Anthony Pierce, who served as bishop of Swansea and Brecon between 1999 and 2008, was jailed last year for sexually abusing a boy. He pleaded guilty to five counts of indecent assault on a male child under the age of 16, committed while he was a parish priest in Swansea in the 1980s. The Church in Wales commissioned a review last year into Pierce and how claims against him had been handled.
The review found that senior clergy had been aware of sexual abuse allegations against Anthony Pierce when he was appointed Archdeacon of Gower in 1995 and then Bishop of Swansea and Brecon in 1999. Allegations against Anthony Pierce, which were alleged to have occurred in around 1990 against a teenage boy, were not reported to the police until 2010, by which time the victim had died. Police took no further action after the 2010 report.
' Four Archbishops of Wales, including Dr Rowan Williams, were referred to in the report. Dr Rowan Williams was given by his predecessor a handwritten report prepared in 1999 by a friend of Anthony Pierce that included the apparent admission of a criminal offence when he became Archbishop of Wales, although he did not read it. Dr Rowan Williams had been made aware many years previously that some sort of allegation had been made, but he did not understand that it was a legal or criminal matter, and there is no indication that he was told it involved a child.
It was not unreasonable for Dr Rowan Williams not to have read the 30-page handwritten document, as it had very little relevant information and no apparent briefing on it. The current Archbishop of Wales, The Rt Revd Cherry Vann, apologised to anyone who has been failed by the Church in the past. ' She stated that safeguarding processes of the Church in Wales have improved immeasurably since the periods covered in the review.