IICSA's first Anglican Church report, "The Anglican Church Case Studies: the Diocese of Chichester and the response to allegations against Peter Ball," published 9 May 2019, a 252 page report examining the Diocese of Chichester's wider safeguarding culture and, as its central case study, the Church of England's decades-long response to allegations against Peter Ball. It found the Church had put its own institutional reputation above the needs of Ball's victims, citing a serious failure of leadership by then Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey among the individuals whose handling of the allegations it examined. This atlas does not adopt any single figure for the diocese-wide clergy conviction count the report also discusses, since secondary reporting on that broader number is inconsistent across outlets; the period, victim and key-finding facts below track the report's central Ball case study specifically, whose facts are well corroborated.
Facts
Documented Findings
Allegations DocumentedThe Inquiry received evidence of allegations against Peter Ball from 33 individuals; a 1992 Gloucestershire Constabulary investigation identified a further six complainants (33 + 6 = 39). Distinct from the victim-estimate of 18, which reflects the young men Ball himself admitted abusing in his 2015 guilty plea. Victim EstimateThe 18 young men Peter Ball admitted abusing over 1977 to 1992, per the report's own central case study; not a diocese-wide figure. Key FindingThe Church put its own reputation above the needs of Peter Ball's victims across more than two decades, from his 1993 caution and resignation through the reopened 2012 investigation to his 2015 conviction, a period during which senior figures including Archbishop George Carey are found to have failed in their leadership response to the allegations. 1 Inquiry Profile
Kind of Record JurisdictionEngland (Diocese of Chichester; the Peter Ball case study spans the Dioceses of Lewes and Gloucester as well) 1 Commissioned ByIndependent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) 1 Publication Year Period Covered, From Cross-Tradition Connections
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