A SECOND lifetime prohibition for David Tudor, a former Rector of Canvey Island, has been handed down by a tribunal, after a ruling that found that he had groomed and sexually abused a 15-year-old girl within the Nineteen Eighties (News, 25 November 2025).
Mr Tudor was first faraway from office and prohibited from ministry for all times in October 2024, after two complaints under the Clergy Discipline Measure. This followed full act of contrition to disclosures of great sexual abuse from the 2 complainants, regarding the time when he was a priest within the diocese of Southwark.
The grievance of “Z” then got here before the Deputy President, who ruled in December 2024 that there was a case for Mr Tudor to reply. Last November, the Bishop’s Disciplinary Tribunal for the diocese of Southwark reached a unanimous verdict: “We are satisfied that it’s more likely than not that the Respondent had sexual activity with Z when she was 15. She gave a transparent, consistent and cogent account of those events.”
The abuse took place between 1984 and 1985, with the primary such sexual act occurring when Z was 15. She had attended the youth club at St Philip’s, Reigate, where Mr Tudor was Priest-in-Charge on the time.
As a part of her evidence, Z told the tribunal that, after having sex with Mr Tudor on the age of 15, she had taken a paracetamol overdose a couple of days later, “because she felt she had let God down and wouldn’t find a way to go to Church any more”.
It had been her assumption that Mr Tudor would never be permitted to exercise a priestly ministry again, “and it got here as a shock to seek out out in June 2023 that he had been exercising a ministry in Canvey Island for a few years.” She told the tribunal that this had made her feel “that the Church thought his behaviour within the Nineteen Eighties was inconsequential”.
Mr Tudor declined to take part in the tribunal proceedings, stating that he had been acquitted of the allegation of sexual activity with Z when she was under 16 by a Crown Court in 1988. In that 12 months, he was suspended from ministry for five years after disciplinary proceedings brought by the then Bishop of Croydon, in respect of an inappropriate sexual relationship with Z from when she was 16 (conduct which he admitted within the Crown Court trial).
On 30 January 2026, the tribunal imposed the penalty of Prohibition for Life. The determination describes Mr Tudor’s misconduct as “a deliberate and damaging failure to comply with the high standards of Christian behaviour set out within the Ordinal required of clergy”.
In November, it was announced that the David Tudor safeguarding-practice review, commissioned by the National Safeguarding Team and the dioceses of Southwark and Chelmsford, had been prolonged beyond its planned six-month timeframe, owing to latest police information.
