Sex abuse survivors are calling for former Archbishop George Carey to face a police investigation for his role in the Church's collusion with convicted abuser and ex-bishop of Gloucester Peter Ball.
Victims and their lawyers say Lord Carey should relinquish his right to sit in the House of Lords if he his found to have deliberately concealed evidence.
'It is unacceptable that someone involved in concealing evidence of criminality should have a role in making laws for others,' a letter from two of Ball's survivors and their lawyers to the Times reads.
The calls for a police investigation into Lord Carey, backed by the National Secular Society, come after he quit his honorary role as assistant bishop in the Oxford diocese following a damning report by Dame Moira Gibb.
Abuse in Faith, published last week, is highly critical of the Church's response to the 84-year-old former Bishop of Lewes and Gloucester, who was jailed for 32 months in October 2015 after admitting a string of historical sex offences against 18 teenagers and young men.
The independent review focuses particularly on Lord Carey's role and his repeated briefings as to Ball's activities. Despite being told of allegations against Ball, Carey was part of the Church's cover-up, the report says.
'Ball's priority was to protect and promote himself and he maligned the abused. The Church colluded with that rather than seeking to help those he had harmed, or assuring itself of the safety of others,' Dame Gibb wrote in her foreward.
In response the letter says the Church 'cannot be allowed to carry on policing itself' and calls for 'independent oversight' of safeguarding in the CofE.
Signed by Richard Scorer, abuse solicitor at Slater & Gorden and director at the National Secular Society (NSS); David Greenwood, solicitor at Switalskis; and Phil Johnson and the Rev Graham Sawyer, survivors of abuse by Peter Ball, the letter calls for more consequences for the perpetrators of the cover up.
The NSS has also written to the George Carey Church of England Primary School in Barking, urging it to consider a name change. In a letter to the chair of governors, the NSS said it was 'wholly inappropriate' for a school to be named in honour of Carey.
Stephen Evans, campaigns director at the NSS, joined the calls for Lord Carey to face a police investigation.
'It's clear from the independent review that Carey concealed evidence of criminality and acted as judge and jury over Ball, allowing him to evade justice for 20 years. It is surely inconceivable that those found to have covered-up evidence of criminality and shielded perpetrators from justice can act as legislators in the House of lords.'
