ViaMedia

Category: Sexual Abuse

  • Safeguarding: Still Not Trauma-Informed

    by Helen King, member of General Synod, 2021-2026; vice-chair of Together for the Church of England; President, Modern Church

    I have commented many times on the seeming inability of the Church of England to learn from its safeguarding failures. More and more ‘lessons learned’ reviews are published: but, despite promises of some work to connect them all and find common ground, nothing seems to happen. Lessons Learned Reviews are now called Safeguarding Practice Reviews but that does not detract from the point that they are not an end in themselves: we are supposed to learn something from their findings. As I have noted in relation to the abuse of the Read sisters, there is inconsistency in which reviews are considered ‘national’ and needing to be shared, and which are kept confidential to the diocese and the survivors. The recent Independent Safeguarding Audit of the National Safeguarding Team recommended that the C of E’s National Safeguarding Team, “in collaboration with the Audit and Information Technology departments, should immediately commission and establish a Centralised Safeguarding Learning Repository for all completed Lessons Learned Reviews (LLRs) and Safeguarding Practice Reviews (SPRs)”. And that’s what we need; something to join up the dots.

    Reviewing reviews

    This recommendation from the Independent Safeguarding Audit is of considerable interest for those of us on General Synod for the 2021-2026 quinquennium who have been asking questions about how the ‘learning’ is supposed to be connected across reviews. We were led to believe that those dots were already being joined up. In February 2026 the Lead Safeguarding Bishop reported (Q80) that a thematic review of the LLRs and SPRs over a five-year period would be completed that month.

    There is still no sign of it. Responding to a follow-up question on this in July (Q130) the Lead Safeguarding Bishop said that the National Safeguarding Steering Group had received the report on these themes across reviews in May and were working on it to connect its findings with existing work on improving safeguarding, and after they consider it again later this year “publication arrangements will be considered”. That is rather less definite than what he said in February which was that “the findings will be published as part of the Church’s ‘From the Ground Up’ workstream within the ‘Turning the Page’ safeguarding programme”. I had never heard of the DARE Unit – that stands for data analysis, research and evaluation – until I was following up that February response, but this seems to be what was meant by “Turning the Page”; some information is here and if you click on the FAQs you can find out more about how it is supposed to turn safeguarding “lessons into action without delay”.

    So how is this going to join up with the Centralised Safeguarding Learning Repository, and who will have access to that repository?

    LLRs and SPRs are not the only sort of review probing our safeguarding practice, and here I want to say something about another sort of review: an Independent Review. One of these was published on 15 July. It relates to a survivor whose experience with the C of E was on the list of cases needing attention at the point when the Independent Safeguarding Board was abruptly terminated in 2023. The ‘ISB 11’, victims and survivors of C of E abuse and misconduct whose cases had been referred to this group, were left in limbo. The subject of this Independent Review, Jane Chevous, identified in it only as ‘TT’ but waiving her anonymity on publication, has noted that “Mine is the first new review to be published from the legacy of the ISB work, and I hope it gives some hope to others that they will see some resolution soon”. That’s encouraging. Other than a news story in the Church Times and an interview on BBC Woman’s Hour, this new review by safeguarding specialist Helen M. Gilbert seems to have had little publicity, but it deserves to be very widely read.

    What have we learned?

    Much of what is highlighted in the Review is not new, and makes it clear that we are yet to take on board the most basic lessons of earlier reviews; Jane Chevous reported what had happened to her more than once, and we read of missing documents, long delays in responding to letters, unacknowledged power imbalances, and a generation of bishops described as being used to “being the boss”. This Review uncovers two appalling examples of bishops who did not pass on allegations of abuse because they were said to be “aggressively committed to protecting clergy and would bat complaints away”. One of these bishops did not bother with doing the statutory safeguarding training; after several years of this, he was given bespoke training, and then let that lapse as well. Safeguarding is everybody’s business? Apparently not.

    This case, which spanned three dioceses, yet again showed up inconsistencies across the C of E in culture and practice, not helped by high staff turnover in safeguarding. As with the Smyth abuse case, one of the clergy involved – in this case, one of the bishops – moved overseas, which revealed the lack of connection between parts of the wider church and the implications of this in a safeguarding case.

    The detailed and very clear Review also shows where there was good practice. Both my own diocese, Oxford, and Southwark, in recent years come out as places “where bishops worked closely with their safeguarding teams, taking their advice and supporting the development of strong survivor centred safeguarding cultures”. In particular, Oxford Diocese is praised when it went beyond what the NST had recommended.

    What are we not learning?

    The key lesson, and it’s not the first time we’ve heard it, is that safeguarding must be survivor-centred and trauma-informed, and a real sense of best practice here comes across throughout the Review. What the survivor most wanted from all of this was to be believed and heard, to be given an apology, “and to be able to engage in some form of restorative justice. The process denied her all of these.” When, in 2021, a letter of apology was produced, it was not written by the person over whose name it appeared: and then it was not sent for 8 months. In her conclusions Helen Gilbert comments “One must question why there has been such a reluctance to provide apologies and during this case review the opinion was expressed to the Reviewer that there is little doubt that part of this is to avoid liability.”

    One aspect which receives attention throughout the Review is what happens to a member of the clergy when they retire and keep Permission to Officiate (PtO). In 2022, the “Diocese of Oxford had considered their moral response regarding Rev B [one of the two clergy abusers]. On 30.3.22 the Bishop’s Chaplain and Rev B’s area Bishop visited Rev B. Following their conversation Rev B relinquished his PtO. He maintained he intended to do this on health grounds”. In the light of the detailed timeline given, with many earlier discussions of whether or not he should keep PtO, this appears to be a case of jumping before you are pushed. That meant that Rev B was allowed to take control of the story. This becomes explicit later in the report where we read that “Rev B wanted TT to be told he was relinquishing PtO on health grounds” [my italics]. Why the reluctance to remove PtO, and how does that look to the survivor?

    The national church needs to do far more to appreciate how important a survivor-centred and trauma-informed approach is. For example, in February 2026 I asked at General Synod about the trauma-informed training which we had been told in 2023 was ideally to be given to all members of Synod (Question 81). I was told that bite-size modules for this would go live in May. They didn’t. A question following this up in July (Question 129) received the answer “Competing priorities in the development of the National Safeguarding Training Portal have delayed the progress with the bitesize modules for trauma-informed practice training. The modules are in development and will be released as soon as possible.” No date was mentioned. I don’t think this is good enough. Such training was a recommendation of the Wilkinson Review and it should not take three years to set it up.

