A damning report into child abuse within the Church of England has revealed how leaders "minimised" a Wirral vicar's offending.
The institution spent decades failing to protect some children and young people from sexual predators, preferring instead to protect its own reputation, the hard-hitting dossier showed.
The Church was accused of being "in direct conflict" with its moral purpose of providing "care and love for the innocent and the vulnerable" by failing to take abuse allegations seriously.
It was also found to have neglected the "physical, emotional and spiritual well-being" of the young, and created a culture where abusers were able to "hide".
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse's (IICSA) report into the Anglican Church also found examples of clergymen being ordained despite a history of child sexual offences.
And it highlighted the case of Reverend Ian Hughes and how his superiors made excuses for his descent into child pornography.
The parish priest of Poulton and Seacombe, then 46, was jailed for 12 months in 2014 for downloading 8,000 indecent images of children.
But Bishop Peter Forster has since suggested to the enquiry that Hughes had been “misled into viewing child pornography” on the basis that “pornography is so ubiquitously available and viewed."
That was despite more than 800 of the images downloaded by Hughes were graded at the most serious level of abuse, the report noted.
Until his retirement in September 2019, Mr Forster was the Bishop of Chester and the longest serving to hold that role in the Church of England.
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In his evidence to the inquiry, Bishop Forster declined to accept the seriousness of the offending of Hughes, it was heard.
He maintained his view, expressed in a letter to the President of Tribunals, that “many people who download child pornography believe it to be different from direct abuse of a child."
Archbishop John Sentamu described these comments as “shocking."
Bishop Foster argued for Hughes’ prohibition from ministry to be reduced from life to 20 years, relying on Hughes’ “relative youth”, his “good ministry” and that he was “very well regarded by his parishioners."
The President of Tribunals ultimately agreed that a prohibition for a minimum of 20 years, rather than for life, should be imposed.
Hughes told police he had been attracted to boys since he was a teenager and after becoming a priest aged 21 struggled with his sexuality.
He said he thought of the images as “just a film, it wasn’t real."
He later admitted 16 counts of possessing indecent images of children and a single charge of possessing extreme pornography.
Hughes told police he was relieved when they raided his vicarage in Wallasey and told officers it was "like an addiction."
Speaking of the release of today's report, Bishop of Huddersfield Jonathan Gibbs, the Church of England's lead safeguarding bishop, and Melissa Caslake, the Church's national director of safeguarding, said: "The report makes shocking reading and, while apologies will never take away the effects of abuse on victims and survivors, we today want to express our shame about the events that have made those apologies necessary.
"The whole Church must learn lessons from this inquiry."
The inquiry heard that, from the 1940s to 2018, 390 people who were either members of the clergy or in positions of trust associated with the Church had been convicted of sexual offences against children.
The report found that, in many of those cases, the Church of England failed to take the abuse seriously, and alleged perpetrators were "given more support than victims, who often faced barriers to reporting (abuse) they simply couldn't overcome."
The report said the Church of England also "struggled to develop a model for effective safeguarding within its organisational structure".
Richard Scorer, lead lawyer for Slater and Gordon, who represented 20 survivors of abuse within the Church of England at the inquiry, said: "This is a very damning report.
"It confirms that, despite decades of scandal, and endless promises, the Church of England continues to fail victims and survivors. Bishops have too much power and too little accountability."
The report acknowledged that the Church had made "considerable improvements to practices and procedures" in recent years, but identified that it needed to make further changes to existing measures, including a Church-wide policy on the funding and provision of support to victims and survivors of child sexual abuse concerning clergy.
In an open letter ahead of the report publication, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York apologised to survivors of abuse, saying they were "truly sorry for the shameful way the Church has acted" against those who have suffered.
Inquiry chairwoman Professor Alexis Jay said: "Over many decades, the Church of England failed to protect children and young people from sexual abusers, instead facilitating a culture where perpetrators could hide and victims faced barriers to disclosure that many could not overcome."
