Leaked Report Claims Priest Admitted Sexually Assaulting Boy Before Being Made Bishop

A former Church in Wales bishop is said to have admitted sexually assaulting a teenage boy before being made Bishop, according to a leaked report

Anthony Pierce, who was jailed for historical sexual abuse of another boy, earlier this year, allegedly confessed to what is described as a “criminal offence” while he was a parish priest.

BBC reports: The document was written months before he became Bishop of Swansea and Brecon in 1999 and the church held the report – which Pierce asked a “friend” to write – for 11 years before passing it to police.

The Church in Wales said it did not commission the report and the document would form part of a review into how they handled the claim.

The handwritten 25-page document said the abuse happened in 1990 and stated Pierce, who is now 84, felt “intensely guilty” and “could not escape the reality that he was an adult” while the victim was a child.

“He was frightened of his own shame being made public, and of losing his ministry,” the report reads.

The report was written in February 1999, just two months before Pierce became Bishop of Swansea and Brecon, one of the Church in Wales’ most senior positions.

We’re calling his alleged victim Dean to protect his identity. Dean – who has since died – attended Pierce’s old church near Swansea in south Wales.

The report goes on to claim Pierce – a priest in his late 40s at the time – was “naive” and “had no defence” against 15-year-old Dean, who is described in the report as “mercurial” and “very attractive”.

Lawyers acting for Dean’s mother have said the document appears to be a “character assassination” of both him and his family, to keep Pierce beyond reproach.

Dean’s mother had reported the allegation twice to the church – the first time in 1993, complaining to the then Bishop of Swansea and Brecon the Rt Rev Dewi Bridges.

The document said it was after this allegation Pierce admitted the “criminal act” to the report’s author.

She also raised it again in January 1999, the month before the report was written and three months before Pierce succeeded Mr Bridges as Bishop of Swansea and Brecon in the April.

The allegation wasn’t reported to police until 2010 – two years after Pierce had stepped down from his nine-year tenure as bishop.

The Church in Wales said it reported the claim to police again in 2016, as it submitted documents – including the handwritten report – to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. But, by then, Dean had died.