    A further example of not acting on previous reviews – in other words, not learning lessons – that comes out in Helen Gilbert’s Review is that “Both the Makin Review and the report by Professor Alexis Jay CBE on the Future of Church Safeguarding in the Church of England recommend the establishment of a separate, wholly independent body who would be responsible for providing scrutiny and oversight of safeguarding, free from the influence of any senior church officers. This is also a finding of this review.” But such independence has still not happened.

    As for that reference to the potentially malign influence of senior church officers, it recalls another recent safeguarding document, INEQE’s 2025 annual report, where the lead auditor shifted the blame away from (most) senior clergy on to senior diocesan officers and some national church staff. He wrote, “Crucially, the primary inhibitors of progress do not stem from senior clergy, most of whom demonstrate a genuine desire for change. Instead, they are structural and, in certain cases, institutional. They arise from a small group of influential senior officers at the diocesan level and certain individuals within the national Church.” This needs investigation, and action.

    That was then and this is now?

    A theme of this Independent Review, as of many others, is the claim of those who did not report abuse that such a (lack of) response was appropriate to the time when they heard about it. The Reviewer will have none of that. When Jane Chevous first reported her abuse by the two clergymen, it was in the period 2001-2002. The two clergy tried to claim that here that they could not be blamed for their actions; in the words of the review,

    “However, they qualified their statements and their responses in 2001/2 by saying ‘but there were no policies then’. As stated, during the course of this review, the theme that in 2001-2 there were no policies and procedures has been expressed repeatedly both in some of the NST documentation and in some of the interviews. Furthermore, it has been stated by some members of the NST that the diocesan bishop acted ‘appropriately for the time’. The Reviewer does not accept this view.”

    The Review contains not only a highly detailed and evidenced timeline but also a list of discussions and reports which predate 2001, with the Reviewer identifying a clash between NST views and other views on past abuse when she notes that “It is therefore a real concern that members of the NST still consider Bishop X acted appropriately for the time despite the evidence set out in this report.”

    Moving forward?

    The Reviewer comments that “it is not possible in this case review to comment on whether there has been any significant learning from the investigation into TT’s case. The church’s response to investigations and reviews is a wider issue across the Church of England.” She is right. Read the Review for yourself to learn how trauma-informed responses are essential if we are to move forwards on safeguarding.

    The last words must rest with Jane Chevous herself. She writes:

    “The review reveals my experience that, as a woman, the misogynistic attitudes in the church both made it easier for the priests to rape me, and meant that my complaint was often not taken seriously. Too often I hear of other women victims’ abuse dismissed as ‘affairs’.

    It shows that while safeguarding processes have developed, the too narrow focus on risk doesn’t offer survivors justice or healing. This makes it almost impossible for the church to deal with all the damage caused by non-recent abuse. 

    … In the end, it’s about love for a fellow human being who is suffering. And if the church can’t manage that, then it has truly lost its way.”

  • A Heavy Yoke: Selina Stone on Power

    I wanted to review Selina Stone’s new book, published today, on Via Media News, because this is such an important and accessible reflection on themes which are currently being discussed widely in our churches, particularly as we continue to reel from awareness of sexual and other forms of abuse: the themes of power, leadership, trust and success. While her approach is a theological one, Stone rightly points out that theology is expressed in practice and can be shaped and distorted by our personality and prejudices. And that was where I found her book was especially valuable, because she challenges each of us to face our own power in order to understand just where it is held, and how it can be abused.

    Stone writes from the Pentecostal tradition, but everything she discusses applies equally to other denominations. Leaders’ use of the church for their own ends is only made possible by the cultures in which they function and the Christian theology they can call on; certain theologies encourage particular power dynamics which increase the chances of spiritual abuse. In a comment which reminded me of the objections some individuals make when required to do safeguarding training, she notes that “Christians … imagine that there is no need to be trained to understand sexual harassment, toxic behaviour and racist abuse, since these are ‘worldly concerns’; instead, apparently, we simply need more Bible studies” (5). And, for those of us who are at least able to recognise abuse outside the Church, she argues that we need to do far more to understand what happens inside. Using Matthew 5’s “You’ve heard it said… but I say”, she invites churches “to critically engage with the traditions they have inherited” (11).

    I particularly appreciated Stone’s dissection of the current tropes of “disagreeing well” (31) and “servant leadership” (26), the second of these identified as virtue signalling, since it can disguise the immense power such a leader may wield over others, feigning service while keeping all the power. Stone uses the example of Jean Vanier’s abuse of nuns and lay women, which also leads her to explore the danger of concepts of spiritual fatherhood and of marriage imagery when talking about spiritual union.

    The chapter on the potential of preaching in grooming a congregation to accept abusive behaviour takes as its text a sermon by Mike Pilavachi, where he used the story of Jacob and Laban to argue that God sometimes sends toxic and abusive people into our lives because… He loves us. As a Black lay woman, Stone also knows all about churches “where white married couples occupy the highest rungs of power”, noting that the concerns of the “little people” were only properly heard after Matt and Beth Redman spoke out about Pilavachi.

    Another case study is that of SPAC Nation, whose wealthy leaders told young people to give them more money, including from selling their own blood, because this would become the seed of the church and would enable them to become rich too. To encourage this behaviour, SPAC nation drew on scripture about sacrifice and obedience. Here, Stone shows how we are still too quick to assume that dominance and numerical growth are evidence of success; and focusing on God as “Almighty” can stop us seeing how God can also be breath, or possibility.

    A further section focuses on John Smyth’s abuse, which was supported by specific readings of the Cross and theologies of atonement focused on God’s wrath. Here, Stone draws on the resources of Black female and womanist theologians, and on their interpretations of the “power in the blood”. After showing the different ways in which oppressed groups have drawn on this theology, she concludes that “God does not delight in the shedding of our blood, any more than he did in the torture and murder of Jesus” (106).

    She also explores the meaning of unity, uncovering the ways in which the word can be used to push the less powerful to remain silent so that the dominant group is able to continue as before, with any expression of disagreement being silenced as a threat to unity. But the price for unity should not be paid by those “who are already forced to carry burdens too heavy for them” (86). She asks what it really means to love each other, as opposed to merely tolerating those with whom we disagree.

    This is a book which fully grasps the complexity of power. When writing on the power of vulnerability as an element of good leadership, Stone shows how controlling leaders can pretend to be vulnerable as a technique to make others reveal their own stories, and also shows how the term “vulnerable adult” can be used to suggest that the survivor is somehow the cause of the abuse. She is very aware of body theology, particularly when analysing Vanier’s views on touch, which dangerously ignored boundaries and power. She contrasts Vanier with Jesus, who knows his power and what it is for, and always waits for consent.

