sport’s highest accolades: Knight in the Order of Lifesaving.
Surf Lifesaving GB was aware of an accusation of assault in 1993, but said it was only told of another case in October 2012.
The case has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
Many of the offences took place at the now-defunct Devon and Cornwall Police Surf Life-saving Club which he was a founder member of.
Jailing Bryant, of Bideford, North Devon, Judge David Ticehurst said it was ‘a matter of regret that the force did not bring him to justice before’.
BLUE EARTH TRAINING LTD
BRYANT, Daniel Harold
BRYANT, Jennifer
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/07318516/officers
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/officers/ZKd8zWCdAy6kzC_9eefOa-Dwieg/appointments
In 2013, former detective Shirley Thompson told of her long-standing concerns about the Goad inquiry. William Goad, a rich man, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2004 after he admitted sexually abusing more than a dozen boys.
The Azimuth Trust and Dr Morris Fraser, PIE member and his band of cronies
Nxivm: Nigel Havers’ step-daughter arrested over claims she funded secret ‘sex cult’ that branded women with symbol
Seagram heiress Clare Bronfman has been arrested on charges of racketeering conspiracy after allegedly using her fortune to help finance the group
25 July 2018
The step-daughter of actor Nigel Havers has been arrested over claims she funded a suspected US sex cult.
Investigators in America allege Seagram liquor heiress Clare Bronfman used her fortune to help finance the operations of Nxivm.
The 39-year-old is the daughter of Georgiana Bronfman, who is the Chariots of Fire star’s third wife.
Bronfman was arrested on Tuesday along with three others on charges of racketeering conspiracy.
She later appeared in a Brooklyn federal courtroom pleading not guilty to charges of running a criminal enterprise.
A judge ordered she be held under house arrest as the judge considered the prosecutor’s request for a $100 million bond.
Bronfman’s lawyer said her client “did nothing wrong”.
Her attorney, Susan Necheles, said in a statement that Nxivm was “not a criminal enterprise” but “an organisation that helped thousands of people”.
“The charges against Clare are the result of government overreaching and charging an individual with crimes just because the government disagrees with some beliefs taught by Nxivm and held by Clare,” Necheles said.
Nxivm co-founder Nancy Salzman, 64, her daughter, Lauren Salzman, 42, and the group’s 60-year-old bookkeeper, Kathy Russell, were also charged with racketeering conspiracy.
Six people have now been charged in the Nxivm inquiry, including 35-year-old actress Allison Mack, who starred in the TV show Smallville.
The US Department of Justice says all six committed “an array of crimes, including identity theft, extortion, forced labour, sex trafficking money laundering, wire fraud and obstruction of justice”.
They included Nicki Clyne, an actress who appeared on Battlestar Galactica, Bronfman’s sister Sara, a son of former Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and India Oxenberg, a daughter of Dynasty actress Catherine Oxenberg.
In an indictment, prosecutors said Mack, who played a teenage friend of Superman in the CW network’s Smallville, helped Raniere recruit women to a secret sub-society within NXIVM whose members were branded with a surgical tool with a symbol that resembled his initials.
Women were expected to be subservient to “masters”, prosecutors said, including giving in to demands for sex.
In February, Havers credited his wife for saving him from grief following the death of his second wife, Polly Williams.
The actor was happily married to Polly Williams for many years before her death from ovarian cancer in 2004 at the age of 54.
Despite criticism for years by ex-followers who called NXIVM a cult and a pyramid scheme, the organisation’s intense self-improvement classes had, at one point, earned it thousands of adherents, including some with Hollywood ties.
They included Nicki Clyne, an actress who appeared on Battlestar Galactica, Bronfman’s sister Sara, a son of former Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and India Oxenberg, a daughter of Dynasty actress Catherine Oxenberg.
In an indictment, prosecutors said Mack, who played a teenage friend of Superman in the CW network’s Smallville, helped Raniere recruit women to a secret sub-society within NXIVM whose members were branded with a surgical tool with a symbol that resembled his initials.
Women were expected to be subservient to “masters”, prosecutors said, including giving in to demands for sex.
In February, Havers credited his wife for saving him from grief following the death of his second wife, Polly Williams.
The actor was happily married to Polly Williams for many years before her death from ovarian cancer in 2004 at the age of 54.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/nigel-havers-step-daughter-arrested-12975257
Edgar Bronfman Jr., half-brother of Sara and Clare, is a member of Queen Elizabeth’s Committee of 300, and the chairman of Warner Music Group.
Charles Bronfman is also a member of the Committee of 300, and the owner of Seagram liquor, net worth $2 billion.
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_committee300_14.htm
And Edgar Bronfman Jr is on the Council on Foreign Relations
https://www.cfr.org/membership/membership-roster-a-f
The Bronfman family has very close ties to the Rothschild banking dynasty, with members of both families belonging to many of the same companies, including their joint financial firm, Bronfman & Rothschild.
At Bronfman & Rothschild, Donald Trump’s, the Clinton’s and Jeffrey Epstein’s friend, “Lady” Lynn Forester de Rothschild, is on the Board of Directors:
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/al…-slavery-ring/
Edgar Bronfman Jr. is also in the “little black book” of paedo billionaire Jeffrey Epstein
Nigel Havers’ step-daughter, Clare Bronfman – her brother Edgar Bronfman Jr is in convicted billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s black book
The Havers family has a long history with paedophiles:
Nigel Havers’ father Lord Michael Havers tried to stop Geoffrey Dickens from naming Sir Peter Hayman
Brother of child abuse inquiry judge Elizabeth Butler-Sloss was accused of ‘cover up’
Late brother of Baroness Butler-Sloss, judge formerly in charge of Westminster child abuse inquiry, was attorney general who refused to prosecute paedophile spy Peter Hayman
Sir Michael Havers, the late brother of Baroness Butler-Sloss, was accused of a “white-wash” after he backed a decision not to prosecute Sir Peter Hayman.
Baroness Butler-Sloss, a former president of the Family Division of the High Court who led the inquest into the death of Princess Diana, has been appointed by Theresa May to lead an independent inquiry into allegations that child sex abuse was covered up by state bodies, the church, political parties and the BBC. The Home Office said she had “impeccable credentials”.
Elizabeth Butler Sloss covered up for Bishop Peter Ball
Elizabeth Butler Sloss, 1st IICSA chair, member of the establishment protected Bishop Peter Ball
Establishment ‘rallied to help ex-bishop later jailed for abuse’
Prince Charles and Lord Carey among powerful backers of Peter Ball, abuse inquiry told
23 July 2018
Members of the establishment, including the heir to the throne, the then archbishop of Canterbury and a senior member of the judiciary, rallied to the support of Peter Ball, a Church of England bishop accused of sexual abuse, an independent inquiry has heard.
“The story of Peter Ball is the story of the establishment at work in modern times,” said William Chapman, representing survivors. “It is the story of how the establishment minimised the nature of Peter Ball’s misdeeds … and silenced and harassed those who tried to complain.”
One survivor told the inquiry the C of E’s response to his disclosure of abuse amounted to “enduringly cruel and sadistic treatment”.
The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse is examining how the church handled allegations. A five-day hearing this week is scrutinising the church’s response to claims of sexual abuse against Ball, a former bishop of Lewes and then Gloucester, who was jailed in 2015.
Ball was able to call upon the “willing assistance of members of the establishment”, said Chapman. “It included the heir to the throne, the archbishop and a senior member of the judiciary, to name only the most prominent.”
Between them, they provided Ball with money and accommodation, legal advice, a private detective, references and approaches to the police and the prosecuting authorities.
“The alacrity and the extent of the response by Peter Ball’s friends to one of their own in trouble was impressive. It makes a horrible contrast to the way Peter Ball’s victims were treated,” Chapman said.
He told the inquiry: “These establishment helpers claim they were duped by Peter Ball … But you will have to consider if it is credible, given what they must have known or could easily have found out about Peter Ball, whether they were really as ignorant as they claimed they were about the nature of Peter Ball’s activities.
“Some claimed they did not know what a caution meant. Well, Prince Charles has many advisers; he only had to ask. So does the archbishop of Canterbury.”
Ball’s friends were willing to “add their weight” against the due criminal process. “They went far beyond the normal obligations of friendship.”
Allegations were first made against Ball in 1992, but he accepted a police caution and resigned his position as bishop. An independent review of the case commissioned by the C of E and published last year found evidence of collusion and a cover-up at the highest levels.
Richard Scorer, also representing survivors, said that Ball found in his fellow bishops the “perfect accomplices, prepared to turn a blind eye to his abuse over many decades”.
None bore greater responsibility than Lord Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, Scorer said. “We fear that when we hear from him this week, the usual litany of excuses will be trotted out,” he said, adding that Carey must give a “transparent account of his actions”.
Prince Charles’s assertion that he did not understand the significance of a caution was “frankly astonishing”, he said. The prince has access to “the best legal advice that money can buy,” Scorer added.
The prince chose not to clarify the legal position. “To my clients, this extraordinary lack of curiosity looks like wilful blindness,” he said.
In her opening statement, Fiona Scolding, senior counsel to the inquiry, said that Ball’s “fall from grace was a huge shock to the church”.
She added: “He was a very senior clergyman with enormous spiritual authority. He also had power and charm.”
People inside and outside the church had attested to Ball’s charisma and oratorical brilliance. She said that power had been “further enhanced by his cultivation of influential friends both within and outside the church”.
As an example, Ball had told people after his arrest that four cabinet ministers had offered him a “bolthole from the press”.
“He did not stint from mentioning those friends in prominent places when he thought it would assist his cause,” Scolding added.
She told the hearing of a scheme set up by Ball for young men interested in religious life that gave him the opportunity to groom them for sexual abuse and exploitation. The men were encouraged to pray naked, and engage in massage and spanking. One, Neil Todd, who first made allegations against Ball, killed himself in 2012.
Scolding said that Ball, now 86, was too unwell to give evidence either at the inquiry or by video link. But in one of two statements he had submitted he made an apology and said he had “neither been open nor shown penitence in the past”.
The hearing heard from three survivors who described their abuse by Ball. One, the Rev Graham Sawyer, who has waived his right to anonymity, said: “The sexual abuse that was perpetrated on me by bishop Peter Ball pales into insignificance when compared to the enduringly cruel and sadistic treatment that has been meted out to me by officials, both lay and ordained, in the Church of England.”
He described the culture within Anglicanism as an “ecclesiastic protection racket – and anyone who seeks in any way to threaten the reputation of the church and institution has to be destroyed”.
Safeguarding should be taken out of the church’s hands he said, as “it cannot police itself with any credibility”.
At the start of proceedings, Alexis Jay, the chair of the inquiry, said she had ordered an investigation into the leaking to the media of the Prince of Wales’s letter.
She said the leak was a “very serious breach of confidence by someone with direct access to information in this investigation” and promised “firm action” should the source be uncovered.
Scolding said a suggestion reported by the Times that the timing of the statement, to be read on the final day of this week’s hearings, was to prevent the prince being called for cross-examination “could not be further from the truth”.
She said: “There is no requirement for him to attend in person as his evidence, whilst important, is not of central relevance to many of the issues raised by this case study.”
The hearing continues.
“within the records of the 1992 investigation…there are both oblique and direct references noting that Prince Charles or the royal family were interested inthe matter…there was also internal correspondence
Dame Alun Roberts @ciabaudo
If he didn’t know, he’s hardly fit to be King …
Richard Scorer: My clients accept the PoW has many interactions with Church of England clergy. However our clients do not accept that he claims he was not aware that a caution means an acceptance of guilt.
Scorer claims senior leaders in the Church knew of Peter Ball’s offending but Lambeth Palace did not hand over letters to police: http://ow.ly/M5yK30l4wJe
Mr William Chapman: There’s a reluctance to trust the secular authorities to handle the matter and a willingness to forgive and reintegrate Peter Ball, no matter what he’d done
Elizabeth Hall, Nat Safeguarding Advisor, recommending a further review of Peter Ball information which should involve trying to find all files/documents
Both Michael Ball and brother Peter Ball were not shy about using the name of the Prince of Wales to seek to influence others. Bishop Michael Ball wrote to Lord Carey in Dec 1992 saying that his brother was receiving support from 2 Cabinet Ministers and Prince Charles Peter Ball often mention their friendship.
On 8 March 1993 Peter Ball received a caution for one count of gross indecency against Neil Todd. He resigned immediately. Peter Ball alleged to the Church of England shortly that he either did not wish to resign, and accepted a caution to avoid a trial.
“This Inquiry has been provided with details of allegations made by a total of 32 individuals. These all relate to an alleged abuse of power by Peter Ball for the purposes of his sexual gratification.”
The former Bishop of Lewes, Peter Ball was convicted of two offences of indecent assault, and an offence of misconduct
Peter Ball admitted when pleading guilty that he received sexual gratification from the deliberate manipulation of vulnerable young men, that the contact was consistent with grooming and that he abused his position as a Bishop in the Church of England
In January 1996, Ball was permitted by Archbishop Carey to preach at a particular public school and, to conduct confirmations at other specific schools later on in that year
(1) Why he was permitted to return to ministry in this fashion? (2) Why did no-one think to carry out some kind of risk assessment? (3) Whether or not senior clergy simply thought that Peter Ball’s pleas of innocence should be believed?
Watch: http://ow.ly/Ibhh30l4x9a #Anglicanhearing
Peter Ball preached at over 25 schools between 1996 and 2002.
Lady Renton, wife of the chief whip, was friends with Peter Ball and wrote a letter of support to the DPP on HOC headed notepaper
Prince Charles gives evidence to inquiry into Peter Ball
The Prince of Wales says he was aware that Peter Ball, who lived in Aller, near Langport, had been given a police caution, but claims he did not realise it amounted to an admission of guilt.
Details of Prince Charles’s relationship with Ball will be revealed at an inquiry into the case on Friday.
The next in line to the throne had “decades of correspondence” with Ball and occasionally sent him “small gifts of money”, according to the draft copy of his statement to the inquiry, The Times has reported.
The statement will add that Ball confided in him in 2009 that he had been involved in an “indiscretion” years previously, which he blamed on a person with a grudge.
Peter Ball abuse inquiry requests statement from Prince Charles
By Press Association
The Prince of Wales has been asked to give a witness statement to a public inquiry about a paedophile bishop who was jailed after abusing young men.
Peter Ball was sentenced to 32 months in 2015 for a string of offences between the 1970s and 1990s, and the handling of allegations against him is now being examined by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).
At a hearing on Wednesday, counsel to the inquiry Fiona Scolding QC said that statements had been requested from the prince and his principal private secretary.
According to a transcript posted on the inquiry website, she said: “We have also requested a witness statement from both His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and his principal private secretary.
“The Prince’s solicitors have indicated their client’s willingness to assist us and have raised a number of important issues for us to consider.
“This has led to lengthy and complex discussions and we are currently considering the latest points they have raised. We hope to be able to provide an update to core participants on this in the next couple of weeks.”
Charles had exchanged a series of letters with Ball, the former Bishop of Gloucester, whose diocese covers Highgrove, the prince’s country home.
A spokesman for the prince told the Daily Mail last year that the correspondence contained nothing of relevance to the clergyman’s offending.
Lawyer Richard Scorer from Slater and Gordon, who is representing complainants at the IICSA, said: “It is imperative that the inquiry leaves no stone unturned in its efforts to establish how Peter Ball was able to evade justice for two decades.
“If this means calling Prince Charles and other prominent establishment figures as witnesses then the inquiry should do so without fear or favour.”
https://www.premier.org.uk/News/UK/Peter-Ball-abuse-inquiry-requests-statement-from-Prince-Charles
George Bell was ‘fond’ of paeodophile bishop Peter Ball and sponsored him for ordination, an inquiry has heard.
As former bishop of Chichester, Bell is considered one of Anglicanism’s heroes. However, it emerged in 2015 the Church of England paid £16,800 to the woman, known as Carol, in a legal settlement after she accused Bell of sexually abusing her as a child.
Now it can be revealed Peter Ball, who was jailed for a string of sex offences against teenagers and young men in 2015, was close friends with Bell.
Ball was initially rejected in his attempt to become a priest in 1951 but Bell wrote to the selection panel in support of Ball’s application.
When Ball applied for ordination a second time it was Bell who sponsored him through the process.
In his witness statement to an inquiry investigating child sex abuse within the Church of England, Ball denied that Bell had ‘overruled’ the selection board allowing him to be ordained.
However he said that after his ordination Bell would visit his parish to take services, adding he was ‘aware that he was “fond” of me’.
In response to a question about Bell’s involvement in his ordination, Ball told the inquiry: ‘It is not right therefore to say that Bishop Bell “overruled” the selection board in order for me to be ordained.
‘Although Bishop Bell had indicated in 1951 in a letter to the first Selection Board who did not recommend me for ministry that he would be “prepared to accept me for ordination” even though the Selection Board had not recommend me for training at that time, that is not how matters proceeded.’
He went on: ‘After theological college, it was Bishop Bell ultimately who did sponsored [sic] me for ordination, but with the approval of the Selection Board. Bishop Bell then placed me in the parish of Rottingdean where I undertook my first curacy.
‘He would visit my curacy on occasion to carry out confirmations and to take services.
‘We had a good working relationship; I was aware that he was “fond” of me. He was someone who I looked up to when I was a young curate starting out in the Church.’
Bell, who died in 1958, was revered by Anglicans before the abuse allegations against him emerged. However a report earlier this year heavily criticised the Church’s handling of the accusations and found it ‘rushed to judgement’ and failed to give proper consideration to Bell’s rights.
But the archbishop of Canterbury refused to back down and said a ‘significant cloud is left over his name’.
Ball went on to become bishop of Lewes in the diocese of Chichester and then bishop of Gloucester. He was accused of gross indecency against a 16-year-old in 1992 but escaped with a police caution after he received backing from a member of the Royal Family and a number of other establishment figures. He was told to step down from his role as a bishop. However he continued to minister in churches and schools until 2010 before he was eventually arrested.
At the age of 83 he was sentenced to 32 months for misconduct in public office and 15 months for indecent assaults in 2015. He was released after serving 16 months.
The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse has been investigation how the diocese of Chichester handled allegations of child sexual abuse as a case study for the wider Church of England.
In his concluding remarks today solicitor David Greenwood said the CofE was more ‘malign’ than the Catholic Church in its response to abuse and accused it of ‘a conscious effort to treat survivors badly’.
The archbishop of Canterbury in his evidence said he had ‘learnt to be ashamed again of the Church’ and warned child sexual abuse would ‘destroy the Church’ if not addressed.
Ex-Archbishop ‘faces probe into Church sex abuse cover-up’: George Carey accused of ‘colluding’ with senior clergy to protect jailed bishop
05 Mar 2018
The former Archbishop of Canterbury could face a police probe over claims the Church covered up the activities of a sex abuse bishop, it was reported last night.
George Carey was last year accused in a report of ‘colluding’ with senior clergy to protect Bishop Peter Ball.
Ball, who groomed and abused 18 vulnerable men from 1977 and 1992, was allegedly not added to a list of questionable ministers in 1993 that enabled him to carry on working.
Bishop Peter Ball, who groomed and abused 18 vulnerable men from 1977 and 1992, was allegedly not added to a list of questionable ministers in 1993 that enabled him to carry on working
Even though the Metropolitan Police has not started a criminal investigation, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is discussing whether to press charges against Lord Carey, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Prosecutors are said to be reading a 70-page report by Dame Moira Gibb, which was released last summer, in order to decide whether to prosecute.
A spokesman for Operation Hydrant – the investigation into historical allegations of child abuse – said: ‘The matters under consideration are complex, and advice is currently being sought from CPS to understand whether anything contained within the report suggests criminal offences have been committed.
‘This does not equate to a criminal investigation being underway.’ Solicitor David Greenwood, who has represented several of Ball’s victims, criticised the length of time prosecutors were taking.
He said: ‘What’s taking the CPS so long? It’s a 70-page report which was published nine months ago.’ Ball, a former suffragan bishop of Lewes, was let off with a caution for molesting a teenage novice monk in 1993. Although the Church knew of other allegations against him, it was not until 2015 that Ball was finally prosecuted and jailed.
He admitted abusing 18 teenagers and young men who had sought spiritual guidance from him between 1977 and 1992. Last summer the report into the scandal by Dame Moira, titled Abuse of Faith, described the Church’s handling of the scandal as ‘lamentable’.
It found Mr Carey ‘colluded’ with senior clergy to protect Ball. The independent inquiry into the scandal found that the Church of England knew of a string of allegations against Ball, then bishop of Gloucester, but failed to alert the police.
Justin Welby, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, urged his predecessor to step down from his role as an assistant bishop after the report covering his time as head of the Church of England.
Some of Ball’s victims called for a criminal investigation into senior clergy after the report found that the Church was ‘more interested in protecting itself’ than helping those he had abused, and that at least nine bishops knew allegations had been made against him.
In a Christmas letter last year, Lord Carey attacked his successor Mr Welby for commenting on his handling of allegations against Ball. The 82-year-old lashed out at the ‘unjust’ request for him to step down over his supposed failings 24 years ago.
The news comes as the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse prepares to begin today. The inquiry will spend three weeks analysing the actions of the Anglican Church, and is expected to hear from Mr Welby. A spokesman for the Church of England said it would always cooperate with police, but declined to comment.
A spokesman for the Carey family also declined to comment.
George Carey allowed church role despite part in abuse cover-up
Former archbishop of Canterbury was criticised in report into abuse by Peter Ball
13 July 2018
George Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury who was heavily criticised in an independent report for his part in the cover-up of sexual abuse carried out by a bishop, has been allowed to resume an official role in the Church of England.
Lord Carey stepped down last year as an honorary assistant bishop at the unprecedented request of Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, after a damning report which found the church had colluded over the abuse.
But it emerged this week that Carey has been granted “permission to officiate” (PTO) by Steven Croft, the bishop of Oxford, allowing him to preach and preside at churches in the diocese. Croft is reportedly under police investigation for allegedly failing to respond properly to a separate report of clerical sexual abuse.
The decision to grant the PTO was made in February despite expectations of further revelations this month about Carey’s role in the case of Peter Ball, a former bishop of Gloucester, at the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA).
The inquiry will spend a week scrutinising the C of E’s handling of the Ball case, starting on 23 July. Ball was jailed in 2015 for the grooming, sexual exploitation and abuse of 18 vulnerable young men between 1977 and 1992. Prince Charles has been asked to give a witness statement to the inquiry about his correspondence with Ball.
Carey, who was archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002, resigned his honorary post after the publication of an independent report on the Ball case by Dame Moira Gibb.
She concluded that senior figures in the church had “colluded [with the abuser] rather than seeking to help those he had harmed”. She said: “The church appears to have been most interested in protecting itself.”
Carey had “set the tone for the church’s response to Ball’s crimes, and gave the steer which allowed Ball’s assertions that he was innocent to gain credence”, said Gibb.
The former archbishop responded to the report, saying it made “uncomfortable reading” and that he accepted its criticisms of him.
In February this year, Carey contacted the diocese of Oxford to request a PTO, which was granted by Croft. It followed letters from members of the congregation where Carey worships that requested he be allowed to resume ministry at their church.
A spokesperson for the diocese of Oxford said: “The granting of PTO enabled Lord Carey to preach and preside in the church where he worships, a church where his ministry is much valued. The granting of a PTO does not indicate a planned return to the role of assistant bishop.”
It is understood that Carey underwent fresh checks on his criminal record and C of E safeguarding training.
The church’s national safeguarding team was not consulted on whether the PTO should be granted.
A survivor of abuse by Ball said he was extremely concerned to learn that Carey had been granted a PTO. “It’s a real stab in the back for Ball survivors,” he said, adding that it would have been prudent to wait until further evidence had been heard by IICSA.
Croft is one of several senior church figures, including John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, who are reportedly being investigated by South Yorkshire police over alleged failures to act on disclosures of an alleged rape of a teenage boy by a clergyman in the 1980s. The force declined to confirm or deny an investigation was under way.
Matthew Ineson claims he was raped by the Rev Trevor Devamanikkam, and in 2012 and 2013 reported the crime to senior figures in the church, including Croft. He alleges they failed to follow proper procedures and did not advise him to tell police.
Devamanikkam was later charged with indecent assault and buggery without consent, but killed himself in 2017 before coming to trial.
A spokesperson for the diocese of Oxford said: “Written records and notes taken at the time give a different picture to the one Mr Ineson is presenting about how his case has been handled.”
An independent review had been commissioned by the C of E’s national safeguarding team, the spokesperson said.
Ineson told the Guardian: “Steven Croft may disagree about the wording of my disclosures, but nonetheless accepts I did tell him of my abuse. No word of apology has ever been forthcoming for what I have been put through.
“Given the circumstances it is incredible that Croft is still in a position to decide whether PTO should be given to George Carey or anybody else who has been so involved in the dreadful case of Peter Ball or any other safeguarding case.”
PTOs are mostly granted to retired priests who wish to continue their ministry by preaching, taking communion and providing holiday or sickness cover to serving clergy. PTOs are granted at the discretion of the local bishop.
Matthew Ineson @InesonMatthew
And he didnt even consult the National Safeguarding Team.
NST deal with all high profile cases. @Steven_Croft didn’t even consult them. Another failure. Bishop under investigation for safeguarding failures gives PTO to a bishop under investigation for safeguarding failures etc
If anyone has doubts about @Steven_Croft poor safeguarding record, have a look at the independent Scie safeguarding audit on Sheffield diocese covering Crofts time-scary reading. Add to that my case & now he gives PTO back to Carey who had to resign cos of the Peter Ball cover up
Revd Canon John Rees with Archbishop Welby
Gilo @seaofcomplicity
This is just plain weird that Archbishop Welby’s provincial registrar kept such conflict-of-interest hidden. Not good. Whole structure needs reform if CofE legal officers can do this?
England: Anglican legal advisor named Queen’s Chaplain
March 17, 2014
The legal adviser to the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) and Provincial Registrar for the Archbishop of Canterbury has been appointed as a Chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II.
4 March 2018
Police and prosecutors are considering a criminal investigation into a former Archbishop of Canterbury over an alleged cover-up of sexual abuse.
George Carey stepped down as an honorary bishop last year after a report found the Church had “colluded” with convicted sex abuser Bishop Peter Ball under his leadership.
Now the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is discussing with Scotland Yard detectives whether to pursue criminal charges against Lord Carey, the Telegraph understands.
The Metropolitan Police said it had not launched an official criminal investigation into Lord Carey. A spokesman for the Carey family declined to comment.
It comes as the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA)…
Princess Diana, in intimate confessions recorded on video by her voice coach, described her sex life with Prince Charles as “odd, very odd”.
Sex abuse bishop Peter Ball and brother seek Catholic switch
A former bishop jailed for sex offences and his twin brother have said they are looking to join the Catholic Church to “live and worship in anonymity”.
Peter Ball, who is now 85, was jailed for 32 months in October 2015 for offences against 18 teenagers and men.
The former Bishop of Lewes and of Gloucester carried out the abuse between the 1970s and 1990s.
Ball’s identical twin and former bishop Michael Ball said in an email events had “wearied and reduced us”.
In the email, mistakenly sent from Michael Ball to BBC South East’s Colin Campbell among others, the brothers said having been “battered by the Church” they would be looking to join the Roman Catholic Church.
