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 churchwarden at St Nicholas’s, Leicester, who was stalked and harassed by Ms Pinto, then a licensed lay minister in the diocese, over 19 months in 2021 and 2022. Both were in their mid-twenties.
Mr Hulme said that Ms Pinto had started to attend the church a few times in the summer of 2021 before asking to speak to him privately at the end of a weekday service, when she asked him out. He was, he told the BBC, “very taken aback because I didn’t know her” and because, although he told her that he was gay, “she asked me if it was because she was black.”
Mr Hulme, a poet and author, said that this was the beginning of a long campaign of harassment at a time when he had been exploring a vocation to the priesthood, and had been at a “happy juncture” at his life, having come out as trans a few years previously.
Ms Pinto reportedly sent him “angry and accusatory” messages before Mr Hulme agreed to meet 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 with her, but 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 of 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 formal complaint to the Church of England in January 2022. An internal church investigation was conducted, which concluded that Ms Pinto had been responsible for the abuse.
Mr Hulme was called to a meeting with Bishop Snow, who reportedly came to a different conclusion: that Ms Pinto had not been responsible, that the accusations were not in keeping with her character, and that the Bishop would not be upholding the complaint or revoking her lay licence.
Mr Hulme says that the Bishop then accused him of conducting a séance, because “Somebody had given a statement that I had been seen in the church, in the darkness, with a candle,” and because he was friends with a tarot-card reader. “For clarity, I was praying with a candle in the dark, 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 would 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 is ‘missing’ from many of our churches”. Soon afterwards, she was elected as a central member of the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC).
Mr Hulme made another complaint in December 2022 to the police, whose subsequent action 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 statement from the diocese of Leicester in response to the BBC report said: “We wish to make it very clear that Bishop Martyn did not accuse Jay Hulme of practising ‘witchcraft’. Indeed, he is deeply disturbed that this accusation has been made.
“He did question Mr Hulme with regard to complaints that had been made against him — complaints which included (in Mr Hulme’s words in 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 is a tarot card reader.”
It continued: “The Church of England has never supported such actions and therefore it was entirely appropriate for the bishop to ask about their veracity (given that Mr Hulme is exploring becoming a priest in the Church of England). This is a long way 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 serious criminal behaviour that led to Venessa Pinto’s conviction.”
Ms Pinto was employed and paid by the diocese to work as an intercultural pioneer minister. To carry out this work, she was licensed by the Bishop. The statement confirmed that she had been employed between March 2020 and November 2022, when her employment was terminated. The diocesan safeguarding team had received and “took seriously” a complaint in January 2022, it said. “It sought legal advice and is confident that it followed HR practice and due process in handling the complaint.”
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 complaint should be upheld, the bishop did not believe there were sufficient grounds to remove Ms Pinto’s lay ministry licence. He did, however, (on 30 June 2022) ask Ms Pinto to withdraw from ministry concerning her behaviour,” the statement said.
“On 25 July 2022, new evidence came to light which led the bishop to immediately 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 a further four months, she was on leave for the duration of this period and asked not to engage 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 end her employment in November 2022.”
Ms Pinto, the statement said, “resigned” from the Synod and CNC on 30 March 2023 — the month in 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 complaint against Ms Pinto had been handled, the statement said, and “pastoral support and counselling were offered to those affected throughout the process.”
A further statement was issued by the diocese on Tuesday saying that “detailed interviews” had been conducted by the independent reviewer, and that “the main conclusion of the review concerned the complexities of an employee who also holds a licence from the bishop. As an employee, a person is subject to the employer’s HR policies. As someone who holds a licence from the bishop, they are subject to canon law which sets out a different process for the bishop to make a decision about removing a licence.”
Clarity on processes was recommended and the reviewer “did not offer any specific criticisms of the bishop or any other member of staff”, the statement said. It concluded: “Bishop Martyn did meet with Mr Hulme and apologised for his original decision to not uphold the complaint. He explained the further evidence that had come to light from an external organisation, which had given him irrefutable grounds to remove Ms Pinto’s licence.”
Recent high-profile safeguarding cases have prompted some Bishops to call for a new review of the Church’s HR and employment structures, including whether clergy should be employees rather than officer-holders (News, 10 January).
In a statement to the BBC, Leicestershire Police said that their initial response had fallen short of the standards expected, and that the force continued “to develop its knowledge and training in relation to preventing and detecting stalking offences”.
This story was updated on 1 July with a further statement from the diocese.
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