    What is most challenging of all is when Stone turns from the shocking cases which have become familiar to us in the last decade or so and makes us look at ourselves, at “the wolf who might be within us” (13). For this, the most important chapter is the final one, on discernment. Here I remembered what I found most powerful in recent safeguarding leadership training: the Social GGRRAAAACCEESSSS. Taken from a social science context, these emphasise that we are all disadvantaged in some contexts and privileged in others, based on who we are. The long list used in C of E safeguarding training covers: gender, geography, race, religion, ability, accent, age, appearance, class, culture, education, employment, ethnicity, sexuality, sexual orientation, spirituality, and “something else”.

    Stone looks at discernment in the sense of a community and an individual working out how best to use their gifts in ministry, but also considers its less obvious aspects, such as knowing when to speak and when to remain silent, and recognising the spiritual influences behind people’s actions. She argues that we can’t ever spot every abuser and we don’t even know what we ourselves may be capable of doing. This is not made easier when we are not taught how to discern. Even within a church community we need to recognise the sense of something being “off”, perhaps from taking seriously our own bodily reactions. A church is which is a healthy space will have a sense of community, of making space for others, of leadership which does not control but develops other people. It will understand the importance of accountability and cultivate a culture of reflection.

    This is a clear, confident theological and personal appeal for a better understanding of power; I hope it will find its way on to the recommended reading sections of all diocesan safeguarding training materials.

     

     

     

  • Jagged Edges: Where Safeguarding Overlaps with the Trust Deficit

    by Professor Helen King, an authorised preacher in Oxford Diocese and an elected lay member of General Synod

    (picture credit: BBC/Yourkevich)

    ‘Trust’ is currently one of Synod’s key words. As part of the formal agenda, we’ve recently had a presentation and a report on why we don’t trust each other. At the July 2025 General Synod the papers included a further one on the progress of this work, which includes developing “trust and trustworthiness repair strategies”. That paper told us that the Trust Task Group, working with a reference group and a theologian (thus avoiding from the outset the question ‘where’s the theology for this’?), has decided to cancel one of its surveys, originally planned to produce some quantitative data, simply because it’s so blindingly obvious what the results will be.

    From what I’ve been reading recently, I wonder how far this trust deficit is related to the series of safeguarding disasters with which we have to live: from IICSA to Smyth to Soul Survivor to the Nine O’Clock Service with, along the way, the prime-time TV airing of The Sixth Commandment bringing to a far wider audience what happened in Stow and Maid’s Moreton. One of the many items on the agenda at the July General Synod this year was the Final Drafting and Final Approval (the capital letters are there because this is a piece of legislation) of the Redress Scheme for victims and survivors of church abuse. The Redress Scheme is person-centred and trauma-informed; it is not an adversarial process, because repeatedly having to tell one’s story is retraumatising. It now has to go through Parliament before an opening date can be announced, and information and updates can be already seen on the House of Survivors site.

    As one of the supporting documents for the Redress Scheme sent to Synod notes, “The Scheme’s development has been overseen by a project board which included representation from victims and survivors, and which has heard from a broader group of voices on a survivor working group.” Survivors have been involved at every stage.

    In another arena, a friend of mine, Maff Potts, set up the Camerados social movement, which has just celebrated its tenth anniversary. The movement is all about the importance of ‘People and Purpose’ and Maff has now published a book telling stories from that first decade. Camerados reverses the usual service or charity model of helping others, and instead recommends “Ask someone who is struggling to help you”. This is a powerful model, and I think the involvement of survivors in designing the Redress Scheme can be seen in these terms.It’s now very clear that survivors can and do help everyone else.

    Here, I want to introduce a resource from another group of survivors; a resource which needs to be better known and which has made me think about trust. Produced in the Newcastle Diocese, this is Jagged Edges: A New Stations of the Cross. I was thinking about Jagged Edges in the Redress debate last week, when Revd Jenny Bridgman mentioned Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, a classic on how trauma goes on affecting the body and the brain. She suggested that the body of the Church also keeps the score; that our responses are continuing to be affected by what IICSA and subsequent reports of abuse have told us about ourselves. Even those of us who are not victims and survivors of church abuse – and in every debate on the subject at Synod there seem to be more speakers saying that they too have been through this – are in some way traumatised by what we now know. Is that affecting our capacity to trust each other in other areas of church life?

    Although it has the full support of the Bishop of Newcastle, Jagged Edges is not a clergy-led project. It was created by survivors David Creese, Peter Locke and Sarah Troughton and combines David’s poetry, Sarah’s linocut prints and Peter’s music. All the resources are available on one website, here, including audio of the music and the poems and a video of a presentation given by the contributors and their editor, Maggi Creese, in the Moral Injury Webinar Series hosted by the International Centre for Moral Injury at Durham University. Like an earlier Newcastle Diocese creative project on abuse, “If I told you, what would you do?”, this is all free to download and use.

    As that Durham University Centre explains, this is about trust: “Moral Injury involves a profound sense of broken trust in ourselves, our leaders, governments and institutions to act in just and morally ‘good’ ways”. Moral injury not only feeds into the current Synod debates on trust, but also underlies the Private Member’s Motion considered in July about whether the House of Bishops should “urgently submit itself to an independent culture and governance review” (for the record, we did not vote on this but decided instead to move to Next Business).

    The focus of Jagged Edges is on repairing relationships in the Church; while embracing anger and pain in the “wounded heart” of the Church, the tone is generous. The resources are best used slowly, and absorbed gradually, as – with this reader at least – they connect viscerally. There are reflections included, which can be used by an individual reader or in a group, The exploration of abuse through the experience of Jesus draws on Michael Trainor’s 2014 book The Body of Jesus and Sexual Abuse. Even the process of lino printing replicates abuse: cutting into the sheet, covering it with ink – “shame, guilt and self-condemnation” – hiding it under a sheet or paper then applying pressure to reveal the image. Traumatic events affect memory; details are clear, but the narrative order breaks down. That is just as true of the differences between the gospel accounts of the days leading up to the Cross.

    While the poems start from and explore the original Greek of the descriptions of the events leading up to the Passion of Christ, the resources go up to the Resurrection with an image of Jesus and Peter healing their relationship on the beach as they begin to repair broken trust. As Jagged Edges says, “It is not a matter of finding the right way to say ‘sorry’ so that we can all ‘move on’. It is about discerning what it would mean to do as Jesus instructs Peter when he says ‘Feed my sheep’.”

