Accused Minister commits suicide
A church minister accused of child abuse killed himself in a burning car parked outside his home after kissing his 17-year-old son goodbye, an inquest heard on Wednesday. His widow, Diane, told the inquest in Bury St Edmunds the Reverend John Pugh, 54, had shown tangible “despair and bewilderment” before his death. The coroner, Peter Dean, ruled that Mr Pugh, a minister in the United Reformed Church in Stowmarket, Suffolk, had committed suicide on 3 June this year while the balance of his mind was disturbed. The minister had been suspended from his job a few days before his death after police started an investigation into an allegation that he indecently assaulted a teenage boy in the late 1980s.
