Welby refuses to apologise for shaming of Bishop Bell
The Church condemned a man of proven good to make itself look good. It must admit that was wrong
THE Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday refused to clear a bishop whose reputation has been besmirched by a Church of England ruling, saying instead that a “significant cloud” hung over him.
Lord Carlile of Berriew published a damning report yesterday which concluded that the reputation of Bishop George Bell, who was posthumously accused of sexually abusing a child, was “wrongfully and unnecessarily damaged” by the Church when it publicly named him in an apology in 2015.
In a statement following the publication, Justin Welby said the Bishop of Chichester, who died in 1958, was “accused of great wickedness”. The Archbishop added he would apologise only “for the failures of the process”.
He said he disagreed with Lord Carlile’s finding that the bishop’s name should not have been made public because there had been no admission of liability. “The C of E is committed to transparency and therefore we would take a different approach,” he said.
Lord Carlile said the Archbishop’s comments were disappointing. “The implication of what he said is everybody accused should have their name made public, and that is just not acceptable,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
The peer said that had the bishop been alive, the prospect of a criminal conviction would have been “low”. Bishop Bell’s supporters also criticised the Archbishop. Dr Ruth Hildebrandt Grayson, daughter of Bishop Bell’s friend Franz Hildebrandt, said the family deserved a personal apology.
“The Church can’t have its cake and eat it,” she said. “Either he is innocent, in which case they must apologise, or he is guilty, which they can’t prove, and the report makes clear they have not proved.” Prof Andrew Chandler, the bishop’s biographer, said that the Archbishop’s statement was wrong and illogical. “It fails a basic test of rational justice,” he said. “It lacks an understanding of all kinds of dimensions which require compassion, not least in Chichester, where people feel deeply upset by this.”
Lord Carlile’s review found that the Church was wrong to publicly name Bell, who was accused by a woman known as Carol of sexually abusing her more than 60 years ago when she was a young child.
It said the Church failed to investigate the allegation, failed to inform surviving family members and did not properly consider the impact upon the Bishop’s reputation. The Church paid compensation of £16,800 and £15,000 legal costs to Carol in 2015.
Before the allegations were made public, George Bell was a respected theologian named a hero for his work helping Jewish victims of Nazi persecution in the Second World War.
In October 2015, the Church of England announced that George Bell, Bishop of Chichester from 1928-58, had committed serious sexual abuse of a child roughly 65 years ago. It paid money to the “victim”. This was sad news to me because, like thousands, I admired Bell for his support for German Christians resisting Hitler and for Jewish refugees from the Nazis. I respected his courage in criticising the “blanket” Allied bombing of Germany.
I assumed, however, that the Church would not lightly condemn one of its most revered figures. Past revelations about other clergy had inoculated me against the idea that seemingly holy bishops are incapable of evil. I inclined to believe what I heard.
But although Bell had been dead since 1958, his memory burnt bright enough for people to question the means by which he had been condemned. Though talking of “transparency”, the Church was most reluctant to give details. The condemnation rested solely on the fact that the alleged victim – later called “Carol” – had claimed that Bell had abused her. She had first complained to the Bishop of Chichester in 1995, without getting anywhere, and again to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s office in 2012. After some confusion, the Church listened to her complaint, and decided to believe her.
I was amazed to discover that the Church authorities had not tested the evidence. They had not sought witnesses, studied Bell’s diaries or the details of Carol’s claims. No one else had ever made any complaint against Bell. In the process of investigating, the “Core Group” charged by the Church with the task had appointed no one to make his case. This seemed an unjust way of proceeding, driven by fear of being accused of “cover-up”. I said so in this column.
By good luck, I had once met a man called Canon Adrian Carey, a schoolfriend of my father-in-law. He was by now very old, but mentally fine. When he saw my piece, he wrote and said he had been Bell’s domestic chaplain for two of the years in question. He saw Bell all day, every day. He thought the accusation unbelievable. No one had approached him for his account. I am glad he managed to give his evidence to Lord Carlile before dying this summer.