    When I was working with a spiritual director, she advised me to keep on asking the question, “Where are you being fed?” We need to be fed if we are to feed others. As we not only listen to survivors, but learn from their wisdom, is this the re-set we need in the trust debate?

    The exhibition of the Jagged Edges material will be at Newcastle Cathedral from 1 October.

  • Behold the Men: Identifying Risks, Reconsidering Relationships

    by Rachel Starr, Director of Studies at the Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education, Birmingham

    Since Behold the Men was published in January, a lot of people have commented on its relevance to the present moment. Conversations about how churches interpret, encourage, even prescribe, certain models of masculinities have long been needed, but often not given the necessary attention. Today’s global realities have brought into sharper focus the problematic intersections of white power, patriarchy, colonialism and certain forms of Christianity. Yet churches are still in denial about the necessary theological work they need to do in relation to abuse, inequality and injustice.

    In an article from 2019 addressing clerical abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, Susan A. Ross observes that ‘the insights that feminist theology offers to this crisis have not received the kind of attention they deserve’ and seeks to demonstrate both that ‘many (although not all) of the issues in clergy sexual abuse are theologically grounded’ and also that ‘feminist insights can contribute to a transformed church in which ?patriarchy and clericalism no longer dominate, where there is a healthy and holistic theology of sexuality, and ?where the voices of women and the laity are truly heard’ (Ross 2019, p. 633).?

    When viewed in relation to the ongoing safeguarding crisis within many churches, the risks inherent within dominant models of masculinity are clear to see.

    Within many such models, men are considered solitary, independent figures. They are expected to be both self-centred and self-reliant rather than understanding themselves in relation to a wider community. Men are encouraged to be the answer rather than to ask questions or listen to other people’s responses. They are called on to be strong, to ignore or decry their own and others’ vulnerabilities. Men are expected to lead rather than follow, receive instruction or advice. Men in leadership face pressure to be the charismatic leader, the hero, the saviour. As I have written elsewhere, the hero is best avoided.

    As part of their formation within such dominant models of masculinity, men are asked to deny or overcome emotions – framed as signs of weakness – and focus on the rational mind. They are kept at a distance from the realities of their own – and especially others’ – bodies. In different ways, and in a variety of settings, men are seen as creators and consumers, rather than those tasked with caring or cleaning up. This can result in a lack of attentiveness to the impact of actions or decisions.

    A model of masculinity found in some men’s spirituality movements is that of the ‘wild man’. While this model is less prevalent in British churches, it is present in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. This is a model focused on individual spiritual needs, sometimes to be pursued with aggression. It invites risk-taking rather than rule-following. Another model present in some Christian traditions is the successful man, whose presence is sought and whose failings are overlooked. A third model explored in Behold the Men is the family man, often found within a ‘culture of niceness’ which can mask power and stifle challenge. All three of these models – and others beside – need to be reconsidered if churches are to become places of wellbeing for all.

    Behold the Men offers some suggestions as to how churches might begin conversations around what it might mean to be a man of faith.

    1. Beginning with bodies

    ‘In our earliest conversations about the book, we talked about the importance of the body. While we cover shared ground with some systematic theology texts, we made a conscious decision to begin not with God but with human bodies, specifically, men’s bodies. Each chapter places bodies central to the discussion: naked, earthed, displaced, broken, of and in Christ, healing, resistant, receptive, created and connected’ (Beckford and Starr 2015, p. 4).

    We hope the book will help readers to listen to their own bodies and trust the insights offered: but not to be limited by their own embodied experiences. As Brazilian feminist theologian Ivone Gebara writes, ‘I have had … to listen with my whole body to what my particular body had not experienced concretely’ (Gebara 1995, p. 129).

    1. An ongoing conversation

    Behold the Men brings together more than a dozen contributors, who offer insights from a range of contexts, identities and theological traditions. The aim of the book is not to propel the reader towards a clear conclusion. Instead, it invites readers to listen carefully to different experiences, gain fresh insight and be encouraged to find new ways forward. It is not the first book exploring masculinities within Christianity, and we hope it will not be the last.

    1. ‘We Cannot Walk Alone’

    We chose to use Birmingham artist Eddy Aigbe’s painting, ‘We Cannot Walk Alone,’ for the book cover. Originally commissioned by Celebrating Sanctuary for Refugee Week in 2021, the image seeks to convey many different people coming together to shape more inclusive, just communities. In the work of justice, the wisdom, compassion and commitment of many is needed. We hope our book will be a resource for the journey. Certainly, there is much distance for our churches to travel if they are to be places where all bodies are welcomed, respected and honoured. Challenging violent and limiting models of masculinity within churches, exploring more inclusive and healthy ways of being men of faith, is long overdue.

  • Recognising Grooming: Revisiting the David Tudor Case

    by Anon.

    I write as a woman who met David Tudor in the early eighties when he came to our parish as a half-time Curate. The other half of his time was spent as chaplain and teacher of RE to the local CofE /Roman Catholic comprehensive school nearby. The Judgment at his recent Clergy Discipline Measure tribunal made clear that it would not name that parish in order to protect the anonymity of the recent complainants; I shall not do it here. Further, this judgment made it clear that, for the first time and after 40 years, Tudor admitted to abusive behaviour when confronted with a contemporaneous diary kept by one of the complainants.

    In the early days, he had concentrated his attention in the parish on three groups: children, their mothers and the elderly in the congregation. He was, by common consent, stunningly attractive and utterly charming. However, before long our then-incumbent (since deceased) confided that he found Tudor “uncontrollable”.

    From my own viewpoint, Tudor was making great progress with children in the parish, with their parents and with the elderly on whom he lavished time and attention. What I failed to realise at the time that this was a very practised onslaught of grooming of all those groups. Nonetheless, he seemed to sense that attention on me would not be appreciated but I felt, at the time, that I was quite alone in this. I have heard nothing since to make me change that view.

    After only a few months, problems crystallised when Tudor invited a group of the older children to a weekend away without any adult assistance.  I raised this at a PCC meeting in Tudor’s absence and not a single other person showed any concern. The expedition went ahead without my son, then aged 13 or so. The anguish this caused in our family was out of all proportion, as is often the way with young teenagers who have to be with their peer group in all circumstances (more recently captured in the epithet FOMO: fear of missing out).

    By that time, I had insisted on a meeting to discuss the matter with Tudor, but he failed to turn up “owing to an asthma attack”. The irony of taking children away overnight unaccompanied by any other adult when he could have an asthma attack was totally lost on him, as was the suggestion that, should any complaints arise, he would have no adult witness to protect him.

