The Archbishop of York, Most Rev. Stephen Cottrell, second highest ranking leader in the Anglican Communion, is facing calls to resign over his supervision of sex assault allegations involving a priest known for his charismatic preaching.
The new debacle has emerged just weeks after Cottrell’s boss, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Most Rev. Justin Welby, resigned over his handling of a serial sex offender, the late John Smyth, in an unrelated case.
Cottrell is due to take over from Welby on a temporary basis from Jan. 6, assuming leadership of the Church of England. However, a BBC R4 “File on Four” program investigation reveals that when Cottrell was Bishop of Chelmsford, he allowed a priest, David Tudor, to stay in his job even though the church had barred the priest from being alone in the company of children. The BBC reports the priest paid compensation to one of the victims of £10,000 for violent abuse.
Cottrell published a personal statement on his website in response to the allegations made by the BBC program.
“The situation I faced when I became Bishop of Chelmsford, was horrible and intolerable – most of all for the survivors and victims who had bravely come forward and shared their stories from the 1980s,” Cottrell said.
“This morning’s (Dec. 16) news coverage incorrectly implies that no action was taken until 2024. That is not the case. In my capacity as Bishop of Chelmsford, I suspended David Tudor from office at the first opportunity, when a new victim came forward to the police in 2019. Up until 2019, there were no legal grounds to take alternative action.”
Cottrell also pointed out that when he joined the Chelmsford diocese in 2010, he worked closely with its “very professional” safeguarding team to ensure the risk was managed.
“But it was not possible to remove David Tudor from office until such time as fresh complaints were made, which happened when a victim bravely spoke to the police,” he explained. “Once this happened in 2019, I acted immediately. I suspended David Tudor from all ministry pending the investigation and subsequent tribunal hearing in which he was removed from office and prohibited from ministry for life.”
Cottrell apologised in the statement that action had not been taken earlier but said he had inherited the situation. He expressed disappointment that the story had been reported in the wider media “as if it was an abuser being ignored or even protected.”
“Actually, nothing could be further from the truth,” opined the archbishop. “And to present it this way only re-traumatises already hurt people. The situation with David Tudor was an awful situation to live with and to manage and has meant many people suffering as a result. I want victims and survivors to know that everything was done to understand, assess and manage the risk.”
Cottrell also welcomed the outcome of a tribunal in October (2024) about the issue but said that the approach to such matters would be different now, than in the past.
“Following David Tudor’s five years of suspension from ministry in 1988, the process at that time did not prevent him from returning to ministry in the Diocese of Southwark in 1994,” Cottrell outlined. “Changes to the way safeguarding is now managed and scrutinised would mean the decision taken in 1988 would not take place now. But it did then.”
Lastly, Cottrell called on the Church of England to undergo independent scrutiny of safeguarding measures so that “those who do have understandable frustrations and concerns can have their voices heard and those of us who have responsibility for managing these situations can be helped to avoid them and resolve them.”
“I have publicly supported this for many years. I pledge myself to do what I can to achieve it,” he added.
Tudor, reportedly known for his charismatic manner of preaching, worked for the Church of England for 46 years in London, and the counties of Essex and Surrey. When Cottrell became Bishop of Chelmsford in 2010, Tudor was an area dean on Canvey Island in Essex.
The BBC lists the following facts that “Mr Cottrell would have been told.”
Tudor was a defendant in two criminal trials in 1988 and in the first trial he admitted having sex with a 16-year-old schoolgirl. He had been cleared in court of indecently assaulting the girl when she was 15.
For the second trial, Tudor was initially jailed for six months for indecently assaulting three girls. However, this conviction was “quashed on technical grounds because the judge had misdirected the jury,” according to the BBC.
Tudor was also banned from ministry for five years for sexual misconduct by a church tribunal in 1989. He was then allowed to return to ministry.
But Tudor was then suspended again in 2005 when police investigated allegations he assaulted a child in the 1970s. Yet he was not charged by police and then allowed to work for the church again, under certain conditions.
Tudor had been subject to a safeguarding agreement blocking him in Jan. 2008 from working alone with children or entering schools in the county of Essex. A few months later he was given the position of area dean, responsible for 12 church parishes.
In response to the BBC program, the Bishop of Newcastle, the Right Rev. Helen-Ann Hartley, reportedly called for Cottrell to resign. She had previously called for Welby to resign too, before he did so.
“One archbishop has resigned over a safeguarding failure, and now the remaining archbishop has a very serious matter that calls into question his ability to lead on the urgent change that is required,” she said, as reported on the BBC Radio 4’s Today program.
“My personal view is that the evidence before us makes it impossible for Stephen Cottrell to be the person in which we have confidence and trust to drive the change that is needed.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Most Rev. Justin Welby, resigned on Nov. 12 following concerns about his handling of a sex abuse case involving the deceased John Smyth QC, mentioned above, who sexually abused countless boys and young men in the 1970s and 1980s, as reported by Christian Daily International.
The Makin Review, looking into the matters of Smyth’s abuse, concluded that the serial abuser could have been stopped sooner if Welby had formally reported concerns disclosed to him a decade ago.
Smyth was reported to be the most prolific serial abuser associated with the Church of England, a previous independent review concluded. He died aged 77 in Cape Town, South Africa in 2018, after being accused of abusing boys at his home in Winchester, England, whom he worked with at a Christian summer camp in the county of Dorset in the 1970s and 1980s, according to the BBC.
