The Church of England paid a six-figure sum to Canon Andrew Hindley, a BBC investigation reveals.
The Church of England made a six-figure pay-off to a priest assessed as a potential risk to children and young people, a BBC investigation has found.
The archbishops of Canterbury and York have told the BBC they are “still working” to get Church processes right and “must learn” from past mistakes. The Church of England said it was settling legal action brought by the priest in response to an earlier Church decision to force him to retire. She says she was assured there was a plan to deal with it. But after taking up the post “it became quite clear there was no plan” and quickly realised the Church of England was sitting on an open secret.
Police took no further action in three other investigations. In each, Canon Hindley denied the allegations: The repeated failure to definitively act on the findings of these risk assessments, and other warnings, is at the centre of our investigation. It also recommended he attend a sex offender programme and his risk be reassessed - and if he failed to co-operate, the Church should think about ending his employment.A review he commissioned by a social work researcher in 2007 said “it would be hard to sustain an argument of predatory targeting behaviour” but Canon Hindley “needs support on developing his boundaries in relation to work with children”.
The cathedral then began legal proceedings to remove him from his cathedral townhouse, which he also opposed.This pushback may explain why church leaders had not acted earlier. Internal papers show they had previously considered dismissing Canon Hindley but were worried about legal action. Several attempts were made to take complaints to tribunals but all were refused permission to proceed.
Canon Hindley says that whenever his case has been considered objectively by an independent judicial decision-maker, “I have always been exonerated”. She did not want to be identified and would not talk about her relative’s allegations against Canon Hindley. “The Archbishop had told them that the Church house lawyers wouldn't be able to resolve this, and the archbishop himself suggested that one way for this clergyman to go would be to, effectively, leak the story to the press,” he says.
Rt Rev Henderson said “this should never be said of a clerk in Holy Orders” and he made the startling threat that if Canon Hindley came back to work he was “prepared to close the ministry of the Cathedral”, with the agreement of the Dean and the archbishops of Canterbury and York. In the end, the Church’s solution to get rid of Canon Hindley was to dismiss him on ill-health grounds, followed by a financial settlement.
Speaking to the BBC, the current Bishop of Blackburn, Philip North, says: “I don't think anybody can be quite happy with the way that that situation was resolved.”
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