They said they would like to “end our days in a church where we can live and worship in anonymity and without constant fear”.
The BBC contacted Michael Ball about the email and he said a move to the Catholic Church was “a possibility”.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton said in a statement: “We confirm that Peter Ball has been in contact with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Clifton, in which diocese he now lives, expressing an interest in becoming a member of the Catholic Church.
“This matter is subject to discussions between Clifton Diocese and the statutory authorities, who are the lead with regards to Peter Ball’s risk management in the community.”
‘Manipulative’ campaign
An independent review of Ball’s case by Dame Moira Gibb criticised the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey.
Dame Moira said he had received seven letters from families and individuals following the arrest and cautioning of Ball in 1992 for gross indecency – when he stood down as Bishop of Gloucester – but failed to pass six of them to the police.
Lord Carey had also failed to put Ball on the the “Lambeth List” which names clergymen whose suitability for ministry had been questioned.
Dame Moira also heard Bishop Michael Ball allowed his brother to attend functions in his place, even after his resignation, and on one occasion Peter Ball had introduced himself as his brother.
In 1994 Michael Ball campaigned to Lord Carey to return his brother to the ministry, with one bishop calling the brothers’ activities “manipulative”, Dame Moira reported .
Between 1995 and 1997, with Lord Carey’s backing. Peter Ball returned to church ministry, eventually undertaking duties such as confirmations.
After a series of investigations Balls’ ministry ceased in 2011, Dame Moira reported.
He was released from jail in February after serving 16 months.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-42257380
Former Bishop of Truro Michael Ball and his paedophile ex-bishop twin Peter want to become Catholics so they can live in anonymity
8 DEC 2017
Peter Ball, the former Bishop of Lewes and Gloucester who boasted of links to royalty, has asked to join the Roman Catholic Diocese of Clifton in Bristol, a spokesman for the Church confirmed.
His identical twin brother Michael Ball, who was Bishop of Truro from 1990 to 1997, also sent an email to friends telling them of the idea.
From the email…”The events of the last years and rightly or wrongly the battering by the Church have totally wearied and reduced us.
“We will probably be joining the Roman Catholic Church soon.
…Michael Ball’s complaint of taking a “battering” from the Church was “flippant” and it was “disgusting” the pair were acting as though they were the victims.
A spokesman for the Roman Catholic diocese of Arundel and Brighton said: “We confirm that Peter Ball has been in contact with the Roman Catholic diocese of Clifton, in which diocese he now lives, expressing an interest in becoming a member of the Catholic Church.
“This matter is subject to discussions between Clifton diocese and the statutory authorities, who are the lead with regards to Peter Ball’s risk management in the community.
Disgraced paedophile former bishop Peter Ball with close friend Prince Charles
Peter Ball’s sentence came 22 years after the abuse first surfaced. He eventually admitted misconduct in a public office and two counts of indecent assault.
The court heard how Peter Ball had convinced some of his victims to strip naked to pray and even suggested they submit to beatings between 1977 and 1992.
The first of his victims to come forward took his own life in 2012 after hearing Sussex Police had reopened the case.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey resigned as honorary assistant bishop in the Diocese of Oxford after the public inquiry into child sex abuse last year heard he delayed a “proper investigation” into Peter Ball’s crimes for two decades by failing to pass information to police.
There were fears Peter Ball may have taken the place of his twin, who was Bishop of Truro in the Nineties, and therefore duped congregations in other parts of the UK.
The Diocese of Truro was understood to be looking into the evidence that Peter Ball conducted services in Cornwall.
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 Peter Ball in the early 1990s but did not pass them on to police until years later.
“The Church appears to have resorted to staggering levels of deceit in order to prevent the true extent of Ball’s offending coming to light,” said Richard Scorer, a solicitor who is representing victims of Peter Ball.
Details of the letters, all sent to the Church between December 1992 and February 1993, reveal that Peter 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, Peter 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.
An independent review is also currently under way into the way the Church of England responded to the case involving Peter Ball.
Church knew about allegations before Cornish preacher went on to abuse boys, investigation reveals
The diocese failed to investigate the accusations against Jeremy Dowling
25 MAY 2018
Dowling became such an important and valued worker and volunteer during a 40-year association with the diocese that a special service of thanks was given in his honour when he retired in 2009
A leading figure in the Church of England in Cornwall went on to commit child sex offences for several years after allegations about his behaviour with young boys were raised with the diocese and not acted upon, an official investigation has revealed.
The diocese failed to investigate the accusations against Jeremy Dowling, a lay preacher, allowing him to rise to influential positions including communications officer to the bishop, an independent review for the church concludes.
The report, released today, says there were “historic failings” within the diocese in dealing with the allegations, first raised in 1972. There was “ongoing knowledge” of the situation among senior figures in the diocese “well into the 1980s” with references to “a big fat file” on Dowling.
After the first allegations of Dowling abusing boys at a North Cornwall school where he taught were dropped by the Director of Public Prosecutions – because of a lack of corroborative evidence – the then Bishop of Truro Maurice Key wrote: “I suppose the problem will now be to find him some other work”.
Dowling became such an important and valued worker and volunteer during a 40-year association with the diocese that a special service of thanks was given in his honour when he retired in 2009.
In 2015 he was jailed for seven years after pleading guilty at Truro Crown Court to 15 charges of sexually abusing boys under 16.
In 2016 he was jailed for an additional eight years after being found guilty of six further charges of indecently assaulting a boy between 1973 and 1977. Those offences happened when he befriended the boy while a lay preacher at a church in Budehaven – and took place after concerns were first raised with the diocese.
The report’s author said the lack of action by the diocese allowed Dowling to gain credibility and authority.
“Because they didn’t take it any further it enabled Jeremy Dowling to reach a position where he made up his own rules, and his position within the church lent him credibility and authority,” said Dr Andy Thompson, an academic, magistrate and member of the Diocesan Council.
The Bishop of St Germans, Rt Revd Dr Chris Goldsmith, apologised for the lack of action and the suffering that resulted.
Bishop who ignored warnings about preacher Jeremy Dowling who went on to abuse boys is identical twin of paedophile ex-bishop
Former Bishop of Truro Michael Ball’s twin Peter Ball, the former Bishop of Lewes and Gloucester, was convicted of abusing young boys
25 May 2018
One of the bishops who ignored warnings about a preacher who went on to sexaully abuse boys is the identical twin of a paedophile ex-bishop.
It emerged this week that a leading figure in the Church of England in Cornwall went on to commit child sex offences for several years after allegations about his behaviour with young boys were raised with the diocese and not acted upon, an official investigation has revealed.
The diocese failed to investigate the accusations against Jeremy Dowling, a lay preacher, allowing him to rise to influential positions including communications officer to the bishop, an independent review for the church concludes.
The report, released on Friday (May 25), says there were “historic failings” within the diocese in dealing with the allegations, first raised in 1972. There was “ongoing knowledge” of the situation among senior figures in the diocese “well into the 1980s” with references to “a big fat file” on Dowling.
Dowling became such an important and valued worker and volunteer during a 40-year association with the diocese that a special service of thanks was given in his honour when he retired in 2009.
Cornwall mum made homeless with Down’s Syndrome son after mouldy flat sees child hospitalised
In 2015 he was jailed for seven years after pleading guilty at Truro Crown Court to 15 charges of sexually abusing boys under 16.
In 2016 he was jailed for an additional eight years after being found guilty of six further charges of indecently assaulting a boy between 1973 and 1977. Those offences happened when he befriended the boy while a lay preacher at a church in Budehaven – and took place after concerns were first raised with the diocese.
One of the leaders who was named in the report was Michael Ball, 86, who was Bishop of Truro from 1990 to 1997. The Right Reverend Ball told the diocese he had been informed of the allegations about Dowling but had not seen any need to take action as there had not been a prosecution.
His identical twin, Peter Ball, the former Bishop of Lewes and Gloucester who boasted of links to royalty, was jailed for 32 months in October 2015 for offences dating back to the 1970s against 18 young men at his home in East Sussex.
His sentence came 22 years after the abuse first surfaced. He eventually admitted misconduct in a public office and two counts of indecent assault. The court heard how Peter Ball had convinced some of his victims to strip naked to pray and even suggested they submit to beatings between 1977 and 1992.
The first of his victims to come forward took his own life in 2012 after hearing Sussex Police had reopened the case.
There were fears Peter Ball may have taken the place of his twin, who was Bishop of Truro in the Nineties, and therefore duped congregations in other parts of the UK.
The Diocese of Truro was understood to be looking into the evidence that Peter Ball conducted services in Cornwall.
Last year the brothers decided they wanted to become Catholics so they could live in anonimity. Peter Ball asked to join the Roman Catholic Diocese of Clifton in Bristol and both said they wanted to switch faith from the Church of England so they could “live and worship in anonymity” within the Catholic Church.
https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/bishop-who-ignored-warnings-preacher-1608976
Former Bishop of Truro was Michael Ball, twin brother of convicted paedophile/friend of the royal family and Jimmy Savile – Bishop Peter Ball.
Jeremy Dowling
The Right Reverend Michael Ball – Bishop of Truro from 1990-97 – told the diocese he had been informed of the allegations but had not seen any need to take action as there had not been a prosecution.
His identical twin, former bishop Peter Ball, was jailed in 2015 for a string of indecent assaults on teenagers and young men.
A file found “in an unusual place” at the Bishop of Truro’s residence in 2013 was passed to police and led to Dowling’s prosecution.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cornwall-44240688
A RECENT service at Truro Cathedral paid tribute to the work of Jeremy Dowling, the Diocese of Truro’s Communications Officer, who steps down at the end of December after more than 25 years in post. He has lived in the Bude area for more than 40 years.
On a wet and windswept evening, a congregation made up from clergy and people from across the diocese enjoyed a service that included readings, hymns and a sermon given by the former Bishop of Truro, Bishop Bill Ind. Also present were the current Bishop of Truro, The Rt Rev Tim Thornton, the Dean of Truro, The Very Rev Dr Christopher Hardwick, both Archdeacons and Mr Martin Follett, the Diocesan Registrar.
During his sermon, Bishop Bill paid tribute not only to the work that Jeremy undertook as Communications Officer but also his very substantial other work for the Diocese including nearly 40 years as a Reader,
seventeen years as Chairman of the House of Laity of the Diocesan Synod, one of the first people to be made Lay Canons of the Cathedral, a member of the General Synod for 27 years, as well as sitting at one time or another on virtually every Board and Committee of the Diocese.
He said, “Jeremy’s media and broadcasting skills are second to none.”
His experience and expertise in the television broadcast area was particularly noted, especially the background work he was able to do which led to programmes such as the very successful and popular BBC series ’Seaside Parish’ featuring Boscastle and the surrounding parishes, which enjoyed weekly audiences if over three million, ’Island Parish’ featuring the Isles of Scilly and ’The Monastery.’
Summing up, Bishop Bill said: “He has been a critical friend, someone who has told me the truth as he sees it. He has made me and indeed others both laugh and think and for both these things and much else I remain profoundly grateful. The Diocese owes him an enormous amount and so indeed do I and a host of others.”
Jeremy Dowling has lived in the Bude area of North Cornwall for more than forty years, with thirty years spent in the parish of St Gennys, and he is Chair of Governors of Budehaven Community School.
In his thanks and response to Bishop Bill, Jeremy noted how the communications role had changed greatly with much more emphasis today on electronic media. He acknowledged with gratitude the work of the local press and media, recognising its essential vitality and the key role it played in championing issues which were important for the church and for society.
“We have enjoyed excellent relations with the westcountry media” he said “and it has been a privilege to work with local journalists and broadcasters.”
He concluded by saying: “In my view, the strength of the Church remains in the local community. There is a lot going on. And the thread which runs through most of the stories is undeniably positive. They chronicle a vigorous, interesting, dynamic, eccentric and imaginative life in the church in Cornwall. Long may it
continue.”
After refreshments, a large bouquet was presented by Bishop Tim to Daphne Dowling in recognition of her support for her husband, and Jeremy was presented with a substantial cheque from parishes and individuals in the Diocese
Prime Minister lauds accomplishments of Bude organisation as he presents Big Society Award
–
BIG SOCIETY: Pictured above, with Prime Minister David Cameron and North Cornwall MP Dan Rogerson, are Co-founder of Community Action Through Sport (CATS) and volunteer Denise Jane May, CATS trustee and volunteer Jeremy Dowling, CATS Project Development Manager Karen Hemmings, CATS Project Development Assistant Louise Anne Harris and CATS trustee and volunteer Sharon Caroline Marshall.
Ex Truro Diocese worker Jeremy Dowling sexually abused boys
5 June 2015
An ex-Diocese of Truro press officer has admitted sexually abusing boys over a period of more than 10 years.
Jeremy Dowling, 76, carried out the assaults on five children, aged between 12 and 15, from 1959 to 1971.
Truro Crown Court heard Dowling abused the boys at sporting events and in toilets while working as a teacher in Devon.
The Bishop of Truro described Dowling’s offences as “deeply shocking” and said his thoughts were with the victims.
Sentencing was adjourned until July 10 for a pre-sentence report to be prepared.
Dowling, of Church Path, Bude, retired from the Diocese of Truro in 2009 after 25 years of service.
‘Damaging impact’
He pleaded guilty to 13 counts of indecent assault on boys aged 12 to 15 and two counts of indecency with a child.
The court heard one assault was carried out on a boy at a cricket match. Others took place in an attic, in storage rooms at a sporting pavilion and in outside toilets.
The Right Reverend Tim Thornton, Bishop of Truro, said many people would have known Dowling as a reader at St Michael’s Church and St Genny’s Church in Bude and as a member of the Diocesan and General Synods.
Bishop Thornton said: “Offences like this will have a damaging and lasting impact on people’s lives.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cornwall-33025742
Former Cornwall preacher Jeremy Dowling ‘assaulted boy’
The assaults happened when Jeremy Dowling was a lay preacher at two churches in the Bude area of Cornwall, Truro Crown Court was told.
Mr Dowling met the boy when he was 10 through church activities and “took him under his wing”.
He has denied six counts of indecent assault on a child and two counts of gross indecency with a child.
The assaults happened in the 1970s before Mr Dowling became a press spokesman for the Diocese of Truro, the court heard.
‘Long time ago’
Jo Martin, prosecuting, said some of the assaults took place at Mr Dowling’s house after the boy had been invited for dinner and on one occasion he was taken to a church on the north coast.
She said Mr Dowling took him up a tower and showed him the view, then took him to a room and assaulted him.
The alleged victim did not tell anyone when he was a child but later, when he was married, told his wife about the assaults.
He said when his wife rang up Mr Dowling, accusing him of being a paedophile, Mr Dowling replied “that was a long time ago”.
He said he eventually went to the police after reading in news reports that Mr Dowling had admitted abusing five boys when he was a teacher at a private school in the 1960s.
Mr Dowling is currently serving a jail term for those offences.
Tributes paid as Bude man retires as diocesan communications officer after 25 years
–
A RECENT service at Truro Cathedral paid tribute to the work of Jeremy Dowling, the Diocese of Truro’s Communications Officer, who steps down at the end of December after more than 25 years in post. He has lived in the Bude area for more than 40 years.
On a wet and windswept evening, a congregation made up from clergy and people from across the diocese enjoyed a service that included readings, hymns and a sermon given by the former Bishop of Truro, Bishop Bill Ind. Also present were the current Bishop of Truro, The Rt Rev Tim Thornton, the Dean of Truro, The Very Rev Dr Christopher Hardwick, both Archdeacons and Mr Martin Follett, the Diocesan Registrar.
During his sermon, Bishop Bill paid tribute not only to the work that Jeremy undertook as Communications Officer but also his very substantial other work for the Diocese including nearly 40 years as a Reader,
seventeen years as Chairman of the House of Laity of the Diocesan Synod, one of the first people to be made Lay Canons of the Cathedral, a member of the General Synod for 27 years, as well as sitting at one time or another on virtually every Board and Committee of the Diocese.
He said, “Jeremy’s media and broadcasting skills are second to none.”
His experience and expertise in the television broadcast area was particularly noted, especially the background work he was able to do which led to programmes such as the very successful and popular BBC series ’Seaside Parish’ featuring Boscastle and the surrounding parishes, which enjoyed weekly audiences if over three million, ’Island Parish’ featuring the Isles of Scilly and ’The Monastery.’
Summing up, Bishop Bill said: “He has been a critical friend, someone who has told me the truth as he sees it. He has made me and indeed others both laugh and think and for both these things and much else I remain profoundly grateful. The Diocese owes him an enormous amount and so indeed do I and a host of others.”
Jeremy Dowling has lived in the Bude area of North Cornwall for more than forty years, with thirty years spent in the parish of St Gennys, and he is Chair of Governors of Budehaven Community School.
In his thanks and response to Bishop Bill, Jeremy noted how the communications role had changed greatly with much more emphasis today on electronic media. He acknowledged with gratitude the work of the local press and media, recognising its essential vitality and the key role it played in championing issues which were important for the church and for society.
“We have enjoyed excellent relations with the westcountry media” he said “and it has been a privilege to work with local journalists and broadcasters.”
He concluded by saying: “In my view, the strength of the Church remains in the local community. There is a lot going on. And the thread which runs through most of the stories is undeniably positive. They chronicle a vigorous, interesting, dynamic, eccentric and imaginative life in the church in Cornwall. Long may it
continue.”
After refreshments, a large bouquet was presented by Bishop Tim to Daphne Dowling in recognition of her support for her husband, and Jeremy was presented with a substantial cheque from parishes and individuals in the Diocese
Former Archbishop of Canterbury could face police probe into whether he broke the law by covering up for a paedophile bishop
- Police are considering a formal inquiry into Church of England’s former leader
- Lord Carey, 82, could face being interviewed under caution in investigation
- Rev Peter Ball indecently assaulted 18 boys and young men from 1977 to 1992
- Former leaders could face criminal charges for not passing on abuse complaints
The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, could face a police investigation into whether he broke the law by covering up for a paedophile bishop.
Officers are understood to be considering a formal inquiry to determine whether the former leader of the Church of England and other senior church officials should face criminal charges over their failure to pass on sex abuse complaints made against ex-bishop Peter Ball.
Such an investigation would be highly controversial and may involve 82-year-old Lord Carey being interviewed under caution.
Sources say police are collecting evidence and scrutinising a scathing Church of England report commissioned by the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.
It concludes that senior church figures ‘colluded’ to protect Ball and says the decision by Lambeth Palace not to pass the complaints to police ‘must give rise to a perception of deliberate concealment’.
Lawyers representing victims of Ball, who have called for a police investigation, believe the former Archbishop could face a charge of misconduct in a public office, for which the maximum penalty is life imprisonment.
Ball, a friend of the Prince of Wales, (and other members of the royal family) was jailed for 32 months in 2015 after indecently assaulting 18 boys and young men between 1977 and 1992 in one of the biggest scandals ever to rock the Church of England.
It has been claimed, however, that he might have been convicted more than 20 years earlier had Lord Carey and his staff at Lambeth Palace not withheld from the police six letters making other claims about his behaviour. The letters were sent in by members of the public after allegations against Ball surfaced in the 1990s. Ball was arrested and subsequently resigned as Bishop of Gloucester in 1993.
But his only punishment at that time was a caution for gross indecency for molesting a teenage monk and he was later allowed a licence to work as a retired priest.
Peter Ball, pictured with Prince Charles, was jailed for 32 months in 2015 after indecently assaulting 18 boys and young men between 1977 and 1992
Last year, The Mail on Sunday revealed that Anglican officials who had privately reviewed the case suggested that had the letters been given to detectives in 1993, Ball may have been convicted of serious sexual offences.
The report commissioned by Archbishop Welby, published this summer, concluded that the ‘greatest failure’ of the handling of the case was the ‘management’ of the correspondence, in which Lord Carey was ‘significantly involved’.
Lord Carey strongly denies any cover-up or collusion. His supporters have also argued that Ball could still have received a caution in 1993 even if Lambeth Palace had handed the letters to the authorities.
David Greenwood, the head of the child abuse department at Switalskis solicitors and who represents a number of victims of Peter Ball, said the failure to pass them on provided ‘reasonable grounds’ for the Metropolitan police to open a formal investigation.
The Met and Lord Carey both declined to comment.
Lord Carey is already facing questioning next year by the Government’s independent inquiry into child sexual abuse.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5117815/Former-Archbishop-face-probe-paedophile-bishop.html
Former Archbishop Lord Carey resigns after review into child abuse
Dame Alun Roberts @ciabaudo
This is NOT good enough. He should be taken to court for obstructing the course of justice!
The former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has resigned after a review into child abuse.
Lord Carey has now left his last remaining formal role in the church.
He was criticised in an independent review of the church’s handling of abuse carried out by Bishop Peter Ball.
In 2015, Peter Ball, the former Bishop of Lewes and Gloucester from Somerset, was jailed for 32 months for sexually abusing boys and young men.
The court heard that police documents in the 1990s revealed they received telephone calls of support for the disgraced bishop from dozens of people, including MPs, former public school headmasters, magistrates and a judge. In addition, his defence team claimed to have more than ‘two thousand letters of support… including letters from cabinet ministers and Royal Family,’ said prosecutor Bobbie Cheema-Grubb QC at the Old Bailey.
Keith Porteous Wood, National Secular Society executive director, commented: “Such volumes could not have been achieved without an huge orchestrated campaign. Copies of the letters should be examined, as complete a list as possible of writers and callers obtained, particularly for those of high profile as their support would have been especially influential. It should be established whose idea this was, who masterminded it and who carried it out.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has recently commissioned an independent review of how the Church dealt with the allegations, but the National Secular Society has expressed concerns that the review will not have the scope required to establish the full extent of wrongdoing.
Speaking after sentence was handed down, Mr Wood said: “Much more important than Ball’s sentence is that this case has demonstrated the power the Church which has even recently bullied victims into silence and sought to curry favour with the law to let off perpetrators, or let them off lightly and impose reporting restrictions.
“Ball’s case is a disgraceful catalogue of the legal system letting him off at every juncture. Just last month, two serious charges were inexplicably ordered to ‘lay on the court file’ – presumably to be ignored at least until Ball becomes too old or unfit to stand trial, a ruse he has already tried.
“Abuse victims’ lives are often ruined by the abuse, they are much more likely to be substance abusers and vulnerable to suicidal impulses. One of Ball’s victims, Neil Todd, killed himself and another, Graham Sawyer of Briercliffe, said that he had wished at times that he were dead. He was adamant that ‘people at the highest levels of the Church are more concerned with ‘saving face’.”
Mr Wood said there were numerous examples of this evident in Ball’s case alone.
“Evidence abounds of an institutional culture of intimidation of victims, in effect compounding the abuse, robbing the victims of justice, and not just allowing the perpetrator to escape justice, but enabling them to continue the abuse.
“The extent to which the Church’s attitude has changed is as yet unclear. Several survivors were recently reported to have been told by Paul Butler, Bishop of Durham (responsible for dealing with abuse), that ‘the Church was too busy working on banking reform’ to have time for abuse responses, and his statement when Ball pleaded guilty was perfunctory, given the depth of the Church’s complicity and the extent to which that had increased the suffering of victims. Sawyer maintains that Bishop Butler ‘is out of his depth, and should step aside’.
Moira Gibb Report on the Church of England and convicted paedophile Bishop Ball:
The report of Dame Moira Gibb into the Church of England’s handling of the abusive bishop Peter Ball makes shocking reading. It reveals a concern for appearance over reality, for the institution over the individual and, most of all, for the strong and powerful over the weak and vulnerable. From the moment the first victims came forward, the response of the church up to the highest level was one of institutional self-protection.
The complaint was not reported to the police, but only to the archbishop of Canterbury, then George Carey, who persisted long past the point of reason in hoping that his colleague was innocent. The police were not told until after the first victim to come forward, Neil Todd, had attempted suicide twice – and even then it was his parents and not the church who made the complaint. The diocese of Gloucester hired a former policeman to investigate, and if possible discredit, the witnesses.
After news of Bishop Ball’s arrest broke, Lambeth Palace received seven independent accusations about his earlier behaviour. Two were seen by Archbishop Carey, who replied to them personally. Only one of the seven, though, was passed to the police, and that the least damning. Lord Carey’s message to the diocese after Bishop Ball was arrested urged prayers for the bishop and said nothing about victims. After Bishop Ball had retired on spurious grounds of ill health and accepted a caution – though remaining in denial about his crimes – Lord Carey worked to have him rehabilitated. True, he did so with less ingenuity than Peter Ball’s identical twin Michael, himself a bishop, who has admitted allowing his twin to deputise for him at “one or two events”, even after his disgrace.
Lord Carey nevertheless gave Peter Ball £12,000 from church funds, leading to loud complaints from the brothers, who had wanted £20,000. He deliberately kept Peter Ball’s name off the Lambeth blacklist of unemployable clergy; he had the disgraced bishop to stay at Lambeth Palace twice; he attempted to find him work in South Africa (writing to Desmond Tutu for this scheme) and in prisons; he wrote to an American parish that “Peter was possibly the victim of a plot but that, of course, cannot be proved”. Lord Carey’s only objection to a full rehabilitation of Bishop Ball as a retired bishop was that it might provoke unfavourable publicity.
This was disgraceful, and the result has been a deserved disgrace. But it was part of a culture of privilege, power and make-believe that corrupted more than one bishop. Lord Carey’s successor, Rowan Williams did nothing to help Bishop Ball but very little and very slowly to hinder him either.
Richard Scorer @Richard_Scorer
#Gibb report on Bishop Ball a damning indictment of how the establishment in this country protect their own.
https://www.churchofengland.org/media/3999908/report-of-the-peter-ball-review-210617.pdf …
In 1993 the CPS agreed to issue Ball with a caution, rather than prosecute, after the personal intervention of then-Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey.
Alun:
In no way would I wish to influence the decision about Bishop Ball. No? But you did so pull the other one next time!
Alun:
I have only 2 explanations for this: 1) Carey condones abuse, or 2) he was protecting a friend of Bishop Ball.
Dr Andrew Watt @DrAndrewWatt
It’s important to know if Prince of Wales helped Ball. cf
http://ukchildabuseinquiry.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/did-prince-of-wales-intervene-on-behalf.html …
Dame Alun Roberts @ciabaudo
for Ball was an honorable man. They are all honourable men. Including yourself Mr Carey!
Bishop Ball was given special treatment because he was mates with Prince Charles!
Dame Alun Roberts @ciabaudo
Northleach = Ball = Harding = Jennings (lifelong Ball friend) = BigEars Coincidence?
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-27555686 …
Rt Rev David Jennings
With a little help from his friend: Ball promised to go abroad but went to stay on Charles’ estate.
http://www.macsas.org.uk/P%20Johnson%20Statement%208-9-15.pdf
previously…
Goddard inquiry: Outrage as bishop Peter Ball jailed for sex offences given public funding for legal team
30 July 2016
A lawyer close to the inquiry said: “I was really surprised Ball was given funding. The issue is about how he was allowed to get away with it by the Church not about his offending. He has already been investigated and pleaded guilty.”
Chris Stacey @chrisstacey1
He’s one of the gatekeepers I’ve seen campaigning in Lords to clear name of another Bishop Bell from 1950s. Children don’t feature at all
We cannot allow the Bishop Ball story to be put to bed! Ball’s links to paedophiles and royalty with links to paedos warrants scrutiny!
