Church should have acted faster over ‘grooming’, says victim
Traumatised woman speaks out as clergyman is banned for life from the Church of England
WHEN parishioners in a Hampshire village were told their vicar had resigned following “sexual incidents” with a 16-year-old schoolgirl, many walked out of church in support of their “wonderful” minister.
Some members of the Emsworth congregation insisted the Rev Simon Sayers’ five-year ban from the priesthood in 2016 was too harsh a punishment for a mere moment of weakness many years ago.
This month, the married 60-yearold father of two was banned for life from the Church of England after it emerged he also had an “intimate sexual relationship” with a married parishioner who came to him for pastoral support. Now, the woman who first raised the alarm about Sayers targeting her when she was a schoolgirl has waived her right to anonymity. Speaking publicly for the first time, Anne Smith, now 40, condemned as “deluded” those who rallied to Sayers’s defence, insisting they had fallen under his spell.
From the age of 10 in the Nineties, Ms Smith regularly attended a North London church where Sayers, in his 30s, was curate. “I thought he was a pillar of the community, certainly the heart and soul of the church,” Ms Smith told the The Sunday Telegraph.
She explained how his pats on her back turned into lingering stroking, and how he would invite her to sit on his lap as the sexual element “escalated”, often after his evening sermons. “Looking back it felt like he was grooming me. As I told police, he made me feel special. But, I was 16 and confused – this respected man was showing me special attention.
“I saw him quite regularly, with the church becoming almost my second home. It felt at the time as though it was my fault for participating freely. But now as an adult and a mother I realise he was abusing his position for his own sexual satisfaction.”
Then, one day, Sayers held a church barbecue and announced he was leaving the city parish for pastures new.
“Suddenly he was cold towards me and told me it should never have happened,” she continued. “I suppressed what happened for 20 years because I was too worried about standing up to a vicar as a teenager.”
The mother of three from Kent explained how a doctor suggested she may have had suppressed traumatic childhood memories that were contributing to her deteriorating health (she is now a wheelchair user and suffers from fibromyalgia – she can experience pain over her entire body).
In 2015, she plucked up the courage to report Sayers to the authorities. The Metropolitan Police decided no charges would be brought, in part Ms Smith believes, due to the passage of time.
However, Sayers admitted “initiating” two “sexual incidents” with the schoolgirl when he responded to the Church’s internal investigation. He was suspended from the ministry for five years in 2016 for “conduct unbecoming of a clergy person and inappropriate for a married man”, the Church ruled.
Sayers issued a statement apologising for the affair, describing it as a “brief above the waist incident” followed by a “kiss two days later”. Many in his congregations were infuriated he had been forced resign
Ms Smith said: “The suspension was inadequate. He should have been barred from the Church there and then.”
This month, a Church of England tribunal heard the clergyman of 30 years had sent a married woman – named only as Mrs X – “many sexually explicit texts”, with one printable message saying how the woman was “sexy, skilled and [a] sensuous lover”.