‘Wrong’ caution meant sex case bishop avoided prosecution
BISHOP Peter Ball escaped prosecution in 1993 for abusing a young man because police wrongly cautioned him, an independent child sex abuse inquiry has heard.
The bishop should not have been cautioned as he had not admitted guilt, said Gregor Mcgill, of the Crown Prosecution Service. Ball, who was convicted later, in 2015, of misconduct in public office after admitting abusing 18 young men, was first arrested in December 1992 when Neil Todd, who had been on his scheme for young men considering a monastic life, reported him to the police for abuse.
Mr Mcgill, who was not involved in the initial investigation, said that not all of the necessary conditions for a caution were met. This included Ball having to make a “full and unequivocal” admission to the offence of gross indecency – a condition set out in a letter sent to Ball’s lawyers from the CPS. The caution was also not administered in accordance with Home Office guidelines, which said such a warning “will not be appropriate where a person does not make a clear and reliable admission of the offence”. Speaking to the inquiry yesterday, Fiona Scolding QC, chief counsel to the Anglican investigation, said: “The inquiry can’t find… any kind of letter or anything, either written or oral on a tape, which provides a full and unequivocal admission.” She added that it “may well be buried in among the papers”. Ball’s lawyers accepted the caution in a letter in March 1993, but did not make the required admission. Mr Mcgill said he would have re-interviewed Ball.
“The best way to have done it, I think, would have been to have re-interviewed and had a full, unequivocal admission in a tape-recorded interview.
“Other police officers may have a written admission in a pocket book and asked the suspect to sign it. Others might have required, if you like, a basis of plea,” he said.
The inquiry is due to hear evidence today, in statement form, from the Prince of Wales, who kept in contact with the bishop following his arrest, caution and resignation. It is expected to argue that he did not know the caution involved an admission of guilt.
Ball regained permission to officiate from Lord Carey, then Archbishop of Canterbury, who this week said he had been manipulated by the bishop and taken in by his claims of innocence.
Ball’s initial victim, Mr Todd, killed himself in 2012.