Vicar found with vile images during police raid over drugs hoard (2025)

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A former vicar who claimed his drug habit helped him relate to his parishioners has admitted possessing indecent images linked to the 'eunuch maker' case.

Geoffrey Baulcomb, who was expelled from the Church of England last year by a disciplinary panel,was still ordained at the time of the offences.

In a hearing at the Old Bailey on Tuesday, the79-year-old admitted seven charges, including distributing an indecent video of a child and making a Category A indecent image of a child.

Baulcomb also pleaded guilty to making four category B and 37 category C indecent images of children.

He admitted three further charges of possessing extreme pornographic images, one of which related to'eight images portraying person performing an act of intercourse with a live or dead unknown animal'.

Another related to '182 images which portrayed in an explicit and realistic way an act which resulted or was likely to result in serious injury to a person's anus, breasts or genitals and which were grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character'.

Prosecutor David Burns has connected the case with another 'involving the dangerous surgical removal of several body parts' - a reference toself-styled 'eunuch maker' Marius Gustavson, who was jailed for life last May with a minimum term of 22 years.

Gustavson mutilated paying customers, streaming online procedures that were described at his sentencing as 'little short of human butchery'.

Crystal meth and ketamine were discovered by police during a raid on Baulcomb's £25,000 cottage near Eastbourne in December 2022.

He accepted a police caution for possessing the substances and told church officials he had been buying and using drugs, including heroin, 'periodically' for 20 years.

A church disciplinary tribunal 'utterly rejected' his claim that taking drugs 'assisted him in carrying out his pastoral mission'.

Baulcomb was handed a permanent ban from any position in the Church of England last September.

'You've pleaded guilty today to some very serious offences,' Judge Nigel Lickley, KC, told him. 'You're not going to be sentenced today.'

Baulcomb was granted bail until May 2 subject to conditions that includeno deliberate direct or indirect contact with people under 18.

He not attending any events on Church of England premises, residence at his address in Filching Grove, Eastbourne, and not to visit websites or social media platforms depicting extreme body modification.

Baulcomb retired from the historic St Mary the Virgin church in Eastbourne, East Sussex several years ago.

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