This video highlights ‘Lord’ Carey’s role in preventing the earlier prosecution of Prince Charles’ mate Bishop Ball
Bishop Peter Ball, convicted, to Enoch Powell, fascist and alleged satanist and child abuser:
Peter Ball sending the love of God to Enoch and Pam! What a mistake!
Further evidence of close relationship between godly convict Bishop Ball and ‘Rivers of Blood’ Enoch:
Oh, just remind me again who were Enoch’s two aides and buddies! Ah, yes. Proctor and Denby!
Denby – Powell aide on the run
It is thought the armed hold up incident in Down St not far from MI5 offices, may have been linked to Ulster Loyalist terrorist organisations. The following day, Denby phoned an old friend – far right Tory MP Harvey Proctor – and told him he was going abroad.
Denby is said to have visited Ulster several times.
A specialist on shipping law, Denby visited both Iran and Iraq,
He is also alleged to have twice broken into the home of a former senior partner to search for private papers and to have falsified information to a building society so he could extend the mortgage on his Islington home.
Interesting that Barbara Hewson says satanic sexual abuse doesn’t exist while her cousin worked for Enoch Powell who is accused of just that
Why does the Gin Goblin so categorically deny the existence of satanic child abuse like this in Proctor’s home county?
MI5 knew of cover-up over Cyril Smith child abuse, inquiry hears
9 Oct 2017
MI5 knew the country’s chief prosecutor had covered up a sex abuse inquiry into Cyril Smith but did nothing because it was not its job to expose paedophiles, an inquiry has heard.
Files released by the intelligence agency show it was aware that the Director of Public prosecutions (DPP) had lied to a newspaper over its decision not to prosecute Smith. But it decided not to make the information public because its duty was to ‘defend the realm’ rather than to expose a prominent politicians accused of being a paedophile.
The disclosure came during the first day of hearings into how Smith, the former Liberal MP, was able to abuse boys at Cambridge House hostel and Knowl View residential school in Rochdale. Smith died in 2010, having never faced prosecution.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) last night released an MI5 briefing note which showed how Sir Thomas Hetherington, the then DPP, had lied to a local newspaper about the existence of a 1970 police inquiry into allegations of gross indecency made against Smith.
Had the DPP admitted Smith had been under investigation, it would have led to a new inquiry and Smith being put on trial in his lifetime.
Hetherington had called a legal adviser in the intelligence agency to inform him of the press interest from David Bartlett, a journalist with the Rochdale Alternative Press. The briefing note states: “After consultations, the DPP’s press representative had untruthfully told Bartlett that they had no record of this case. In fact their file closely accorded with the details given by Bartlett.”
The memo, from the MI5 legal adviser and written in April 1979, goes on to suggest that the South African intelligence agency had been “trying to obtain compromising information about political figures” and that Smith was one of them.
The police investigation into Smith had been closed nine years earlier in 1970 by Hetherington’s predecessor Sir Norman Skelhorn who decided it was unlikely to lead to a prosecution.
Skelhorn’s decision was made despite a senior detective warning that the “sordid” accusations against Smith “stood up”.
Brian Altman QC, IICSA’s lead counsel, told the inquiry: “The documents show that the Security Service’s legal adviser was informed of the false representations to the press from the DPP’s office.
“Based upon their review of the information they hold, the Security Service considers they took active steps to ensure that those involved in investigating allegations of child sexual abuse against Smith were made aware of all information of relevance to their inquiries.
ww
wording here starts off exactly like the torygraph article – so ‘official brief via No 10?’
Don Hale report vindicated?
Skelthorn
Thatcher knowingly knighted child abuser
https://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/thatcher-knowingly-knighted-child-abuser/3233018/
Was the Cabinet Ministers ever named who supported former bishop Peter Ball ?
Prince Charles gave him a grace & favour cottage. Like the church, did he also overlook Ball’s abuse of young boys?
Tory MP Tim Rathbone
Alun:
Rathbone was not only David Cameron’s godfather; he was also a relative. David Cameron is related to Queenie. Is that the secret to the support to Ball?
Establishment figures who helped disgraced bishop avoid prosecution for sex abuse revealed
Bishop of Chichester Eric Kemp labelling Ball’s accusers as ‘mischief makers’
Dominic Walker was one of Ball’s biggest supporters and he named POWELL, ABSE and WHITELAW as abusers.
Alongside Bishop Ball, Harvey Proctor and Bea Carthew, Enoch Powell also corresponded with Nicholas Soames, Proctor’s most ardent defender.
Prince Charles denies trying to help sex crimes bishop escape jail
Unnamed member of the Royal Family sent a letter of support for Peter Ball as prosecutors considered putting him on trial
David Cameron’s late godfather then Tory MP of Lewes, Tim Rathbone, who gave Mr Cameron his first work experience in the House of Commons.
Mr Rathbone, wrote that he found it “literally inconceivable” that Ball would ever become involved with anyone in the way described.
Harvey Proctor being pronounced a saint by his buddies reminds me of the way Don’t-Carey took Ball under his wings.
Alun:
Interesting how Ball associated with Apartheid supporters but was in turn aided by Rathbone, an opponent of Apartheid.
Former Lord Justice Anthony Lloyd and David Cameron’s late godfather Tory MP Tim Rathbone among figures who wrote in support of former Bishop of Gloucester, Peter Ball, one said he was a “saint”
Interesting how Ball associated with Apartheid supporters but was in turn aided by Rathbone, an opponent of Apartheid.
Bishop of Chichester Eric Kemp labelling Ball’s accusers as ‘mischief makers’
Dame Alun Roberts @ciabaudo
Northleach = Ball = Harding = Jennings (lifelong Ball friend) = Prince Charles Coincidence?
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-27555686 …
22 June 2017
Church of England colluded with bishop who abused boys, says Welby
Report about bishop Peter Ball, finding collusion over 20 years, is ‘harrowing reading’
Collusion: Secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy
Senior figures in the Church of England colluded for a period of 20 years with a disgraced former bishop who sexually abused boys and men, a damning independent report has found.
The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said the report on the church’s handling of former bishop Peter Ball made “harrowing reading”.
“The church colluded and concealed rather than seeking to help those who were brave enough to come forward. This is inexcusable and shocking behaviour,” he said.
“To the survivors who were brave enough to share their story and bring Peter Ball to justice, I once again offer an unreserved apology. There are no excuses whatsoever for what took place and the systemic abuse of trust perpetrated by Peter Ball over decades.”
Two former archbishops of Canterbury, George Carey and Rowan Williams, apologised to the victims of Peter Ball after being criticised for their failures in relation to him.
Ball, the former bishop of both Gloucester and Lewes, was jailed in October 2015 for the grooming, sexual exploitation and abuse of 18 vulnerable young men aged 17-25 who had sought spiritual guidance from him between 1977 and 1992. He was released from prison in February after serving 16 months.
His trial heard that after Ball was first accused in 1993, a string of senior establishment figures – including Carey, an unidentified member of the royal family, cabinet ministers and a high court judge – came forward in his support, writing letters to the police and Crown Prosecution Service.
Ball was cautioned by police. He resigned his post as bishop and retired to a rented cottage on the Prince of Wales’s Duchy of Cornwall estate but continued to officiate in 17 public schools until 2007. A fresh investigation was opened in 2012 which led to his conviction.
One of Ball’s victims, Neil Todd – the first to come forward with allegations of abuse – attempted suicide three times before killing himself in 2012.
Welby ordered an independent review of the church’s handling of the case, chaired by Dame Moira Gibb, former chief executive of Camden council.
The report said Ball’s case was dealt with at the highest levels within the church. He “was seen by the church as the man in trouble who the church needed to help”.
Ball was portrayed as a victim, and the review found “little evidence of compassion for Neil Todd even though from the outset it was clear that he was a vulnerable young man who had come to harm”.
It added: “The church appears to have been most interested in protecting itself.”
In the foreword to her report, An Abuse of Faith, published on Thursday, Gibb said the serious sexual wrongdoing of Ball “is shocking in itself but is compounded by the failure of the church to respond appropriately to his misconduct, again over a period of many years”.
“Ball’s priority was to protect and promote himself and he maligned the abused. The church colluded. The church colluded with that rather than seeking to help those he had harmed, or assuring itself of the safety of others.”
The report added, “progress has been slow and continuing, faster improvement is still required”.
Gibb made 11 recommendations in her report, including improving support to survivors of clerical abuse and taking steps to “demonstrate the individual and collective accountability of bishops”.
Peter Hancock, the C of E’s lead safeguarding bishop, who received the report on behalf of the church, said it had failed Ball’s survivors. “Having read the report I am appalled and disturbed by its contents … As a church we colluded, we failed to act and protect those who came forward for help. There are no excuses. We accept all the recommendations and are working to action them.”
Rowan Williams: ‘It is clear I did not give adequate priority to sorting out the concerns and allegations surrounding Peter Ball.’
He added: “For the survivors, it may feel this is all too late.”
According to the report, Ball intimated “on many occasions, to Lord Carey and others, that he enjoys the status of confidant of the Prince of Wales” and “sought to exploit his contact with members of the royal family in order to bolster his position”.
Bishop Ball with Prince Charles and Camilla. Ball gave the homily at the funeral of Camilla Parker Bowles’s father, Major Bruce Shand, in 2006
Moira Gibb is made a Dame CBE by the Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace back in 2012
However, Dame Moira Gibb’s report went on, it “found no evidence that the Prince of Wales or any other member of the royal family sought to intervene at any point in order to protect or promote Ball”.
Carey was criticised in the report, which said he “set the tone for the church’s response to Ball’s crimes and gave the steer which allowed Ball’s assertions that he was innocent to gain credence”.
In a statement responding to the report, Carey said it made “uncomfortable reading” and he accepted its criticisms of him. “I apologise to the victims of Peter Ball. I believed Peter Ball’s protestations and gave too little credence to the vulnerable young men and boys behind those allegations.”
Carey said he regretted not putting Ball’s name on the Lambeth List – names of people whose suitability for ministry is under question – after he was cautioned.
Under the leadership of Williams, the church began reviewing past cases, a move which ultimately led to the criminal case against Ball being reopened, the report said. However, he was criticised as being “lamentably slow” in making change.
In a statement, Williams said: “Having read the report and reflected on its details, it is clear I did not give adequate priority to sorting out the concerns and allegations surrounding Peter Ball at the earliest opportunity. I recognise such a delay is likely to have increased the pressure and distress experienced by the survivors of his abuse and I am sincerely sorry for this.”
Chris Stacey @chrisstacey1
He’s one of the gatekeepers I’ve seen campaigning in Lords to clear name of another Bishop Bell from 1950s. Children don’t feature at all
Sex abuse bishop Peter Ball released from prison
Richard Scorer, a lawyer representing a number of Ball’s victims, said his early release was “an affront to justice” and “a huge blow to his victims”.
“This was a man whose appalling crimes represented a gross and systematic abuse of trust spanning decades,” he said.
He said the sentence handed down to him was “in no way proportionate to the crimes committed”, and it seemed he had been freed “at the earliest opportunity”.
In February 2016, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Most Rev Justin Welby, commissioned an independent review of the Ball case.
Mr Johnson said its publication was not likely “for several more months”.
“I think it’s utterly ridiculous that it’s taken longer to write a report on what happened than it has for Peter Ball to serve his jail sentence,” he said.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-38868834
Article from the Sunday Times Magazine 29/1/17, just a few days before the former Bishop Peter Ball was released from prison.
Powerful figures intervened when Ball was investigated for abusing novice monks.
Neil Todd, a trainee monk reported the bishop for sexual abuse in 1992. He committed suicide 20 years later aged 38.
Ball was jailed for 32 months in 2015. There was reportedly considerable and unseemly negotiation between the defence and the CPS
Prince Charles’ bishop ‘friend’ is freed from prison early – despite committing horrific sex offences against 18 teenagers and young men
A predatory bishop who had links to Prince Charles has been freed from prison halfway through his sentence for sex offences.
Peter Ball, described as a ‘monster’ by his victims, served only 16 months for grooming and molesting aspiring novice monks. One victim committed suicide while others have suffered long-lasting trauma.
Survivors condemned the early release of the 84-year-old former Bishop of Lewes and Gloucester.
He was jailed for 32 months in 2015 for offences against 18 teenagers and young men between 1977 and 1992, but was allowed out on licence at the halfway point of his sentence.
Richard Scorer, an abuse lawyer at Slater and Gordon who represented some of Ball’s victims, said his early release after ‘a gross and systematic abuse of trust spanning decades’ was ‘an affront to justice’.
Ball was first investigated in 1992 but escaped with a caution. It emerged later that an unnamed royal was among Establishment figures who had written in support of Ball at the time.
After his caution, Ball was provided with a Duchy of Cornwall home by Prince Charles. Ball counted Charles as a ‘loyal friend’
Mr Scorer added: “What is equally frustrating is that despite his conviction we still have not got to the bottom of which establishment figures – including MPs, cabinet ministers and members of the Royal Family – came out in support of him in the 1990s and prevented justice being served then.
“This is a disgrace and those who suffered at Ball’s hands deserve answers.”
One of Ball’s victims said: “Ball’s crimes led to one of his victims committing suicide so how can 16 months in jail be justice?
“There are still many questions that need answers about who helped him cover up his crimes and what happened.
“What is crucially important is that the inquiry into child abuse answers these questions before it is too late.”
The CoE said Ball has been prohibited from ministry for life.
However the National Probation Service has had to draw up “bespoke” licence conditions with the Church so he can continue to exercise his right to worship.
It is understood that the bespoke licence conditions in place are very strict, and include Ball being forbidden from doing or wearing anything that would give him clerical status, or from leading a service.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said sex offenders are “robustly risk assessed and subject to a strict set of conditions”.
“If they fail to comply, they can be recalled to prison,” the spokesman said.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Most Rev Justin Welby, has commissioned an independent review – led by Dame Moira Gibb according to reports – into how the Church dealt with the allegations against Ball.
Last year the Telegraph revealed the Church of England was investigating evidence that Ball took services in the place of his identical twin brother in the 1990s, who was then the Bishop of Truro.
It emerged that he may have taken services in Cornwall, where his brother Michael was a former Bishop of Truro.
Revealed: Charles’ dozens of letters to ‘calculating’ paedophile bishop as victims demand they are made public
Jan 27 2017
- Prince Charles is believed to have written to paedophile bishop Peter Ball
- Ball was jailed two years ago for using his position to groom 18 young men
- The former Bishop of Gloucester exchanged letters with Prince Charles
- Clarence House stressed the letters are not connected with Ball’s case
Victims of a paedophile bishop last night called for dozens of letters he received from Prince Charles to be made public.
Extensive correspondence is understood to exist between the future king and Peter Ball, the ‘calculating’ former Bishop of Gloucester, who was jailed after admitting exploiting his position to groom and abuse 18 young men.
The prince’s letters now have been handed to an independent inquiry into the case, launched after Ball was convicted two years ago.
It is not clear what role, if any, they will play in the inquiry which is examining the Church’s handling of the Ball case, but Charles has not given any evidence to it either formally or informally nor has he or his team been asked to.
The content of the letters is unknown, but in a statement yesterday, Clarence House said they believed there was nothing in them which pertained to the case.
A spokesman for the prince said: ‘We do not believe that the letters have any bearing on the issues before the inquiry, but we have not objected to them being shared for their consideration.’
Royal sources insist it would be perfectly normal for the future king to write to the priest, who in 1992 became Bishop of Gloucester, the diocese in which Charles’ country home, Highgrove, sits.
One said that the existence of letters between the two simply reflected their ‘long-standing acquaintance’.
Ball was Bishop of Gloucester which covers Prince Charles’s Highgrove Estate
It is not clear if the prince continued to write to Ball after his well-publicised earlier arrest and police caution for gross indecency against a 17-year-old boy in 1993.
Ball escaped prosecution for this offence, despite investigators knowing of ‘many’ more allegations against him, after the police received dozens of supportive letters and calls from MPs, former public headmasters, JPs and even a Lord Chief Justice.
At the time his lawyers also told the police they had a letter of support from a member of the Royal Family, but prosecutors said they had not seen this correspondence and there is no evidence that this letter even existed.
However, Ball clearly did continue to enjoy cordial relations with the royals as he read the homily at the funeral of the father of the Duchess of Cornwall in 2006
Prince Charles awarding honour to Dame Moira Gibb. Moira Gibb is made a Dame CBE by the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace back in 2012
The letters from Charles are understood to have been handed to the Church of England’s independent inquiry, which is being led by former council chief executive Dame Moira Gibb.
A Church of England spokesman said: ‘We are supplying the inquiry with all information relevant to the inquiry’s purposes as set out in its Terms of Reference.’
The Government’s separate child abuse inquiry is also due to investigate whether there were ‘inappropriate attempts by people of prominence to interfere in the criminal justice processes’ after Ball was first accused of child sexual offences 24 years ago.
Phil Johnson, one of Ball’s victims and chairman of the Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors group, last night called for the letters to be made public in the ‘spirit of openness.’
He said: ‘I think the victims have a right to know what is in them. They may of course just be innocent letters between friends. But given the grave concerns about how the case was handled, the public also have a right to know what the future head of state wrote to Ball for the avoidance of any doubt.’
After his second arrest in 2015, Ball claimed his victims had been ‘spiritually uplifted’ by his treatment of them. The court heard how he targeted young men seeking spiritual instruction on the Bishop’s ‘Give a Year for Christ’ scheme.
He changed his plea at the last minute and admitted to offences against 18 teenagers and young men between 1977 and 1992. He was sentenced to 32 months for misconduct in public office and 15 months for indecent assault, to run concurrently.
The lawyer for some of those he abused said the way establishment figures closed ranks around him had ‘compounded his victims’ anguish’.
Two years ago, 27 letters that Charles sent to ministers between September 2004 and April 2005 were published after a decade-long legal battle over their release that went to the Supreme Court
Second member of Fiona Woolf inquiry admits controversial links with Lord Brittan
Dame Moira Gibb, who is to sit with Fiona Woolf on the Government’s child sex abuse inquiry, confirms she also has a link with Lord Brittan
Dame Moira Gibb – who was appointed to sit on the panel along with a number of other experts – has admitted a close personal friend worked with Lord Brittan during part of the period which will be closely scrutinised by the inquiry.
In a letter to Theresa May, the Home Secretary, on October 17 Dame Moira said she had no “direct interest in the matters to which the inquiry relates”.
But just five days later she was forced to write to Mrs May again.
She wrote: “I would like to set out that Mr Gerald Malone, whom I declared as a personal friend, informed me last night that he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Lord Brittan in 1985 when Lord Brittan was Secretary of State for Trade and Investment, and a Government whip from 1986-1987.
Gerald Malone was a Conservative MP in Baroness Thatcher’s and Sir John Major’s governments.
As a trusted worker for Lord Brittan in the 1980s it is conceivable the sex abuse inquiry may wish to take evidence from him about Lord Brittan’s tenure at Home Office.
Auchi
Other career politicians on the board of General Mediterranean or its subsidiaries are former Liberal party leader Lord Steel, former president of the European commission Jacques Santer, former Conservative chancellor Norman Lamont and former Tory health minster Gerry Malone, who is chairman of Regent.
www.theguardian.com/society/2003/apr04/health.business?commentpage=1
People don’t like Gerry Malone much. He’s seen as arrogant, unclubbable. ‘I had few friends in politics and it remains so.’ He’s a pal of Andrew Neil’s. John Major’s, too.
He now has a non-executive role in several companies, including Regent GM Laboratories, Ultrasis and Chiltern Invodex.
link
20 May 2003
It has been a long and varied career path from engineering student to teacher, social worker and senior director. …management experience on a four-strong executive board running Kensington and Chelsea council, west London.
She joins a growing list of social services directors making it to the very top in local government, moving to the north London borough of Camden as its £140,000-a-year chief executive.
Director of social services in Kensington and Chelsea since 1990
Gibb’s long path to the top began after a two-year engineering course at Glasgow University. She decided it was not for her, moved into teaching – secondary modern in Newham, east London -but soon decided to move on.
1979 Senior caseworker Gosforth Newcastle
“I had a friend who was a social worker and, while I did not know what they did, I was enthusiastic,” Gibb says. She returned to Scotland for a social work degree course in Edinburgh, and then spent five years in Newcastle upon Tyne, working in the city’s tough Scotswood area.
After a spell teaching social work in Preston, she moved south to Surrey, becoming an adviser in child care, then joined the west London borough of Ealing – rising to assistant social services director, before joining Kensington and Chelsea in 1988 as deputy director. She was promoted to director two years later.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/about/whos-who/
Dame Moira Gibb is a non-executive member of the UK Statistics Authority.
Dame Moira is Chair of Skills for Care and Chair of City Lit Adult Education College.
She is a non-executive director of the NHS England and chairs its Investment Committee.
She is a member of the Council of Reading University. Her career was in social services and local government, latterly as Chief Executive of Camden Council. She was a Civil Service Commissioner from 2012-15 and a Director of the London Marathon from 2005-11.
Moira Gibb – social worker in Newcastle
Newcastle:
Brian Roycroft, Colin Gregg, Dawn Reed and Christopher Lillie – Newcastle City Council Nursery paedophile ring etc
Safe hands Moira Gibb also led William Vahey review
Malone is married to a leading Scottish doctor, Anne Blyth. He made tabloid headlines in 1995 when, still a minister, he attended a live sex show.
Mr Malone, who was a health minister in John Major’s government and is now editor of the European, has issued a formal apology to the title’s features editor, Nicola Davidson, after making a drunken sexual approach to her and then hitting her around the head when he was rebuffed.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/exminister-in-trouble-after-striking-journalist-1165912.html
…He initially became chairman of Regent GM, one of Britain’s biggest suppliers of generic drugs to the NHS, before moving to his current role as chairman of Ultrasis, which specialises in computerised cognitive behavioural therapy software.
But controversy has never been far away where Malone is concerned, and last year he faced an unprecedented challenge to his role in a shareholders’ revolt. Susan Malin, a 42-year-old accountant, stood for election to the board following a row over executive pay, claiming the company was being run “like an old boys’ network”. Unlike the people of Winchester, however, the shareholders stood by him, and the former Tory minister lives to fight another day.
http://www.totalpolitics.com/history/45348/where-are-they-now-gerry-malone.thtml
Re-entering Parliament
Seat of Winchester
He re-entered parliament in 1992, representing the “safe” Conservative seat of Winchester. He was appointed a Minister of State at the Department of Health in 1994, when Virginia Bottomley was the Secretary of State.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Malone
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BUPA Nursing Awards
Production of Award Ceremony in the presence of the Prime Minister (1991): The Princess Margaret (1992); Virginia Bottomley (1993); Gerry Malone (1994); Secretary of State (1995).
http://s314663725.websitehome.co.uk/jon_laurie/old/live.htm
Nurses jeer Minister as strike looms Threat of action by 900,000 NHS staff
May 1995
NURSES were poised to tear up their long-standing no-strike rule after Ministers yesterday refused to back down on controversial local pay deals.
Junior Health Minister Baroness Cumberlege was booed and heckled by members of the Royal College of Nursing meeting in Harrogate for their annual congress, when she claimed that local pay bargaining was here to stay.
She ended with a defiant message for the Prime Minister, Health Secretary Virginia Bottomley, and Health Minister Gerry Malone.
”We will fight for nursing and for the health services of this country, to ensure that our campaign marks a turning point for nursing, and to use the tremendous support we have received to create a better future. We will fight to win this battle and move on to win the war.”
Moira Gibb – her views on physical punishment, response to Kensington and Chelsea abuse, and child deaths in Camden under her watch
Malone was mp for Winchester from 1992 to 1997 (during which time he served as Minister of State for Health under Virginia Bottomley from 1994)
He became editor of the European and was forced to make a public apology for hitting the paper’s features editor, Nicola Davidson, around the head when she rebuffed a drunken sexual advance.
But what of Gibb herself? She has a long history in social work and local government, was president of the Association of Directors of Social Services, received a CBE in 2002, then was knighted in 2012. In 2009, she was appointed by then Children’s Secretary Ed Balls to head the government’s Social Work Task Force in the aftermath of the death of ‘Baby P’, and more recently was appointed to head a public investigation into how paedophile teacher William Vahey was able to drug and abuse 60 children at Southbank International School in London.
link
Anger over massive pensions gulf between local authority bosses and ordinary workers
24 March 2009
At least seven London local government bosses are heading for final salary pensions of more than £100,000 a year, the Evening Standard has learned.
They are the first of a new generation of high-earning council chiefs, now in their fifties, who can look forward to six-figure retirement incomes once their careers are over.
The size of the pensions has angered union leaders, who have drawn attention to the vast gap between the “fat cat” bosses at the top of the local authority earnings league and the average London council worker pension of around £4,000.
And three of those due for a windfall have been criticised for serious failings in their social services department after children died.
But councils said the pensions were justified. A spokeswoman for Camden council, where chief executive Moira Gibb is set to retire on a pension of more than £109,000, said: “All local government pension holders pay a proportion of their own wage into these pension schemes and for some people these reflect years of service.
Moira Gibb
Chief executive of Camden
Age: not disclosed
Salary: £210,000
Estimate local government career at retirement: 40 years
Annual pension: £109,375 (£2,187,500 pot)
Lump sum: £267,750
Moira Gibb qualified as a social worker after a short teaching career. She has worked in social services departments in Newcastle, Surrey, Ealing and Kensington and Chelsea.
Since being appointed as Chief Executive of Camden, four serious case reviews have been carried out into the death or serious injury of a child as a result of abuse or neglect. One, a six-year-old girl, was murdered in 2005 by her mother’s boyfriend, despite being on the child protection register. Ms Gibb announced a restructuring of children’s services “to improve the welfare of all children”. The next year a two-month-old boy died after “horrific” abuse.
THE woman leading the Baby P taskforce faces questions after two children died from abuse on her watch, the Evening Standard can reveal.
Children’s Secretary Ed Balls appointed Moira Gibb from Camden council to review social services across England in the wake of the Baby P scandal. But a series of failings by Ms Gibb’s social workers in two separate cases raised concerns over her suitability for the role.
An Evening Standard investigation found that four inquiries have been held into the death or serious harm of a child from suspected abuse or neglect in Camden in the last five years.
Among the victims was a six-year-old girl, Ukleigha Batten-Froggatt, who was murdered in 2005 by her mother’s boyfriend, despite being placed on Camden’s child protection register. Her mother was also killed in the attack.
Social workers failed to check the police records of his mother’s boyfriend, who was revealed as a convicted child sex attacker with a “troubled” past.
Children’s Secretary Ed Balls appointed Moira Gibb from Camden council to review social services across England
Haringey’s MP, Lynne Featherstone, questioned the appointment of Ms Gibb in light of the other cases in Camden.
“This is concerning information,” she said. “It must, unfortunately, put a question mark over Ed Balls’s choice. He should look into the background here so we are reassured over his choice to lead the taskforce.”
Ms Gibb, who has been chief executive of Camden since 2003, said she did not “seek” the role but was asked to take it on.
NHS England Board
Dame Moira Gibb: Non-executive Director and Chair of the Investment Committee
Dame Moira Gibb is Chair of Skills for Care and Chair of City Lit Adult Education College. She is a non-executive director of the UK Statistics Authority and a member of the Council of Reading University.
