Senior British police officers claim that Archbishop Justin Welby and other Church of England leaders properly reported accusations of John Smyth’s abuse to the police in 2013, challenging a key claim of the Makin Report, which resulted in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s resignation on November 12.
Church Times staff reporter Francis Martin writes in a November 27 article that “three retired police detectives with extensive safeguarding experience” questioned Makin’s claim that “there was never a formal referral to Cambridgeshire police,” which the reviewer listed in his “summary of failures.”
“Nobody can say this isn’t a hideous, horrific case, but to say that in 2013, no one did anything, and that it wasn’t a police referral, leading to where we are now with the Archbishop resigning, it’s just wrong,” one of the officers told the Church Times.
“Really, what more could the Church have done?” another asked about the action of church officers in 2013.
The three former officers were unwilling to be named because they all now work independently in safeguarding.
Noting the many steps taken by Yvonne Quirk, the Bishop of Ely’s safeguarding adviser, in the weeks and months after a safeguarding complaint was filed by a church officer in the diocese, one detective said, “I don’t know how much more of a referral you can get.”
The Makin Report says the Cambridgeshire police officer with whom Quirk spoke, Lisa Pearson, said the conversation was “about giving advice,” and did not believe Quirk was making “a formal referral.”
This is contradicted, the officers say, by the fact that a meeting followed between Quirk and two more senior officers in the Cambridgeshire police. “That’s reporting to police,” one of the officers claimed.
In his November 12 resignation announcement, Welby stated, “When I was informed in 2013 and told that the police had been notified, I believed wrongly that an appropriate resolution would follow.”
Bishop of Lincoln Stephen Conway, who was Bishop of Ely in 2013 (and is under considerable pressure to resign), said on the same day, “It was my understanding that this matter was reported to the Police in Cambridgeshire and duly passed on to the Police in Hampshire, where the abuse had occurred.”
All three officers told the Church Times that Welby was justified in thinking that proper reporting procedures had been followed in 2013, and that Makin’s statement that he was “ill-advised” in the matter is incorrect.
Makin also based his claim that a formal referral had not been made by church officials on the failure of the Cambridgeshire police to give the case a number in the U.K.’s crime-recording system in 2013.
But Martin’s story points out that the Cambridgeshire police were cited in an inspection the next year for failures in recording crimes referred to it by third parties, including “other public sector organizations.”
“We found little evidence of supervision of these systems and we found that there is no cross-referencing to the crime-recording system,” the inspection report said.
Last week, a spokesperson for Cambridge Constabulary downplayed suggestions that it had mishandled the Smyth case, telling the Church Times, “Concerns regarding the conduct of a man in the 1980s were discussed at a safeguarding meeting in October 2013. Limited information was spoken about in relation to two victims of physical abuse who had approached representatives of the Diocese of Ely, but did not wish to be identified or to make a formal complaint.
“Both victims were adults at the time of the alleged incidents and none of the incidents were believed to have taken place in Cambridgeshire. With the limited information available at the time, and the victims not willing to make a complaint, it was not possible for us to pursue an investigation.”
Asked to comment on the claim that Smyth’s abuse had been properly referred to police by church officials in 2013, Makin’s spokesperson told the Church Times, “Any detail on police involvement beyond what is contained in the report is a question for the police.”
