A former Church of England priest has been given a two-year community order after admitting the sexual abuse of two boys more than 40 years ago. On 20 July 2026 the Wolverhampton Crown Court sentenced Edward Phillips-Smith, 76, to a two-year community order on each twp charges of gross indecency and assault, to run concurrently; completion of a Building Choices programme; 30 days of rehabilitation activity; and a five-year sex offenders’ notification order. Phillips-Smith pleaded guilty in November 2025 to offenses committed while he was chaplain at St Peter’s Collegiate School in Wolverhampton and later in Brewood, Staffordshire.
Phillips-Smith, who was known to children as “Father Eddie,” admitted indecently assaulting an 11-year-old boy and inciting him to commit an act of gross indecency between 1978 and 1980, and indecently assaulting a second boy under 14, and inciting him to commit an act of gross indecency, between 1982 and 1983.
BBC reporting says Phillips-Smith had already been sentenced in January 2024 to 32 months in prison after admitting other historic abuse offenses at his Brewood home, and was released on licence in May 2025.
The judge said “competing factors” including Phillips-Smith’s deteriorating health, a lack of prison space, and rehabilitation time already served made sentencing difficult, but that his earlier sentence would have been longer had the present charges been included.
The Diocese of Lichfield said in 2024 that it had referred Phillips-Smith’s file to police after an internal review uncovered “red flags” and described the conduct as “profoundly unacceptable.”
The Church of England’s safeguarding guidance states that safeguarding is integral to the church’s mission and that every diocese has safeguarding advisers and every parish safeguarding officers.
The Phillips-Smith case also belongs to the larger and still unsettled Anglican conversation about safeguarding, episcopal accountability, and the credibility of public repentance. The Church of England has spent years under pressure to strengthen safeguarding, including national reviews and debates about structural reform, yet each new historical case reopens the question of whether the Church learned too slowly and too little from earlier failures.