Her career was in social services and local government, latterly as Chief Executive of Camden Council. She was a Civil Service Commissioner from 2012-15 and a Director of the London Marathon from 2005-11.
Paedophile bishop and a cover-up by the Church lasting 23 years: Scandal deepens
Peter Ball – who was eventually jailed after admitting the abuse last year – benefited from a ‘deeply sinister cover-up’.
Secret documents claimed that he had been let off 23 years ago to ‘prevent a scandal in the press’ – despite the Church of England being told he was a serial abuser. Ball resigned as Bishop of Gloucester in 1993, but returned to work within two years.
The report was compiled at the time by a private detective working for Ball’s legal team. It warned senior figures that Ball had been ‘abusing not only his office but many young men’ and had confessed to his behaviour.
Its existence was reported by the BBC and it was described as being for the information solely of the Bishop of Chichester, the late Eric Kemp, and the then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey.
The documents also indicate the private investigator frequently got to his victims before police did. They also made it clear that Ball had confessed to abusing boys.
Now details have emerged for the first time of a secret report by a private detective to help Ball’s defence.
According to the BBC, the documents showed that Mr Murdock had discussed with Ball’s legal team ‘the need to prevent a scandal, especially as Peter was a frequent visitor to Sandringham and is friendly with Prince Charles’.
A source, who has seen some of the secret documents, told the Daily Mail: ‘After Ball was arrested the Church hired a private detective to aide his defence.
Prosecutors have already conceded that the decision not to prosecute Ball in 1993 was ‘wrong’ as there was enough evidence to bring charges.
But it emerged that at the time of his arrest, leading Establishment figures – including two Archbishops of Canterbury, Tory MPs, a senior judge and public school headmasters – mounted an extraordinary campaign to protect hi
In 1993, Ball resigned in disgrace after receiving a police caution for committing an act of ‘gross indecency’
“Evil bishop drove me to suicide”- this Telegraph article about his abuse was published in Mar 1993
Ball escaped with a police caution despite statements from other young men who claimed to have suffered at his hands and Prince Charles provided Ball with a grace- and-favour mansion on his Duchy of Cornwall estate in Somerset.
The mother of one of Ball’s victim’s said: “This is quite unbelievable. I don’t know what Prince Charles thinks he is doing.
“The man ruined my son’s life and should have been locked away.
“Instead he now lives in luxury on one of the finest estates in the country.
“I don’t feel Ball was ever properly punished – but the fact that the prince has given sanctuary to this pervert is staggering.
Bishop escaped abuse charges after MPs and a royal backed him, court told
2006 Prince Charles and Peter Ball at a memorial service for Camilla’s father Major Bruce Shand at St Paul’s Church in Knightsbridge, London
11 July 2016
Lord Carey told the BBC that he had placed Peter Ball on a list of priests banned from the ministry.
But Sussex police documents, released under an Freedom of Information (FOI) request, suggest Ball’s name was not included.
The documents also indicate Ball associated with other sex offenders in the clergy and that he was investigated in 2008 for being part of a suspected paedophile ring.
Peter Ball with Peter Canon Gordon Rideout, from Polegate, East Sussex, who was jailed for 10 years in May 2014. He was found guilty of 36 separate sex offences by a jury at Lewes Crown Court.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-36767415
http://aanirfan.blogspot.com/2016/07/famous-eastbourne-people.html
Gordon Rideout
Canon Gordon Rideout was the vicar of All Saints Church in Eastbourne for 25 years.
Clergyman Canon Gordon Rideout was chaplain at Moira House School, Eastbourne, until 2003, and chairman of governors at Bishop Bell C of E School in Eastbourne until November 2011.
Clergyman Canon Gordon Rideout was a serial sex offender who preyed on young children across the south of England.
In 2013, Rideout, 74, was jailed for 10 years at Lewes Crown Court after being convicted of two attempted rapes and 34 indecent assaults on 16 boys and girls
In the 1970s Canon Gordon Rideout was taken to a military court on child sex-abuse charges.
At that time Rideout was chaplain on a military base.
GORDON RIDEOUT; PEDOPHILE RING
Gordon Trevor Rideout back in court Dec 21 2016
Maybe he’s applying for compassionate relief again?
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/media/images/53006000/jpg/_53006174_53006173.jpg
Peter Ball was in regular contact with Vicar Roy Cotton, a convicted paedophile priest. Cotton took children to visit Ball.
2011 Baroness Butler-Sloss was appointed by the Diocese of Chichester to carry out the review which looked into the behaviour of Cotton and another paedophile priest, Colin Pritchard.
Bishop turned ‘blind eye’ to Bexhill vicar’s abuse, inquiry hears
06 March 2018
In one segment, Miss Scolding described abuse by a Reverend Colin Pritchard, former vicar of St Barnabas’ Church in Bexhill and a church in Sedlescombe. She said: “There have been suggestions about the culture of abuse operated by Reverend Pritchard and that Bishop Peter Ball turned a blind eye to that abuse.” Pritchard was arrested in 1997 on suspicion of sexual offences, and again in 2007. Miss Scolding said: “There were no restrictions upon his ability to attend church or be involved in ministry with children from his arrest until July 2007.
Reverend Pritchard, who was vicar of St Barnabas in Bexhill, pleaded guilty in 2008 to seven counts of sexual assault on two boys and was jailed for five years. Pritchard – now known as Ifor Whittaker – was convicted last month of sex offences against a boy and jailed for 16 years. The crimes were when he worked in Sedlescombe, police said. Speaking on behalf of the Diocese of Chichester and Archbishops’ Council for the Church of England, Nigel Giffin QC said the Church’s response to abuse in the last few decades was ‘not nearly good enough’. The IICSA inquiry will look into how far institutions failed to protect children from sexual abuse within the Anglican Church. It focuses on abuse within the Diocese of Chichester, which covers all of Sussex, as a case study. Miss Scolding said: “As a society we have over the past 10 years had to examine some uncomfortable truths about our wilful blindness to such abuse.” Richard Scorer, speaking on behalf of many of the victims, said: “The Church of England claims to offer moral guidance to the country yet clerical sexual abuse cases powerfully undermine the claim. This leads to the cover-up of abuse. “The question is whether the Church can be trusted to put its own house in order.” In a statement, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said: “The failures that we have seen are deeply shaming and I personally find them a cause of horror and sadness. “That children have been abused within the communities of the church is indeed shameful.” The inquiry continues.
Baroness Butler-Sloss Report
Former Sussex priest jailed for sex abuse against boy
Feb 22 2018
A “disgusting and despicable” ex-Anglican priest has been jailed for sexually abusing a boy and conspiring with another priest to abuse the child.
Ifor Whittaker, formerly Colin Pritchard, was convicted of abusing the boy, aged between 10 and 16 when the abuse happened in the 1980s and 1990s.
The 73-year-old also conspired with ex-clergyman Roy Cotton, who has since died, to commit sex acts.
Whittaker, of Rectory Road, Sutton, south London, was jailed for 16 years.
He was told he will serve a minimum of 10 years in prison. He is already a registered sex offender for life after a previous conviction.
Sentencing Whittaker, Judge Paul Tain described the priest’s behaviour as “disgraceful, disgusting and despicable”,
He said: “It was an obvious and clear case of grooming, where he carefully manipulated a vulnerable child.”
Whittaker had “attempted to bamboozle, cheat and mislead the jury”, the judge said.
He said the abuser had “plied the victim with alcohol” and “emotionally blackmailed the boy by saying ‘no one would believe you over a priest'”.
Whittaker, a former rector of Sedlescombe, near Battle, was convicted of seven counts, which also included gross indecency and inciting the boy to commit gross indecency.
The offences took place between February 1987 and February 1993 in East Sussex, Hove Crown Court was told.
The jury was told Whittaker was a “predatory paedophile” and had organised and facilitated the abuse with Cotton, who worked as a priest in Brede, near Rye, in the 1990s.
He died in 2006 and was never prosecuted.
The victim, now in his 40s, told the court Cotton had been the main abuser and had “just passed me over like a toy to be borrowed by a friend”.
‘Quite forceful’
The court heard the abuse began after he was invited to do gardening work at the church by Whittaker in return for pocket money.
Whittaker and Cotton “had an agreement” and Cotton would often take the boy to and from Whittaker’s house, it was said.
There were also occasions at Cotton’s house when, after abuse had taken place, Whittaker would “suddenly immediately appear in the room as if he had been watching”, the jury heard.
Whittaker’s victim described him as “quite forceful, quite scary”.
The jury was told Whittaker had previously pleaded guilty to gross indecency and indecent assault in 2008 over offences which had take place in Wellingborough in Northamptonshire against teenage boys in the 1980s.
‘Profound regret’
In 2010 Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss was appointed by the Diocese of Chichester to carry out the review into how the two priests were allowed to work at East Sussex churches following the earlier sex abuse allegations.
The diocese apologised “unreservedly” after Baroness Butler-Sloss’s report criticised both senior clergy and Sussex Police over how they dealt with historical claims of abuse by Cotton and the then Colin Pritchard.
Following Whittaker’s latest conviction, the Diocese of Chichester issued a statement saying: “We express our profound sorrow and regret to the victim in this case and our admiration for their courage and determination in coming forward.
“The abuse of children is both a travesty and a tragedy and a complete betrayal of the Christian faith.
“This case demonstrates once again why it is so important to listen to those reporting abuse.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-43141768
THE former Bishop of Blackburn has been criticised in an inquiry report into child sexual abuse in his former diocese.
The Right Rev Nicholas Reade, the Bishop of Blackburn from 2004 to 2012, has been held to account by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse over his time as Archdeacon of Lewes, in the Diocese of Chichester.
The Rev Robert Coles admitted the alleged sexual abuse of a teenage altar server in the 1980s to Bishop Nicholas and a fellow clergyman, the inquiry was told.
But despite Coles confessing to sexual activity with the 15 or 16-year-old boy at his home, neither Bishop Nicholas nor his colleague disclosed this information to police, following the former’s arrest in 1997.
Coles, who was a parish priest across the southern diocese, faced no criminal action at the time.
But an investigation was relaunched in 2012 and he was later convicted on two separate occasions of serious sexual offences involving young boys and given substantial jail sentences.
Referring to the 1997 disclosures, Prof Alexis Jay, the inquiry’s chairman, said in a final report: “Archdeacon Reade declined to report a serious indecent to the police, yet repeatedly sought to justify this failure on the basis that ‘he had not raped the boy’.
“Coles should have been reported to the police and subject to disciplinary action or a risk assessment.”
The inquiry heard that Coles sexually groomed a child in 2007-08. He was officially retired but still continued to officiate.
Mr Reade was also found to have defended another minister, Rev Roy Cotton, who had a past conviction for indecent exposure involving a boy in a church organ loft in the 1950s.
Cotton, an ‘Anglo-Catholic’ was supposed to only be allowed to celebrate Mass at his retirement home but officiated in public several times when children were present, the inquiry report disclosed.
He was investigated twice over allegations that he abused boys in the 70s and 80s, with another disgraced minister. Three victims came forward to make accusations. No criminal action was taken but Sussex Police’s inquiry was found to be ‘inadequate’. Cotton, who was the subject of later church and judicial inquiries, died in September 2006.
Prof Jay, referring to Cotton’s case, added: “This was a clear example of the diocese failing to prioritise its responsibilities for children and young people.
“Its concerns seem to have been led by pastoral concerns for Cotton, rather than the danger he posed to children.”
The current Bishop of Blackburn, the Right Rev Julian Henderson, this week wrote to all clergy in the diocese, calling on them to learn lessons from the inquiry’s findings.
Mr Reade was Archdeacon of Lewes before being appointed Bishop of Blackburn in 2004. He retired in 2012.
The child sex abuse inquiry was prompted by revelations that no fewer than 20 individuals with connections to Chichester Diocese had been convicted of sexual offending against children, including Peter Ball, the former Bishop of Lewes and later Bishop of Gloucester, over the past 50 years.
In her findings, Prof Jay said: “The Church must take action to ensure that this catalogue of errors does not occur again.”
Update: 26 Apr 2017
A former Anglican priest has been charged with sex offences against a boy in the 1980s and 1990s.
Ifor Whittaker, 72, formerly known as Colin Pritchard, is charged with seven offences involving the boy, who was aged between 12 and 16 at the time.
He is accused of conspiring with ex-clergyman Roy Cotton, who has since died, to commit sex acts with the boy.
Mr Whittaker, of Rectory Road, Sutton, south London, is due to appear before magistrates on 24 May.
He is also accused of gross indecency and inciting the boy to commit gross indecency.
The offences are alleged to have taken place between February 1987 and February 1993 against the boy in East Sussex.
Mr Whittaker was vicar of Sedlescombe, near Battle, and it is claimed the offences took place there, Sussex Police said.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-39724639
In 2014, Butler-Sloss covered up for Peter Ball when she kept allegations about bishop Ball’s abuse out of a report.
Peter Ball with Vickery House in 1986
The police investigated allegations of sexual offences by Ball against 19 young men and boys, in East Sussex and elsewhere between the 1970s and the early 1980s.
John Stingemore at the trial of Peter Sutcliffe..linked to Savile..linked to McSweeney…
Peter Bick lived in Bexhill in East Sussex.
On 23 April 2012, a former altar boy, Christopher Hunnisett, 28, appeared in court accused of murdering Peter Bick, 57, as part of a campaign of hate against paedophiles.
Bick is believed to have been a friend of Prince Philip. Bick shared a love of carriage racing with Prince Philip.
Police found Peter Bick, 57, dead in his flat on January 11 201.
2005 The wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles
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.
link
Ball resigned as Bishop of Gloucester following the caution and a short time later Prince Charles invited him to live in a lodge house owned by the Duchy of Cornwall in Aller, Somerset.
He described the Prince of Wales at the time as ‘a loyal friend’.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey wrote to police in 1993 with letters of support for the then Bishop of Gloucester Peter Ball who was being investigated for sex offences
1993 Rt Rev Michael Ball and twin Brother Rt Rev Peter Ball – Church House – Westminster
Carey praying the name of Bishop Ball will be cleared.
The Guardian
London, Greater London, England
In one of Lord Carey’s letters he told police it was “improbable” that Peter Ball was guilty.
Church failed to pass Peter Ball abuse evidence to police in 1993
11 July 2016
Sussex
Church leaders failed to give police incriminating evidence about disgraced former Bishop Peter Ball in 1993, according to Sussex police documents.
Ball, 84, was jailed last year for sex assaults on 18 teenagers and young men in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.
March 14 1993 Sunday Telegraph enlarged image here: ball sunday-telegraph-p-ball-14-3-93
He courted a niece of Sir Anthony Eden (former prime minister)
Peter Ball was governor of Radley, Wellington and Lancing
2 March 1977
The Queen has appointed a monk as – Church of England bishop for only the third time in living memory…Father Peter Ball. The two other modern monk-bishops have been the late Rt Rev Walter Frere, Bishop of Truro, 1923-35 and the Rt Rev Trevor Huddleston, the present Bishop of Stepney
Truthseeker1 @thewakeupcall09
Bishop Peter Ball, Tom Driberg & Trevor Huddleston all went to Lancing College and are all paedophiles.
Some of Peter Ball’s “schemers” were sent to work with the Community in Uruguay
Neil Todd, the teenage aspirant monk who was sexually abused by Ball, said bishop Ball told him that ‘the Prince had written him personal letters. He didn’t say what was in them …Then he told me they were in his safe and added: “One day they will be very valuable.”’
“…complained to the police, who then spent 15 weeks turning out every cupboard in Ball’s life over the past 20 years.
Whatever else the police found – and there may well have been other allegations – they evidently decided to take no further action.”
Peter Ball and Jimmy Savile were close and visited Prince Charles at Highgrove often.
Staff at Highgrove, the Prince of Wales’s country home, had grown accustomed to these intimate exchanges when the Rt Rev Peter Ball, the now disgraced Bishop of Gloucester, came to offer solace and enlightenment to their boss.
Prince Charles has a strange temple at Highgrove.
During his time in Lewes, Peter Ball got to know Jimmy Savile well.
Ball was bishop of Lewes between 1977 and 1992
and Jimmy Savile was bishop Ball’s principal entree into the Waleses’ household.
AnnaStillHereRaccoon
Mutual interests?
LazerLight @Lazer_Light
“Nobody will ever know what you have done for this country Jimmy. This is to go some way in thanking you for that.”
Truthseeker1 @thewakeupcall09
Lot No 524 ‘THE QUEEN FIXED IT FOR JIM’ Jim’ll Fix It badge.
This York Student Television project from 1992 makes clear reference to Jimmy Savile’s paedophile tendencies.
This York Student Television project from 1992 makes clear reference to Jimmy Savile’s paedophile tendencies. The source description says it originates from 2nd February 2011 but the end credits twice state clearly 1992. It seems to attempt to shy away from literal sodomy on Savile’s part but there are clear and unambiguous sexual references including a direct allegation of paedophilia.
Description
Jim’ll Sodomise You was a one-off short spoof of Jim’ll Fix It. It features David Bartlett wearing a tracksuit and glitzy wig and covered in bling, doing a not-bad impression of Jimmy Saville.
The idea being that Jim in this case would not fix it, and would thereby sodomise your ambitions (rather than literally sodomise you).
Bishop Peter Ball and Jimmy Savile were close and visited Prince Charles at Highgrove often.
Peter Ball was propelled into the royal circle by two people… One was prebendary Willie Booth, a former chaplain at Westminster School,the other was Jimmy Savile.
Jimmy Savile committed a number of sex offences in Sussex at the time when Ball was bishop
Royal Family, Paedophilia, Satanism & Murder
Aug 29th, 2017
1985
Ball appeared regularly on t.v.with his twin brother.
After his appointment to Gloucester was announced, Ball became a regular visitor to Highgrove and was held in such high regard that Charles attended his enthronement.
Peter Ball: a close friend of public figures, including Prince Charles and Lady Thatcher
Bishop Peter Ball – was a founder member of the Thatcher Foundation set up by the former prime minister.
While Bishop Suffragan of Lewes, he had come to public notice through his close friendship with Ian Gow
The Margaret Thatcher Foundation was formed in 1991
Ball dined with Thatcher at the Savoy and Margaret Thatcher’s former Chief Whip Tim Renton MP said any criminal action against Ball was “far too great a punishment”. link
Peter Ball saw a good deal of the Norfolks and Abergravennys, and
Peter Ball was a friend of Lord John Wakeham and Sir Ian Gow.
Truthseeker1 @thewakeupcall09
Former Tory MP & Paedophile Alan Clark (Deceased)
Thatcher & Ian Gow (PPS to Thatcher) both turned a blind eye to Alan Clark affairs
Truthseeker1 @thewakeupcall09
MINISTER BEDDED JUDGE’S WIFE AND DAUGHTERS (Underage) News of the World 1994
Alan Clark MP who was involved in a scandal with two 14 yr old girls –
Clark was involved in a sex scandal with a woman and her daughters — ‘the coven’
The Trouble with BBC ‘Children in Need’ Ambassador Max Clifford and Tory MP Alan Clark
In the leaked video Clifford, the legendary PR Guru to the stars and elites let slip that he had successfully hid away the sins of one Tory MP, and ‘diarist’, Alan Clark.
Peter Ball saw a good deal of the Abergravennys
– John Nevill, 5th Marquess of Abergavenny
was the first Lord Lieutenant of East Sussex from 1974 to 1989.
Lord Hampden, Anthony David Brand was Deputy Lord-Lieutenant for East Sussex from 1986 until 2000
Lord Hampden, Anthony David Brand and Peter Ball, were involved in the 1986 Derry Mainwaring Knight Satanist trial
The Observer
(London, Greater London, England)
16 Mar 1986, Sun • Page 2
“Ordo Templi Orientis”
Derry Mainwaring Knight involved with Ordo Templi Orientis
craftymuvva:
Derry Mainwaring Knight – Whitelaw, Powell and Abse:
Lord Longford wrote the foreward to a book Brand had written
Anthony John Leslie Lloyd, Baron Lloyd of Berwick (left)
He held the office of Deputy Lieutenant of East Sussex in 1983.
Anthony Lloyd, who was a Lord Justice at the time, wrote a letter of support for Peter Ball and described Ball as a “saint” in one of more than 2,000 letters sent to the Crown Prosecution Service and Gloucestershire Police in his support from acquaintances.
In 1969 Lloyd was appointed Attorney-General to the Prince of Wales, serving until 1977.
1984 – made a Privy Counsellor
Camilla’s father Bruce Shand – was a Deputy Lieutenant of Sussex, and Vice-Lieutenant of East Sussex from 1974 until 1992.
Peter Ball preached at Bruce Shand’s funeral
Lord Wakeham, center with Prince Philip
Lord Wakeham aka “Lord Fix-It” He tried to protect the rich and the famous from intrusions into their privacy
Director, NM Rothschild & Sons 1995
He was a director of Enron (close ties with George Bush) from 1994 until its bankruptcy in 2001.
As a non-executive director and a member of Enron’s auditing committee, paid a reported £80,000 a year, Lord Wakeham was meant to ensure that the company’s accountants were happy with the way that it was reporting to Wall Street.
http://www.apfn.org/enron/wakeham.htm
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/natarch/wakeham.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1260000/images/_1264198_wakeham300.jpg
It was in another role, as chairman of the Press Complaints Commission from which he stepped down last week, that Lord Wakeham was able to show his prowess as a fixer, defusing the continuing battles between the tabloids and Buckingham Palace, placing a restraining hand on editors here, holding back politicians there from legislation to impose new privacy laws on the press.
link
Peter Ball spent hours comforting Lord Wakeham after his wife was killed in the 1984 Brighton bombing and was a staunch friend to Jane Gow when her husband was murdered by the Ira.
Rt Rev Peter Ball – St Paul’s Church – Brighton 11th October 1988
The Rt Rev Peter Ball, the Bishop of Lewes, blesses a plaque in memory of those who died in the Grand Hotel bombing of 1984, at St Paul’s Church in Brighton. He is watched by Prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Sir Donald Maclean, left, and MP John Wakeham, who both lost their wives in the IRA blast.
1st August 1990 – Mrs Jane Gow stands with her two sons James, right, Charles and The Rt Rev Peter Ball, the Bishop of Lewes, at the spot her husband, Conservative politician Ian Gow, died when his car was blown up by the IRA at their home in Hankham.
He was deeply involved in the workings of Thatcher’s private office.
Gow was killed by a car bomb attack in 1990 . Irish republican paramilitaries claimed responsibility in both cases, but nobody was ever charged with causing the deaths and rumours later circulated concerning possible involvement of the CIA and intelligence community
my sweet landlord:
Mark Worrall handed 2nd Dickens dossier to Ian Gow, according to @johnmannmp. Mark Worrall was a close colleague of Phillip Pedley
John Mann @johnmannmp
The Dickens file contained 19 names of Tory activists and was also given to central office and Ian Gow as Tory vice chairman in 1984
Bishop Ball and Ian Gow – “we enjoyed each other enormously.”
The Guardian
Ian Gow was very close to Margaret Thatcher. And Peter Morrison
He made an offer to the black MP, Paul Boateng: “He must visit me in my home in Sussex, The Doghouse, where I shall be delighted to receive him, despite his unwise views. And I shall offer him one, perhaps more than one, White Lady.”
Soon after becoming prime minister, Thatcher writes to Ball …she was “deeply grateful”
1979 May 17 Th
MT: MT letter to Suffragan Bishop of Lewes, Peter Ball (thanks for letter) [“Letters like yours are a great source of strength”] [released 2010]
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/119086
Peter Ball’s royal friendships
They were not confined to the Prince of Wales.
Peter Ball was on close terms with the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, and was invited to preach at Sandringham.
Even the Queen supported him after his police caution. In 1994, when she was distributing Royal Maundy money in Truro, Ball was there with his brother, who was Truro’s bishop.
After lunch in the Chapter House, the Queen, who had been on the high table with local dignitaries, went across to Ball, held out her hand and said in the clearest of voices: ‘My love and encouragement, Bishop.’
The Rev John Robson, chaplain to the Queen was a friend of pervert Bishop Ball
The Rev John Robson, chaplain of the Savoy Chapel
1992
The lasting image I retained from the service was that evoked by the chaplain in his sermon. Mr Robson is a friend of the Bishop of Gloucester, the Right Rev Peter BaH who has preached at the Savoy Chapel Bishop Ball was the only bishop to abstain during the televised debate on women priests, said Mr Robson: “He pulled his monk’s cow} over his head and sat in deep, profound and tortured prayer.” https://archive.org/stream/NewsUK1992UKEnglish/Dec%2005%201992%2C%20The%20Times%2C%20%2364506%2C%20UK%20%28en%29_djvu.txt
Queen’s chaplain, RevJohn Robson, friend of Peter Ball was a chaplain at Christ’s Hospital School:
From the Worshipful Company of Gardeners Autumn 2017 Issue 42
My Inspiration – Actor Roger Allam and his favourite teacher spill the beans about each other
02 Sept 1997 The Guardian
Christ’s Hospital School:
Christ’s Hospital School ex-sports coach jailed for sex abuse
9 Aug 2018
A sports teacher at a private school has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for sexually abusing female students.
Ajaz Karim, 63, from Hammersmith, west London, was convicted of nine charges of indecent assault at Christ’s Hospital School in Horsham.
Hove Crown Court was told he abused six girls aged 14 to 18 between 1985 and 1993.
He was also found guilty at an earlier hearing of one count of attempted indecent assault.
He is one of a number of teaching staff at the West Sussex school who have been convicted of sexually abusing students.
Karim had claimed during the trial his relationship “with the girls and boys was one of friendship”.
Judge Christine Henson said Karim displayed a “complete disregard” and “continued arrogance” towards his victims, adding: “I’m in no doubt that you used your popularity as a teacher to groom your victims.
“They should have been safe and secure, sadly they were not.
“You have betrayed everything a teacher should stand for.”
He left the school after complaints from four pupils surfaced between 1990 and 1993.
Senior staff came under fire from victims over the way they handled the allegations.
Teachers never reported him to the police and he was initially allowed to carry on working, even with the girls in question.
‘Hugely traumatic’
Reading a victim’s statement, Oliver Dunkin, prosecuting, said the victim was “deeply disappointed” with the school’s handling of the incidents, which made it “hugely traumatic”.
“For 32 years I have lived with the deeply buried memory of events that took place with Mr Karim,” the statement read.
“Until recently I believed the impact had been minimal and I got on and lived my life.”
An NSPCC spokeswoman said Karim displayed a “shocking breach of trust”.
She added: “We hope today’s sentencing provides some sort of closure for those cruelly targeted by Karim.”
Karim was also made the subject of a sexual harm prevention order.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-45129488
WALES: Ex-N.Wales Teacher Denies Sex Assaults; ‘Drunken Party Led to Offences against 4 Teen Boys’
Daily Post (Liverpool, England), October 24, 2008
Byline: By CARL BUTLER
A FORMER North Wales teacher has denied sexual assaults against four teen age boys after a drunken Christmas party.
Robert Charles Durrant – who is on trial in Dorset – spent four years at the Rydal Penrhos School in Colwyn Bay, before he moved to Ruthin School where he spent the next 16 years. He also taught on the Wirral.
