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If you don’t want to read the full 1,400 words, go to the 300-word TL;DR summary

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Yesterday’s blog examined why the “no case to answer” decision in the David Tudor case is unsustainable. This supplement takes a different but equally important approach. It examines the Archbishop of York’s own words, as recorded in his response to the complaint, and measures them against four benchmarks:

1. good safeguarding practice and process;
2. his public statements to the media;
3. the duties imposed on charity trustees by law; and
4. the Church of England’s own safeguarding policies.

The difficulty is not tone, sincerity, or intention. It is process, evidence, and accountability.

Memory is not safeguarding: why records matter

In his response to the complaint, the Archbishop accepts overall responsibility for decisions affecting David Tudor but says that he has “no actual memory” of the processes by which Tudor was reappointed as Area Dean. He then adds that he is “sure” he would remember if safeguarding professionals had questioned the propriety of those reappointments — and that they did not.

This is not a minor point. It goes to the heart of safeguarding governance.

Safeguarding systems do not rely on personal recall. They rely on records. Where a known abuser is subject to ongoing restrictions; where risk is said to be “managed well”; and where decisions are taken to extend responsibility, authority, or visibility, safeguarding standards require a clear, contemporaneous documentary trail. That trail should include:

• written advice from safeguarding professionals;
  
• minutes or notes of meetings where risk and role suitability were discussed;
  
• documented consideration of alternatives and mitigations;
  
• explicit recording of victim and survivor impact; and
  
• a reasoned, recorded justification for the final decision taken.

These records are not optional, and they are not kept for their own sake. They exist precisely so that, when decisions later come under scrutiny, the organisation can demonstrate how safeguarding judgments were made, what information was considered, and why particular risks were judged acceptable or unacceptable.

The Archbishop repeatedly emphasises that Tudor’s risks were being “managed well”, with regular oversight and professional involvement. If that is correct, then robust records must exist. If they exist, they should have been used, cited, and relied upon in responding to the complaint and in reviewing safeguarding actions. A review that looks past records and instead relies on a failure of memory is not a meaningful review at all.

If such records existed but were not used, that raises serious governance questions. It suggests that record-keeping is treated as a compliance exercise rather than as a tool for accountability and learning. Records that are not used to inform review and scrutiny serve no safeguarding purpose.

If, on the other hand, those records did not exist, then the claim that risk was “managed well” is unsustainable. Risk management that cannot be evidenced is not risk management; it is assertion.

Either way, reliance on “I’m sure I would remember” falls far short of what safeguarding policy expects. It reduces safeguarding to personal confidence rather than demonstrable process — exactly the failure mode that safeguarding frameworks are designed to prevent.

The “I can’t remember” defence in law and public accountability

This problem is not unique to the Church of England. Courts and statutory inquiries have grappled repeatedly with the question of what weight can be given to an office-holder’s inability to remember key decisions.

The consistent legal and public-law position is clear: an inability to remember does not absolve responsibility, particularly where the individual held a senior role and where proper records should have existed.

In the UK Supreme Court and Court of Appeal, cases involving historic wrongdoing, institutional failure, or public authority decision-making regularly emphasise that responsibility does not depend on personal recollection. Courts look instead to contemporaneous documentation, established processes, and what ought reasonably to have been recorded. Where records are missing, that absence itself can support adverse inferences about governance and control.

The same principle is repeatedly applied in Independent Statutory Public Inquiries. From child abuse inquiries to major public disasters, inquiry chairs have consistently rejected “I can’t remember” as an adequate answer where the witness was responsible for systems, policies, or decisions. The expectation is not perfect recall; it is that proper records exist and can be examined. Where they do not, that absence is treated as a failure of governance.

Inquiries have also been explicit that senior leaders cannot rely on memory loss while simultaneously asserting that systems were robust and risks well managed. Those two positions are logically incompatible. Either the system was robust — in which case it should have produced records capable of scrutiny — or it was not.

Against that backdrop, the Archbishop’s reliance on lack of memory, coupled with personal assurance (“I am sure I would remember”), is not a neutral evidential position. It is a red flag. It indicates a safeguarding system that cannot demonstrate its own workings when challenged.

Administrative convenience over safeguarding priority

The Archbishop explains that he was reluctant to reappoint Tudor as Area Dean but did so because he was told that there was nobody suitable to replace him. That explanation is treated as mitigating context, but it is troubling when measured against safeguarding norms.

Area Dean is not a marginal role. It carries authority, influence, and symbolic weight. Where a known abuser is involved, safeguarding best practice requires positive justification for extending responsibility — not merely an explanation of difficulty.

