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Former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey and the former Bishop of Lewes Peter Ball
Former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey delayed a “proper investigation” into a senior priest’s paedophile crimes for two decades by failing to pass information to police, an inquiry heard.
A lawyer for some victims of Peter Ball, the disgraced former Bishop of Lewes and Bishop of Gloucester, made the claim to Dame Lowell Goddard’s public inquiry into child sex abuse.
Ball, 84, was jailed for 32 months in October 2015 after pleading guilty to a string of historical sex offences.
But 22 years previously, in 1993, he was investigated and let off with a caution for gross indecency by police after abusing a trainee monk.
Richard Scorer, who represents 17 victims, made the claim about Lord Carey while an application for three of them, all men, to be “core participants” in the inquiry at a preliminary hearing in the Royal Courts of Justice.
He said one of the men, known as A13, complained to Lord Carey in 1992, when the latter was the most senior figure in the Anglican Church.
Mr Scorer said: “A13 can tell the inquiry about a very detailed complaint he made to Archbishop George Carey in 1992, reporting Peter Ball’s behaviour … years previously.
“We believe that the Archbishop of Canterbury failed to pass that information on to the police and is one reason, we believe, a proper investigation of Peter Ball’s behaviour and abuse was delayed by over 20 years.”
One strand of Dame Lowell’s wide-ranging inquiry will examine child sex abuse by members of the Anglican Church and ecclesiastical authorities’ reaction and response to it.
It is looking in detail at allegations involving the Diocese of Chichester, in which Ball worked as Bishop of Lewes from 1977 to 1992, when he took the position in Gloucester.
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