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 in the 1980s (News, 25 November 2025).
Mr Tudor was first removed from office and prohibited from ministry for life in October 2024, after two complaints under the Clergy Discipline Measure. This followed full admission of guilt to disclosures of serious sexual abuse from the two complainants, relating to the time when he was a priest in the diocese of Southwark.
The complaint of “Z” then came before the Deputy President, who ruled in December 2024 that there was a case for Mr Tudor to answer. Last November, the Bishop’s Disciplinary Tribunal for the diocese of Southwark reached a unanimous verdict: “We are satisfied that it is more likely than not that the Respondent had sexual intercourse with Z when she was 15. She gave a clear, consistent and cogent account of these events.”
The abuse took place between 1984 and 1985, with the first 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 at the time.
As part of her evidence, Z told the tribunal that, after having sex with Mr Tudor at the age of 15, she had taken a paracetamol overdose a few days later, “because she felt she had let God down and would not be able 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 came as a shock to find out in June 2023 that he had been exercising a ministry in Canvey Island for many years.” She told the tribunal that this had made her feel “that the Church thought his behaviour in the 1980s was inconsequential”.
Mr Tudor declined to participate in the tribunal proceedings, stating that he had been acquitted of the allegation of sexual intercourse with Z when she was under 16 by a Crown Court in 1988. In that year, 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 in 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 in 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 extended beyond its planned six-month timeframe, owing to new police information.