Church of England hits back over claims it is ‘delaying’ George Bell report
James Macintyre, Christian Today:
The Church of England has hit back over the allegation that it is delaying publishing the Carlile report into its handling of an abuse claim against the late George Bell, the once internationally respected former Bishop of Chichester, saying it is ‘business as usual’.
The Church said in a statement that the delay in publishing the report from the review by Lord Carlile of Berriew into lessons learnt from the case, which was delivered a month ago, was down to the ‘intensive process’ of ‘responding with feedback from those who contributed’ which includes ‘issues over factual accuracy and identification of “Carol”‘ the pseudonym for the complainant, in accordance to the terms of reference.
‘This is the process with all independent reviews, there is a period of a few months between receiving the first draft and final publication, the statement from a spokesperson for the National Safeguarding Team said, with a Church source adding that ‘we are not delaying anything’.
The statement comes after fierce criticism of the Church’s handling of the case led by Peter Hitchens, the Mail on Sunday columnist and outspoken supporter of the campaign to clear the name of the late former bishop which is being coordinated by the George Bell group.
Hitchens — who condemned the Church for allegedly disregarding the presumption of innocence in October 2015 when it publicised claims by ‘Carol’, to whom it paid compensation — has regularly since used his blog, column and Twitter account to attack the Church and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, over the handling of the case, and to speculate that the Carlile report is highly critical.
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