A former Dean of Chichester Cathedral, the late John Treadgold, burnt a batch of files suspected to contain sensitive personnel material upon his retirement in 2001, the Dean of Worcester, the Very Revd Peter Atkinson, confirmed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Dean Atkinson, who was Canon Chancellor of Chichester Cathedral at the time of the incident, was giving evidence to a public hearing conducted by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA).<\/p>\n
The hearing, now in its third and final week, is using the Chichester diocese as a case study.<\/p>\n
Asked by Counsel about the burning of files, Dean Atkinson said: \u201cHe [Dean Treadgold] had retired in the autumn of 2001 and moved a short distance away. What I remember of the episode is that he returned to the Deanery, which then was empty \u2014 this was long before Dean Frayling arrived \u2014 removed a number of files from the Deanery basement and had a fire in the garden.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what the files were. I think there is some indication that they might have been old Chapter files, but they may well have been his own. It\u2019s a bit odd that he\u2019d moved away and then came back to do this, and it was sufficiently troubling for us to mention this to the police, which happened.\u201d<\/p>\n