Durrant, 60, who got married while teaching at Ruthin, is an English teacher at Milton Abbey School, Dorset, and has denied eight charges that are all alleged to have happened after a drunken Christ mas party at Milton Abbey School on December 6.
He faces six charges of sexually as saulting four teenage boys and two fur ther charges of battery that evening.
Dorchester Crown Court heard yester day Durrant targeted a ‘shy and isolated pupil’ after an alleged night-time assault in the Dorset private school.
Durrant, of Milton Abbas, Blandford, told jurors at Dorchester Crown Court he was very friendly with many of the boys he taught and he would often hug them and give them massages in a friendly way.
Earlier in the trial a schoolboy in his late teens said Durrant came into his room after midnight and touched his leg and tried to kiss him.
Another said Durrant had come into his room and kissed him on the arm and chest.
One boy said Durrant came into his room and put his hands down his trousers.
The final sexual assault was alleged by another boy in his late teens who said Durrant touched his backside twice that evening.
He denies any accusation he touched any of the boys in a sexual manner and said he has little recollection of that evening.
The jury heard after a schoolboy had burst into the room where Durrant was with another pupil, Durrant followed him angrily into his room.
He denies grabbing one boy around the neck but said he did shout at him and the boy reacted by threatening him that he would make up accusations about having his arm twisted by Durrant.
Durrant told the jury he had been drinking wine all evening and he and the other pupils were drunk.
Durrant said after sitting and talking to a schoolboy for a few hours he then hugged him and left and walked around the school stopping at different rooms.
He then admitted he drove two miles home to his house.
Prosecutor Robert Griffiths accused Durrant of targeting one of the school boys because he was a shy and isolated boy.
Mr Durrant replied he resented the accusation.
Mr Griffiths added: “I am going to suggest that over the years you may have got the odd grope off these boys but on that night you went far beyond that.”
When asked in a police interview about his sexuality Durrant said: “I am heterosexual with a hint of bisexual.”
Durrant clarified in court he had ex perimented sexually with other boys when he was at school himself.
The court heard Durrant has been a teacher since 1971 and had previously taught at the Calday Grange School in Wirral and the Christ’s Hospital School in Sussex before moving to Wales.
There he spent four years at the Rydal Penrhos School in Colwyn Bay before he moved to Ruthin School and spent the next 16 years there and got married.
Durrant then left this school, divorced his wife and moved to teach in Zimbab we and then Kuwait before taking the post at Milton Abbey School in 2003.
He now lives alone and is currently suspended from the school, the court heard.
The trial continues.
carlbutler@dailypost.co.uk
CAPTION(S):
Robert Durrant faces charges of sexual assault on four teenage boys
https://www.questia.com/read/1G1-187660700/wales-ex-n-wales-teacher-denies-sex-assaults-drunken
Re: School Chaplains
ks wrote:George Bell was certainly a very charismatic as well as a theologically sound Bishop, and his work is still recognised. He took office as Bishop of Chichester in 1929 and (I think) died in post in 1958.
I THINK he had retired when he died, but only very shortly before. Of course it was 1958, in fact the 50th anniversary of his death was last week (sorry about that mistake further up). His CH Leaving Bible was presented to him in the spring of 1958, on the day after he carried out Confirmations at CH for the last time.
As for chaplains, an interesting part was played by John Robson, who might be considered the first “modern” chaplain of CH. As assistant chaplain he introduced things like holy communion in houses. But his other contribution to CH was the mutual introduction of the school and his lifelong friend the then Dean of Westminster, Eric Abbott. This was a piece of social climbing on the school’s part which it exploited for all it was worth.
I went to Eric Symes Abbott’s memorial service as SG. John Robson was a great guy and in my time it was the great trio of Robson, Atkinson and for a while Godfrey Hall. Porteous came in in my last year.
House Communions were great as were Confirmation lessons in Robbos house.
Does anyone remember the fantastic colorful garments the chaplains wore in the 80s and maybe beyond? It was always a treat to see what garb John Robson would be wearing on the Sunday evening service. Ian Atkinson was always dressed in a monk like white …it did look a bit like a Klu Klux Klan garb.
Robson followed Newsome to Wellington…
His CH Leaving Bible was presented to him in the spring of 1958, on the day after he carried out Confirmations at CH for the last time.
http://www.chforum.info/php/viewtopic.php?t=1803&start=60
Lord Carey said he was ‘appalled’ at the way it (the church) handled the accusations against Bishop George Bell
George Bell was ‘fond’ of paeodophile bishop Peter Ball and sponsored him for ordination, an inquiry has heard.
As former bishop of Chichester, Bell is considered one of Anglicanism’s heroes. However, it emerged in 2015 the Church of England paid £16,800 to the woman, known as Carol, in a legal settlement after she accused Bell of sexually abusing her as a child.
Now it can be revealed Peter Ball, who was jailed for a string of sex offences against teenagers and young men in 2015, was close friends with Bell.
Princess Margaret would take communion at The Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy, just by the Savoy Hotel.
It was noted how she would always attend before flying off to Mustique
Mr Robson remembers her infectious laughter and wit but has no illusions as to how fearsome the Princess could be with a cutting remark. I am thankful to say I have never been on the receiving end of that aspect to her character,” he said. “Like all of us, she had a dark side – that was part of her attraction.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/margarets-anger-at-archbishop-6330525.html
Charles, meanwhile, must surely have been advised to keep Ball at arm’s length — just as he had been advised to distance himself from Jimmy Savile.
‘The Prince did receive letters from the public complaining about Savile,’ says a senior aide. ‘But the writers were dismissed [by him] as jealous or mad.’
Neil Todd, the teenage aspirant monk who was sexually abused by Ball, said bishop Ball told him that ‘the Prince had written him personal letters. He didn’t say what was in them …Then he told me they were in his safe and added: “One day they will be very valuable.”’
Todd also said: ‘We knew that Bishop Peter and the Prince were good friends. He didn’t refer to him as Prince Charles. He would always say just Charles.’
Ball had become a spiritual advisor to the Prince, particularly in the period between Diana’s death in 1997 and his marriage to Camilla in 2005.
Ball had also become close to the Duchess Camilla Shand
‘She liked him …’ says an aide.
17 June 2006 The Prince Of Wales & The Duchess Of Cornwall Attend The Funeral Of Major Bruce Shand At The Holy Trinity Church In Stourpaine, Dorset. .
Peter Ball ‘preached at the funeral of Camilla’s father’s in 2006, which indicates his standing in their household.’
Bruce Shand was a Deputy Lieutenant of Sussex, and Vice-Lieutenant of East Sussex from 1974 until 1992.
The service was conducted by the Rev Stephen Colton (Coulter). The homily was given by the Rt Rev Peter Ball.
RECTOR: THE REVEREND STEPHEN COULTER STOURPAINE VICARAGE
Royals Support Camilla at Her Father’s Funeral The Journal (Newcastle, England), June 17, 2006
Files obtained by the BBC indicate Lambeth Palace received six letters detailing indecency allegations shortly after an arrest in 1992.
Ball was cautioned but worked in churches and schools for 15 more years.
Richard Scorer, a lawyer at Slater and Gordon, said: “It’s an absolute scandal. It is wrong and unacceptable that the Church of England sat on the information and didn’t pass it to the police.
“There is no question Peter Ball would have been prosecuted, convicted and jailed for child abuse at that time.”
The Church of England has declined to comment.
Ball was Bishop of Lewes between 1977 and 1992 and Bishop of Gloucester from 1992 until his resignation the following year
The police files also suggest Ball covered for and helped other priests accused of sex abuse, including:
In 1978, Ball failed to take appropriate action against a priest who abused a child and went on to abuse others.
In 1985, Ball let a priest who had abused a 14-year-old boy stay in his home after his release from prison, and provided the abuser with a positive report enabling him to return to work.
In 2009, Ball tried to persuade a teenage boy to apologise to a priest who had allegedly abused him.
These files give a further insight into how the church handled Ball’s case. It seems the Diocese of Chichester did not share documents which could have jailed Ball earlier.
There is no explanation about how he was able to gain a clear Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check, so he could continue working in the church.
The documents reveal Bishop Peter Ball considered asking the home secretary to overturn his caution in the 1990s.
They also detail the “limited disciplinary action” taken by the-then Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey in relation to Ball and “his return to ministry”.
In February, it was announced Dame Moira Gibb was chairing an independent review of the Ball case to consider what information was available to the Church of England, who had it and when.
A month later, Justice Lowell Goddard’s inquiry into historical child sex abuse announced it would consider whether there was interference by the Church in the Peter Ball case.
Lord Carey’s spokesman, his son Andrew, declined to comment on the new claims but said: “Lord Carey is working with and cooperating fully with two ongoing enquiries – Dame Moira Gibb’s review and the Goddard Enquiry”.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-36767415
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey wrote to police in 1993 with letters of support for the then Bishop of Gloucester who was being investigated for sex offences, it can be revealed. Ex-archbishop George Carey said Peter Ball was in “torment” as a result of a police investigation, letters released by the Crown Prosecution Service show. Ball, 83, was jailed in October for a string of offences against young men. The Church of England apologised “unreservedly” to Ball’s victims. He was sentenced to 32 months for misconduct in a public office and 15 months for indecent assaults, to run concurrently.
In one of Lord Carey’s letters he told police it was “improbable” he was guilty.
He also wrote in a letter to Barbara Mills – then the director of public prosecutions – that Ball’s health was fragile and the decision to prosecute should be made “as speedily as possible”. The letters have been released by the CPS in response to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request by the BBC and others, after it emerged that personal letters had been written which were supportive of Ball. Ball was eventually told he would not be prosecuted but received a caution instead. He resigned as Bishop of Gloucester in 1993, a position that followed a previous period as Bishop of Lewes. However in October 2015, following repeated claims of a church cover-up, Mr Ball pleaded guilty to abusing 18 young men in the 70s, 80s and 90s. He was jailed for two years and ten months.
One of his victims was Neil Todd, whose attempts to take his own life triggered the police investigation 1993 which prompted hundreds of letters of support for the Bishop. In his two letters Lord Carey said he had no wish to influence the legal process. He makes no reference to the allegations of sexual abuse or Mr Todd, who finally took his own life at the end of 2012.
www.macsas.org.uk/MACSAS News.html
1/3 rd of Ecclesiastical Insurers board made up of Church of England figures…
Gilo @seaofcomplicity
Year Neil Todd reported, @Ecclesiastical Insurers had third of its board senior @c_of_e figures. Complicity hardwired into whole structure
Bishop Peter Ball Cover Up
This video highlights ‘Lord’ Carey’s role in preventing the earlier prosecution of Prince Charles’ mate Bishop Ball
http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/north-east-news/royals-support-camilla-fathers-funeral-4567080
Throughout the years, Prince Charles and Peter Ball would pray together in the Sanctuary – a Harry Potteresque temple built by Prince Charles deep in a glade in Highgrove’s grounds.
09 Sept 2007 The Tampa Tribune
Bishop of London Richard Chartres was invited to consecrate it in 2000
There are stain glass windows dedicated to poet Ted Hughes* and and another mentor of Prince Charles – writer Sir Laurens van der Post*
http://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-mail/20151009/281483570210349
Prince Charles was advised by another paedophile – one of the most prolific ones ever – Jimmy Savile
Savile, who died in 2011, was for years a visitor to Highgrove and St James’s Palace.
Fresh evidence of the extent to which the Prince of Wales relied on Jimmy Savile as a confidant and adviser is revealed
Prince Charles ‘trusted Jimmy Savile on everything from marriage guidance to checking speeches’
Peter Ball remained a confidant of Prince Charles right up until 2012
PRINCE IN SAVILE COVER-UP Daily Star Sunday 12-05-13, p6
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2006/08/shhep190806_228x371.jpg
Occultists slaughter sheep on Prince Charles’s estate
19th August 2006
...when night falls here on Dartmoor, that last great wilderness of southern England, some visitors clearly have a sinister purpose.
Princetown is the highest town in the eerie landscape of Dartmoor, which famous for its wild, undomesticated ponies.
link
Satanists On The Prince’s Land
Daily Express (28th August, 2006)
...when night falls here on Dartmoor, that last great wilderness of southern England, some visitors clearly have a sinister purpose.
In recent weeks a series of satanic ceremonies have taken place on the vast 69,000-acre Dartmoor estate owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, the royal Trust which pays Prince Charles his £14 million annual income.
Sheep have been sadistically slaughtered; necks broken; eyes, tongues and sex organs often gouged or cut out. It is possible some were still alive as the mutilations took place.
Police have reports of a crude stone altar, possibly bloodstained, next to a wooden stake and a roughly-built den has been found near the scene of an attack.
On one occasion sheep carcasses were laid in the shape of a seven-pointed star, a symbol closely linked to the notorious Victorian occultist Aleister Crowley, once described as ‘the wickedest man in the world’.
More recently the animals have been left in lines, their heads grotesquely twisted as though looking back through nearby gates or field entrances.
Most bizarrely of all, these sacrificial rituals appear to be triggered by phases of the moon.
Duchy officials are aware of the livestock attacks but insist there is no evidence that the organisation is itself being targeted – even though Prince Charles is the future head of the Church of England.
Almost all the rituals have occurred three miles west of Princetown between Sampford Spiney, Merrivale, and the picturesque market town of Tavistock, Devon.
The area includes one of Dartmoor’s most important Bronze Age sites – the Merrivale stone circle and ritual complex – which local folklore describes as the ‘Gateway of the Dead’.
Other legends mention a sadistic witch called Vixiana who lived on Vixen Tor – one of Dartmoor’s best known granite outcrops. She is said to have conjured up dense fogs to lure travellers off the old trans-moor path between Tavistock and Princetown and into a deep bog.
http://www.westcoast-news.org/story-satanists.htm
Another favourite of the princes was The Horses, a poem about 10 greys “megalith-still” in “the hour-before-dawn dark”. The recitals took place mainly at Highgrove, the Gloucestershire home of the Prince of Wales, in the early 1990s before William and Harry entered their teens. Hughes also read to Prince Charles and the Queen Mother, to whom he was close.
Details of the private readings have been recounted by Roy Davids, former head of the books department at Sotheby’s auction house, who knew Hughes well in the last 20 years of the poet’s life.
“Ted’s relationship with the royals was much closer than anybody has so far known.
DEVIL DID IT! A BRITISH MAN NETS $313,000 – NYTimes.com
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Even more astonishing than his story was the fact that he managed to persuade a group of pious Anglican churchmen and landed gentry in East Sussex to underwrite his struggle with cash. The money was needed, he confided, both to free him from debts that bound him to the Devil and to buy various objects of Satanic regalia enabling him to gain control of the cult.
In order to allay the suspicions of Lord Whitelaw and others he also needed a Rolls-Royce with a telephone since the Satanists had his other phones tapped.
The parish priest in the village of Newick, the Rev. John Baker, organized a donors’ group to back Mr. Knight in his struggle and mobilized the support, among others, of Viscount Hampden, Viscount Brentford, the Earl of March and Mrs. Susan Sainsbury, the wife of a Conservative Member of Parliament.
Knight claimed that he financed his lifestyle from a vice-ring. He earned up to 12.000 pounds a week running a private clinic which turned prostitutes into “bona fide” virgins.
May 4, 1986
Derry Knight told an astonishing story about his membership in a secret Satanic cult called the Sons of Lucifer and his heroic efforts to take over the leadership of the cult to free himself and 2,000 members from the coils of the Devil.
As he told it, it was an incredibly dangerous mortal struggle he was waging against the most evil forces in the universe, personified by some prominent politicians, including Viscount Whitelaw, the deputy Prime Minister, who were, he said, the secret masters of Britain’s Satanic orders.
Their efforts won the support of the Anglican Bishop of Lewes, Peter Ball, a member of a small monastic order who shuns ecclesiastical vestments and worships in a converted pigsty.
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Dame Alun Roberts @ciabaudo
Would this by any chance explain why Baker/Ball turned to Sue Sainsbury for a donation for Mainwaring Knight? Sainsbury – Gatsby – BASW – Peter Righton …
Nick Stacey
13 Mar 1965
Stacey married an aristocrat, partly explaining his contacts and support:
He and his wife, Anne, came from wealthy and well-connected families
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2017/26-may/gazette/obituaries/the-revd-nicolas-david-stacey
Nick Stacey
‘Men Who Are Attracted to 13-Year-Old Boys Make the Best Teachers’ – Director of Kent Social Services ’74-’85
“It’s terribly sad when you’re sexually orientated towards children,” he said, while defending a Canadian child sex offender who was a church organist.
Stacey describes how he frightened the other Directors of Social Services because he was “a different beast.” But his tone becomes almost sinister when talking of rules he set down with his six thousand member staff about dealing with accusations of abuse. “Nobody was to go to the police about accusations against staff without my approval. And it is incredible the way times have changed. I could never begin to do that now. But children, especially children in care, are incredibly manipulative.” Nicolas Stacey should never have been director of Kent social services.
Children were physically pinned down in Kendall House, drugged with excessive doses of controversial medications, beaten regularly, mentally abused, sexually abused, and in some cases raped. Nicolas Stacey states, “I never once went to the police. This was because I never felt that we had a serious case and never in the eleven years I was there did a scandal occur. I mean no scandal that I know of, or none that got out in the public.” Louise Brodie cuts in on the recording and asks Stacey, “No scandal about your staff?” Stacey replies, “About my staff. Now what I did do, I said ‘Look, I’m afraid I’m going to ask you to resign. I am going to have you put on the register of “at risk”.’” A clear admission by Rev. Nick Stacey that he had covered up abuse whilst head of the Kent Social Services. This was Stacey’s “Frost-Nixon” moment. “I would try and get them to go to counselling, had it emerged, you know, that… rampant abuse of kids had occurred, you know.”
Nick Stacey openly admitted on tape that there were cases of abuse, but that he had not informed the police, and instead offered voluntary counselling to the abuser. No mention of the abused at all. But the shock confessions don’t stop there. Stacey went on to say, “A member of staff once hit a child very hard and we had to go to the police. But I went into the dock. I got one of the best QCs. In fact, he was a son of Canon John Collins, you would know from your South African experience. And I went to court and spoke. I said you’ve got no idea how these children wind care staff up. You know, we sit comfortably at our home, we expect care staff with small pay to look after some of the most admittedly tragically deprived. It’s not their fault that they wind people up, and they’re aggressive. Once somebody loses their cool and they do hit somebody then, you know, you say they should be locked up. And I got them off.” Stacey seemed to be very focused on his staff and never on the service users in his care. How many other cases of abuse did he cover-up?
What’s clear from listening to the seven hours of interviews, is that Nicolas Stacey was very much a part of the establishment. Rev. Stacey admitted to hiding cases of abuse while he was responsible for the safety of the children in care homes around Kent. This admission should be enough to deserve a public inquiry into Kent Social Services during his reign as well as the Kent Police force’s response to the recorded confessions.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-40547724/clergyman-never-once-reported-social-services-staff
Peter Righton was of a close associate of Nick Stacey, a man of God, who played a central role in the protection of paedophiles. As Director of Social Services, he instructed his staff not to report alleged paedophiles within Kent Social Services.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40547383
Social worker, Tony Graham, jailed for sexual acts with under-age girls. The Rev Nick Stacey, a former director of Kent social services, said that he had appointed Graham in 1982
Dame Alun Roberts @ciabaudo
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alun:
On the face of it, the Gatsby Project, a distance learning project for residential child care workers, was a good thing – except that it was carried out with Peter Righton, who was an active member of PIE and was convicted of possessing child abuse images in the early 90s
LazerLight @Lazer_Light23
Bloody Hell, this is all making sense now. Social Work Today’s Margaret Jervis, who went on to become a legal adviser for the ‘False Memory Syndrome Society’. No wonder the animosity.
The role of Rev. Nicholas Stacey and his associates (incl. Claire Jervis) should be subjected to greater scrutiny.
Nick Stacey, a man of God, plays a central role in the protection of paedophiles. Later a Director of Social Services, he instructed his staff not to report alleged paedophiles within Kent Social Services.
Righton and Stacey
Stacey, formerly a vicar, was very close to Peter Righton, and was based in Maidstone, where Righton also lived for a time. They cemented their friendship via Social Work Today and were on a steering committee together, training those working with disturbed young people.
Just to show how close Righton and Stacey were, here they are on the same committee. Note also: John Rea Price of Islington
Also in this group were John Rea Price, Director of Islington for 19 years while every one of its kids’ homes was run by paedophiles. When Liz Davies blew the whistle on Islington, the coward Rea Price quickly legged it to become CEO of NCB, also based in Islington.
Nicholas Stacey and Claire Jervis: What is it about Islington?
https://scepticpeg.wordpress.com/2017/10/01/islington-the-connections-leading-to-pie/
Claire Jervis
The role of Rev. Nicholas Stacey and his associates (incl. Claire Jervis) should be subjected to greater scrutiny.
http://www.kentonline.co.uk/gravesend/news/inmates-were-given-drugs-with-134688/
Also close to Righton and Stacey was Chris Andrews, Chair of BASW and another force within SWT alongside Margaret Claire Jervis.
When Righton was arrested in 1992, Chris Andrews, who spoke for BASW, was one of the first to jump to Righton’s defence.
Read here how Andrews rushed to the defence of paedophile Peter Righton:
Chris Andrews, of BASW, described Righton at the time of his arrest as follows: He [Righton] is a highly respected figure within the residential field, particularly working with highly disturbed children. He is very much concerned with therapeutic work in child care’ (cited in Burden and Rose, ‘Porn Squad quiz Child Care Expert’).
Complimentary tickets to PIE (Paedophile Information Exchange) event from convicted paedo Tom O’Carroll to Chris Andrews of BASW, colleague of Hewson friend Claire Jervis.
It would appear that Nick Stacey turned first to the Sainsburys for funding:
The Sainsburys also backed the Tear Fund, a Christian relief organisation closely associated with Cliff Richard, a man accused of child abuse whose name appeared as a patron of the Elm Guest House child brothel.
All for the love of Vaz: The Sainsburys were also close to Keith Vaz, a man who rarely fails to get a mention in threads of mine. This time the link is Auchi, a man guilty of fraud whose extradition Vaz tried to prevent:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/may/27/election2001.labour… https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/married-mp-keith-vaz-tells-8763805…
During the 1992 election Shaun Woodward (ex-husband of Camilla Sainsbury) worked as media guru for then party chairman Chris Patten
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/571139.stm
Nick Stacey – Governor of Reed’s
Cyril Smith molested boy, 11, at National Liberal Club – and introduced him to David Steel: Further embarrassment for the Lib Dems after another shocking revelation
- 29stone paedophile MP took schoolboy from Rochdale to London
- Introduced him to party leader David Steel, molested him later at HQ
- Victim, now 49, claims he was ‘suicidal’ until the age of 25 after assault
A man told yesterday how he was molested as an 11-year-old by Cyril Smith in a bedroom at the National Liberal Club.
The paedophile MP took the schoolboy from his Rochdale constituency to London and introduced him to Liberal Party leader David Steel at Westminster.
Hours later, 29stone Smith sexually assaulted the boy at the club which housed the party’s headquarters.
The schoolboy’s sordid encounter with Smith took place in 1978 after his mother spotted a story in the Rochdale Observer newspaper. It said the MP had been invited to nominate a Rochdale boy from a one-parent family for a free place at public school.
She contacted Smith and was told it was Reed’s School in Cobham, Surrey, founded in 1813 as a boarding school for children who had lost one or both parents. After visiting the family, Smith took the 11-year-old by train to the capital.
Smith’s victim, who is now 47 and doesn’t want to be identified, said: ‘He sat next to me on the train. I remember he ate a massive breakfast of fried eggs and bacon.’
The MP first took the schoolboy to the Houses of Parliament where he met Mr – now Lord – Steel.
The victim recalls little of the meeting save for a brief introduction but said: ‘I remember telling all my friends at the time that I had met the leader of the Liberal Party – it was something to brag about.’
In the afternoon he travelled to Surrey to tour the school whose former pupils include Tim Henman and where current boarding fees range from £22,000 to £27,000 a year.
On returning to London he and Smith arrived at the National Liberal Club near Parliament. The Liberal Party HQ was based in offices in the building and it also provided accommodation for members.
Smith was ‘disappointed’ when told the boy had decided not to take up the Reed’s School offer. The victim finally told his mother what had happened some ten years later. ‘She was mortified,’ he said. His mother added: ‘I was terribly anguished and have been since. But Smith was extraordinarily plausible.’
Her son said: ‘If my small story can encourage other people to get in touch and flesh out the real truth here and prompt a public inquiry, then so be it.’
The Queen meeting staff from Reed’s School in Cobham, during a royal visit
Reed’s School patron is Queen Elizabeth
Chairman of Governors and Life President is Viscount Bridgeman – Nicolas Stacey’s wife is Anne Bridgeman –
3rd Viscount Bridgeman is her cousin
http://www.reeds.surrey.sch.uk/patrons-and-governors
Job title Organisation Date Trustee Parliament Choir 2011 – Chairman CORESS 2006 – 2012 Joint Life President Reed’s School 2002 – Chairman Hospital of St. John and St. Elizabeth 1999 – 2007 Trustee Music at Winchester 1995 – 2006 Treasurer Florence Nightingale Art in Sickness Trust 1995 – 2006 Treasurer New England Company 1995 – 2006 Chair of Governors Reed’s School 1994 – 2002 Chairman Friends of Lambeth Palace Library 1992 – 2008 Special Trustee Hammersmith and Queen Charlotte’s Hospital Authority 1992 – 2000
ob title Organisation Date Director Guinness Mahon and Co. Ltd 1988 – 1990 Director Nestor – BNA Plc. 1988 – 2000 Partner Henderson Crosthwaite and Co., Stockbrokers 1973 – 1986 Director The Bridgeman Art Library Ltd. 1972 –
UK Parliament Committee House Date Consolidation Bills (Joint Committee) Jul 2017 – Consolidation Bills (Joint Committee) Jun 2015 – Apr 2017 EU Sub Committee F – Home Affairs, Health and Education May 2012 – Mar 2015 EU Sub-Committee G – Social Policies and Consumer Protection Oct 2011 – May 2012 Information Committee (Lords) Jun 2010 – Sep 2011 House of Lords Offices Committee Jun 2001 – Nov 2002 Standing Orders (Private Bills) Committee (Lords) Jun 1997 – May 2001 EU Sub-Committee C Nov 1993 – Apr 1997 Ecclesiastical Committee (Joint Committee) Nov 1990 – Oct 1991 Statutory Instruments (Joint Committee) Jun 1990 – Nov 1993
Category 10: Non-financial interests (a) Member of Court, New England Company (missionary charity) (interest ceased 7 November 2017) Director, Bridgeman Art Library Limited Category 10: Non-financial interests (b) Joint President, Reed’s School Category 10: Non-financial interests (e) Trustee, CORESS (medical research charity) (interest ceased 7 November 2017)
Policy Interests Asylum, immigration and nationality Energy and environment European Union Health services and medicine Home Affairs Local Government Northern Ireland Social services World Areas European Union Greece UK Areas County Down and Northern Ireland Hampshire Yorkshire
https://www.parliament.uk/biographies/lords/viscount-bridgeman/3515
His son Luke Bridgeman – member of the notorious Bullingdon Club, alongside Nat Rothschild
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/oct/30/fashion-bullingdon-george-osborne-oxford
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-mail/20161129/282849370590858
Luke and his father are part of the New England charity:
The Court
The New England Company is managed by a Court, who are Trustees of the Charity, chaired by a Governor. Members of the Court are required to be practising Christians.
