Clergy assumed guilty

SIR – Colin Bullen (Letters, March 28) rightly criticises church safeguarding procedures that make an assumption of guilt until innocence is proved.

An unmarried priest who is the subject of an unsubstantiated allegation can be summarily removed from his parish to an unknown location.

He is publicly stripped of his home, his work, his friends – even an address. He stands alone and vulnerable and can be destroyed by the allegations (possibly malicious), of one person.

Meanwhile, the presumed “victim” retains normal routines, occupation, home life and anonymity.

Priests are treated worse than other civilians caught up in a comparable situation and dealt with by the police and the law courts. Hugh Whittle

Devizes, Wiltshire

SIR – I wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury asking what “significant cloud”, in his words, supposedly hung over the late Bishop Bell. A reply from his office said all would be made clear at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. It was not. Alison Lambie

Royston, Hertfordshire