Prince Charles Misused Influence to Shield Cleric, Abuse Inquiry Reports

LONDON — Prince Charles misused his influence to shield Peter Ball, a former Anglican bishop and old friend, from punishment after the cleric had admitted sexually abusing a young novice, an independent inquiry found this week.

In an unusually tough rebuke of the future king, the inquiry concluded that “the actions of the Prince of Wales were misguided.”

“He should have recognized the potential effect that his apparent support for Peter Ball could have had upon decision-making within Lambeth Palace,” the headquarters of the Anglican Church, concluded the Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse, which was led by a professor of social work, Alexis Jay.

The prince has expressed “deep personal regret” that he was deceived by Mr. Ball, and said he had not been aware that any abuse had taken place.

“As he made clear in his voluntary witness statement to the inquiry, at no time did he bring any influence to bear on the actions of the church or any other relevant authority,” a spokesman for Clarence House, the prince’s administration, told the Press Association.

The report details a powerful old-boys’ network that mobilized to defend Mr. Ball, who was first accused of sexual misconduct in 1969 but continued to rise through the church hierarchy for two decades.

Upon being appointed bishop of Gloucester, in 1991, he was warned that “there should be no more boys,” the inquiry found. In 1993, Mr. Ball admitted to an act of gross indecency with a 19-year-old and accepted a police caution, which allowed him to avoid a criminal trial. He was forced to step down as bishop, but returned to the ministry within two years.

Only in 2015, after the investigation was revived, did Mr. Ball plead guilty to indecent assault and misconduct in public office in connection with the abuse of 16 boys and men who had come to him for spiritual guidance. He was sentenced to 32 months of imprisonment, but was released on parole after serving half the sentence.

The report offers a kind of anatomy of social influence in Britain’s power structure.

Mr. Ball, 87, who attended Lancing College and Cambridge University, was friends with headmasters of many of the country’s most prestigious boarding schools, and belonged to a private dining club called Nobody’s Friends, which met twice a year at the home of the archbishop of Canterbury.

He was close with the archbishop, George Carey, and Lord Lloyd of Berwick, an appeals court judge. But the most powerful of his friends was Charles, the Prince of Wales. He lived in one of the prince’s properties from the late 1990s — after he had been forced to step down — until 2011, and preached at the funeral of the prince’s second father-in-law, Bruce Shand.

Wayne Murdock, a police detective assigned to the investigation in 1993, anticipated early on that the suspect’s powerful friends would try to quash it.

“The jungle drums will start going and the phone calls will start,” he said, according to the report.

The report quotes correspondence suggesting that, after Mr. Ball was forced to step down as bishop of Gloucester, the prince lobbied for him to be returned to the ministry.