‘£200m bill’ to compensate thousands of C of E’s child abuse victims

THE Church of England could be forced to pay £200million to survivors of child sex abuse, its parliament is to be told.

The money is being set aside for ‘restoration or redress’ to thousands of victims abused by bishops, clergy and lay helpers.

This huge bill is more than the annual sum spent running the C of E by its financial arm, the Church Commissioners

It could lead to major spending cuts and force the sale of some of the Church’s £8billionworth of historic assets.

In papers for a meeting today of the C of E ruling body, the General Synod, the Rt Rev Peter Hancock, Bishop of Bath and Wells, says the Church is cooperating with the national Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, whose hearings, he admits, have ‘underlined the Church’s poor response to survivors of abuse’.

The inquiry is due to make recommendations this summer and Bishop Hancock says these ‘will inform next steps, including budget setting’.

He told the Synod two years ago that in 2016 the number of complaints had reached 3,300, around a fifth of them against clergy, and mainly from people who were abused as children.

The Church has struggled to cope with abuse cases for a decade. Ex-bishop Peter Ball, jailed for 32 months in 2015 for sex abuse against boys lasting three decades, had been allowed to stay in the Church after a reprimand in 1993.

And a former Archbishop of York, Lord Hope, was investigated by police in 2016 over his cover-up of child abuse by an ex-Dean of Manchester, the Very Rev Robert Waddington.

Most recently, a leading CofE evangelical, the Rev Jonathan Fletcher, was accused of subjecting boys to naked ice baths, beatings and massages.

A £200million compensation bill would be equivalent of paying all 42 of the Church’s diocesan bishops, running their houses and palaces, and paying their staff and expenses for a period of four years.

‘Response to the victims was poor’