PRAYERS AT HIGHGROVE ...AND A FRIENDSHIP THAT LASTED DECADES
PETER Ball, who made his young victims roll in the snow naked before beating them until they bled, once described Prince Charles as a loyal friend.
The pair had prayed together at Highgrove and exchanged more than 50 letters, many of them deeply spiritual.
And even after his ‘indiscretion’ with a boy of 17, the bishop was given a Duchy of Cornwall house to live in, for which he thanked the ‘wonderfully kind’ prince.
Yesterday Charles expressed deep regret that he had ever put his faith in Ball, saying he had been horribly deceived by the paedophile bishop.
Charles said that in the 1980s, when he first knew him, and the 1990s, there was ‘a presumption that people such as bishops could be taken at their word’.
It is now believed that sadistic Ball preyed on more than 100 boys and men in a 20-year reign of abuse.
Born in 1932, he went to Lancing College public school in West Sussex and Cambridge University before establishing a monastery in Gloucestershire with his twin brother, Michael. Ball showed ‘favouritism’ to novice monks, and targeted schools to deliver sermons.
He was made Bishop of Lewes in 1977 and Bishop of Gloucester from 1992, during which time he handpicked 18 vulnerable victims to commit acts of ‘debasement’ in the name of religion. He would pray naked with them at the altar and encourage them to submit to beatings. At least five more victims were schoolchildren.
As Bishop of Gloucester, Ball’s diocese covered Charles’s country home Highgrove, and the prince was among the guests at his enthronement.
By now, he was one of the church’s best known characters, refusing to wear the ceremonial purple of a bishop in favour of simple, monastic robes, sleeping on the floor and taking vows of celibacy.
Eight months after the enthronement, Ball was arrested. Yesterday the prince recalled: ‘Peter Ball told me he had been involved in some sort of “indiscretion” which prompted his resignation as my local bishop.’
In fact he had been horrifically abusing 16-year-old trainee monk Neil Todd, forcing him to perform sex acts as they lay naked in bed together, take ice-cold, early-morning showers while reading the Bible and stand side by side naked reciting psalms in front of a figure of Christ.
Mr Todd was so tormented he eventually committed suicide aged 38 in 2012.
In his letter to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse, Charles said he was unaware of the true nature of the clergyman’s behaviour until more than 20 years after allegations first surfaced.
Ball got away with a police caution in March 1993 despite confessing his guilt. For his part, Charles said he had accepted Ball’s claim that Mr Todd had borne a grudge and made false allegations.
So Ball resumed his ministry, even officiating over communion at Highgrove.
He was also provided with Manor Lodge, a pretty cottage on Charles’s Duchy of Cornwall estate in the village of Aller, Somerset.
CLARENCE House has been at great pains to say it was the Duchy of Cornwall, the private estate which funds the heir to the throne, and not Charles himself that had purchased the lodge that Ball rented.
It subsequently emerged that police went easy on Ball in 1993 and cited his royal connections. In documents unearthed by the BBC, retired police detective Wayne Murdock is said to have 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’.
It also emerged that the bishop’s lawyers had claimed to have a ‘letter of support from a member of the Royal Family’, who was not named. It is unclear whether this could be the same letter as the one that emerged yesterday. Either way, no such letter was ever produced in any court hearings, and an official report found there was no evidence any royal had sought to intervene in the judicial process.
But the mother of the trainee monk was scathing about Prince Charles allowing Ball to live on his Duchy estate. Speaking in 1998, she said of the bishop: ‘He is pure evil, a beast, and he’s hiding behind God. This is quite unbelievable. I don’t know what Prince Charles thinks he is doing.’
Yesterday Charles said he had always believed in allowing the judicial process to take its course ‘rather than rushing to private judgement’.
In 2006 Ball’s status in royal circles was confirmed in spectacular style when he was invited to read the homily at the funeral of the father of Camilla Parker Bowles.
He continued as a Church of England priest until 2010.
But justice was slowly catching up with him. Police reopened their investigation in 2012 after new allegations, and this time a flood of Ball’s victims came forward.
If Charles was anxious, that might explain why in 2013 a royal aide contacted the chief constable of Sussex Police to ask whether information gathered during its investigation could ‘be embarrassing to Prince Charles or the monarchy in general’. Apparently they were reassured.
In 2015, Ball’s crimes were finally laid bare at the Old Bailey which heard shocking details of his reign of abuse. His trial heard he had been protected by ‘Cabinet ministers, the Royal Family, MPs, JPs and a lord’, not to mention the Church of England.
The Church has since expressed its ‘true sorrow’ at its shocking failures.
Ball, now 86, was released in February last year and lives a free man back in Aller, Somerset. Clarence House was quick to insist last night that he is definitely not living in any of Charles’s properties.