Updated again Wednesday
Media Reports
BBC Bishop George Bell not to be cleared over ‘abuse’
Guardian Archbishop refuses to retract George Bell statement
Telegraph Justin Welby under fire over refusal to say sorry over ‘trashing’ of Bishop George Bell’s name
Church Times Welby declines to lift the cloud hanging over Bishop Bell
Christian Today Archbishop of Canterbury stands by statement saying there is a ‘significant cloud’ over Bishop George Bell’s name
Press Association via Daily Mail Archbishop of Canterbury refuses to clear late Bishop Bell of child sexual abuse
Premier Radio Justin Welby: ‘I cannot with integrity rescind my statement’ on Bishop George Bell
Updates
Express Fury as Archbishop Of Canterbury refuses to clear innocent Bishop of child sexual abuse
Times I won’t retract statement on Bishop Bell, says Archbishop Welby
Chichester Observer Archbishop refuses to lift ‘significant cloud’ left over Bishop Bell
Comment
Peter Hitchens What Does the Archbishop Think He is Doing?. This is a lengthy and detailed rebuttal of Welby’s statement which needs to be read in full. Here’s an extract:
…Mr Welby, in his very thin responses to the Carlile report, has never really addressed this. He has said that the report didn’t rule on Bell’s guilt or innocence, an almost childishly absurd response, since Mr Welby had told Lord Carlile in his terms of reference that he could not rule on this. In any case, Lord Carlile has repeatedly said since, in response to media questions, that no court would have convicted George Bell on the evidence which has been produced against him. It is clear that had Lord Carlile been asked to rule on George Bell’s guilt or innocence, he would have pronounced him ‘not guilty’. So what, precisely is the evidence on which the Archbishop of Canterbury, supposedly spiritual leader of millions, guardian of the foundations of truth and justice, maintains that there is still a ‘cloud’ over George Bell’s name? Does he have second sight? Does he know something he is not telling us? If so (though I cannot see how this can be so) , why will he not say what it is? If not, why is he of all people exempted from the good rule, surely Biblical in origin, that if you cannot prove that a man is guilty, he is innocent and you shouldn’t go round saying that he is guilty just because in some way it suits you to say so. Some miserable rumour-monger in a pub might be entitled to drone that there is ‘no smoke without fire’, but not the inheritor of the See of Saint Augustine, I think. I doubt Mr Welby is familiar with the catechism in his own Church’s Book of Common Prayer, it having fallen rather out of use since that Church became happy and clappy. But I am sure the Lambeth library can find him a copy, and point him to the passage in which the candidate for confirmation is asked ‘What is thy duty towards thy neighbour’? I commend it to him…
Separately, a Question was asked in the House of Lords yesterday about this matter, and the full Hansard record of what was said, by Lord Lexden, Lord Cormack, and others can be read here.
Lord Lexden asked:
I urge my noble friend to study a recent report by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, into the way in which a group within the Church of England investigated a single uncorroborated allegation of child sex abuse against one of the greatest of all Anglican bishops and a prominent Member of your Lordships’ House, George Bell, who died 60 years ago. While the noble Lord was precluded from reviewing the Church’s decision to condemn Bishop Bell, it is clear from his report that the case against that truly remarkable man has not been proved, to the consternation of a number of Members of this House including my noble friend Lord Cormack. I ask my noble friend to consider the recommendation from the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that,“alleged perpetrators, living or dead, should not be identified publicly unless or until the Core Group has … made adverse findings of fact, and … it has also been decided that making the identity public is required in the public interest”.
Should there not be a legal requirement in all cases to ensure that that is met before anyone, alive or dead, is named publicly? Does my noble friend agree that institutions of both Church and state must uphold the cardinal principle that an individual is innocent until proved guilty?
And Lord Cormack said:
My Lords, I urge my noble friend to think again on this. It is a deeply shocking case. The reputation of a great man has been traduced, and many of us who are Anglicans are deeply ashamed of the way that the Anglican Church has behaved. This can surely be a spur to the Government to review the law to try to protect the anonymity of people who are accused of something years–decades–after their death with one uncorroborated alleged witness. Please will she take this on board and talk to the Secretary of State about it?
The Bishop of Peterborough said:
My Lords, this has been a very difficult case, but Bishop Bell is not the only person whose reputation has been severely damaged by such accusations–some are dead and some still alive. I urge the Minister and the Government to take very seriously the call for a major review of anonymity. In all cases where the complainant has a right to be anonymous, there seems to be a case for the respondent also to be anonymous, and in cases until there is overwhelming evidence to suggest guilt, it seems reasonable for people’s reputations not to be damaged in this public way.
Updates
Tim Wyatt in the Spectator The Church of England’s Bishop Bell battle
“Archbishop Cranmer” Justin Welby has staked his reputation and legacy on the maintenance of a profound injustice to Bishop George Bell
In a letter in The Times yesterday the ex-choristers of Chichester cathedral make an interesting point when they write
“We have never accepted that “Carol” identified Bishop Bell as her abuser.”