The role of the Court is to oversee the management of the New England Company’s assets and investments and to make grants to support its objectives.
The Court meets at least four times a year to consider applications for grants, to consider how the New England Company’s income should be spent and generally to oversee the good management of the Charity.
Members of the Court
- The Hon. Luke Bridgeman
- THS Duke
- The Rev Colin Fox
- N Kaye
- WG Lee
- RJW Milliken
- W Rathbone
- The Lord Rayleigh
- DMF Scott
- WMF Scott
- GC Stephenson
- WO Stephenson
- CJ Talbot
- NW Wells
- The Rt Revd Peter Wheatley
Officers and Committees
- Governor:
- NW Wells
- Treasurer:
- The Hon. Luke Bridgeman
- Missions Committee:
- THS Duke (Chairman)
- The Rev Colin Fox
- DMF Scott
- WO Stephenson
- The Rt Revd Peter Wheatley
- Finance Committee:
- The Treasurer (Chairman)
- The Governor
- RJW Milliken
- W Rathbone
- WMF Scott
- Property Committee:
- N Kaye (Chairman)
- The Lord Rayleigh
- GC Stephenson
- CJ Talbot
- Secretary:
- Mrs Nikki Johnson
- http://www.newenglandcompany.org/htms/court.htm
The Virginia Company comprised of two branches, the London Company and the Plymouth or New England Company. The former was responsible for the first permanent colony in America at Jamestown on May 14th 1607 and the latter were the so-called ‘Pilgrim Fathers’ who arrived at Cape Cod in the ship the Mayflower, in November 1620, and went on to land in Plymouth Harbour on December 21st. The ‘Pilgrims’ of American historical myth were, in fact, members of the second Virginia Company branch called the New England Company
Given the royal family’s extremely close links to the Sainsburys, it is highly unlikely that Prince Charles would be unaware of Peter Ball’s involvement in the Derry Mainwaring Knight case …
The last two checks Mrs Sainsbury wrote to satanist Derry Mainwaring Knight were to purchase a satanic throne.
The biggest contributor was Mrs. Sainsbury, who wrote checks totaling $116,000. Next came the chief magistrate and former high sheriff of East Sussex, a wealthy farmer named Michael Warren, who is reported to have given nearly $80,000
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/04/world/devil-did-it-a-british-man-nets-313000.html
^ Mrs Sainsbury is related to Elizabeth Butler-Sloss
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainsbury_family
Theresa May’s, (the new prime minister) first choice to head the designed to fail inquiry into establishment child abuse…Elizabeth Butler-Sloss … who tried to cover up for bishop Peter Ball
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Home Office defends Butler-Sloss amid claims of abuse cover-up
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The Home Office has again been forced to defend the appointment of Lady Butler-Sloss to run the inquiry into allegations of historical child abuse amid claims she refused to go public about bishop Peter Ball implicated in a scandal.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jul/12/home-office-defends-butler-sloss-bishop-cover-up
Rev Peter Ball part of youth dance held in graveyard
Rev Michael Turnbull, who scheduled the graveyard dance at which Bishop Peter Ball spoke,…was domestic chaplain to the Archbishop of York Donald Coggan
In 1965, Turnbull e moved to York to be domestic chaplain to the Archbishop of York Donald Coggan
Turnbull was asked what his policy regarding gay clergy would be. He replied that: “An admitted and open lifestyle is incompatible with full-time ministry.”[8]
Despite his speaking out against homosexual clergy, in 1994 the News of the World reported that the bishop had been convicted of an act of gross indecency with a Yorkshire farmer. The offence occurred on 30 August 1968, as undercover policemen kept watch on public toilets in Hull. On 13 September at Hull magistrate’s court, Turnbull, who at the time was chaplain to the Archbishop of York, pleaded guilty and was given a 12-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay costs of £6.30.[11]
The disclosure of Turnbull’s gross indecency conviction came just four weeks before his scheduled enthronement. His past was known to the archbishops of Canterbury George Carey and York Stuart Blanch, to Lord Runcie, the previous archbishop and to Lord Coggan, whom Turnbull had acted as chaplain when the offence took place.[12]
According to close associates, Turnbull “seriously considered withdrawing” from his enthronement “when his past was revealed.” In his sermon during his enthronement, Turnbull spoke of the “gravity of sin” and of his “repentance”. He told the congregation that he had been “through a private and now public process of repentance”, and that he was “deeply sorry” that friends had to share in the consequences of his past. His sermon also touched on the “depth of forgiveness” by many fellow Christians.[12]
Outside the cathedral, the leader of the pressure group OutRage!, Peter Tatchell, and others protested “against what they saw as [Turnbull’s] hypocrisy”.[12]
In 1995, George Carey appointed Turnbull as chair of the Commission on the Organisation of the Church of England with the task of producing a plan to save the Church of England. The commission was given the nickname “Turnbull Commission.”[10][14]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Turnbull
“Rt Rev Michael Turnbull, Bishop of Durham”
Queen Elizabeth II has approved a nominee to replace a controversial Anglican bishop who is retiring this summer. The Rt. Rev. Michael Turnbull is the nominee to be the new bishop of Durham in northern England, succeeding the Rt. Rev. David Jenkins
Turnbull report:
“Rt Rev Michael Turnbull, Bishop of Durham”
30 Nov 1995
1995 Turnbull report: “Working As One Body” – “A clause allowing people convicted of child abuse to become churchwardens in a package of changes to the lay office provoked bitter criticism.
alun:
The 1995 Turnbull Report ‘Working As One Body’ included a clause allowing people convicted of child abuse to become churchwardens in a package of changes to the lay office. This, unsurprisingly, provoked bitter criticism.
alun:
The Rev. Turnbull who organised the 1965 graveyard bop and hot dog roast at which Bishop Ball spoke went on to become domestic chaplain to Donald Coggan, the Archbishop of York, and later, in 1984, Bishop of Durham.
Prince Charles’ card and gift to Jimmy Savile:
Charles, who led tributes when Savile died, aged 84, in October 2011, had sent him cigars and gold cufflinks on his 80th birthday.
A note with the gifts read: “Nobody will ever know what you have done for this country, Jimmy. This is to go some way in thanking you for that.”
AnnaStillHereRaccoon @AnnaRaccoon2017
who they are so when they try to write about JK they will have the same treatment I’ve had. Not hide behind false names. They call him ‘Sir’ Same as Savile. They had meeting up in Leeds. Amanda, Johnny, Hewson, rabbit don’t know about moor or jervis, can’t remember.
Alun:
So the Gin Goblin (Hewson) met up with Savile’s (niece Amanda?) who has boxes of savile’s correspondence
LazerLight @Lazer_Light23
Gin Goblin, is it malicious gossip when @AnnaRaccoon2017 maintains you were at Leeds meeting with Amanda McKenna, niece of Jimmy Savile?
Anna Racoon:
Big Ears wrote to Savile about many things……..of cabbages and kings….
Dame Alun Roberts @ciabaudo
We know BigEars (Prince Charles) wrote to Bishop Peter Ball and Bishop Peter Ball wrote to Enoch. But did BigEars (Prince charles) write to Savile about Cleveland? Now that’s one for you, eh?
Did BigEars (Prince Charles) urge Savile to get involved with the Cleveland scandal? See what it was all about? If so, why? And with what intention?
But why would he do that? Why would he be interested in Cleveland?
Lady Susan Sainsbury and Bishop Peter Ball were both supporters of satanist Derry Mainwaring Knight
Here’s the Prince neatly juxtaposed in a newspaper right next to an article about Derry Mainwaring Knight …
When night falls on Dartmoor owned by the Duchy of Cornwall … http://www.westcoast-news.org/story-satanists.htm …
*Ted Hughes was a close friend of the Queen Mother.
Ted Hughes is said to have learned about Wicca and mind control from his mother: see Popular Witchcraft page 149
Master Storyteller or Master Deceiver?
*Van der Post a spiritual adviser to Prince Charles; In 1982 Charles made him godfather to his heir, Prince William. Van der Post was also a close friend of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, exerting an influence on her policy in South Africa.
In the early 1950’s, when he was 46, he seduced the 14-year-old daughter of a wealthy South African winemaking family, who had been entrusted to his care during a sea voyage. She became pregnant, and although he sent her a small stipend, he never publicly acknowledged the daughter born of the relationship.
…the Queen Mother’s cousin Lilian Bowes Lyon, with whom he was having a relationship.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/03/books/master-storyteller-or-master-deceiver.html?pagewanted=all
Van der Post defending another paedophile
https://bitsofbooksblog.wordpress.com/tag/sir-laurens-van-der-post/
Even intimates of the prince knew little of the nature of the relationship he forged with Hughes. Now he has made it tangible by placing a plaque in his private sanctuary. The recognition given by Charles to Hughes's role had previously been given only to one other person: the late Sir Laurens van der Post, who once led the prince on retreat into the Kalahari desert and became godfather to Prince William. Hughes, poet laureate from 1984 until his death at 68 from cancer in 1998, was a frequent guest at Highgrove and he shared with the prince an unconventional spiritual curiosity. His presence will now live on in two commemorative stained glass windows installed in the prince's private temple, hidden in a glade in the grounds.
Hughes's reputation has also been questioned since his death. Former lovers, including Emma Tennant, the novelist, have come forward to destroy the myth that he lived for years as a saintly recluse after the suicides of Plath and his common-law wife Assia Wevill, who also killed their four-year-old daughter
http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg61923.html
The existence of a secret stone memorial to Ted Hughes has emerged after being found by walkers on a remote hillside on his beloved Dartmoor.
Prince Charles, a close friend of the poet laureate, gave special permission for the plain piece of granite to be laid on land owned by his Duchy of Cornwall estates near the Fernworthy forest, it was revealed yesterday
A spokeswoman for Prince Charles said the Duchy of Cornwall operates a blanket ban on such memorials but the prince intervened, although he has yet to visit it.
She said: “Ted Hughes had a very special link with the Royal family as poet laureate and moreover he was a special and dear friend of the Prince of Wales and so a rare exception was made to enable the memorial to be laid.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/aug/22/books.booksnews
MEAT magnate Lord Vestey counts Prince Charles as a close friend and his second wife, Celia Knight, is Prince Harry’s godmother
He is the owner of the 6,000-acre Stowell Park estate near Northleach – and chairman of Cheltenham Racecourse
‘This is a day for families to have fun and show the Government that the people want proper racing on a Sunday.’
He was not the strangest sight of the day. That prize must go to the Bishop of Gloucester, the Rt Revd Peter Ball, who enjoyed a large congregation for his short service of prayer in the winners’ enclosure. This may have been due, in part, to the presence of Desert Orchid, who was doing a parade of honour at the time.
…several thousand children who were admitted for free..the occasion was deemed suffi- ciently respectable for Cheltenham Ladies’ College to bring along two busloads of junior girls for the first time.
Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles, enduring a painful weekend of speculation about his wife’s friendship with the Prince of Wales, attended
Former head of Independent Panel Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse
Fiona Woolf – her husband Nicholas Woolf its on a board with someone very close to the royal family:
Hospital Board
He is former Lord Prior of the Order of St John. He is Chairman of The Vestey Group
https://www.stjohneyehospital.org/who-we-are/hospital-board
Lord Vestey and Prince Charles
It is quite Eye Opening Info, that Lord Mountbatten, Charles’ mentor, who introduced Jimmy Savile to the Royal Family, used to have Charles and Camilla visiting regularly in the early 70s around the time that Judge Goddard was in Britain with Camilla’s friend [11]
Truthseeker1 @thewakeupcall09:
Lord Louis Mountbatten former chauffeur Norman Nield exposed him
Paedophile Lord Louis Mountbatten
Edward Prince of Wales and his cousin Lord Louis Mountbatten “relax” in a canvas swimming pool on board H. M. S. Renown during their 1920 Empire Tour.
Lord Louis was a great grandson of Queen Victoria and the uncle of Prince Philip (consort of Queen Elizabeth II). Mountbatten was also a promiscuous bisexual who was famously rumored to have had an affair with Edward VIII (who was Prince of Wales at the time) when he accompanied him on his Empire tours (see photo above).
The Queen. Like any human being, she is subject to the influence of those around her. While he lived, Lord Mountbatten was a persuasive counsellor, and he formulated the plan for Prince Charles’s unusually rigorous education.
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/magazine/an-informal-look-at-the-royal-family.html?pagewanted=all
Goddard inquiry: Outrage as bishop jailed for sex offences given public funding for legal team
30 July 2016
A disgraced bishop jailed for a string of sex offences has been given public funding for a legal team at the Government’s child sex abuse inquiry, The Telegraph can disclose.
The decision to pay for lawyers, costing taxpayers up to £200 an hour, to defend the reputation of Peter Ball, the former Bishop of Gloucester and of Lewes, has outraged his victims.
Ball is the first convicted sex offender to be granted taxpayer funds, setting a precedent that could pave the way for dozens of paedophiles to get the same deal.
He received the legal funding because he “may be subject to explicit criticism by the inquiry”.
A lawyer close to the inquiry said: “I was really surprised Ball was given funding. The issue is about how he was allowed to get away with it by the Church not about his offending. He has already been investigated and pleaded guilty.”
Update on Lord Carey:
The Archbishop of Canterbury with his son Rev Mark Carey
Vicar son of former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey arrested over historic child sex abuse claims
21 Oct 2016
Rev Mark Carey, 51, is accused of assaulting a young girl in the 1980s when he was in his late teens
His alleged victim, now in her 30s, claimed she was assaulted when he was in his late teens and Lord Carey was a priest in the North-East.
(Notable Crusader Peter Broadbent was at St Nicholas’ Church til 1980.
Ordained in 1977, Broadbent’s first parish job was as Curate to George Carey, when he was Vicar of St Nicholas, Durham and he was an Islington Labor councillor 1982-1990.)
Mark Carey, now 51, would have been no more than 17 years old at the time.
(Mark Carey was, born in 1965, he was 17 in 1982. If the woman is in her 30s now, she would have been born between 1977-1986, so in 1982, the oldest she would have been was 5 years old.)
Rev Carey was released on police bail and has since been suspended by the Church of England pending inquiries.
Father of three Rev Carey, who followed his father into the church in 1995
Rev Carey’s father was Archbishop between 1991 and 2002
He was joined at his home in Harrogate, North Yorks, yesterday by his father and mother Eileen. His wife Penny, 53, whom he married in 1988, refused to comment.
The alleged victim approached Durham Police to make the complaint. Officers from North Yorkshire police arrested him.
The former social worker – was ordained in 1995 at Wakefield Cathedral, witnessed by his father.
He had previously been curate of Christ Church in South Ossett, West Yorks and went on to be a parish priest in Sheffield and then Harrogate in 2007.
Last night, a Church of England spokesman said: “A 51-year-old priest in the Diocese of Leeds has been suspended by the Bishop following his arrest by Durham Constabulary concerning allegations of historical abuse.
His brother Andrew, who works at the Christian charity Barnabas Fund, told the Sunday Telegraph that his family did not wish to comment on the allegations against Rev Carey.
Lord Carey said he was ‘appalled’ at the way it (the church) handled the accusations against Bishop George Bell
21 Oct 2016
THE former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has been granted core-participant status at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) after Professor Alexis Jay, who chairs it, ruled that he “may be subject to explicit criticism by the Inquiry in due course”.
Core participants are entitled to legal representation at the Inquiry and to receive advance disclosure of evidence. They may also cross-examine witnesses when the public hearings begin, something that is expected to happen next year.
In his application for core participant status, lawyers for Lord Carey explained that, as a retired office-holder, he was led to be believe that he would be represented at the Inquiry by lawyers for the Archbishops’ Council, which also has core-participant status. “Once the Archbishops’ Council indicated to Lord Carey that there might be some conflict between their interests and those of Lord Carey, he made contact with alternative legal representatives,” Professor Jay said.
In granting core-participant status, Professor Jay said that “Lord Carey was Archbishop of Canterbury at the time when [the former Bishop of Lewes, then of Gloucester] Peter Ball’s sexual abuse came to light in 1992, and when he received a police caution in 1993, and it is stated in Lord Carey’s application that he had a pastoral and disciplinary role in relation to Peter Ball at that time. I also understand that Lord Carey was involved in deciding on Peter Ball’s further officiation within the Church of England after he received that caution.
”The Inquiry will consider the extent to which any failings identified in relation to the diocese of Chichester and Peter Ball are representative of wider failings within the Church of England and/or the Anglican Church in general, and the nature and extent of any failings of institutions to protect children from abuse.
1993 Peter Ball, Diocesan Youth Adviser
https://archive.org/stream/the-door-1993/199304_djvu.txt
turnDr Carey said Bishop Ball was a “highly gifted and original man who has inspired many people to deepen their faith in Jesus Christ.”
The Guardian
London, Greater London, England
Police urged to investigate Lord Carey, former C of E head
A lawyer representing victims of an abusive Church of England bishop has called for an investigation into the ‘misconduct’ of former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton, above.
According to this report, David Greenwood, representing several of Peter Ball’s victims, said he was sure the Church had covered up evidence and urged Scotland Yard to:
Consider opening an investigation into perverting the course of justice by church officials.
Greenwood spoke out after the release of documents that suggest the head of the Church of England knew about the abuse allegations but failed to act.
Sussex police documents, released under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act last week, reveal that Lambeth Palace, the residence of the head of the Church, received six letters and a number of verbal reports detailing allegations of abuse shortly after the initial investigation into Ball in 1992.
In the letters, Ball is accused of encouraged victims to pray naked, perform sex acts in front of him and share his bed.
The files indicate the Church failed to pass this evidence on to police. In February 1993, Lord Carey wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions and a chief constable in support of Ball.
During Ball’s trial last year, Lord Carey denied that the correspondence with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) amounted to a cover-up.
Last October, current Archbishop Justin Welby launched an independent review into the Church of England’s response to the allegations.
A spokesperson for Lord Carey declined to comment but said Carey was cooperating fully with Welby’s inquiry.
The newly released documents also suggest Ball associated with other known sex offenders in the clergy and was investigated in 2008 for being part of suspected pedophile ring.
The documents show Ball covered for and helped priests accused of sex abuse.
MISC
Mark Carey
I used to work with children and young people as a Residential Social Worker in Bristol before becoming a C of E Vicar. I now lead Kairos Church, formerly St Mary’s Harrogate with All Saint’s, Harlow Hill.
https://www.facebook.com/mark.carey1
Nursing Times, Nursing Mirror, Volume 83 – 1987
Mark Carey was a residential social worker.
Mark Carey is passionate about adoption.
Mark CareyProtected Tweets
@kairoscarey
Follower & friend of Christ, husband, father of 3. Pioneer Minister Kairos Network Church.
Passionate about discipleship, adoption & Arsenal FC.
https://twitter.com/kairoscarey
Since 2006 when their building was declared unsafe, the congregation have been worshipping at Harrogate Grammar School where Mr Carey was licensed as Priest in Charge during a ceremony at the beginning of this month. The Bishop of Leeds and Ripon was there to lead the ceremony.
Mr Carey was previously vicar at St Mark’s Church Grenoside, Sheffield, where he had been for eight years. His wife Penny, and three children joined him at the vicarage in September as they embarked on their new life in Harrogate.
http://www.harrogateadvertiser.co.uk/news/homeless-churchwelcomes-new-vicar-1-2639829
GEORGE AND MARK CAREY; ABUSE CLAIMS
Lord George Carey
In England his time saw notable national events: he took part in the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, led worship for the nation in the Dome for the new Millennium;quoted at the Service commemorating the victims of the 9/11 attacks; led the tributes at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 2001 and preached memorably at Golden Jubilee of the Queen in 2002
He retired in 2002 at the age of 66 and was made a life peer, taking the title Lord Carey of Clifton, reflecting appreciation of his time as Bishop of Bath and Wells.
Her Majesty the Queen greets members of the Carey family at the Lambeth Palace Garden Party 2001
Her Majesty the Queen greets members of the Carey family at the Lambeth Palace Garden Party
2001
http://www.glcarey.co.uk/Pages/PhotoFile.html
Lord Chris Patten with wife, Lavender
Lord George Leonard Carey director at same company as Chris Patten’s wife LADY MARY LAVENDER ST LEGER PATTEN OF BARNES
United Learning Trust
https://companycheck.co.uk/company/04439859/UNITED-LEARNING-TRUST/companies-house-data
Lord Carey is a director of
Christian Weekly Newspapers along with RT REVD PETER ALAN BROADBENT
RT REVD PETER ALAN BROADBENT – director at son Mark Carey’s school ST.JOHN’S COLLEGE NOTTINGHAM LIMITED
He became a Christian at 14 through ‘Crusaders’, a Christian youth organisation. He trained for the ministry at St John’s College, Nottingham.
Peter Alan “Pete” Broadbent is a British Anglican bishop. He is the current Church of England Bishop of Willesden, an area bishopric in the Diocese of London. He was also the acting area Bishop of Stepney
He was 15 when he became a committed Christian through the Crusaders youth organisation. He studied English at Jesus College, Cambridge and then studied theology at St John’s College, Nottingham before being ordained.
Broadbent’s first parish job was as Curate to George Carey, the previous Archbishop of Canterbury, when he was Vicar of St Nicholas, Durham
Broadbent moved to the Diocese of London in 1980 to be curate of Emmanuel Church, Holloway and the Bishop of Stepney‘s Chaplain for Mission.
Pete Broadbent has served as a member of General Synod on and off since 1985 and was a member of its Standing Committee. He chaired the Business Committee of Synod from 1996 – 2000 and was also a founder member of the Archbishops’ Council.
Broadbent is a member of the Labour Party and was a councillor for the London Borough of Islington from 1982 and 1990, being the chair of their Development and Planning Committee.
| RT REVD PETER ALAN BROADBENT | Director | Jul 1952 | 14 Oct 1992 |
George Carey’s wife, Eileen, was won over by Billy Graham Crusade
When Eileen was sixteen the young American preacher, Billy Graham, was conducting his London Crusade and once a week Eileen took a chartered bus to London.
Later she welcomed Billy Graham to Canterbury Cathedral for the enthronement of her husband.
Who is John Smyth? Barrister who led Iwerne Trust accused of physically abusing boys from Winchester College in Christian group
John Smyth QC ‘forced public schoolboys to strip naked before subjecting them to savage beatings’
The prosecuting counsel was John Jackson Smyth, Mary Whitehouse’s fellow traveller from the Festival of Lights
Truth Sentinel @ScotTSentinel
Coincidence never ceases to amaze me. Look at these Royals in photos with convicted paedophiles they befriended. What rotten luck.
QUEEN’S PORNO BUTLER
Former QE2 steward Nicholas Greaves, 33, had 458 images of youngsters from two months to 16 years old on his computer – 13 in the most serious category – and 15 films.
He worked for the Royal Family between 2002 and 2004 at Buckingham Palace, Sandringham and Balmoral.
A former royal butler who opened doors for the Queen downloaded obscene images of young children, including scenes of torture and babies just months old.
radfax @radfax
Favoured butler to the Queen butler jailed for child porn offences
Queen Elizabeth II accompanied by the Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon (centre) received flowers from a young guest at Marlborough House in central London. The Queen marked her 80th birthday at a special Commonwealth celebration held in her honour in 2006
Greaves was questioned by police and immediately admitted owning indecent images of children and distributing them on the Internet. He said he used a one to one messenger service to chat with paedophiles and swap images of children but denied it was for sexual pleasure. “In interview he said he was not interested in the content of the photos but instead in the people who sent them,” Mr Hatton said. “He said he wanted to know what made them tick.” The former butler told police he thought they would only find six images on his computer as he regularly deleted them and had not built up a large collection. But when they searched the machine they found 453 indecent photos of children and 15 sick films. These had been categorised using a scale of one to five, where five indicates the sickest type of child porn. There were 13 pictures and one film in the top category and over 250 images at level three and above. Greaves told police he was surprised by the find and said he thought there was only around 100 deleted images. He could not account for over 300 pictures and 12 films not deleted and still stored in his MyPictures and MyDocuments files. The ex royal servant failed to answer police bail on 8 May, this year, but handed himself in at a police station a month later on 12 June. Greaves claimed he had tried to kill himself by taking over 100 pills the night before he was due to answer bail and was shocked to wake up alive. He said he panicked and drove off on his moped to Redcar and Blackpool looking for cliffs he could jump off but failed to find any. He then travelled round the country for a month, feeling suicidal, before handing himself in. Mr Reevel said Greaves was of previous good character and now realised how wrong his actions had been. Judge Marson ordered him to sign on the sex offenders register and disqualified him from working with children. He added: “There is no reason for the possession and distribution of these images other than for sexual gratification. “There is no other logical explanation and were it not for people like you those who make and distribute these dreadful images would have no market for them.” Speaking after the verdict Sgt Darrin Knight said: “I have a great deal of sympathy with the children depicted in the images, some of which are were the worst I’d seen in 17 years. “The judge understands the link between the people who download these images and the people who make them.” Sgt Knight said Greaves’ royal duties had included opening doors for the Queen and added: “As I understand it she has preferred butlers and he was one of them.”
A Westminster Abbey chorister who sang at Wills and Kate’s wedding was arrested over child sex allegations. Simon Gay, 61,...It is thought the case relates to his involvement in a monastic order set up by Bishop Peter Ball, jailed in 2015 for indecent assaults on young men.
Rev Revelation @revelation_rev
Fails to say an Anglican Royal Naval chaplain was also arrested for procurement.
Also arrested was Revd James Francis Royal Naval Chaplain who exposed both Peter Ball.
Can the COE, WM Abbey and Royal Navy confirm a Naval Chaplain has also been arrested for procurement?
https://twitter.com/revelation_rev/status/868741101921980420/photo/1
Francis’s digs are in Lashkar Gah, a military base so well-appointed it is nicknamed Lash Vegas
Rev Revelation @revelation_rev
Omg any other job and sex offence = sack. @RoyalNavy = fast track for Revd James Francis arrested for procurement. Also Mr A in Gibb Report
#resign Rowan Williams @JustinWelby dean of @wabbey too little too late. Still covering up abbey scandal Simon Gay and Revd James Francis RN
Rev Revelation @revelation_rev
Revd James Francis RN Chaplain outed +Peter Ball yet he was linked with Ball and Simon Gay. How many other connections?
Appointments
11 August 2017
St Ann’s Church is an Anglican chapel within Her Majesty’s Naval Base Portsmouth. It is regarded as the spiritual home of the Royal Navy, [1] and contains numerous memorials to men lost at sea.[2]
The original church was built in 1704, on the site of what is now Admiralty House. The present church was opened in 1786,[3] and is built in red brick in Flemish bond. It was possibly designed by Marquand, a Navy Board surveyor, working under Samuel Wyatt at Admiralty House. The contractors were Thomas Parlby & Sons. The church suffered some bomb damage in May 1941, and was restored in 1955-6.