    Years later, our I met our then-incumbent at a Church School function and he told me that Tudor had originally proposed this overnight stay for school pupils but the governors had refused to allow it. Tudor had therefore cancelled the school trip rather than comply and hastily invited young church members instead. If the Governors had concerns about him by that time, they did not share them with our incumbent.

    As a family we were caught out again when Tudor proposed a holiday in Greece, again unaccompanied by other adults. We had already made arrangements to go to Canada where family members had emigrated some twenty years earlier and we had not seen them since. In the circumstances, rather than spell out my misgivings I explained to my son we could not do another holiday in Greece over and above the one in Canada. He took that to mean we could not afford it, which was eminently reasonable, and he came back from a meeting saying that Tudor had offered to tap into “charitable funds” on his behalf. I responded by letter saying how disgusted I was that my over-privileged son had been offered “charitable funds”. I was teaching at that time and I explained that, in my experience, in circumstances where finances were apparently the issue preventing a child from participating, the child was never informed. Negotiations would be between the head of the school and the parents. In the context of a parish church, the incumbent could be asked.

    The plan foundered but I never knew who it was who had seen the light and put a stop to the venture. I never heard of any conversation between the school and the parish church, although that does not mean they did not occur.

    Meanwhile the grooming process continued with apparent success,  even though in those far-off days of innocence I did not quite recognise it for what it was. I had concluded that children were likely to be at risk, but I was not certain whether those children were likely to be male or female. It troubled me greatly but I could not identify anyone with whom I could discuss it; as I saw it, I had no evidence and I certainly had no relationships in the Diocese for consultation and I did not even know an Archdeacon until many years later. Only recently have I discovered that our then-Area Bishop testified in Tudor’s favour at his subsequent trial (see below). I was clearly quite right to perceive myself to be at a loss.

    In 1986 or so, Tudor’s curacy was completed and he became part-time priest-in-charge at a nearby Church; his chaplaincy at the school was extended.

    I was not aware of how he was getting on at all until I heard on the grapevine that he had been convicted of molesting five girls at the school; Tudor was convicted and sentenced to six months in prison, which he served.

    After his release he appealed against the conviction, which was quashed on the grounds of a technicality. This technicality was that complaints against him as a defendant should have been taken one at a time, rather than all at once. It is not difficult to see the problems for a defendant if multiple cases are taken at once but, during the Labour Government of 1997-2010, that provision was changed in the case of trials for sexual offences. That is why it is not uncommon now to hear of sexual offenders convicted on multiple counts. That Government also brought in a provision covering people in a position of “authority /trust” to protect pupils or students who were technically above the age of consent.

    I did not know until recently what Tudor did after that but I now know that he was banned from the priesthood for five years and was then allowed back. I discovered only the other night that Archbishop Carey made that decision and he explained that it was he who decided to insist that Chelmsford Diocese should accept Tudor, which duly happened. Perhaps it was the Archbishop’s legacy which Stephen Cottrell inherited on his appointment to Chelmsford as Diocesan in 2010 rather than that of his immediate predecessor in that role.

    Meanwhile I still knew nothing of Tudor’s whereabouts and was assured by my own Bishop that he was not serving at that time and never would serve as a priest again. Priests have come under Employment Law since 2009 and are entitled to go to an Employment Tribunal, for example, and I guess that this was on his or her mind when the lawyer advised Stephen Cottrell against dismissal when he first encountered this problem. It could have been agreed that the risk was worth taking but, as there had already been archiepiscopal intervention, that would have been difficult.

    The case of the Dean of Manchester (Robert Waddington) emerged in 2013, long after Tudor had been to prison and long after Waddington himself had died. In the ensuing review chaired by Sally Cahill QC, both the then-Archbishop of York and the then-Bishop of Manchester were criticised for not having taken action years earlier. One problem was found to be of mutual deference between all three and it was noted that each was obliged by oath to the other two. This issue might have come into play in the Tudor/Carey/Cottrell situation although they would almost certainly not have recognised it.

    What I never knew until now was the nature of the abuse  and that Tudor was violent as well as abusive – or that there were girls in our congregation who suffered. A friend recently told me that her daughter reported at the time (in the eighties), that a friend of hers was “having an affair” with Tudor and that this friend had not told anyone because she was “frightened”. My friend could not understand the notion of being frightened. Maybe this child was one of the recent complainants who were from the parish.

    In my later life, I was in a position to speak about all this in various central church committees, in particular to use Tudor’s case to illustrate the power of grooming. At the time, I did not know where Tudor was, but then I saw a television programme with quite a long slot given to Canvey Island and its wonderful vicar, and there was he was. I continued to mention the case at national level. I was assured that enquiries would be made, and then that “there was no further problem and previous problems had been dealt with”.

    The only thing I have to add to the wider conversation about this is that the congregation in this case was never mentioned. I think what many of them may have experienced was real heartbreak. The women who have now complained have suffered ever since but they and the other girls at the time must have been distraught. Further, a subsequent incumbent who arrived at the parish about 15 years after these events told me he found the congregation still deeply divided and unhappy over it all. I still thought I was the only person who believed that Tudor was guilty as charged; he was even invited back to take Occasional Offices, although not in the Parish Church.

    In all the conversations about safeguarding I have heard in the interim,  nothing has been mentioned about congregations or about the other youngsters in the friendship groups of any victims. For all these people there will have been a massive betrayal of trust and a challenge to their self-belief. Some may have been groomed and they may never bring themselves to believe ill of the offender. A great friend of mine who was then the age that I am now firmly believed, she said, that those girls were “no better than they should be”. I guess there could be similar reactions in current cases, and such people should be sought out and helped otherwise bitterness and division could well persist as they did in this congregation for a generation or more.

    In the past few weeks, in a conversation with one of those adults groomed in the eighties who now understood Tudor’s admission, they nonetheless seemed to regard the latest revelations with an insouciance which is very difficult to understand. However, grooming needs to be understood if we are to bring closure to everyone who gets caught up in such events and to be sure that the whole parish can get healing.

    The existence of Parish Safeguarding Officers should and often does give people confidence to report; but that depends on parishioners and safeguarding officers themselves recognising grooming for what it is.

     

  • The Church is What We Do Next 

    by Gilo,  co-editor with Janet Fife of the book Letters to a Broken Church, and co-creator of the House of Survivors website. He is also a hymn writer.

    I recently saw Conclave at my local cinema. If you haven’t read the Robert Harris novel, and don’t want to be handed the crux of the story – avoid looking up any online reviews. They nearly all give spoilers. So I won’t reveal any here, other than one pivotal moment when a cardinal makes a quietly impassioned call to the other cardinals in the midst of heated debate, “The church is not tradition. The church is not the past. The church is what we do next.”

