Another day, another safeguarding mess. And another independent safeguarding review “to ensure lessons are learnt from this case” (Church of England statement on David Tudor, 15 December).

I’d like to make one very simple point: that the lessons needing to be learned are ones of which we were already very well aware. 

The David Tudor saga is horrible. It concerns the grooming and abuse of girls, police involvement, and various ‘church law’ involvement: the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure, use of the Clergy Discipline Measure and a tribunaI which – decades after the first reports, a six-month prison sentence and a five-year suspension from ministry – finally prohibited Tudor from ministry for life. The tribunal report details the whole account of Tudor’s actions alongside his attempts to minimise what he did (“He was looking for a soulmate”. Funny way of going about that). Perhaps this case gives us more insights into the amount of truly grubby stuff that comes across the desk of a bishop or archbishop. As with the recent Blackburn Cathedral case, there’s a strong element of ‘Our hands were tied: although we knew what was going on, there was nothing else we could do to stop the perpetrator’. 

Here are just three of the lessons which should be learned, all of which have already been highlighted, again and again, in previous reviews of safeguarding failures.

We are easily taken in by charm. Character evidence always features in these tribunal accounts. Sometimes, the report makes it clear that those comprising the tribunal were not convinced. Notoriously, of course, Peter Ball produced character references from a range of the great and the good, including the current King. Mike Pilavachi was “just Mike”, big and cuddly and quirky. The 2024 tribunal noted that Tudor was supported by “a large number of people [who spoke] to his success in invigorating the church, leading its growth and presenting a flourishing message”. So that’s all right then. Before the tribunal, the dominant story seemed to be of the long period of his suspension while investigations took place, presented as the unfair victimisation of a “well respected” leader. The Facebook page for the local paper gave the same message: “a true gentleman”, “the best vicar ever” and so on. 

Following on from that, and closely related to it, the second lesson is that, so long as you fill the church, it’s all fine. Think Soul Survivor, again. Think Nine O’Clock Service. As one of the locals interviewed in 2022 said of Tudor, “He had [the church] packed to the rafters every week and now the same community is losing out. Lots of people are very upset.” So long as you pack them in, is anyone going to listen to victims? And how do you raise a doubt about someone who is perceived by many as “the best vicar ever”? As the legal team for one of the survivors notes, he “has enjoyed a long and successful career in the Church despite the Church’s knowledge of his abuse of young girls”. Success, eh? Even when the church authorities know about the dark side of that charming personality, success in filling the pews can lead to career benefits.

Keep quoting the Bible. Notoriously, of course, this was one of the methods used by John Smyth. In the long-suppressed 1983 Ruston Report, Mark Ruston noted that “Scriptures used commonly were: Hebrews xii.5-11, 2 Samuel vii.13, St Luke xii.47 and many ‘spare the rod’ and ‘fathers and sons’ verses in Proverbs”. Ruston was not entirely rejecting these; it was more about how they are interpreted so that, among other things, for the Smyth situation “the fathers and child verses do not apply”. Except, of course, that they did, for Smyth’s own children, who do not seem to have been of any interest to those in the church who worked so hard to cover up the abuse of other boys. There’s a hint of this abuse of the Bible in the descriptions of David Tudor’s actions; the File on 4 report included a survivor talking about Tudor hitting her while quoting Bible verses as she performed sexual acts. What is there about violence, sex and the Bible?

So, no new ‘learning’ there. But I want to end with something else which is coming out in responses to the Tudor case; the issue of what happens to known offenders. This has not yet been addressed in the media, although some people have clearly been horrified by the revelation that it is possible to work as a priest while being forbidden to go near children; from 2008 Tudor had been the subject of a safeguarding agreement that meant he could not go into schools, or be alone with children. While this was in force, the subsequent appointment of Tudor as an area dean does seem particularly strange. What doesn’t seem to be acknowledged is that many churches are already working with situations like this. There are people – clergy and lay – with histories as abusers and offenders, sexual or otherwise, and there has to be a plan to manage this. That will involve, for example, a written agreement, a group to support the offender, and the keeping of notes. The person may need to sign to agree, for example, that they will “stay away from areas of the church where children or young people meet”. Southwark Diocese has this guide for such situations.

None of this is easy. There will be people in a congregation who know more than others; there will be people who refuse to believe someone is not “a true gentleman” and “the best vicar ever”, even when that person is found guilty in court. Last year, on the Via Media News blog, I published a piece by Revd Mark Bennet about leading a church where something like this has happened. Perhaps now is the time to return to the questions he posed about the issues of relationships and trust, all listed here.