Priest admitted assaulting boy before being made bishop, leaked report claims

A former Church in Wales bishop is said to have admitted sexually assaulting a teenage boy, according to a report seen by the BBC.

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

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.

Lawyers acting for the mother of the alleged victim - who we are calling Dean - have said the document appears to be a "character assassination" of both him and his family, to keep Pierce beyond reproach.

She 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 that 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 the Rt Rev Bridges as Bishop of Swansea and Brecon in the April.

The allegation was not reported to police until 2010 - two years after Pierce had stepped down from his nine-year tenure as bishop.

By this time, Dean had died.

The handwritten 25-page report 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 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".

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.

A BBC investigation into the Church in Wales previously revealed allegations against Pierce reached the desk of his bishop as early as the mid 1980s, but the church found no record of him being disciplined.

Lawyers acting for Dean's family have said the existence of this report has caused them "immense distress".

"It's designed to put anyone investigating the case off giving Dean's account any credibility," said David Greenwood, a solicitor who specialises in child abuse claims.

"It's brought up this new revelation that someone was trying to cover it up."

The report focuses on Dean's childhood and sexuality and is largely derogatory in nature.

It has been obtained by the BBC ahead of a review into how the Church in Wales treated the allegation involving Dean, who attended one of Pierce's former churches near Swansea in south Wales.

The BBC understands Pierce asked the author, a friend of his, to prepare the report so that it could be passed to a senior cleric in the church. It is not known who saw it or what action was taken.

In correspondence seen by the BBC, a church employee said: "It should never have been written from what is clearly highly confidential information and certainly should not have formed part of any decision-making process."

The report said that Pierce was "naive and inexperienced in coping with anybody who treated him in this way".

"He was confused and mesmerised and had no defence against such a bold attack," it added.

"I am not condoning what Pierce did but trying to see how it happened.

"I do not think for a moment, that Dean was being malicious. He was just being himself and exploring life and his own sexuality."

The report described how Pierce "maintained an invisible barrier around himself.... and Dean effectively crashed straight through that barrier".

Mr Greenwood, who has dealt with a number of child abuse cases, has said he has seen this in other cases where "those close to those accused try to rally around them" with "letters of support".

He added it shows how the church responded to these type of allegations by "defensively" downplaying them and finding "evidence to essentially rubbish the characters of the complainants".

The Church in Wales said the report was "written by a friend of Anthony Pierce and was not commissioned by the church".

"It forms an important part of the evidence of the review, where it is dealt with in a thorough and detailed manner, and where the other questions that have been asked will be answered with full context," said a church spokesperson.

The BBC wrote to Pierce in prison but he declined to comment.

The review into how the allegation involving Dean was handled is due to be published in the new year.

Pierce was sentenced to four years and one month earlier this year after admitting to five counts of indecent assault on a separate child between 1985 and 1990.

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