    The church is what we do next. Upon such a fulcrum of gravitas where promise and danger meet in equal portion is where the Church of England now stands. Almost every senior bishop who might be considered for the role of Archbishop of Canterbury is likely to have legacy ghosts trailing in their wake and waiting to haunt them. This is not a political statement, nor particularly an anti-bishop one, but rather a statement of probable fact. If the Church and especially the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) do not exercise rigorous scrutiny in this appointment, you can be sure the media will.

    Any senior bishops being considered for the role will need to have searing honesty with regard to their safeguarding history. Have they blanked survivors or denied disclosures? Have they evaded necessary and crucial questions? Have they deployed the standard institutional responses of silencing and blanking? Have they been party to the burial of things which they know should not have been buried? Have they hidden reviews under lock and key? (I know of at least one current diocesan who has done so in recent years.) Have they rested easy in quiet complicity with any bad cultures of Church House or Lambeth Palace when their position of power and privilege offered opportunity to speak up and act? In truth, the standout voice has been that of the Bishop of Newcastle. She alone has spoken fearless truth to frightened power and has from all reports met with a lack of support. Other bishops, especially senior ones, have lacked even basic courage in comparison.

    This is the reality the Church finds itself in: the CNC may sleepwalk the Church into fresh crisis simply by assuming that senior bishops are transparent in any assertion that all is well with them and that no skeletons will emerge to plunge the Church deeper into damage. Some of them are possibly too hubristic to care much.  Unaccountable power tends to breed a hubristic attitude. Some perhaps imagine that what has been successfully buried in the past will stay buried. It won’t.

    Increasingly my own view is that the next occupant of St Augustine’s Chair might need to be an interim figure. Someone who can hold the Church to its promises and critical decisions throughout this year and during the next few. But not necessarily someone attempting to usher in any ‘Grand Plan’. Lambeth Palace and the Church probably need a rest from any big Welby-esque strategic vision. Maybe five years max in the post. Deep elder wisdom required. Someone who has not necessarily been in much position of power to bury anything. Someone from the edge. Someone with a deep understanding, heart of compassion, and wisdom. Possibly a retiring suffragan. The late great Alan Wilson would have been such a figure. He was unique and I’m not sure we will see his like again. But imagine if he’d been Archbishop leading up to his retirement, with a brief to begin the vital rescue of the Church. With Rosie Harper alongside him as Chaplain and partner in the project of institutional  transformation. He had the chutzpah to speak right over the heads of the agents of resistance and obvious institutional corruption. Crucially, he and Rosie had shared the journey of survivors for a decade or more, and gathered the threads in their groundbreaking To Heal and Not to Hurt. Alan would have stood sentinel to the beginning of root and branch reform and insisted upon a much more honest Church of England built upon the keystones of systemic transparency and truthfulness.

    It’s clear that the CofE will undergo considerable and necessary change over the next decade, with hopefully a return to a much more locally focussed Church and away from the two-tiered Church of struggling parish over against the weight of privileged and unaccountable power. The next Archbishop will need a depth of wisdom that almost none of the current senior bishops seem capable of demonstrating, to guide the start of that process. Crucially, they will need to embody a focus of real energy across CofE on setting the safeguarding and response to survivors on to a genuinely healing and restorative path.

    When Channel 4’s Cathy Newman summed up the John Smyth scandal as showing that ‘the church had neither process nor kindness’, Justin Welby had no option but to agree. The next Archbishop will need to be someone who can insist upon right process matched with great kindness, and who can publicly and decisively call all structures which govern every aspect of the response to survivors to follow that lead. Transparency is the essential cornerstone of such a move. But transparency is destined to fail when touted publicly by Archbishops whilst figures hidden in the corridors of power work to mitigate against it. For transparency to work, for it to bring any possible redemption of the Church’s reputation, everyone needs to face in the same direction and sing from the same hymn sheet. And the act of kindnessing will need to be apparent throughout.

    Realistically, any implementation of structural independence is likely to be complex and require more than a few years to achieve. If this is rushed as a reactive response to the mess the Church is in, will only lead to further meltdown and confusion. So I posit some crucial first steps along the way for a possible interim Archbishop. I imagine an experienced suffragan with the strength of purpose to focus on the following:

    1. Call an EGM of Synod
    2. Support Tanni Grey-Thompson’s Mandatory Reporting bill currently in passage in the House of Lords, and call for that support across the House of Bishops and Synod.
    3. Ensure the Redress Scheme begins this year, is fair and just, and not any kind of rerun of toxic Ecclesiastical Insurance tactics.
    4. Sort out the undeniable mess of Archbishops’ Council and its wholly unaccountable Secretariat. Sackings required, even if key personnel demand immorally high severance packages. The Secretary General is unlikely to leave without a wheelbarrow of cash. So be it. But go he must.
    5. Call all of Church House and NCI staff publicly to transparency. Ditto to all bishops/dioceses. Transparency must be the watchword of the Church going forward.
    6. With this in mind, introduce the Nolan Principles into public life across the Church. Bishops and key staff are public office holders and should be required to commit to principles of accountability and integrity.
    7. Work with key parliamentarians to bring the Church quickly under Freedom of Information regulation.

    In fact, with grit and determination, I think all of these could be achieved in Year 1. Ceasing to be ‘pope’ of the Anglican Communion will free up time and energy, and allow for focus on recovery of the broken Church. If this 7-point plan was achieved, it would be a job well done, and would pave the way to longer-term repair after the turbulence of the last decade. The Church’s only chance of repair will be the measure to which it commits to the repair of those it has harmed and re-harmed.

    If the CNC chooses business as usual and Lambeth Palace ends up with someone who represents the fearful milquetoast culture we’ve seen in the bishops of recent months, then the Church is likely to fold in on itself and travel deeper towards its own shabby diminishing. If, on the other hand, they choose an unexpected and unknown elder of wisdom it may be that the Church will have a much better future after he or she has gone. The reset of the Church of England depends on the initial year or two of the next Archbishop and the vision and determination and public grit they bring to laying the groundwork.

    Any of the obvious diocesans – York, London, Oxford and others – will in various ways represent a Church of broken promises, complicity with cruel structures and reliance upon reputation management. If the CNC looks to them, the Church will rue the day. The current grim state of affairs will deepen. Let us hope the CNC (which has awkward ghosts of its own which need to be sorted) will find the boldness to choose with extraordinary care. “The Church is what we do next.”