Mistaken identity doesn’t seem to have figured much in the torrent of words that have been written about the Bishop Bell case. Carol’s evidence is, to say the least, vague, confused and contradictory and would inevitably have been thrown out of court in an instant.
Realpolitik, as ever, tells us what’s going down. Succinctly, in the current climate, it’s safer to condemn Bell than to exonerate him: condemnation doesn’t arouse any populist fury, and gains Welby support from the “listen and believe” zeitgeist; whereas exonerating Bell could well draw their ire.* At a time when conventional opinion views accusation as proof, and #MeToo’s power grows by the day, it takes extraordinary courage and independent thinking to so much as question any complaint. Since Bell’s defenders are defined by their support of due process and restraint, he has a lot less to fear by rejecting their… Read more »
David Lamming also referred to this letter on an earlier thread. I would be interested to read it, but do not seem to be able to get access. Is there a way of providing a link?
I don’t know how many others of you have had to give an account of events twenty years before in a high-stakes trial in a UK court of law. It happens that I had to do so a few years back in related civil and criminal matters. I was able to refer to my contemporaneous notes and minutes of meetings I’d attended. I think I had a better raw recollection of events than some others who had been involved. But my initial recollection left people out (including a couple of key members of the team I’d been in), got events… Read more »
Edward, Unfortunately the letter is behind The Times paywall. It may be that Simon Sarmiento can find a way of posting it. The Times has also caught up with Justin Welby’s statement yesterday in response to the historians’ letter published last week in the Daily Telegraph. A report was posted on The Times online at 9.00 am this morning (23 January) and will presumably be in tomorrow’s newspaper. So far it has attracted 45 online comments, nearly all critical of Welby and and supportive of Bell.
Here’s the letter mentioned in the preceding comment. As former Chichester Cathedral choristers and Prebendal School pupils in the late 1940s and 1950s, we protested in 2015 at the defamation of Bishop George Bell implicit in the church’s response to the claim by a woman around the same age as us that she had been sexually abused by him when very young (“Justice for Bell”, letters, Jan 19). We are delighted at the conclusions of Lord Carlile ofBerriew’s report. We choristers had a fair sense of George Bell as a man whose fundamental integrity we saw, and throughout our life… Read more »
Apparently, the church botched it. But that doesn’t mean the problem is the #metoo movement!!! 1 in 4 women have been raped and most of us have suffered sexual harassment, job discrimination, and underpayment (undervaluing us). The reality is that the church was brutally heartless towards victims of clergy abuse for a very long time. The overwhelming problem is that there are so many victims of sexual abuse. Clearly, the church needs mechanisms in place to act justly and compassionately. However, denigrating the #metoo movement could push victims back into the closet. #metoo – and anyone denigrating a movement that… Read more »
I wasn’t denigrating the #MeToo movement, Cynthia; simply pointing out that, in the current climate, Welby has far more to lose by defending Bell than he does by condemning him.
With reference to the letter from the Chichester choristers: As one who is well informed about Bishop Bell’s life and work, I have thought the allegations against him utterly implausible from the beginning, and have been delighted with Lord Carlile’s report, just as I am disgusted by Justin Welby’s continuing behaviour over the case. I am particularly interested that they mention the presence of a paedophile teacher when you were at Chichester. I have twice heard that there was such a person around at the time to which they refer (though not necessarily the same individual). In one case the… Read more »
“As one who is well informed about Bishop Bell’s life and work, I have thought the allegations against him utterly implausible from the beginning”
Unfortunately, the same was said of Peter Ball. Character references haven’t proven terribly reliable. That’s not to say the evidence for Bell being an abuser is plausible, but “he was such a nice man, he never would have done this” is not convincing as counter-evidence either.
England’s Court of Appeal would disagree in Bell’s case, Interested Observer: since alleged conduct that departs radically from previous behavior is inherently more unlikely than alleged conduct that’s in-line with it, a person with an unblemished record, and against whom no bad character evidence has been admitted, is entitled to a good character direction from the judge.* With only a single, uncorroborated allegation as the sole evidence against him, if he were alive and on trial, Bell would undoubtedly have been entitled to a good character direction from the judge. Welby’s statement appears to conflate two cases that’re different in… Read more »
Interested Observer: my comment on Bishop Bell was not based on the assumption that “he was such a nice man, he never would have done this” but on the fact that the evidence of his life and work speaks strongly against his being the person to have offended in the way alleged. His life was lived more in the public eye than almost any other bishop of his time, and the testimonies to his moral and spiritual character and unshakeable integrity are abundant. If we are not to make judgements about a man on such evidence then what is the… Read more »
I can’t speak to Bell, but I knew Peter Ball when he was Bishop of Lewes and his behaviour should have aroused suspicion. He had teenage boys and young men,, one or two at a time, living with him in his rather isolated cottage. There were some of us, even in the early 80s, who thought this inadvisable – to say the least.
Summarised in two lines, Lord Carlile found that the process was seriously flawed, and the outcome was unjust to both ‘Carol’ and Bishop Bell. In all that has been written since, no one has convincingly countered those findings.