Many others came forward with information to assist Bell’s supporters. At first, the current Bishop of Chichester, Martin Warner, condemned us as “strident voices” and accused us of attacking Carol. But in fact we were complaining about his organisation’s conduct, not hers. In November 2016, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, rightly ordered a review of the processes by which he and others had condemned Bell.
The review, by Lord Carlile QC, was published yesterday. I have seen more than my fair share of such official reports. This is one of the most calmly damning ones I have read.
The Core Group, Lord Carlile says, “failed to follow a process which was fair and equitable to both sides”. By calling Carol a “survivor” or “victim”, rather than a complainant, the group was – like the police in the cases of Lord Bramall, Sir Edward Heath, Lord Brittan etc – assuming guilt in advance. Because “the truth of what Carol was saying was implicitly accepted without serious investigation or inquiry”, the Group’s approach was “inappropriate and inadmissible”, indeed “wrong in principle”. The Group held “no real discussion of an investigation of the truth”.
“The Church,” says Lord Carlile, “should not put its own reputation before that of the dead”, yet it did so. It was guilty of “the knowing and apparently deliberate destruction of the reputation of the alleged perpetrator [Bell]”.
Before this destruction was embarked upon, “absolutely nothing was done” to inform Bell’s living relations, and “no strategic decision” was made to see if other complainants existed (most paedophiles have multiple victims). The layout of the Bishop’s Palace gave “no corroborative evidence” of Carol’s allegations.
Nor were other leads followed. The Bells put up refugee Jewish children from the German Kindertransport. Their experiences were not sought. When Lord Carlile began his inquiry, he heard from “Pauline”, a woman about the same age as Carol who had often been in the palace kitchen and the bishop’s study when little because her mother worked there. She could correctly name the staff of that time, but had no memory of Carol. She testified to Bishop Bell’s kindness and complete propriety. Lord Carlile found such evidence without difficulty. He wonders why the Core Group had not sought it.
He also reveals that only two members of the Core Group were fully informed of the contents of the psychiatric report by Professor Tony Maden. They gave the others an inadequate summary. The key passage that was omitted said “[over 63 years] there is no way of determining without reference to corroborative evidence whether or not recall is accurate”. Carol had suffered an abusive first marriage: some people in such situations, said Professor Maden, perform “retrospective re-attribution” of their memories: “the possibility of false memories cannot be excluded.” So the sole basis of the Group’s view that Bell had committed abuse was insecure.
In sum, Lord Carlile is telling us that the Church – a body committed to justice and truth – proceeded unjustly and, in effect, untruthfully. In doing so, it sacrificed the reputation of one of its noblest leaders, to make its own look better.
Obviously the findings are painful for the Church. It has a particular difficulty about Carol. Lord Carlile was not asked to decide whether she was telling the truth – rightly so, because he is not a court of law. But if the Church were now to declare that its condemnation of Bishop Bell was wrong, it would not be accusing her of lying. It would only be reverting to the principle upon which justice is based – that a person is innocent unless proved guilty. It says it accepts the report’s finding that its procedures were wrong. In morality and logic, it must concede that its decision to destroy Bell was wrong too.
This, I had expected, was what Archbishop Welby would now do. He is a brave man and I know, from conversations with him, that he is deeply anguished both by child abuse and by false accusations of child abuse. He tries harder than most princes of the Church to get alongside those who suffer.
Yet this is what he said yesterday. After acknowledging the failure of Church procedures, the Archbishop spoke of Bell’s “great achievement” as a defender of the persecuted and added: ‘We realise that a significant cloud is left over his name… He is also accused of great wickedness. Good acts do not diminish evil ones, nor do evil ones make it right to forget the good. Whatever is thought about the accusations, the whole person and the whole life should be kept in mind.”
I’m afraid this is a shocking answer. The Archbishop must know that what people now think about the accusations depends very much on him. His own report tells him they were believed on grossly inadequate grounds. Does he cling to that belief or not? He invites us to balance the good and evil deeds of men; but there is no balance here. The good Bell did is proved. The evil is an uncorroborated accusation believed by the religious authorities because it makes their life easier. We have been here before – in the life of Jesus, and in the reason for his unjust death.