In February 1954, at Abingdon magistrates court, a 25-year-old trainee priest was convicted of the indecent assault of a child and thrown out of theological college. Despite this, Roy Cotton was ordained in 1966 and went on to be the vicar of a number of parishes in the dioceses of Portsmouth and Chichester. On one job reference, the bishop of Portsmouth said this: “The charge made against him in 1953 has, I believe, been proved a false one. He pleaded guilty to spare the boys concerned having to appear in court.”
Fr Cotton went on to abuse a number of boys in the diocese of Chichester. Cotton’s friend, Fr Colin Pritchard, was convicted of sexually abusing young boys in 2008. And last year, Cotton’s boss, the bishop of Lewes, Peter Ball, was convicted of the sexual abuse of 18 young men in the 1980s.
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