Ex-chaplain to the Queen jailed for sex abuse of girl churchgoer
THE Queen’s former chaplain was jailed for 39 months yesterday for sexually assaulting a young churchgoer. Canon Dr Stephen Palmer, from Fintry, Aberdeenshire, promised to help the 17-year- old girl with her religious education exams.
Instead he assaulted her six times in his home after his wife had taken their two children to school, touching her intimately as she sat on a bench or pew.
Portsmouth Crown Court heard the victim’s ordeal – around 40 years ago – left her feeling suicidal and she still suffers from nightmares.
All of the offences were said to have taken place between 1975 and 1976 at Palmer’s home in Stubbington, Hampshire, where he served as a curate in the local church after leaving the Royal Navy.
The court heard there was a ‘degree of planning’ involved.
Now 68, he was given the title of Honorary Chaplain to the Queen in 2008 and retired from the post a year later.
Prosecutor Tammy Mears read out a statement in court written by his victim, now aged 57.
In it she said: ‘What happened to me all those years ago has affected me greatly. What he did to me caused me to withdraw from the church.
‘I found it hard to trust anyone from the church and have never been able to return to church.’
She added: ‘ Stephen Palmer was a man of the church and someone people looked up to and trusted.
‘I couldn’t cope with what had happened. I have tried to commit suicide. I have suffered from nightmares over the years.’
Passing sentence, Recorder Nigel Lickley, QC, said Palmer’s victim had been a member of a youth group he ran.
He told Palmer: ‘ Her father asked you to give her tuition and you went to her home.
‘Thereafter she attended your home on a number of occasions, usually in the morning at 9am when your wife took your children to school.’
‘On that first occasion, after doing some work, you sat next to her and used your hand to touch her breast inside her clothes.
‘On one occasion you forced her to lie down on the bench or pew then you lay on top of her.’
Mr Lickley said that on one occasion the girl had ‘thought
‘Suffered from nightmares’
she was going to be raped and it must have been a terrifying experience’.
After she went to university she had developed a drug and al cohol problem and had ‘suffered over the years’ from what Palmer had done.
Mr Lickley added: ‘She came forward recently because she was encouraged by other people who were coming forward in other cases and people were believing them.
‘ This case demonstrates a breach of trust. She came to you for tuition and she was abused.’
Palmer was convicted after a five-day trial in May of six counts of indecent assault.
He became an ordained deacon in 1974 and an ordained priest a year later in 1975. He was also a vicar in Portsdown, Hampshire, from 1996 to 2002 and Newport on the Isle of Wight from 2002 to 2009, where he met Prince Charles and Camilla.
An Honorary Chaplain to the Queen is appointed to minister to the monarch and wears a red cassock and a bronze badge consisting of the royal cypher and crown within an oval wreath.
A spokesman for the Diocese of Portsmouth said: ‘Our prayers are with the victim, who has had to live with the consequences of these assaults for many years.
‘Since the 1970s, safeguarding procedures and policies have been transformed in the Church, as well as in society generally.’