The Diocese of Oxford has confirmed that the Rev David Fletcher had Permission to Officiate (PTO) when safeguarding concerns first emerged about his treatment of women.

A spokeswoman for Oxford Diocese this week told Anglican Ink that Fletcher, who attended St Ebbe’s, the conservative evangelical flagship church in central Oxford, had PTO until July 2018.

AI highlighted last week the fact that when a woman reported to the St Ebbe’s leadership in 2017 that Fletcher had been ‘inappropriately tactile’ with her, they handled the disclosure in-house and did not refer it to the Diocesan Safeguarding Team (DST).

The significance of Oxford Diocese’s statement about Fletcher’s PTO status is that as a licensed minister he was under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Oxford.  So why did the St Ebbe’s leadership not refer the matter to the DST immediately?

In their joint statement in February this year following the Channel 4 News revelations that Fletcher was an abuser of women and girls, Oxford Diocese and St Ebbe’s said:

‘In 2017, following a report of him being inappropriately tactile with a member of the church, David Fletcher was told to avoid physical contact that had any possibility of being considered inappropriate.   

‘In 2019, David Fletcher’s behaviour was again raised when a report of inappropriate tactility was passed to St Ebbe’s via a third party. This was referred to the Diocesan Safeguarding Team, who confirmed that the appropriate action had been taken in 2017 and advised that the report did not meet the threshold for further action.’

In plain English ‘being inappropriately tactile with a member of the church’ means Fletcher groped a woman who attended St Ebbe’s. The woman concerned showed enormous courage in making the disclosure.

Fletcher, who died in 2022, was in a high position of trust at St Ebbe’s. He had elevated status at the church having been its Rector from 1986 to 1998 and leader of the Iwerne evangelical camps aiming at the elite English boarding schools from 1967 to 1986. Many young people who had been on the Iwerne camps attended St Ebbe’s. The two senior clergy at St Ebbe’s when the woman made the disclosure in 2017 were closely associated with Fletcher and the Iwerne camps.

The Rector of St Ebbe’s, Canon Vaughan Roberts, was Fletcher’s curate at the church in the 1990s. Morning Congregation Leader, the Rev Pete Wilkinson, effectively Roberts’s clerical number two, is Fletcher’s nephew. Did they tell Fletcher in 2017 ‘to avoid physical contact that had any possibility of being considered inappropriate’?

Would not the warning have carried more weight if it had come from the Archdeacon of Oxford or the Diocesan Safeguarding Adviser?

Given that Fletcher had PTO when the woman made the disclosure that Fletcher had groped her, the serious question arises why in 2019 when another woman made a similar disclosure the Oxford DST ‘confirmed that the appropriate action had been taken in 2017’?  What was the DST’s basis in due canonical process for making that declaration?

Further questions relate to the timing of Fletcher’s ceasing to hold PTO in 2018. Was it due to the illness that led to his death four years later? Or did he decide to hand in his PTO to avoid the accountability it involved because he knew more allegations were coming down the line?

Oxford Diocese has confirmed that more allegations about Fletcher involving adult women have now been received. The St Ebbe’s Parochial Church Council is, according to a news story last month in Evangelicals Now, likely to commission an independent review into the Fletcher scandal. Should not the handling of the 2017 disclosure definitely be included in the review’s scope?  

Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in the UK.