As the oldest surviving chapel in a navy yard, it was Grade II listed on 25 September 1972.[4]
In October 2012, the church held ceremonies marking the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War, attended by Princess Anne. [5] As of 2015 the current chaplain is Revd. James Francis, RN.
Collection of many articles re: clergy abuse
Royal harpist faces sexual offences trial with partner
A HARPIST who has played for the Queen and other members of the royal family is facing child sex abuse charges.
...has also played for four consecutive prime ministers — ‘
Perrett’s former partner Richard Barton-Wood, 68, denies five charges of indecent assault, one of attempted assault and other two charges, all relating to the same teenager.
Barton-Wood, from Wymondham in Norfolk, is a warden and publicity officer at 12th century Wymondham Abbey.
He is said to have been working as a teacher in Suffolk when the offences allegedly took place.
Charlotte de Rothschild and Danielle Perrett
May 25, 2012
Charlotte and Danielle have worked together since 1993 and are one of the most successful soprano and harp duos around. In the past decade they have toured France, South Korea, Japan, USA and UK.
Danielle Perrett and Charlotte de Rothschild (one of The Remaining Heirs Of The Legendary Rothschild Dynasty)
World-renowned harpist who played for Queen jailed for sexually abusing schoolboy
27 FEB 2018
Danielle Perrett, who has performed for the Queen and several Prime Ministers, had earlier been convicted of separately indecently assaulting the boy while he was in his early teens
Perrett, from Alpheton near Sudbury in Suffolk, performed at Prince Philip’s 70th birthday party and has also played for Prince Charles, Princess Diana, Princess Anne, Prince Edward and the Duchess of York.
Barton-Wood, from Wymondham in Norfolk, is a warden and publicity officer at 12th century Wymondham Abbey.
He is said to have been working as a teacher in Suffolk when the offences allegedly took place.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/world-renowned-harpist-who-played-12097816
26/11/1996 Signed EDM 225
PRINCE’S YOUTH BUSINESS TRUST
That this House, noting that the Prince’s Youth Business Trust is 10 years old, views with approval its continuing contribution to the creation of small enterprises by young people in all parts of England, Wales and Northern Ireland; recognises the importance of the Trust’s support which enables young people to develop their self-confidence, achieve economic independence, fulfil their ambitions and contribute to the communities in which they live; records that, since its launch, the Trust has helped more than 32,000 young people to make the transition from unemployment to viable self-employment; congratulates the volunteers and staff of the Trust and those individuals, companies, trusts and foundations, together with local and central government, whose gifts in cash and in kind make the vital work of the Trust possible; congratulates the Trust on achieving 10 years of growing success since its foundation in 1986; and commends the work of the Trust to the interest and support of all honourable Members.
Some notable signers to the EDM- Peter Bottomley, Diane Abbott, Paul Boateng, Greville Janner, Tim Rathbone – he wrote a letter in support of paedophile Bishop Peter Ball
Former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey visiting Sir Peter Bottomley’s local Sunday school group
Chichester church abuser ‘allowed back into choir’
27 June 2017
A woman who was sexually abused by a lay vicar in Sussex says she was “completely failed” by the former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey.
Alesha Racine wrote to Lord Carey in 1992 after discovering her abuser had returned to the church where she had been sexually assaulted.
On Monday Lord Carey announced his resignation as an honorary bishop.
A review by Dame Moira Gibb found he had failed to pass on information about abuse carried out by Bishop Peter Ball.
Ms Racine’s abuser, Michael Walsh, was convicted of five indecent assault charges and confessed to sexual relationships with a further eight children.
He was sent to prison in 1990.
He had been a teacher, a lay vicar at Chichester Cathedral and also ran a choir at a church in Chichester.
Child abuse ‘inevitable’
After his release in 1992, Walsh returned to the same church to be part of the choir.
Concerned for the safety of other girls, in July of that year Ms Racine wrote to the then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, requesting his help.
Speaking after Lord Carey’s resignation, Ms Racine, 54, said: “I was very concerned that my abuser had just come out of prison and it appeared that he’d just gone straight back into the parish church where he’d originally worked, and was again in a position of authority in the choir there where young children – specifically girls – sang.
“I was really worried that these girls were at a huge risk. I felt it was inevitable that children would be abused.”
Three months after writing her letter she was told Lord Carey had been unable to consider her concerns because he was “committed to a series of visits overseas, together with his summer break”.
‘Duty of forgiveness’
She was informed one month later that the “Archbishop had been assured that there was no question of Michael Walsh being reinstated in the choir,” but nine months after raising her concerns she received a letter from the Archbishop’s chief of staff confirming her abuser was back in the choir.
Lambeth Palace wrote to Ms Racine saying the parish authorities had taken “great care” in coming to their decision to allow Walsh’s return to his position “weighing carefully the risk of re-offending against… the Christian duty of forgiveness”.
The letters revealed Lord Carey regretted the decision which allowed Alesha’s abuser back into churches and offered her his sympathies.
Ms Racine said: “I thought his response was deeply hurtful, in that it had taken me a lot of courage to write to him at all.
“Most of what he said was in defence of the Church and the people in it, rather than try to reach out to me as a victim.
“I do feel it was a complete failure on his part.”
A spokesman for the former Archbishop of Canterbury said the correspondence with Ms Racine had been conducted on Lord Carey’s behalf by his chief of staff.
He said: “Lord Carey has absolutely no memory of this chain of correspondence or these events. He cannot therefore comment.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-surrey-40418476
28 Aug 2007 The News Journal
The Sanctuary, built for the new millennium- four knobs which must be turned in a special way…
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles plan to ring in the new year with a “bring-a- bottle” party for their neighbors in Gloucestershire
How the ghost of Diana still haunts Highgrove: As Charles stages a festival to celebrate his beloved garden, RICHARD KAY reveals a poignant secret
- Charles to open up beloved 15-acre estate with Highgrove Garden Festival
- Garden features busts of influential poets, religious figures and relations
- But it still holds signs it was family home to Charles, Diana, and princes
- Sundial they got as a wedding present and places boys played are there
Once a week, Prince Charles takes out a pen and writes knowledgeably about a matter close to his heart.
Nothing unusual about that — he is famous, notorious even, for his ‘black spider’ letters, unfailingly courteous but often couched with just a hint of princely menace, addressed to ministers, civil servants and other public figures.
But this correspondence is different. For a start, he writes in red ink, not black. And rather than the anguish so often evident in the missives which have thumped onto the desks of Whitehall ministries for the past three decades, these are not introspective but full of practical good ideas.
What’s more, they are acted on at once. For they are the letters the Prince writes to his head gardener at Highgrove, his country home for the past 36 years.
Every week, Debs Goodenough, who has been in charge of the 15-acre formal garden since 2008, writes her own note to her boss.
These weekly reports outline what work has been done over the previous seven days and raise issues about new features, such as a new border or what replacement plants he wants.
The points are answered elaborately. Also included are reminders of tasks requiring urgent attention.
This is Prince Charles at his most relaxed: at home in the place where he is undisputed king of all he surveys.
Today, the fruits of his horticultural achievements will echo to the footfall of the curious who will arrive for the inaugural Highgrove Garden Festival.
As well as wandering around the lavishly tended grounds and buying plants and flowers that have inspired the Prince’s displays, visitors will be able to listen to talks from 24 speakers, including some who helped create the garden’s many spectacular features.
Highgrove garden is full of surprises and is constantly changing. By turns breathtaking and colourful, it can also seem ostentatious and eccentric.
Take the ‘Wall of Worthies’, where busts of some of the most influential people in the Prince’s life have been assembled into a screen. They include composer and musician Sir John Tavener, Debo Cavendish, the late dowager Duchess of Devonshire, poet and scholar Dr Kathleen Raine and the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, Bishop of London.
Elsewhere, other busts of people Charles admires include his spiritual guru Sir Laurens van der Post and Dr Alan McGlashan, the distinguished psychiatrist whose patients included Princess Diana.
A memorial is dedicated to the Queen Mother, to whom the prince attributes his love of gardening. A bronze frieze depicts her in her favourite gardening hat and pearls.
Not far away, a patch of long grass marks the grave of Tigga, the Prince’s much-missed Jack Russell. Nearby is a stone carving of the dog snoozing and there is another likeness of Tigga woven from willow.
Royal experts will recognise the two massive earthenware jars that William and Harry clambered inside to pose for their father’s 1995 Christmas card. Only some will know that when they were sent to the Prince of Wales, care of Tetbury, Glos’, the jars were delivered not to Highgrove but to the local Prince of Wales pub, much to the landlord’s surprise.
Another terracotta pot — lying on its side in the Mediterranean garden — was at the centre of a mini-drama when a young Prince Harry hid inside, to the consternation of his bodyguards, who feared he had vanished from the estate.
But what is perhaps most striking about the garden is the extent to which the shadow of Diana still hangs over it. Highgrove was, of course, a family home and an idyllic playground for the young Princes William and Harry.
Traces of Diana are easily spotted — the sundial, for instance, a wedding present from the Duke of Beaufort, and a bank of rhododendrons given by the late Edmund de Rothschild, also to mark the 1981 royal wedding.
The haunts where Diana played with her children are evident, too — she must have watched fretfully as William and Harry clambered up to their tree house, accessible by rope ladder and with trap door.
PRINCE CHARLES AND HIS KINGDOM OF ECCENTRICITIES
Potted history
Charles bought Highgrove in 1980 shortly before meeting Diana, and it became their country home after their marriage.
He described it as ‘stark and exposed, without a trace of any shelter and without a single flower-bed beside the house. It needed hedges, enclosures and vistas, so bit by bit I tried to tackle it.’ There was no grand plan, he says. Instead ‘it just grew like Topsy’.
Helping hands
The Prince was determined to create a self-sufficient organic garden where he could ‘restore lost habitats and plant lots of hedgerows and trees to heal the landscape’.
In 1982 he entered into a partnership with Dame Miriam Rothschild, the late natural scientist, and they planted an experimental 25 acres with 130 native wildflower varieties which became the celebrated meadows.
Together with Mollie, dowager Marchioness of Salisbury, he started work on three key features — the sundial garden, the terrace garden and the kitchen garden, where rows of vegetables and fruit trees are set out.
In 1989 art historian and landscape designer Sir Roy Strong was brought in to shape the topiary, and gardening writer Rosemary Verey designed a cottage garden which was dug with help from five-year-old Prince Harry.
Generous pals
Throughout the gardens are examples of gifts from the prince’s friends, from plants and trees to sculptures and carvings. At the end of the third-of-a-mile-long avenue of lime trees, which was planted in 1994, is a 40ft obelisk topped with a gilded phoenix, given to Charles on his 50th birthday by the Sultan of Oman.
The cast iron column on which the bird stands was salvaged from Victoria station in London and given to Charles by construction tycoon and railway enthusiast Sir William McAlpine.
In the arboretum, there is a bronze of the daughters of Tsar Nicholas II killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and called the Daughters of Odessa, which was a gift from the U.S.
Near to the lily pool is another bronze of a Borghese gladiator copied from the original which is in the Louvre in Paris and given to Charles by his friend, the Marquess of Cholmondeley.
An ornate timber bee house, holding ten hives, was presented from the people of Slovenia. Elsewhere, an Indian bean tree was a 50th birthday gift from Elton John, while the Monarchist League of Australia gave 60 ferns for his 60th in 2008.
Among the rare species, are a Manchurian ash, planted and blessed by the Dalai Lama during a visit in 1999, and a magnolia tree donated by ex-James Bond star Pierce Brosnan to mark the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002.
Nooks and crannies
Chickens with their own police guards: In the early years of the garden, the free-range chickens roamed near the houses where the police were billeted. ‘There was an officer known as the “sergeant of the coop” who kept an eye on them,’ recalls Ken Wharfe. Today, there are 100 hens, whose much-prized eggs are sold locally.
The sanctuary: This is out of bounds to all but invited guests. It’s the tiny woodland chapel, built to mark the Millennium, where Charles likes to pray.
The Stumpery: Conceived in the Eighties after the Prince received a lorry full of old, rotting tree stumps from Lord Cowdray’s estate in Sussex. Bedded in with the roots of ancient trees, this Victorian concept was planted with ferns and foliage. Prince Philip famously asked him: ‘When are you going to set fire to this lot?’
Paying guests
This week’s festival will see 4,000 visitors tramping round the garden. By the end of the year — visitors are permitted from mid-April to mid-October — 40,000 people will have paid a total £650,000 in entrance fees (which the Prince donates to charities).
Eye-watering cost
The precise number of plants, bulbs and trees is not known but one estimate puts it above 750 varieties. There are 21 gardeners and estate workers at all his homes. Over the years, he has lavished many millions on the garden. The Stumpery alone cost hundreds of thousands of pounds.
The legacy
Regardless of what he achieves as king, Charles’s greatest legacy may be his enchanting garden, where he has allowed his imagination to run riot and created a landscape — as he puts it — to ‘feed the soul, warm the heart and delight the eye.’
As the Prince told Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time last week, there was particular concern over this feature. ‘All the ladies were in despair that they were going to drop out (of it) . . .’ Though he did not name them, those ladies were almost certainly Diana and the Queen.
Wherever you turn there are associations with Diana. Once, when Charles was away, she asked royal protection officer Ken Wharfe if he could arrange for some go-karts to be delivered to Highgrove for the weekend. William laid out a track through the vegetable garden and Charles’s cherished wildflower meadow.
‘The area got churned up but he made sure it was all put back,’ says Wharfe. Fearing the worst when he next saw the Prince, he was surprised when Charles told him: ‘I hear you had a marvellous weekend with the boys — you’re not thinking of becoming the next Bernie Ecclestone are you?’
It’s true that Charles has expunged some traces of his ex-wife. The small cottage garden, on to which her sitting room opened, was dug up soon after her death and replaced with a yew hedge.
One observer commented tartly: ‘It is so very masculine. We called it Charles’s “Ego Garden”.’ The joke stuck and even Charles now refers to it as his ego garden.
The Prince also redecorated Highgrove after the couple divorced, ridding the house of Diana’s touches.
In contrast, Diana kept Kensington Palace just as it had been during their marriage — she felt the young princes would benefit from the familiarity of its decor.
In time, however, Charles learned from her example and ensured that mementoes of Diana were kept at Highgrove to please his children.
One unexpected sight is a statue of Diana, Goddess of Hunting. According to Highgrove biographer Bunny Guinness, it’s positioned at the end of one of the garden’s ‘most inspiring vistas’.
Visitors looking for more historical flourishes can see a mulberry tree which grew from a cutting taken from a tree planted by Henry VIII at Hampton Court.
And there is the Boscobel oak, grown from the tree which reputedly hid Charles II from Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers after the Battle of Worcester in 1651.
Of course, most will be coming for the magnificent array of spring flowers, and they won’t be disappointed, the coronation meadow is ablaze with daffodils and the magnolia and cherry blossom trees are in their pomp.
Times 27/7/18 : Peter Ball: the sinful bishop and a very English cover-up
Peter Ball escaped justice for decades, at a terrible cost to his young victims, thanks to his many establishment friends, argues Sean O’Neill
The tale of the paedophile bishop and the heir to the throne — private prayer sessions, gifts of money and a 20-year correspondence — is the stuff of a conspiracy theorist’s dream. Except that the story of Peter Ball and the Prince of Wales is not a theory. It is a key element in a real, modern-day account of how powerful people in Britain formed a protective shield around a predatory sex offender.
This Very English Scandal is not yet the stuff of a TV drama like the recent dramatisation of the Jeremy Thorpe affair. It is too raw, too real and too recent — a scandal that involves not just the prince but also an archbishop, a senior judge, government ministers and MPs, public school headmasters and the country’s top prosecutors and policemen.
They did what they did because he was one of their own. He was educated, articulate, plausible and his word was taken at face value while the young men who said he abused them were condemned as “mischief-makers”.
Despite strong evidence and a police desire to put him on trial for serious offences in 1993, some of his influential friends helped Ball to escape with a caution in return for resigning his ministry. Those friends then spent two decades rehabilitating him in the Church of England and the upper echelons of society before justice finally caught up with him and he was jailed in 2015.
A handful of key players have appeared this week at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. We have seen the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey of Clifton — a man who wrote a few months after Ball admitted guilt that he believed the bishop to be “basically innocent” — stumbling through hours of public questioning.
Also giving evidence was Wayne Murdock, the police detective who investigated Ball in 1992, recalling how the “hot potato” case drew letters and phone calls from bishops, MPs and even a senior appeal court judge.
Much attention has focused on Ball’s relationship with the Prince of Wales, who fought to avoid providing evidence. He hired the law firm Harbottle & Lewis to argue that demands from the public inquiry for “intensely private and confidential material” were a breach of his human rights. In the end, Clarence House insists, the prince gave his evidence voluntarily. His written submission is just seven pages long but remarkable details have emerged about his closeness to the disgraced bishop.
Ball had what was described as a “ministry with the Prince of Wales” and gave him “spiritual counselling”. In return, the prince provided Ball with “small gifts of money” and a sympathetic ear. The Duchy of Cornwall provided a newly purchased house in a Somerset village. Above all, his connection to the prince — which Ball made sure everyone knew about — gave him royal approval for a return to society after his police caution.
Ball relished his royal connections. He preached at the funeral of Bruce Shand, the Duchess of Cornwall’s father, in 2006 and was reported to be a guest at the duchess’s wedding to the prince in 2005. One document suggests he was invited to the Highgrove Millennium Eve party. He also claimed to be a friend of the Duchess of York.
In 1998, Ball wrote to Lord Carey boasting of the number of invitations to preach he was receiving: “I have spoken to 400 voluntary workers in Eastbourne with the lord lieutenant . . . I am shortly to preach to the Grenadier Guards in their chapel; preach at Wellington College, confirm at Radley College and next year preach at Dartmouth to what looks like a full turnout of the royal family.”
Only snippets of his correspondence with the prince have been made public. They are full of self-pity from Ball and lavish support from the prince. In February 1995 Charles wrote to Ball: “I wish I could do more. I feel so desperately strongly about the monstrous wrongs that have been done to you and the way you have been treated.” In 1997 he referred to a “frightful and terrifying man” and added: “I’ll see off this horrid man if he tries anything again.” The prince now says he cannot recall who he was referring to, but Ball had repeatedly claimed that his “accusers” were persecuting him.
The prince admits that his relationship with Ball only ended when the bishop, who cannot be stripped of his title under church rules, was convicted and jailed at the Old Bailey in 2015 for the sexual assault and exploitation of 13 young men. Charges relating to two boys aged under 16 were left on file.
The prince has expressed “deep personal regret” that he was “misled” by Ball. He maintains that he was “not aware until recently that a caution in fact carries an acceptance of guilt”.
That excuse has upset many of Ball’s victims. The Bishop of Gloucester’s resignation after being cautioned in 1993 was a national news story and can hardly have escaped royal attention. The Times reported on its front page that Ball had quit after a formal caution, “a legal step that is taken only after a clear admission of guilt”.
Richard Scorer, solicitor for five of the bishop’s victims, thinks the prince has been afflicted by “wilful blindness”, while William Chapman, counsel for another group of victims, says: “Prince Charles has many advisers — he only had to ask what a caution meant.”
The prince was not alone. The bishop cultivated friends in high places and drew on their support when he was threatened.
As they considered the case against Ball in the early 1990s, Albert Pacey, chief constable of Gloucestershire, and Dame Barbara Mills, the director of public prosecutions, received 24 letters from people in public life expressing support or sympathy for Ball. One letter to Dame Barbara came from Tim Renton, the former Conservative chief whip, who urged that “criminal action” should not be taken against a “man of immense kindness, charity and humour dedicated to serving God in the community”. Renton and his wife, according to inquiry evidence, “decided to write on House of Commons headed notepaper about Peter Ball, precisely so that they would get a more elevated and serious response”. CPS policy was that letters from MPs “had to be responded to at a senior level and required internal investigation and briefing at this stage from the DPP”.
Matthew Parris noted this week that “it’s friendship not money that most corrupts British politics”. The same is true of the corruption of public life and, in this case, the thwarting of the proper process of criminal justice.
Ball’s “helpers”, Mr Chapman argues, assumed “that as members of the establishment they are entitled, even duty bound, to weigh in on behalf of their establishment friends accused of serious crimes, even when they are not sure of what’s been alleged”.
Ball was always an odd member of that establishment. Born in 1932, he was educated at Lancing College and Cambridge University, and became a priest in 1957. His identical twin, Michael, also entered ecclesiastical life and became Bishop of Truro.
The brothers seemed, however, to have stepped outside the establishment ranks when they set up their monastic order, the Community of the Glorious Ascension, in 1960. Arguing that the Church of England had “gone soft”, they practised an austere form of worship. The order and its bizarre ceremonies became the cover for Peter Ball’s sexual offending through naked prayer and flagellation, which he falsely claimed were in the tradition of St Francis of Assisi.
Although he professed to live in near poverty, Ball loved the high life. Household bills during his short period as Bishop of Gloucester from 1992 until his resignation in 1993 were astronomical. Staff at Bishopscourt, his official residence in Gloucester, said that after he arrived “household expenditure on food and alcohol increased significantly and the house was expensively decorated and furnished”.
Ball had important friends and liked to entertain them. As suffragan Bishop of Lewes, he had made contacts in the Conservative Party. Mrs Thatcher was impressed by him and he was invited to No 10. When the see of Gloucester became vacant, the Downing Street appointments secretary Sir Robin Catford, a friend of Ball, ensured that he was picked.
He told John Major, then the prime minister, that Ball had been a squash blue at Cambridge and possessed “a quite extraordinary sparkling personality, impish humour and an unrivalled ability to communicate”. He was also “terribly good fun”.
Ball’s new post allowed him to enlist his most powerful friend when his enthronement at Gloucester Cathedral was attended by the Prince of Wales. He became a frequent visitor to Charles’s home at Highgrove where he administered Communion, prayed with the prince and advised him. Charles is adamant, and previous inquiries have concluded, that he did not interfere with the legal process or in Ball’s campaign to have his ministry restored after accepting a police caution in 1993. He has, however, conceded that he discussed Ball with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Lord Carey, the prince recalls, “was supportive of Peter Ball and thought him a good man and priest”.
Even before Ball was arrested in 1992, Lord Carey had telephoned Sir Peter Imbert, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, to ask what was going on. After Ball’s arrest, six people wrote to the archbishop with further allegations against him, some detailing abusive conduct. None of the letters was passed to detectives and Lord Carey called for prayers that the investigation “will clear [Ball’s] name”.
After Ball’s resignation in 1993, the church offered nothing to his victims but gave him thousands of pounds from the archbishop’s discretionary fund. Within two years he had been given permission to conduct services again. By 1997 Lord Carey, who had Ball to stay as a house guest at Lambeth Palace, had given him permission to carry out bishop’s duties again. Ball also asked for and got the archbishop’s blessing to conduct confirmation services at public schools. Ball said the pastoral support of the archbishop was “the light that sustained me at times”.
Well-placed friends rallied round to campaign for Ball’s return to the senior ranks of the church. There was even talk of a legal challenge to his caution, despite the fact he had admitted being guilty of a criminal offence. Prominent in the campaign was Anthony Lloyd, by now Lord Lloyd of Berwick, a law lord. Lloyd was perhaps Ball’s most cavalier supporter. Despite being an appeal court judge at the time of the 1990s investigation, he intervened in a criminal case by writing to the chief constable of Gloucestershire and the DPP. He told them Ball was “the most gentle upright and saintly man” who now found himself in an “appalling situation”. He also telephoned the lead detective on the case, musing in his “very posh” voice: “I know the DPP, I would like to influence her but I won’t.” The policeman made a note of the words in is diary.
Lloyd was one of what a Lambeth Palace aide described as a “powerful group of friends . . . coming to Peter’s aid”. He was still fighting Ball’s corner in 2013 when the bishop was under investigation by Sussex police. Lloyd, who denies any impropriety, wrote three letters to the Sussex chief constable demanding to know why his friend had been “manhandled”, why there was any need for an investigation and why the case was taking so long.
Sussex police said Prince Charles’s office was also in contact with them in 2013, wanting to know if they had seized from Ball any “material that may be embarrassing to Prince Charles or the monarchy in general”. The police responded that nothing to embarrass the prince had been found.
Lord Carey, too, was still in the Ball camp. He gave a witness statement for Ball’s defence rather than accept the invitation to be a prosecution witness. A police officer noted after a meeting with Lord Carey that he “feels PB has been punished enough”.
The judge, the prince and the archbishop maintained their contact and belief in Peter Ball until he finally admitted his multiple offences in 2015. He exerted a hold over these powerful people and exploited their influence — spoken and unspoken — to deny his victims justice for decades.
Thirty-two men have now complained of abuse by Ball — the true number is thought to be much higher. The first complainant, Neil Todd, who was 17 when Ball targeted him in 1992, left Britain to try to escape the trauma and rebuild his life in Australia. When the Ball case was reopened in 2012, and he was contacted by police and the media, the trauma returned and he took his own life. Mr Todd and his family had first come forward in 1992 fearing that there would be a cover-up. Their fears proved to be well founded. Ball, for his part, was released on licence in February last year after 17 months in prison. Now 86, he lives in Somerset with his twin brother Michael.
The notion of the establishment cover-up has been discredited in recent years in the aftermath of Scotland Yard’s botched handling of lurid and unfounded allegations of child abuse and murder against Lord Bramall, Harvey Proctor and the late Lord Brittan of Spennithorne. The Peter Ball affair is a reminder that, sometimes, extraordinary stories can also be true ones.
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sqjvmh
Misc
Tim Sainsbury and Greville Janner – HET
The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Donald Coggan with the three new bishops – two of them formerly Anglican monks – consecrated at St Paul’s Cathedral in London. They are, from left, the Rt Rev Anselm Genders, Bishop of Burmuda and formerly Bursar of the Community of the Resurrection in Mirfield, Dr Coggan, The Rt Rev Peter Ball, Suffragan Bishop of Lewes in the diocese of Chichester, and the Rt Rev Peter Nott, Suffragan Bishop of Taunton and formerly Rector of Baconsfield in Buckinghamshire.
Rev. Walter Frere, head of the Community of the Resurrection
Some key points to take away is that Hubert Braiser (Theresa May’s father) worked for the Community of the Resurrection Seminary School in Mirfield, West Yorkshire
https://www.freeandfearless.org.uk/theresa-mays-father/
Sir Timothy Sainsbury, who has been both president and vice-president of CFI – Conservative Friends of Israel
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20150302-inside-conservative-friends-of-israel/
https://opencorporates.com/officers/209914354
ROYAL OPERA HOUSE COVENT GARDEN FOUNDATION
Lord John Davan Sainsbury, Lord Robert Temple Armstrong Of Ilminster, The Rt Hon The Lord Peter Selwyn Gummer, Dame Gail Ronson, Lady Sainsbury
He met Camilla Sainsbury, whom he married in 1987, at a gathering of the London Cyrenians, a charity for the homeless.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/may/15/interviews.labour
Cyrenians -Its founder was Anton Wallich-Clifford, a Catholic probation officer who in 1963 started the Simon Community, a movement set up to provide an alternative for homeless single people who, at the time, faced the stark choice between night shelters and huge, 1,000-bed lodging houses.
https://www.thirdsector.co.uk/why-one-charity-broke-away-cyrenians/management/article/1352556
The tragic Sainsbury’s heir who gave away his millions…he left his money to the Prince’s Trust.
