The Church of England may have “overcompensated” for earlier repressive attitudes to gay clergy with a reluctance to deal rigorously with priests who sexually abused children, Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, has said.

Giving evidence to the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, Williams said an “awkwardness” about the church’s views on homosexuality 30 or 40 years ago may have led to a desire not to be “judgmental about people’s sexual activities”.



In recent years, “more and more people [are] coming out of the closet. The question of clergy sexuality has been more openly discussed. The change in climate has been quite striking … I think there has been a sea change.”



He went on: “At a time when people were beginning to feel awkward about traditional closeted attitudes, there was perhaps an overcompensation, [people] saying, ‘Well, we don’t want to be to be judgmental about people’s sexual activities … We must therefore give people a second chance and understand the pressures,’ and so on.”



He suggested that “a rather paradoxical consequence of the traditional view of homosexuality within the church [is that] you want to overcompensate a bit for it.”



The inquiry is holding three weeks of hearings on how the C of E handled cases and allegations of clerical sexual abuse, taking the diocese of Chichester as a case study. It earlier heard the diocese was “engulfed” with allegations in the first decade of this century and that at least 15 priests had been jailed for sex crimes.



Among them was Peter Ball, the former bishop of Lewes, who was sent to prison in October 2015. An independent review commissioned by the C of E concluded that there had been collusion by senior figures to protect the church.



The current bishop of Chichester, Martin Warner, told the inquiry on Wednesday that the diocese was described to him as a “basket case” when he was appointed in 2010. He said: “It is clear to me there had been a historic bias in the diocese in favour of adults in positions of power and authority. This has led to an unwillingness to take allegations of sexual abuse made by children or by adults sufficiently seriously.



“It reflects a wider social attitude of deference, a culture of deferring unduly to those in power and a culture of deference and defensiveness … We are still going through the process of culture change, and for many people, I’m sorry to say, the requirement to take a DBS [police] check is interpreted as ‘Are you accusing me of abusing children?’”



He depicted the diocese at the time he took up his post as dysfunctional, with competing centres of power and a lack of professional administration.



Williams, archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 to 2012, told the hearing there was a “mindset” in the diocese in which the authority of ordained ministry was seen as beyond criticism.



Chichester also had a reputation of being a diocese with a high degree of opposition to the ordination of women. The voices of those belonging to the Anglo-Catholic and conservative evangelical wings of the church were “firmest and loudest”.



The inquiry continues.

