A FORMER worker of Leicester diocese, Kat Gibson, has said that she felt “silenced by the diocese”, which had, she said, prevented her from warning others in regards to the “abusive, deeply unhealthy” behaviour of her former colleague Venessa (Vee) Pinto, who was later convicted of stalking a churchwarden (News, 4 July).
Ms Pinto was employed and paid by the diocese to work as an intercultural pioneer minister. To perform this work, she was licensed by the Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Revd Martyn Snow. Last month, the BBC reported on the case of Jay Hulme, a churchwarden at St Nicholas’s, Leicester, who was stalked and harassed by Ms Pinto over 19 months in 2021 and 2022. Both were of their mid-twenties on the time.
In a press release published on the House of Survivors website last week, Ms Gibson and her husband, Ben, describe being put in a “very traumatic situation” by the diocese. The couple had raised concerns about Ms Pinto’s behaviour as early as 2020, a yr before Ms Pinto met Mr Hulme.
“It grieves us deeply that it got here to the purpose of speaking out publicly,” they write, “but we refuse to be complicit within the coverup that has taken place.”
Their statement quotes emails that Mr Gibson had sent to Ms Gibson’s and Ms Pinto’s then line manager, now the Bishop of Willesden, the Rt Revd Lusa Nsenga-Ngoy. Before his consecration, Bishop Nsenga-Ngoy was the BAME Mission and Ministry Enabler in Leicester diocese.
This includes one email, reportedly sent in May 2021, wherein Mr Gibson writes: “It seems very clear to me that things can’t be allowed to proceed on the best way they’ve been; it’s abusive, deeply unhealthy, and never sustainable for anyone involved. I’m also very concerned that [Vee] might start treating others at [our worshipping community] in similar ways to how she has treated Kat.”
Ms Gibson, their statement says, received an inconsistent response to those concerns. “Sometimes Lusa appeared to take the situation seriously and examine Vee’s behaviour as abusive, and on other occasions he would appear to border it as an interpersonal dispute or clash of cultural communication styles between Kat and Vee.
“At times she felt that she was being blamed, that it was being implied that her difficulties with Vee were the results of her own cultural prejudices, and that her suitability for ministry was even called into query.”
Mr Hulme met Ms Pinto in the summertime of 2021, when she began attending his church. When she asked him out, he was, he told the BBC, “very shocked 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.”
This, he said, was the start of a protracted campaign of harassment at a time when he had been exploring a vocation to the priesthood. He made a proper criticism to the Church, in January 2022, triggering an investigation, which concluded that Ms Pinto was behind the abuse. His vocation was reportedly “slowed down” by Bishop Snow, who disagreed with the investigation’s conclusion.
Mr Hulme also reported the harassment to Leicester Police twice; the second report, in December 2022, led to Ms Pinto’s conviction.
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.
In response to the BBC article, the diocese of Leicester issued a series of statements in regards to the case, which refer only to Mr Hulme’s criticism in January 2022.
The Gibsons report that the diocese has since told them that “senior members of staff within the diocese weren’t aware of the extent of the concerns that we and others had raised about Vee in 2020 and 2021, and that it appeared that Lusa and others had did not pass this information on to them.”
One diocesan statement said that Bishop Snow had asked Ms Pinto to withdraw from ministry on 30 June 2022 (legally, her employment could possibly be terminated only by the diocesan board of finance). The next month, the statement said, “recent evidence got here to light which led the bishop to instantly 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 at some point of this era and asked not to have interaction 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.”
The Gibsons write: “This signifies that the diocese kept Vee able of leadership in our worshipping community, without suspension, for five months after becoming aware of significant criminal allegations with substantial evidence against her, after diocesan staff had already received serious concerns about her from multiple people over the course of two years.
“We didn’t learn in regards to the criminal allegations until Jay reached out to us in September 2022. We were absolutely horrified to learn that the diocese had kept her in post for thus long after becoming aware of Jay’s allegations, and felt that that they had knowingly put us and our community in danger.
“It was the worst betrayal of our lives, and it’s still very painful for us today.”
The Gibsons also write that, despite the agreement, Ms Pinto “continued to contact some members of our worshipping community anyway. . . We were told by the diocese that we couldn’t tell them the true explanation why she had left or the proven fact that her licence had been revoked. This continued indefinitely once the diocese reached their agreement with Vee, because it included a clause meaning that neither party could speak sick of the opposite. We felt silenced by the diocese, and that that they had taken away our ability to share our story and to warn others who could have been in danger.”
At one point, Ms Gibson “became aware that Vee had applied for a job that will involve working with vulnerable people” and “wished to warn this prospective employer, but was told by a member of staff on the diocese that she must not do that”.
While they acknowledge that the diocese had supported Ms Gibson — by, amongst other things, paying for 2 years of counselling sessions, a retreat, and 6 weeks of leave — the Gibsons imagine that it did not support others. “This includes Ben,” who suffered from chronic stress, they write.
Ms Gibson’s support, they write, was also “counterbalanced by the proven fact that the programme board overseeing the project we were a part of decided to not recruit a alternative for Vee. This put enormous pressure on Kat as she tried to do the work of two people by herself, at a time when she was still attempting to recuperate from this very traumatic situation.”
Despite “pleading” with the board, they write, the funding for Ms Pinto’s role was pulled. Ms Gibson was informed in July 2024 that she can be made redundant in 2025.
Another “betrayal”, they are saying, was the positive tone of the diocesan statement announcing Ms Pinto’s departure in 2022, which “recognises the positive contributions that she has made” and “wishes her well in the longer term”. This meant that colleagues “cheerfully” asked Ms Gibson about her former colleague, causing further distress.
During the time of Mr Hulme’s harassment, Ms Pinto, then 26, was elected to the General Synod (News, 22 October 2021). Soon afterwards, she was elected as a central member of the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC).
A comment on the web site Thinking Anglicans points out that Ms Gibson gave an endorsement of Ms Pinto at the moment, saying that she would “be a wonderful candidate for the General Synod” who had a “fresh perspective” and “deep passion for justice”.
In response, Mr Gibson writes: “Kat deeply regrets writing that endorsement. The impact that Vee’s abuse had on Kat meant that she was living under severe chronic stress and anxiety. Vee’s behaviours were highly manipulative and coercive. She was expert at making people query their very own reality.”
She had been “terrified” of the implications, had she not agreed to jot down it, he says. “She feels terrible about it, and it brings back memories of a really dark and painful time.”
The Gibsons’ statement concludes: “The impact that going through all of this has had on us each has been enormous. We have each experienced anxiety attacks and PTSD symptoms.”
While there have been “so many wonderful Anglican churches stuffed with lovely people . . . over the past few years it has been horrifying to grasp how common and widespread it’s for bullying and abusive behaviour to be mishandled and covered up within the Church of England.”
Asked for a response to the Gibson statement, a spokesperson for the diocese of Leicester told the Church Times on Thursday: “We are very sorry that this matter continues to cause such hurt and distress, but it surely wouldn’t be appropriate, nor are we in a position to comment on the small print of their statement, not least because we don’t want to cause further upset to those involved.”
Church House have also been contacted for comment.
