I know too well how the Church covers up child abuse

When he was just 16 years old, Matthew Ineson was raped by a Church of England priest in Bradford.

The priest took his own life on the very day he was due in court to face charges of serious sex offences.

In 2012, some 28 years after the rape, Matthew, who has waived his right to anonymity, told the then Bishop of Sheffield, Dr Steven Croft (now Bishop of Oxford) about what he’d endured — in writing and by phone.

A year later, he tried again. Nothing happened.

Earlier this month, a report commissioned by the Church found that Croft and the then Archbishop of York, Lord Sentamu, had failed to act on Matthew’s reports.

Matthew, now 55, says the impact on his life was devastating. He had been abused and then he was ignored.

His story resonates strongly with me. In 2014, I wrote my first novel, The Four Streets, in which, through a character called Kitty, I detailed my own experience of child sexual abuse at the hands of an Anglican priest.

At the time, I thought it was a cathartic process, my way of processing something I could not talk about. I had no intention of naming my abuser.

But by the time I got to the third book in the trilogy, The Ballymara Road, I wanted his name out there.

I thought he would have heard about my books and be anxious that I would name him — and I did. It was then it dawned on me that writing the books had been an act of revenge. I wanted him to know that I remembered what he had done to me.

In my book, the priest is murdered and his penis hacked off in a churchyard. I was clearly venting deep anger.

The books received some attention and I plucked up the courage to make a complaint to Lambeth Palace. I was invited to the House of Lords, where I was told two bishops would hear my complaint and commence an investigation.

Yes, they took the details from me, but neither took notes.

There they sat, draped in their vestments of authority and trust, and looked down at their hands clasped on their knees as I spoke. So uncomfortable were they that I imagine they wanted the ground to swallow me up.

But I continued because I had to. I outlined what had happened to me and what I knew to be strong evidence that the priest had abused others.

I remembered him driving into the car park at our youth club and going inside, leaving a young girl aged around 12 in the front seat of his car. He had, I noted, locked her in from outside.

I can still recall her terrified face as our eyes met — and I just knew.

Several weeks later he left our parish, telling everyone he was emigrating to the U.S.

The two bishops told me they would conduct a full investigation and come back to me.

A secretary at Lambeth Palace assured me they took allegations like this very seriously and offered me counselling. I refused it. Kitty had been my therapist.

What followed, from that day to this, was silence, despite my following it up and requesting a further meeting.

Later, with the assistance of Mail on Sunday journalist Amy Oliver, I discovered that my abuser, the Rev Jim Cameron, had died.

He’d never gone to America, but had been transferred by the Church to a rural Norfolk parish with an elderly congregation and no youth club.

How many more of us — people like Matthew Ineson and myself — are there out there? People who were abused as youngsters and then ignored.

The Roman Catholic Church has, with good cause, been the focus of much of the historic child sex abuse in recent decades, and that has suited the Church of England.

But it cannot escape the evil that lurks within its own cloisters any longer.

Until the Church takes appropriate action on all cases reported to it and adopts a zero-tolerance approach to safeguarding, that evil will continue to haunt it for years to come.

Naked truth on cut-price beach homes 

A word of warning to those who think a coastal bolt-hole or retirement home may be within reach after a report that properties close to nudist beaches are up to a third cheaper than in other seaside locations.

The question ‘why?’ always leaps to mind whenever I see a sign for a nudist beach, prompted by thoughts of sand and where it can lodge in a human body.

A swimming costume or shorts are worn for comfort as much as modesty, and removing them is an act of pure exhibitionism.

Move if you must but keep your eyes averted when walking the dog. Some sights really are best left unseen.

Scroll for flattery

Japanese scientists have discovered our brains can distinguish between genuine and fake compliments.

When a recipient believes praise is deserved, areas that control feelings of reward and pleasure in the brain are more fired up than when it is judged to be insincere or undeserving.

This fascinates me. When I arrived at the House of Commons in 2005, I was stunned by the blizzard of compliments that came my way from fellow MPs almost every time I uttered a word in the chamber.

‘Amazing speech!’; ‘Excellent points’; ‘Well said, indeed’ etc. I regarded it all with a healthy dose of suspicion and it had zero impact on my brain or mood.

But, today, it makes me smile to watch an MP, after delivering the dullest of speeches or asking the most anodyne question, sit down and immediately pick up their phone to check Whats-App or Twitter, flushing with pleasure as they scroll through and get their dopamine hits.

The Japanese researchers should consider conducting a new study drawing on Westminster’s 650 MPs. They may find they have to report an entirely different result!

The ludicrous claim this weekend by Simon McDonald, the former Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office, that he helped bring down Boris Johnson was almost enough to make me laugh out loud.

McDonald was a bad actor, an ardent Remainer, a suspected leaker to the media and an envious man who apparently took exception to a Foreign Secretary — Boris’s first job in government — who knew his brief possibly better than the veteran mandarin did.

That he is now giving interviews claiming to be Boris’s nemesis gives you a measure of the man’s ego. There are many who can legitimately claim to have helped defenestrate our former prime minister — the BBC, Sky, ITV, the entire Remain establishment, and many of Boris’s own MPs, just for a start.

But one thing is for sure — it really wasn’t you, Mr McDonald.

I spent part of the weekend in a seaside town myself, and my attire was an issue. I’d picked up the wrong suit carrier as I left home and arrived in Bournemouth for a conference to discover I’d brought my Coronation Day party outfit — a pink and white ballgown. I took to the stage to speak in sparkles and chiffon and, in true British style, no one batted an eyelid.

Today’s literary gem

‘Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.’ — Aristotle