Good safeguarding governance would expect to see a documented options appraisal: who else was considered, what interim arrangements were explored, whether the role could be left vacant, whether duties could be redistributed, and why each alternative was rejected. It would also expect explicit consideration of the safeguarding and trauma impact of maintaining a known abuser in a senior position.

Without such evidence, the explanation reads as administrative convenience taking precedence over safeguarding priority. That is precisely the cultural failure safeguarding regimes are designed to counteract.

“We knew he shouldn’t have been allowed back”

One of the most significant statements attributed to the Archbishop is this: “We knew he shouldn’t have been allowed back into ministry, but since he had been, and we couldn’t remove him, we were working hard… to manage and minimise the risk.”

This is an extraordinary admission. It acknowledges that Tudor’s presence in ministry was itself recognised as wrong, yet treats that recognition as a fixed constraint rather than a trigger for escalation.

Safeguarding leadership is not about accommodating acknowledged failure. It is about challenging systems that perpetuate risk. Managing risk while accepting that someone should not be in ministry is not safeguarding; it is containment.

This sits uneasily with the Archbishop’s public statements at the time, in which he insisted that “everything was done” to manage risk, that Tudor was not ignored or protected, and that action was taken as soon as legally possible. Those assurances demand evidential backing. Without records showing how victim impact was assessed and prioritised, they cannot be substantiated.

Charity trustee duties and structural neglect

As a diocesan bishop and later Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell was a charity trustee, subject to legal duties to act where he knew of serious risk to beneficiaries and of systemic governance weaknesses.

His own words show that he knew bishops lacked effective powers to remove clergy in high-risk safeguarding situations. That was not theoretical; it constrained his actions directly. Under charity law, identifying such a defect is not the end of the matter. Trustees are required to take reasonable steps to remedy known structural risks, including escalation and reform.

Instead, the inability to remove became an explanation rather than a problem to be solved. The status quo was accepted, even as its consequences were acknowledged. That is what neglect looks like in governance terms: not bad faith, but failure to act on known, ongoing risk.

The contrast with Hindley

The later case of Gary Hindley at Blackburn Cathedral demonstrates that such paralysis was not inevitable. When safeguarding risk was treated as intolerable, the Church was prepared to contemplate radical structural options to bring the situation to an end. The lesson is not that a neat statutory power existed, but that senior leaders knew the system was not powerless when the will to act was present.

Policy versus practice

The Church of England’s safeguarding policies emphasise victim-centred practice, defensible decision-making, transparency, and accountability. Measured against those standards, the Archbishop’s own account reveals repeated gaps: reliance on memory rather than records; administrative convenience outweighing safeguarding priority; public assurances unsupported by evidence; and acceptance of structural incapacity without meaningful challenge.

None of this requires an allegation of bad faith. But safeguarding is not judged by intention. It is judged by process, evidence, and outcomes. Using the Archbishop’s own words, the conclusion is unavoidable: the actions described are not defensible when measured against safeguarding best practice, public assurances, charity trustee duties, and the Church of England’s own standards. That is why accountability cannot end with “no case to answer”.

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TL;DR — Why the Archbishop’s own words matter

The latest decision in the David Tudor case concluded there was “no case to answer” in relation to the Archbishop of York’s handling of safeguarding concerns. This follow-up examines the Archbishop’s own recorded words — and finds that they do not withstand scrutiny when measured against safeguarding standards, charity-law duties, and the Church of England’s own policies.

In his response to the complaint, the Archbishop accepts overall responsibility but says he has “no actual memory” of key decisions, relying instead on personal assurance that he would remember if safeguarding professionals had raised concerns. That is not a safeguarding answer. Safeguarding depends on records, not recall. Where risk is said to have been “managed well”, there should be clear documentary evidence showing how decisions were made, what advice was given, what alternatives were considered, and how victim impact was weighed. If such records exist but were not used, both the records and the review process are deficient. If they do not exist, claims of good risk management cannot be sustained.

The Archbishop also explains that a known abuser was reappointed to a senior role because there was “nobody suitable” to replace him. Safeguarding practice requires positive justification for extending authority and status — not administrative convenience. There is no evidence of a documented options appraisal or of victim-centred decision-making.

Most strikingly, the Archbishop acknowledges that the individual “shouldn’t have been allowed back into ministry”, yet frames safeguarding as managing risk within that reality rather than challenging the system that allowed it. That sits uneasily with public statements insisting that “everything was done”.

As a charity trustee, the Archbishop had a legal duty to act on known, systemic safeguarding risks — including defects in the Church’s powers to remove clergy. Accepting those defects without meaningful challenge is neglect, not inevitability.

Using the Archbishop’s own words, the conclusion is unavoidable: the actions described are not defensible by safeguarding, governance, or legal standards. Accountability cannot end with “no case to answer”.