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Iwerne: The Anglican Trojan Horse

    by Canon Jeremy Pemberton, a retired priest living in the diocese of Southwell and Nottingham. Formerly in parochial ministry for twenty-six years, he was an Honorary Canon of Boga and Ely Cathedrals. Latterly, he was a senior chaplain for the NHS. He is presently undertaking doctoral research into the ecclesiology of the decline of the Church of England

    Delayed by years until it seemed it would never arrive, I think few of us reckoned with the seismic impact of the Makin report. There, behind the piety, and yet somehow magnified by it, was the horror of the sadism and cruelty of Smyth’s abusing in England; there, in a tale that is still yet to be told in full, was the more explicitly sexual exploitation of boys in Zimbabwe, and his shadowy career in South Africa. One hundred and thirty victims at least; several deaths; many lives forever altered, spoiled, and tainted; and an abused family who could never get away from this narcissistic tyrant.

    There has been a good deal of discussion of the extent to which Smyth was a Church of England abuser. His background was Plymouth Brethren, and when the family were expelled from that setting, they moved to another very conservative evangelical context. But John Smyth found a new spiritual home and purpose when he was recruited by Eric “Bash” Nash to help run the camps at Iwerne Minster from 1962 onwards. These camps were notionally under the aegis of Scripture Union, a non-denominational evangelical body, but they were effectively Bash’s own fiefdom. Nash was an ascetical, driven man whose unrelenting focus on his mission attracted enthusiastic followers from the top tier of boys’ public schools. His most famous disciple was John Stott, a Rugby pupil.

    Nash, a Church of England clergyman, had graduated to youth work and his famous ‘Bash Camps’ after two curacies. These took place at Clayesmore School in Dorset, in the village of Iwerne Minster, hence their later title, ‘Iwerne’. Nash’s mission was clear and simple, to take over the Church of England for Jesus, and through it the nation, providing it with the best leadership he could, Christian boys from elite public schools. His recipe was an imperialist hangover: but for them to be their best they needed to be Christians after his kind. And ‘his kind’ was simple, direct, and entirely Jesus-focused. Theology was a dirty word to Bash; ABC was all you needed – in his words, Admit your need; Believe that Christ died for your sins; Come to him as your Lord and Saviour.

    The camps were also defined by some other noticeable characteristics: they were single sex (though there was a girls’ Iwerne, Bash had no interest in it – or girls at all for that matter) and sex was something to be strongly discouraged. Nash himself was a confirmed bachelor, and never displayed any interest in that kind of thing. He thought marriage was a regrettable weakness, and homosexuality abhorrent. The whole structure of the work created a semi-secret world; Iwerne provided spiritual support and pastoral mentoring for boys who were, after all, away from home a lot of the time. Intense ‘personal work’, as it was called, consisted of regular meetings for Bible reading and prayer and self-examination, supported by much letter writing. It was easy to start to depend on these people who seemed to care so much. In between the running of house parties or camps at Christmas and Easter as well as in the summer, much of Bash’s life was on the road, visiting his boys at their schools.

    Questioning at Iwerne was discouraged, as was thinking; faith, discipline, overcoming temptation and sharing the message with others became the prime areas for activity, all washed down with lots of games and sport to tire everyone out.

    So there you have it: a simplistic faith, keeping its believers infantilised and unquestioning; a culture that separates itself from the world, for those who believe and turn to Christ are saved, and those who have not yet or who don’t are damned; intense relationships with mentors and colleagues, and close relationships with others discouraged; a shame culture – for the mentors wanted to impress upon you the importance of repentance for your many failings, and what teenager does not fail many times and in many ways? If you had the temerity to think you were not doing too badly then it might be suggested that you were caught in the sin of pride – it was hard to avoid feeling guilty. All of this was, as with lots of youth organisations, wrapped up in Iwerne’s own language and customs, not easily accessible to the uninitiated. If, at this point, you are thinking it sounds rather cult-like, I would not blame you.

    In the hands of Eric Nash, who, by all accounts was a modest and genuinely humble man, the camps flourished and raised up leaders for the evangelical wing of the Church of England. I have suggested that the camps and camp culture was cult-like. But what came next was much worse.

    When Nash grew old, he passed on the running of the camps to The Revd The Hon. David Fletcher, son of a Labour peer and one of ‘his’ boys. By then Nash had already introduced Smyth, who went to a minor public school (and felt acutely let down by his father that he had not gone to one of the best) into the leadership of the camps. Smyth’s own church at the time was for many years an Anglican one, and he trained as a Reader and sought ordination. The cover provided by Iwerne’s culture gave Smyth his opening. Within the oddness of Iwerne, the charismatic Smyth created a complete and effective ‘cult within a cult’ in which he was free to abuse egregiously. He was a slippery character to be sure: as the report says, a narcissist, entitled, grandiose, lacking empathy, someone who took pleasure in inflicting pain, and a man with a strong sex drive which, unnervingly for a homophobe, directed itself in part to teenage boys and young men. When challenged he would strike back, and hard, and if that failed, he was always ready to turn himself into the victim.

    Iwerne managed to nurture not one, but two very questionable leaders in that generation; Smyth, whose activities while ‘hiding in plain sight’ have been compared to those of Jimmy Savile, and David Fletcher’s younger brother Jonathan, who will come to trial for alleged sexual offences next summer. Smyth and Fletcher J. did not like each other; yet so strong is the bond inside the little society of Iwerne, that when Smyth’s world within a world was falling apart, and the news of his crimes was leaking out, Jonathan Fletcher can be found, according to Makin’s report, defending him and trying to hush things up.

    In the period 1980-2010 Iwerne, while seeming to continue as normal, was living through two major changes, one external and one internal. First, in the Church of England, the church of which most Iwerne participants were a part, the increasing dominance of evangelicals meant that men from that tribe, including those raised inside Iwerne, were ordained, and, by sheer force of numbers, started to be appointed to senior positions. In a way, this was the vindication of Eric Nash’s strategy. The fly in the ointment was that men who reached those positions were obliged by the demands of the church as a whole to grow beyond the childish and unnuanced theology of Iwerne, which made them suspect for those who kept alive the flame of Bash’s ‘ABC’. This meant that the church had leaders, or certainly some, who had not truly been raised in the historic Church of England but through a parallel closed society, and who did not instinctively understand or value Anglican theology, liturgy, history, or pastoral theology. When you are taught that Christianity is at heart all about the saved and the lost, and that you have the insight to distinguish between them here and now, then the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares, the polity of being a national church, and the practice of parochial and pastoral ministry in all its complexity, subtlety, and opportunity is rather lost on you.

