Warning: the following content relates to issues of abuse and could be both upsetting and triggering.
A significant number of children, understood to be mostly boys, allegedly suffered sexual abuse, grooming and exorcisms at St Andrew’s, Chorleywood over 30-plus years, a “listening exercise” group has heard. However, St Albans Diocese says there are no plans to commission an independent safeguarding review.
A safeguarding report said the information received from 27 individuals “raises significant concerns about aspects of culture and practice” in the context of the church’s youth ministry during that period. The Diocese declined to say what proportion of the individuals were male or female.
Three serious disclosures of alleged abuse, dating back as far as the 1980s, were made between 2023 and 2025. The disclosures were substantiated by the National Safeguarding Team and, in January, the diocese of St Albans announced it would lead a “listening exercise”.
It stressed that incidents raised are not related to the current leadership or church safeguarding at St Andrew’s. Mike Pilavachi, himself the subject of several abuse allegations, was a youth worker at St Andrew’s for several years until 1993. He left the church to launch Soul Survivor alongside Matt Redman.
The listening exercise was carried out by the Diocesan Safeguarding Team under the independent oversight of retired High Court judge, His Honour Philip Waller. An appendix to the report stated that in 1994 more than 1,100 people attended the church, requiring extensive involvement of lay people – presenting the leadership with “considerable safeguarding challenges”.
The report notes a “central and particularly serious theme” among 11 of the 27 individuals who shared their experiences. It concerned the grooming and/or sexual abuse of boys by a number of former male youth workers over two decades.
Those individuals identified “several such people and suggest recurring patterns of behaviour… [including] the formation of intense and exclusive relationships with teenage boys, transgressing boundaries and, in some cases, the use of authority, trust, and Scripture to facilitate abuse.”
One survivor who was groomed said a youth worker referred to “Scripture about ‘the intimacy of Jonathan and David’ to justify what he was doing and he then kissed me. This did a lot of damage to me.”
According to the report, the experiences of 16 individuals – including harm caused by “conversion practices” – were “consistent with the Church of England’s definition of spiritual abuse”.
Three described or experienced exorcisms; one said he was left “irreversibly damaged” by an exorcism. This was not a formal investigation and the report makes no findings of fact, but the report has confirmed that a “small” number of cases has led to referrals “to relevant agencies”.
If anyone has a current safeguarding concern, contact the Diocese of St Albans Safeguarding Team on safeguarding@stalbans.anglican.org or call 01727 818107. If you are affected more generally by any of the issues raised in this story, help is available via: FearFree Support (www.fearfree.org.uk); and the Safe Spaces helpline on 0300 303 1056.
