Bishop covered up vicar’s sex abuse

A PAEDOPHILE vicar is finally facing jail decades after his sexual abuse was covered up by a perverted Church of England bishop who was friends with Prince Charles.

Vickery House, 69, was yesterday found guilty of a string of attacks against four victims in the 1970s and 1980s while he was working as a curate and vicar in Devon and Sussex.

His crimes were hushed up by sex abuser Bishop Peter Ball, 83, who avoided justice until this year.

Ball wrote a letter of apology to a teenager who complained of being groped by House, assuring him it was being ‘looked into’ and ‘would never happen again’.

The boy did not contact police until 2012, when he told how Ball had hidden the allegation.

House was found guilty of five counts of indecent assault at the Old Bailey yesterday. He was acquitted of a further three counts of the same charge. Judge Christine Henson QC warned him that prison is ‘inevitable’ when he is sentenced tomorrow.

Some of the victims were also groomed by Ball, who was handed a 32-month jail sentence earlier this month for 15 years of abuse against novice monks.

The court heard how the pair targeted young men seeking spiritual instruction on the Bishop’s ‘Give a Year for Christ’ scheme.

House, of Handcross, West Sussex, assaulted a 1 -year-old grammar schoolboy in 1970 when he gave him a massage as he lay in bed during a trip to Devon. The father of two, originally from Seattle in the US, struck again when the boy was 15, but the victim escaped after they were interrupted by the doorbell ringing.

Another of House’s victims who was attacked in the early 1980s was also molested by Ball.