ATTACKS on members of the clergy have increased at such a rate that some parishes have become no-go areas and posts are proving impossible to fill, the Church of England’s second most senior bishop said yesterday.

In an interview with The Times, the Archbishop of York, Dr David Hope, said that his bishops and archdeacons were also increasingly advising him of break-ins and thefts. Some vicars have removed signs to stop their homes becoming targets and the Archbishop has installed a telephone entry system for security reasons at his offices in York.

Violence against members of the clergy has increased by a third over the past four years and is still rising, research has shown. Burglaries and thefts are also up, with one in ten churches expected to report a loss this year. While urban and deprived areas are worst hit, nowhere is immune. Even apparently peaceful idylls such as the Channel Islands report violence against clergy.

At a meeting in Jersey, attended by 40 clergymen and women of all denominations, nearly all said they had been victims of intimidation and harassment from a member of the public.

Dr Hope said: “In one parish there were 35 incidents in six months. In another, a priest wandered outside to talk to some young people hanging around outside his church and when he turned to go back to the vicarage the youths jumped him. He ended up in hospital with quite serious flesh wounds. It is these sorts of incidents that make you wonder what is going on. This one was thought to be alcohol and drugs-related. We had one vicarage in Middlesbrough that was almost completely trashed.”

He said that many assaults on clergy took place during the school holidays. “Often you get these marauding gangs from estates outside the immediate area of the church. And when I visit churches, someone has to stand outside and watch the car during the service otherwise there will be no wheels when I come out, or even no car.” He described the situation as serious and said it was partly due to what the clergy represent in deprived areas.

“The clergy and their spouses are often the only professional people left in a community now, so they are particularly vulnerable.”

One step he has taken is to ensure that all clergy in the York Diocese have had a talk on safety from the diocesan secretary, Colin Sheppard, a former deputy chief constable with Norfolk police. All Dr Hope’s clergy also carry personal alarms.

Better lighting and burglar alarms have been installed in and around vicarages and churches in some of the worst-hit areas. Clergy are also offered martial arts courses in self-defence.

Dr Hope said: “We do need to pay tribute to the clergy and their families who are prepared to go into these sorts of areas. Thank God these people remain, but it is becoming increasingly difficult getting clergy to move north at all.”

Recent academic research revealed that vicars were more likely to be assaulted at work than GPs or probation officers.Clergy have been physically assaulted by people ranging from beggars to members of their own congregations, with many attacks taking place in church grounds.

Even nuns have been grabbed by their hair, beaten up and threatened with knives.

Nick Tolson, co-ordinator of National Church Watch, a crime prevention scheme funded by the Ecclesiastical Insurance Group, surveyed the country’s 40 police forces.

Because of different ways of collecting statistics, it was possible to compare just seven of the forces directly, over four years.

In the seven he found that violent assaults, at the level of actual bodily harm or worse, increased by a third from 92 in 1999 to 137 in 2002. Thefts and burglaries from church property increased even more, from 1,878 to 2,708 across the same seven forces. But many assaults and thefts were not even reported. Mr Tolson said that out of 31 clergy who admitted having been assaulted, in a recent report by the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, only seven reported the incident to the police.

Another survey, by academics at London University, found that 12 per cent of clergy in the South East were assaulted over a two-year period.

Mr Tolson said: “Reporting procedures must be introduced into the Anglican organisation and the clergy must be trained to handle difficult and violent people. The Church is getting there but it is moving very slowly.”

The Very Rev John Seaford, Rector of St Helier and Dean of Jersey, said that most, if not all, clergy in Jersey had experienced some form of abuse. In the past 48 hours alone, he and his wife had both been abused on the telephone by an angry caller. Unlike most people now in positions of authority, clergy were not shielded by call centres or secretaries, he said. They could still be reached at the end of a telephone.

One in ten of Britain’s 1,600 Anglican churches report break-ins and thefts every year, according to the Ecclesiastical Insurance Group, which insures 90 per cent of Anglican churches, cathedrals and church halls.

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