The Bishop’s Disciplinary Tribunal for the Diocese of Southwark has now published both its determination of misconduct (17 December 2025) and its reasons on penalty (9 February 2026) in the latest case involving David Tudor.

The tribunal concluded unanimously that it was more likely than not that Tudor had penetrative sexual intercourse with a 15-year-old girl on 28 April 1984, having groomed her and exploited his position as her school chaplain, RE teacher and parish priest. The penalty imposed was Prohibition for Life, together with an indefinite injunction preventing contact.

The tribunal’s reasoning is careful and measured. Its findings are robust. Its recognition of the lifelong harm caused is clear.

But there are serious issues that arise from this case — not in the tribunal’s evaluation of the evidence, but in the language used to frame the complaint and in certain assumptions embedded in the process.

“An intimate sexual relationship”

Paragraph 2 of the determination reproduces the charge as framed by the Deputy President of Tribunals:

“…formed, while she was a child (i) An intimate sexual relationship and engaged in sexual acts with Z…”

Those words matter.

The tribunal found that the first sexual intercourse occurred when Z was 15; that it followed grooming; that Tudor locked the bedroom door; that he instructed her how to put a condom on him; and that her reaction was “absolute horror”. The penalty decision explicitly describes her as having been “groomed and abused”.

To describe those facts as “an intimate sexual relationship” is profoundly troubling.

The complainant was 15. Tudor was 29. He was her teacher, her school chaplain and her priest. She was isolated, seeking guidance, and deeply influenced by him. She described being unable to articulate how he “got inside my head”.

This was not an “intimate sexual relationship”. It was the sexual exploitation of a child by an adult in authority.

“Intimate relationship” suggests mutuality. It implies emotional reciprocity. It risks reframing abuse as romance.

The Deputy President is not a peripheral figure. He is the gatekeeper who decides whether complaints proceed to a tribunal and on what basis. The way he describes conduct shapes how that conduct is conceptualised institutionally.

We do not know how Z reacted to that wording. Under the current Clergy Discipline Measure — and under the proposed Clergy Conduct Measure — she has no mechanism to challenge it. Survivors have no standing to contest how senior judicial office-holders describe what happened to them.

Language shapes culture. Culture shapes safeguarding.

What the criminal law would call it

The determination speculates that Tudor was “most likely” charged in 1988 under section 6 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 (intercourse with a girl under 16) and notes that he was acquitted.

Why speculate?

Why was a certificate of conviction (or acquittal) not obtained from the Crown Court record to establish precisely what charge was laid?

More fundamentally, consider the contrast in terminology.

Under the 1956 Act, sexual intercourse with a girl under 16 was a criminal offence. Under the modern Sexual Offences Act 2003, the relevant language is “sexual activity with a child”. Where the adult is in a position of trust — such as a teacher — separate offences apply.

No criminal statute would describe this as an “intimate sexual relationship”.

The criminal law calls it unlawful sexual intercourse with a child. Or sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust.

The contrast with the Deputy President’s phraseology could not be clearer.

The question of “consent”

The determination notes that Z “has never said that the sexual intercourse when she was 15 was not consensual”. It records that she “did not particularly invite it” but “did not refuse”.

This framing is problematic.

Under both the 1956 Act and the 2003 Act, a child under 16 cannot lawfully consent to sexual intercourse with an adult. The law does not turn on whether she refused.

But beyond strict legality lies the reality of grooming.

The tribunal itself found grooming, imbalance of power, spiritual manipulation and significant psychological harm. Z described how he had persuaded her that sex “did not mean anything” and how she absorbed his framing because of who he was.

That is not consent in any meaningful safeguarding sense.

To focus on whether she has “suggested a lack of consent” risks importing adult paradigms into a child-abuse context. Modern safeguarding practice recognises that compliance under grooming and authority is not consent.

The tribunal ultimately concludes she was groomed and abused. That conclusion is right. But the language around consent sits uneasily beside it.

A “public session” no one could attend

Paragraph 1 of the determination states:

“We announced our decision in public session on 20th November 2025 and reserved our reasons.”

Yet there was no public listing of the tribunal. No notice enabling attendance. The Church issued a press statement on 24 November referring to the tribunal process, but the determination itself was not publicised until much later.

If a decision is truly announced “in public session”, the public must be able to know it is happening and attend.

Otherwise, “public” becomes a formal label without substantive openness.

Transparency is not achieved by assertion. It requires accessibility. And members of Parliament’s Ecclesiastical Committee will need to consider this when it considers the skeletal replacement for the Clergy Discipline Measure — the Clergy Conduct Measure — when it consider’s whether the text’s deferrence to the unpublished “Rules” mean public hearings in practice.

The broader issue

It is important to be clear: the tribunal’s factual findings are serious and balanced. Its penalty decision properly recognises the gravity of the abuse and the lifelong harm.

My criticism is not directed at the panel.

It is directed at the language used by the Deputy President — a senior judicial gatekeeper — to describe the sexual exploitation of a 15-year-old girl as an “intimate sexual relationship”.

That language does not reflect modern safeguarding understanding. It does not reflect criminal law terminology. And it does not reflect the tribunal’s own findings of grooming and abuse.

If those entrusted with gatekeeping clergy discipline conceptualise child sexual exploitation in such relational terms, the Church’s safeguarding culture still has work to do — as we all know it does.

The actions of David Tudor considered by the tribunal took place in 1984. The Archbishops’ Council will repeatedly say that things have changed. Yet this post challenges something that took place now. It is now, today, that child sexual abuse was described by a senior ecclesiastical (and secular) judge as an as an “intimate sexual relationship”. And it is this that the Church of England should address now.

Safeguarding reform is not only about structural change. It is about language, assumptions and power.

Words matter.

And in cases of child sexual abuse, precision is not optional.