26 May 2007
For Annabel Sainsbury, scion of one of Britain’s wealthiest dynasties and sister of the former Labour Cabinet minister Lord Sainsbury, the 30th birthday of her eldest son Jason should have been a proud milestone. It was the day when Jason inherited a £2.5 million fortune from his grandfather, the late supermarket baron Sir Robert Sainsbury, and an occasion that had prompted much speculation at the family’s 400-acre estate in Horsham, West Sussex.
The Jason Kanabus Fund, to be launched later this month, will be administered through The Prince’s Trust
Annabel’s father, Robert, the famous philanthropist and patron of the arts, was already a director of Sainsbury’s by the time she was born – he spent his life working alongside his more flamboyant brother Alan at the head of the family supermarket business, which grew into a nationwide empire during the post-war years.
“I had a privileged upbringing,” Annabel admits.
Annabel’s father, Robert, the famous philanthropist and patron of the arts, was already a director of Sainsbury’s by the time she was born
“We had wonderful Christmases and family parties,”
Francis Bacon – Portrait of Sainsbury (Robert Sainsbury)
“I was the youngest of four and Father was always entertaining well-known and influential people. The artists Henry Moore and Francis Bacon were regular dinner guests.
“Once, the former editor of The Times William Rees-Mogg (now a Mail on Sunday columnist) had to nip out between the main course and pudding to finish the front page.
Robert and Lisa Sainsbury became Francis Bacon’s patrons in 1955 and for a short period they avidly collected his work. This portrait of Robert Sainsbury can be seen to relate to Bacon’s Businessmen series of the previous year, which also employed a degree of realism unusual in his work.
The blurred facial features and the perspective lines are recurring themes in Bacon’s portraits.
Lisa commissioned Bacon to paint this portrait of her husband (he did not normally work to commission) and, later, begin a series of sittings for the artist. Bacon produced some eight studies of Lisa; three of which are in the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection.
https://scva.ac.uk/art-and-artists/highlights/francis-bacon-portrait-of-sainsbury-robert-sainsbury
Sir Robert Sainsbury (1906—2000) with his wife, Lisa (1912—2014), was a well-known sponsor and patron of the arts. In 1978 the couple founded the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. They donated the bulk of their art collection to this centre. In the 1950s, the Sainsburys began to collect paintings by Bacon, with whom they developed a close relationship. He painted one portrait of Robert and eight studies of Lisa, but destroyed five of these.
http://www.francis-bacon.com/life/family-friends-sitters/robert-lisa-sainsbury
Satanic Art 101: Francis Bacon
Tucked away on the old Church of Satan website, there is a list called “Satanic Art 101.” This series explores one artist from that list, in this case Francis Bacon. All the old Church has to say is
Francis Bacon (1909-1992)
Painter
Screaming popes, perverse eroticism, and a raw, undefiled aesthestic that demonstrates that the beast in man does get some exercise from time to time.
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/whats-on/arts-culture-news/7-things-francis-bacon-liverpool-11334518
Revealed: How the Kray twins STALKED Francis Bacon and even sent him their naff paintings while they were in prison
- Francis Bacon revealed startling story on how he first met the Kray Twins
- Bacon was living in the Moroccan city of Tangier when he met them
- Ronnie Kray asked Bacon if he could bring a Spanish boy to his house
- A few years later, one of the Krays ordered several men to break into Bacon’s studio and steal his paintings late at night
During the three decades we were friends, Francis Bacon told me many strange stories about his life — but perhaps the most startling was his account of gaining two unwelcome fans in the form of the Kray Twins. It was during the 1950s that one of the most celebrated yet controversial artists of the 20th century met two of its most notorious gangsters.
The setting was the Moroccan city of Tangier, a place where, as Francis put it: ‘People came to lose their inhibitions — above all queers from England and America.’
Francis was living there when the Krays visited on holiday. Soon after they arrived, Francis received a request from Ronnie Kray, who was said to be the crueller of the brothers and, like Francis, was attracted to much younger men.
‘He said he had fallen for some Spanish boy but he didn’t think he could take him back to his hotel. He was worried about the impression it might make, though you wouldn’t think he’d have cared after cutting all those throats.
‘Anyway, he asked if he could bring him to my place. I had lots of rooms so I agreed, and after that I never saw the end of him. He always seemed to be there.’
If Ronnie Kray was grateful, he had a strange way of showing it. Some years later, with newspapers reporting that Francis’s paintings were selling for colossal sums, one of the Krays’ heavies broke into his studio in London and stole some of his pictures.
Too scared to involve the police, the artist only got the paintings back when they eventually turned up at auction, paying a ridiculous sum of money for his own work.
And he was not free of the Krays even after they were locked up for life in 1969. ‘I still hear from them,’ he told me. ‘They send me these paintings they do there. They’re very odd, always of these soft landscapes with little cottages in them.’
In Tangier, Francis had seen the Krays force a man to go down on his knees and kiss their shoes in a restaurant full of people.
‘Deep down I hated the idea of what they did to people,’ he said, and yet they clearly fascinated him, as did so many other men from the East End.
He believed that they were somehow more ‘real’ and ‘direct’ than their effete, devious counterparts elsewhere, and at one point he bought a house on the Thames near Limehouse, East London — which is today part of fashionable Docklands but was then one of the roughest parts of the city.
This was somewhat ill-advised, since the light constantly reflecting off the water proved distracting to his work. But for Francis, the area had the advantage of abounding with villains, and toughs working in the docks.
He described it melodramatically as ‘the house I shall be murdered in’ and, although he lived there only a short while, he clearly loved the danger of what Oscar Wilde called ‘feasting with panthers’.
Wearing gold watches which he flaunted as a come-on to ‘rough trade’, he had very specific tastes.
‘I actually prefer men who aren’t queer, or who don’t think they are,’ he told me. ‘That’s in the beginning at least. Afterwards, of course, they’re just as boring as the others.’
For many years, his lover was George Dyer, a pale and athletic young man who had the air of a successful East End entrepreneur.
In fact, as I learned from the gossip in Soho bars, he was an unsuccessful thief and burglar. One story suggested they met when Francis caught him breaking into his studio in Kensington via a skylight.
Their relationship was in its early stages when I first met Francis in 1963. As I explained in Saturday’s Mail, I was then a 21-year-old student who sought an interview with him for the magazine I edited at Cambridge University.
Although I have always been determinedly heterosexual, we developed a lasting friendship and I was often invited to see his paintings before they had been revealed to the wider world.
The first he showed me was one of a series of portraits of George who was then around 30 — some 20 years his junior. It depicted him as so badly beaten up that his own mother wouldn’t recognise him.
I wondered what went on between them. Perhaps Francis’s desire to pummel the figures he painted was a kind of re-enactment of what he himself went through as a willing victim of sadomasochism.
He told me that one former lover in Tangier had possessed a collection of rhino whips and been ‘kinky in all sorts of ways and very extreme’. On one occasion, Francis was turned out into the street by this man after being thrashed so badly that the police picked him up and took him to the station, thinking he was the victim of a severe random assault.
I myself had seen him barely able to walk or turn his head, presumably because he’d been so violently attacked by other passing lovers, and in George he had hoped to find a muscular East End ruffian who would punch and kick him within an inch of his life.
Instead, he found a confused and gentle young man whose clinginess often led to tensions between them.
Their relationship moved towards its tragic conclusion in 1971 when Francis received what he regarded as the greatest accolade of his career — being accorded the honour of a major exhibition in Paris.
This was where he most craved recognition, believing that the French were more demanding and discerning than any other nation when it came to art. Many of the portraits in the show were of George — caught in a black mirror, welded to a bicycle, corkscrewed to a chair.
On arriving in Paris, where I was working as a journalist, Francis told me that he’d only reluctantly brought his lover with him.
‘There’s been nothing between us for ages now but he asked whether he could come with me, and since he’s in so many of the pictures I could hardly say no.’
George had then only recently emerged from a rehab clinic where he’d sought a ‘cure’ for a severe drinking problem. Robbed of the oblivion he found in drink, he was clearly aware that he had lost Francis as well.
He looked pale and strained, and on the very day the show opened he took his own life, swallowing an overdose of sleeping pills in their hotel room.
Francis had been preparing for the exhibition at the time and told me he would never get over his guilt, both for leaving George alone that day, and for ever involving him in his world in the first place. ‘By giving him enough money to be able to do nothing, I took his incentive away,’ he said. ‘His stealing at least gave him a reason for living, and I should have left him exactly as he was. He’d have been in and out of prison, but at least he’d have been alive.’
In the aftermath of George’s death, Francis spent longer and longer periods in Paris, completing a series of profoundly moving paintings dedicated to the memory of his dead companion. During those two remaining decades of his life, our friendship deepened and his despair did not keep us from hitting Parisian high spots in determined fashion.
This took us from tea and dainty cucumber sandwiches at the Ritz to champagne in fashionable nightclubs such as Le Sept. This was a predominantly homosexual disco where Francis was greeted as a hero, even on crowded evenings when other celebrities such as the dancer Rudolf Nureyev and fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent were having supper.
There were star-studded parties, too, where guests included the likes of Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol — the latter responding mechanically to whatever you said with the words: ‘Gee, that’s great.’
In contrast to all this, one of our epic drinking bouts ended at a late-night bar in Paris, where porters from a food market would go for a quick brandy before hoisting sides of beef off lorries in their blood-smeared white overalls.
As Francis paid for each round, he pulled out a large ball of money, apparently not noticing the odd large note that fluttered into the sawdust on the floor — a performance that several meat porters followed with obvious interest.
When I finally decided I could drink no more, I bade him good-night. I have no idea whether he ended up with any of those porters.
But, for all his protestations that he’d never have another intimate relationship following George’s death, eventually there were other significant men in his life, including a Spaniard named Jose Capelo, 40 years younger than him.
A Madrid-based banker who spoke several foreign languages, he was a departure from what Francis described as the ‘brutes’ he usually found attractive.
It was with Jose that Francis turned up at Wiltons restaurant in Mayfair on a day when he and I had arranged to lunch together. We had made a firm date over the phone, but he looked surprised to see me and clearly thought that the two of them were eating alone.
By then he had turned 80 and his increasingly unreliable memory, along with a shortness of breath and alarmingly orange hair — the result of a bad dye-job — were all signs that he was fast ageing, something he had always dreaded.
‘Getting old is like having some deadly disease — and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy,’ he said.
That was in 1990, and two years later I was in New York when I saw a newspaper headline announcing that he had died of a heart attack while on holiday with Jose in Spain.
He had left a body of work which is among the most expensive sold at auction today. It includes portraits of such notables as Lucian Freud and Mick Jagger, but the person he painted more than anyone else was his lover George Dyer.
One of the unlikeliest muses in art history, he was also among the most tragic. His fate reminds us that, for all the disquiet surrounding Bacon’s works, nothing he put on canvas could ever match the dark reality of his private life.
Jailed for murder as a member of the Kray brothers’ gang, Chris Lambrianou has seen life’s dark side, yet his collection of thoughts and meditations seek to lift the reader from his or her own high walls of captivity.
Do the Walls Come Down?: Reflections of a Lifer by Chris Lambrianou
Lady Sainsbury (Foreword)
https://www.abebooks.com/9780340671191/Walls-Down-Reflections-Lifer-Chris-034067119X/plp
Freud’s intimate portrait of his friend Bacon
Graham Sutherland, a mutual friend and artist, introduced Freud to Bacon in 1945, inviting them to his house. They formed a close friendship and saw much of one another in the following years.
Bacon had a great influence on the younger Freud and is often credited with liberating his style and fuelling his desire to depict human life.
In the early 1950s, the artists sat for each other; Bacon’s first portrait of Freud came in 1951, and many others followed. Freud painted Bacon just twice.
It was originally known as Tyneside Cyrenians and led by Canon Thomas Gaughan, head of Catholic social services, Brian Roycroft, former director of Newcastle social services, Frank Welsh and Frank Pollock, both members of the Society of St Vincent de Paul.
It began as a soup run each evening in the city but, when the extent of the homeless problem became evident, it opened its first hostel – based near Leazes Arcade, close to Newcastle’s Haymarket – in 1972.
Manned seven nights a week by volunteers, there was a nightly draw for the 24 beds at 6pm. Admission for the lucky ones was at 8pm and they got a meal and a clean bed. The doors re-opened between 5am and 9am the next morning for others to be admitted for a breakfast of porridge, soup, bread and tea. Between 1973 and 1974, further Cyrenians projects opened in St Edmund’s House, Gateshead, and Factory House in Walker, Newcastle.
https://www.changing-lives.org.uk/about-us/our-history/
The Duke of Richmond pictured with his wife
Viscount Brentford, (Earl of March) the president of the Church Society, whose wife was a member of the Crown Appointments Commission which chose Dr WilliamsViscount Brentford, the president of the Church Society, whose wife was a member of the Crown Appointments Commission which chose Dr Williams.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1415758/Church-alliance-warns-Williams-over-gays.html
The Duke held a number of senior positions in the Anglican church, including membership of the Church Synod and the World Council of Churches. He was also Chancellor of the University of Sussex from 1985 to 1998.
Church Commissioner from 1963 to 1976; member of the General Synod of the Church of England from 1960 to 1980 and on committees of the World Council of Churches. He was a Deputy Lieutenant of West Sussex from 1975 until 1990, and Lord Lieutenant from 1990 to 1994. [2] He was also a patron of Prisoners Abroad, a charity supporting the welfare of Britons imprisoned overseas and their families.
He and his wife Susan Monica Grenville-Grey, the Countess of March, attracted attention when they adopted two girls of mixed race in the 1960s at a time when anti-immigrant sentiment was running high and the interracial relationships were frowned upon.
Prisoners Abroad is a UK-registered human rights and welfare charity[1] which supports British citizens who are imprisoned overseas. It also works with ex-prisoners returning to the UK and family members and friends of those detained.
In 2007 Prisoners Abroad was awarded the Longford Prize,[3] awarded annually by the Longford Trust to “recognise the contribution of an individual, group or organisation working in the area of penal or social reform who/which has shown outstanding qualities of humanity, courage, persistence and originality”.[4]
Prominent patrons include the Archbishop of Westminster, Sir David Wootton, Dame Harriet Walter, Jon Snow, John Walters, Bishop James Langstaff, Dominic Grieve QC and Lord Ramsbotham.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_Abroad
The Patrons of Terrence Higgins Trust
Our Patrons include:
In 1979, Righton sat on a steering committee to establish a course for training staff to work with disturbed young people, together with John Rea Price, director of Islington Social Services, 1972-92, subsequently the Director of the National Children’s Bureau. Other’s on the committee included G Godfrey Isaacs, chairman of Peper Harow, Mary Joynsons, director of child care for Barnardos, Janet Mattinson, Tavistock Centre, and Nick Stacey
William Clive [Bridgeman], 1st Viscount Bridgeman, JP DL PC
only son of Rev Hon John Robert Orlando Bridgeman, Rector of Weston-under-Lizard, co. Stafford (by his wife Marianne Caroline Clive, only dau. of Ven William Clive, Archdeacon of Montgomery), 3rd son by his first wife of George Augustus Frederick Henry [Bridgeman], 2nd Earl of Bradford
born
31 Dec 1864
mar.
30 Apr 1895 Dame Caroline Beatrix Parker DBE JP (d. 26 Dec 1961), 1st dau. of Hon Cecil Thomas Parker (by his wife Rosamond Esther Harriet Longley, dau. of Most Rev & Rt Hon C T Longley DD, Archbishop of Canterbury), 2nd son by his second wife of Thomas Augustus Wolstenholme [Parker], 6th Earl of Macclesfield
children
1. Hon Robert Clive Bridgeman, later 2nd Viscount Bridgeman
2. Brig Hon Geoffrey John Orlando Bridgeman MC FRCS LRCP, of Watley House, Sparsholt, Winchester, co. Hampshire ,Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon at St George’s Hospital (b. 3 Jul 1898; d. 15 Oct 1974), mar. 3 Jul 1929 Mary Meriel Gertrude Talbot (d. 5 Jul 1974), only dau. of Rt Hon Sir George John Talbot, and had issue:
1a. Robin John Orlando Bridgeman, later 3rd Viscount Bridgeman
1a. Helena Mary Bridgeman (b. 2 Nov 1932), mar. (1) 18 Jul 1953 (div. 1963) as his first wife Hon Paul Asquith (b. 4 Jan 1927; d. 12 Nov 1984), 2nd son of Cyril [Asquith], Baron Asquith of Bishopstone (Life Peer), by his wife Anne Stephanie Pollock, 1st dau. of Sir Adrian Donald Wilde Pollock KCMG, and (2) 15 Jul 1963 James Francis Lesley Bayley, of Wassall Houzse, Rolvenden, cranbrook, co. Kent, son of Thomas Eliot Bayley, of Edinburgh, and has issue by both husbands
2a. Daphne Bridgeman (b. 9 Apr 1940), mar. 4 Dec 1965 as his second wife William Howard Clive Montgomery, of Grey Abbey, Newtownards, co. Down, 1st son of Maj Hugh Edward Montgomery DL, of Grey Abbey, co. Down, and has issue
3. Hon Sir Maurice Richard Bridgeman KBE, Chairman of British Petroleum 1960-69 (b. 26 Jan 1904; d. 18 Jun 1980), mar. 23 Feb 1933 Diana Mary Erica Wilson (d. in a motot accident 20 May 1979), 2nd dau. of Humphrey Minto Wilson, of 9 South Audley Street, London, and had issue
1. Anne Bridgeman (b. 23 Jul 1900; dvp. 24 Jul 1900)
died
14 Aug 1935
created
18 Jun 1929 Viscount Bridgeman, of Leigh in the County of Shropshire
suc. by
son
note
Private Secretary to the Colonial Secretary 1889-92 and the Chancellor of the Exchequer 1895-1902; Member of Parliament (Unionist) for Oswestry 1906-29; a Lord of the Treasury 1915-16; Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour 1916-19 and the Board of Trade 1919-20; Privy Councillor 1920; First Secretary for Mines 1920-22; Secretary of State for Home Affairs 1922-24; First Lord of the Admiralty 1924-29; Elder Brother of the Trinity House 1928
Robert Clive [Bridgeman], 2nd Viscount Bridgeman, KBE CB DSO MC JP DL
born
1 Apr 1896
mar.
12 Jun 1930 Hon Mary Kathleen Lane-Fox JP (d. 1981), 2nd dau. of George Richard [Lane-Fox], 1st Baron Bingley, by his wife Hon Mary Agnes Emily Wood, 2nd dau. of Charles Lindley [Wood], 2nd Viscount Halifax
children
1. Hon Anne Caroline Mary Bridgeman (b. 30 Jul 1932), mar. 19 Jul 1955 Rev Nicholas David Stacey, of The Old Vicarage, Selling, Faversham, co. Kent (d. 8 May 2017), 1st son of David Henry Stacey, of Knaphill Manor, Chobham, co. Surrey, by his wife Isobel Part, and has issue
2. Hon Susan Elizabeth Bridgeman JP, Lady-in-Waiting to Lady May Abel-Smith, wife of the Governor of Queensland 1958-60 (b. 19 Oct 1935; d. 26 Aug 2013), mar. 1 Aug 1962 David Kenneth Dudley Foster, of The Spicer’s House, 101 Corve Street, Ludlow, co. Shropshire, 1st son of Kenneth Dudley Foster, of The Lodge, Claverley, co. Shropshire, and had issue
3. Hon Mary Selina Bridgeman JP (b. 14 Jan 1940), mar. 14 Jul 1962 Jeremy David Bagot Bayliss FRICS, of Sheepbridge Court, Swallowfield, Reading, co. Berkshire, only som of Edmund Bayliss, of Guernsey, Channel Islands, and has issue
died
s.p.m. 17 Nov 1982
suc. by
nephew
note
joined the Rife Brigade 1914 and served in the First World War 1915-18; MC 1918; Capt 1921, Brevet Maj 1932, Brigade Maj 1932-34, Brevet Lt Col 1935, General Staff Officer 1935-37; DSO 1940; CB 1944; KBE 1954
Robin John Orlando [Bridgeman], 3rd Viscount Bridgeman
born
5 Dec 1930
mar.
10 Dec 1966 (Victoria) Harriet Lucy Turton, 3rd dau. of Ralph Meredyth Turton, of Kildale Hall, Whitby, co. York, by his wife Mary Blanche Chetwynd-Stapylton, 1st dau. of Col Bryan Henry Chetwynd-Stapylton CBE
children
1. Hon William Orlando Caspar Bridgeman (b. 15 Aug 1968; dvp. 12 Nov 2000)
2. Hon Luke Robinson Orlando Bridgeman (b. 1 May 1971), mar. 25 May 1996 Victoria Frost, yst. dau. of Henry Frost, and has issue:
1a. Valentine Henry Ralph Orlando Bridgeman (b. 11 Oct 1999)
2a. Felix Bridgeman (b. 30 Mar 2002)
1a. Artemis Mary Rosalind Margaret Bridgeman (b. 12 Nov 2004)
3. Hon Esmond Francis Ralph Orlando Bridgeman (b. 3 Oct 1974)
4. Hon Orlando Henry Geoffrey Bridgeman (b. 11 Apr 1983)
note
elected to the House of Lords 1999
June 20 2003,
Mr Nunc Willcox
A memorial service for Mr Nunc Willcox, Chairman of the General Committee of the Garrick Club, 1983-95 and Trustee, 1983-2002, was held yesterday in the Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy, Savoy Hill, London, WC2. The Rev John Robson officiated. Mr Anthony Butcher, QC, read the lesson.
Mr Peter Horsfield, QC, read from The Idea of a University by John Henry Newman, and Mr Geoffrey Samson read In Praise of the Garrick Club by Kingsley Amis. Sir Paul Wright and Mr Jim Willcox, brother, paid tribute.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/memorial-service-9th83nwzp28
Derry Mainwaring Knight Former gravedigger Knight, 46, was sentenced to seven years in jail by an English court last weekApril 14, 1986.
Derry Mainwaring Knight had prostitute pick up young school girls for him.
20 Feb 1986 The Guardian
Michael Ball has been priest-in-charge of Stanmer and Falmer, in the diocese of Chichester, sinse 1976, and is senior chaplain of Sussex University
Gordon Scutt- is a co-director with LADY CLARE MARGADALE of the Morrrison Family at PORT REGIS SCHOOL LIMITED
Princess Anne’s children attended Port Regis School
https://companycheck.co.uk/company/00440436/PORT-REGIS-SCHOOL-LIMITED/companies-house-data
Gordon Scutt was part of the Festival of Light (as was Cliff Richard)
Former Archbishop, Donald Coggan, who died in 2000 and who ordained Ball in 1977, wrote: “I have seen a good deal of excellent qualities in his work. I have known him as a godly man, totally devoted to his church. He has had an unblemished record.”
Michael Ramsey (right), the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Donald Coggan, the Archbishop of Bradford, at the spring session of the Church Assembly, Church House, London, February 7th 1961.
The raping Bishop Ball was jailed in October after years of abusing youngsters .
He was able to get away with his crimes because, just as in the case of Savile , he was protected by friends in high places who were no doubt sharing in his sordid practices.
According to the Telegraph, a whole cohort of members of the British establishment came to Ball’s defence and appear to have committed perjury in the process, including the godfather of our own necrophiliac PM, David Cameron:
” A Freedom of Information request by the Telegraph has led to the release of the letters written by some high profile figures in his support, they include former Lord Justice Anthony Lloyd, former Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan and David Cameron’s late godfather Tory MP Tim Rathbone, who gave Mr Cameron his first work experience in the House of Commons.
Vicount Ian Kerr CGC @IanKerr
Dr Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Cantebury, Radio 1’s BBC Paris Theatre, Lower Regent Street, London. 30/04/1971
Archbishop’s treasure found in river
A number of valuable ecclesiastical treasures given to a former Archbishop of Canterbury have been found dumped in a river
A haul of 32 artefacts, including gifts from Pope Paul VI and a commemorative medallion presented to the bishop for the Queen’s coronation in 1952, have been recovered from the River Wear in Durham.
They had been in the possession of Michael Ramsey, the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury, who spent part of his retirement in the northern city where he served as bishop.
One theory is that he may have cast the items into the water himself at various times, having a reputation for eccentricity before his death 21 years ago at the age of 83.
Another suggestion is that they may have been stolen before being discarded by thieves for some reason as they crossed Prebends Bridge.
However, there is no record of the house where Ramsey and his wife Joan lived on South Bailey having been burgled.
The objects, some solid gold, have been discovered by amateur divers Trevor Bankhead, 40, and his brother Gary, 44, a fire service watch officer, over the past two and a half years.
They conducted 300 dives and believe there are no objects left on the river bed after their last find on Sunday.
It is their belief belief the items could have been put into the water deliberately as a “gift” to the city by Lord Ramsey.
Trevor Bankhead, a former soldier, said: “We believe the Archbishop threw them into the river in 1983 or 1984, by which time he would have had limited mobility.
“So we chose places which were easily accessible by the water’s edge and threw silver washers in the river to try and trace the trajectory the objects could have taken.”
The dives were carried out under licence from Durham Cathedral which owns both banks of the stretch of river.
Mr Bankhead added: “It’s been very exciting, not just finding the objects, but also researching them and being able to pin down the time when he would have received them.”
Their first find was an ornate silver trowel presented to the Archbishop for laying the foundation stone of an Indian church in 1961.
The brothers have since retrieved over 30 other items linked to Ramsey, along with hundreds of medieval and Saxon artefacts.
Among them are gold, silver and bronze medals struck to commemorate the second Vatican council, which must have been presented to Ramsey, who was the most senior cleric in the Church of England from 1961 to 1974, when he met Pope Paul VI at the Vatican in 1966.
It was during the same visit the Pope gave Ramsey his episcopal ring which the Archbishop wore until the day he died and is now kept at Lambeth Palace.
Other items discovered include a solid silver coin from the Greek Orthodox Church and a solid gold coin, likely to have been presented when Ramsey met Nikkyo Niwano, president of the Japanese Buddhist movement, in 1973.
Anne Heywood, chapter steward at Durham Cathedral, described the notion that Lord Ramsey may have been responsible as “pure speculation”.
She said: “We don’t know whether he might have had a burglary. Somebody might have thought these were worth something, and discovered when they were running across Prebends Bridge that they weren’t, and just threw them in the river – but again that is just pure speculation.”
Mark McIntosh, professor of divinity at Durham University, who was a student of Lord Ramsey, said the former Archbishop’s health declined in his later years.
He said: “My hunch would be that he would have had very little knowledge of where most of his things were at that point in his life as he was growing feebler by the day.”
The value of the items has still to be established, with estimates up to £10,000, and will be split between the cathedral and the brothers.
It is hoped some will eventually go on display at Durham’s 11th Century cathedral.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6416033/Archbishops-treasure-found-in-river.html
Rev Baker said they first met Knight in April 1983 when Knight moved to the village of Newick near Lewes in East Sussex
The contents of exhibits 204 and 205 were withheld from the public ear….Baker objected to a move for the text of two exhibits – an agreement signed by Knight and an addendum – to be read aloud.
Ball bio:
Ball statement to IICSA
https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/4888/view/ANG000209.pdf
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