by Charles Moore, Spectator
[…] As Holy Week approaches, spare a thought for John Perumbalath. He was Bishop of Liverpool for less than two years, but then in January was forced to resign because of two accusations, one of sexual assault and one of sexual harassment made against him on television. I emphasise the ‘on television’ bit (Channel 4 News), because both accusations had been made earlier and investigated by the National Safeguarding Team of the Church of England. The Church’s official statement on the matter said that ‘no safeguarding concerns were established’. Once Channel 4 repeated the allegations without any new evidence, however, the church authorities fell all of a heap with terror. No bishop publicly supported their colleague, though nothing was proved against him. With that lack of support, Bishop Perumbalath decided, though protesting his innocence, that he must go.
It has been a sad pilgrimage for this gentle and friendly man. Born in Kerala, the most Christian part of India, and trained for the priesthood in Calcutta, John Perumbalath came to England more than 20 years ago. One might call him a reverse missionary to the English heathen. He cannot have realised how brutal and primitive are our native church’s forms of justice, where an accusation of sexual abuse is taken as proof of guilt. Nor could he have imagined that he would be publicly denounced by a fellow bishop. The Rt Revd Beverley Mason, the suffragan Bishop of Warrington, claimed he had harassed her while in a room full of clergy. On any normal evidential basis, her uncorroborated accusation seems highly interpretive and utterly unprovable. Could it all be based on a cultural misunderstanding? Did the Right Rev Bev, accustomed to the chilly reserve of her fellow white English bishops, misread the warmer greetings of a smiling Indian? It must have been disappointing for her not to have been made Bishop of Liverpool herself (she held that role in an acting capacity at the time), but that is no reason for the high priests of the C of E to shun the man the process had preferred to her. In the current culture, you would have to be unusually brave or foolish to become a male bishop in England. Mere accusation can condemn, and no colleague dares call for due process. Given that the founder of the Church was killed on Good Friday because of false accusation, I do find this development shocking.