THE Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Revd Martyn Snow, has denied accusing a stalking victim of witchcraft during an internal investigation into the conduct of a former pioneer lay minister employed by the diocese, Venessa (Vee) Pinto, later convicted of the harassment.
On Sunday, the BBC reported on the case of Jay Hulme, a volunteer welcomer at St Nicholas’s, Leicester, who was stalked and harassed by Ms Pinto, then a licensed lay minister within the diocese, over 19 months in 2021 and 2022. Both were of their mid-twenties.
Mr Hulme said that Ms Pinto had began to attend the church a number of times in the summertime of 2021 before asking to talk to him privately at the tip of a weekday service, when she asked him out. He was, he told the BBC, “very stunned because I didn’t know her” and since, although he told her that he was gay, “she asked me if it was because she was black.”
Mr Hulme, a poet and writer, said that this was the start of a protracted campaign of harassment at a time when he had been exploring a vocation to the priesthood, and had been at a “completely satisfied juncture” at his life, having come out as trans a number of years previously.
Ms Pinto reportedly sent him “offended and accusatory” messages before Mr Hulme agreed to fulfill to resolve the situation. She shouted at him that he was a “liar, racist, and an awful person”, the BBC reports. Mr Hulme stopped interacting along with her, however the abuse escalated online through a series of public, anonymised messages to his social-media account. These included death threats and pornographic images.
“I felt like she was in my pocket, and in my house, and in my brain all the time, saying these horrendous things and I couldn’t get away,” Mr Hulme told the BBC.
Concerned for his safety, he reported to Leicestershire Police, who contacted Ms Pinto. She reportedly told police that her friends had been sending the messages. Unsatisfied, Mr Hulme compiled detailed evidence and made a proper criticism to the Church of England in January 2022. An internal church investigation was conducted, which concluded that Ms Pinto had been liable for the abuse.
Mr Hulme was called to a gathering with Bishop Snow, who reportedly got here to a special conclusion: that Ms Pinto had not been responsible, that the accusations weren’t in step with her character, and that the Bishop wouldn’t be upholding the criticism or revoking her lay licence.
Mr Hulme purports that the Bishop then accused him of conducting a séance, because “Somebody had given a press release that I had been seen within the church, within the darkness, with a candle,” and since he was friends with a tarot-card reader. “For clarity, I used to be praying with a candle at the hours of darkness, because that’s a thing that Christians do,” Mr Hulme said. The Bishop had then reportedly said that Mr Hulme’s discernment process towards ordination can be “slowed down”.
During the time of the harassment, Ms Pinto, then 26, was elected to the General Synod (News, 22 October 2021), having said that she would “represent a demographic that’s ‘missing’ from a lot of our churches”. Soon afterwards, she was elected as a central member of the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC).
Mr Hulme made one other criticism in December 2022 to the police, whose subsequent motion ultimately led to Ms Pinto’s arrest in March 2023.
In May 2024, Ms Pinto, then 29, pleaded guilty to stalking involving serious harm or distress, admitting to 103 unwanted communications sent to Mr Hulme, including sexually explicit messages. She was sentenced to an 18-month community order with 280 hours of unpaid work and ordered to pay £350 in court costs. A restraining order of 12 months was granted by the court at Mr Hulme’s request.
On Monday, a press release from the diocese of Leicester in response to the BBC report said: “We want to make it very clear that Bishop Martyn didn’t accuse Jay Hulme of practising ‘witchcraft’. Indeed, he’s deeply disturbed that this accusation has been made.
“He did query Mr Hulme with regard to complaints that had been made against him — complaints which included (in Mr Hulme’s words within the BBC interview) reference to conducting a seance in a church (something he later described as a ‘joke’) and reference to consulting a friend who’s a tarot card reader.”
It continued: “The Church of England has never supported such actions and subsequently it was entirely appropriate for the bishop to ask about their veracity (on condition that Mr Hulme is exploring becoming a priest within the Church of England). This is a good distance from accusing someone of being a ‘witch’.”
On the conduct and conviction of Ms Pinto, the diocese issued a separate statement, saying that “We remain deeply appalled by the intense criminal behaviour that led to Venessa Pinto’s conviction.”
It confirmed that she had been employed by the diocese as a Licensed Lay Minister between March 2020 and November 2022, when her employment was terminated. The diocesan safeguarding team had received and “took seriously” a criticism in January 2022, the statement said. “It sought legal advice and is confident that it followed HR practice and due process in handling the criticism.”
This was investigated by “an independent HR expert”. “Although the expert’s report, (received in May 2022) concluded that, on the balance of probabilities, the criticism must be upheld, the bishop didn’t consider there have been sufficient grounds to remove Ms Pinto’s lay ministry licence. He did, nonetheless, (on 30 June 2022) ask Ms Pinto to withdraw from ministry concerning her behaviour,” the statement said.
“On 25 July 2022, latest evidence got here to light which led the bishop to right away remove Ms Pinto’s licence and inform other church bodies with which she was involved. . . Although Ms Pinto remained formally employed by the diocese for an additional 4 months, she was on leave in the course of this era and asked not to interact in any ministry. She was also asked to not contact any members of the worshipping community where she had served, at their request.
“An agreement was reached to finish her employment in November 2022.”
Ms Pinto, the statement said, “resigned” from the Synod and CNC on 30 March 2023 — the month through which she was arrested. “On 24 May 2024 — the day of Ms Pinto’s sentencing — the diocese of Leicester published a time-limited statement on its website regarding the conviction.”
At this point, Bishop Snow commissioned an independent review of how the criticism against Ms Pinto had been handled, the statement said, and “pastoral support and counselling were offered to those affected throughout the method.”
In a press release to the BBC, Leicestershire Police said that their initial response had fallen in need of the standards expected, and that the force continued “to develop its knowledge and training in relation to stopping and detecting stalking offences”.
For support, visit safespacesenglandandwales.org.uk or phone 0300 3031056.