    The second sequence of events, invisible to most in this period, concerned the huge threat posed by Smyth. When his appalling crimes started to become known in 1982, those clergy to whom these things were reported kept the whole business to themselves. When Mark Ruston, the vicar of the Round Church in Cambridge, and a greatly respected preacher and leader, wrote his first report that year and began to circulate it to some chosen colleagues, he was clear that he understood the law to have been broken by what Smyth had done, and cited the Offences against the Person Act of 1861 section 47: assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Rather than report this to the police, these men managed this privately for one overwhelming reason – protecting the reputation of the camps. The correspondence between them is littered with concern above all for what any scandal, should Smyth’s activities get out, might do to ‘Gospel work’. Their job, as they saw it, was reputation management, not justice. They were also deeply concerned for John and Anne Smyth and wanted to help them. And the victims of his crimes? There is, in the reports from that time and in the letters between the leaders, more than a whiff of victim blaming. Smyth, of course, encouraged this by saying that all the complaints from the boys and young men were exaggerated. The victims who started to speak were not really listened to and believed – not, that is, until one attempted to take his own life because he could not face another beating. But their needs were never prioritised. Camp, and ‘the work’, had to be protected at all costs.

    Even when Smyth had been forced to resign from camp, his friends and erstwhile colleagues from the Iwerne network clustered round to help him relocate and start a new life. Coded warnings were sent ahead, but he made it to Zimbabwe and then South Africa and was supported financially by UK and other sources in what Makin calls a ‘lavish lifestyle’ from then until he died in 2018.

    The ‘management’ of Smyth and his criminal activity was complex and multi-layered, but as it began to break down, information leaked out to Church of England clergy beyond the Iwerne network, and even bishops. Yet, somehow, even with victims starting to come forward, no one really grasped the enormity of the crimes before them and acted with the perseverance needed to stop him. Not until after 2010 are proper reports laid before the police and, even after that, poor co-ordination between county police forces and the church meant that Smyth remained at large.

    One of the trustees of the Titus Trust, which ran the Iwerne camps after 1997, acknowledged, in her submission to Makin, that she had failed to report abuse because “of a misplaced loyalty to the Iwerne regime”. That is the point: loyalty to the Iwerne regime. Loyalty to that above all else; loyalty to Iwerne above the demands of justice, charity, love, or truth. Loyalty to that regime, even, ironically, above doing what Jesus would have done.

    That regime, built as it had been on its thin gruel of a theological basis, its snobbery and elitism, and its neglect of the richness of the tradition of the Church of England, had the temerity to market its camps as giving a chance for boys to find out about “The Christian Faith”.  The ocean depths of the faith; of prayer, of thought, of service, of social engagement – none of that was offered. Just a simple ‘gospel’ message, disembodied and uninculturated, and a lot of unpleasant manipulation of vulnerable young men masquerading as pastoral care until they were entangled in Iwerne’s clutches.

    I went to Iwerne to help for two summer camps in the mid 1970s. I was twenty years old and at university. I didn’t like it; it seemed childish and creepy at the same time. Personal pressure was put on me by David Fletcher to keep coming, and that solidified my decision to having nothing more to do with it. When I was there, I saw and heard nothing amiss, and I had no personal contact with either John Smyth or Jonathan Fletcher. But I think my instincts to steer well clear were well advised.

    Theology that makes shame one of its core virtues is no Christian theology at all. The bodily and sexual dishonesty of Iwerne was almost limitless. Bodies were there to be taxed and driven in endless sport, and the world of feeling was to be avoided – it was as if bodily existence itself was an inconvenient accident. The tenderness of the incarnation was trodden underfoot by the transactionality of a two-dimensional salvation. One of the summers I went to Iwerne my visit followed some days of singing at Salisbury cathedral. It felt like taking myself away from the beauty of holiness and into a wasteland. I was told off for singing and told off for talking to the girls in the kitchen – but then, Iwerne was weird about sex. I recall being told, in a talk on sex to senior campers, that what you were looking for in a wife was someone who would be “an angel in the kitchen and a devil in bed.” I thought it was messed up misogyny then, and still do now.

    Overly negative about masturbation, fretful about any engagement between the sexes, terrified of real women, utterly neurotic about homosexual attractions and love, Iwerne’s sickness was played out in the distorted libidos and anxiety-laden fumblings of its devotees. The fear of sinning loomed over bodies in general, and participants in the camp in particular. Iwerne’s legacy of fear, homophobia, and inconsistency still fuels the culture war around Living in Love and Faith.

    At its worst, Iwerne was a haven for a vile abuser and criminal. That its alumni, products of a para-church organisation with questionable theology and loyalty to the Anglican tradition, have risen so high in the life of our church, either as leaders or prominent parochial ministers, is our tragedy. It will be our folly if we don’t see what has been done, and fight to recover the breadth of the Church of England, and its traditions, and its social and cultural engagement, so that, even if much diminished, we can again be a church for the nation, and not an incomprehensible and morally suspect oddity.

     

  • Is the Failure to Act on a Safeguarding Disclosure a Disciplinary Offence or Not?

    by ‘Graham’

    “Nobody can say it is not my fault. It is so absurd,” Archbishop Welby said. “To say, ‘I have heard about a problem but it was someone else’s job to report it’, that is not an acceptable human response, let alone a leadership response.

    “If you know a child is being abused, not to report it is simply wrong, for every human being.” IICSA, 20 March 2018.

    “These victims are rightly concerned that no one appears to have faced any sanction yet, when it is clear a number of Christians, clergy and lay, were made aware of the abuse in the 1980s and many learned in subsequent years. I have not yet received a list of names. I am told by Survivors that some facilitated Smyth’s move to Africa. I have made it clear that the National Safeguarding Team will investigate every clergy person or others within their scope of whom they have been informed who knew and failed to disclose the abuse.” Justin Welby, 20 May 2021.

     

    I am a victim of John Smyth QC. It is recorded in Bleeding for Jesus, by Andrew Graystone, that multiple people, “Christians, clergy and lay” knew of the abuse by John Smyth in the 1980s. I know the names of some who provided references for him to move to Africa. I have also read the draft Makin Review (under embargo) and read that 10 Bishops and three Archbishops had received the disclosure of his abuse by August 2013, including of course Justin Welby. And those are just the ones that Keith Makin has been able to identify.

    I have less of a beef with those who knew in the period after February 1982, when the abuse was uncovered, and this is not the focus of this blog. Smyth was stopped pretty quickly, and multiple efforts were made to find him a new home. My complaint about that period is that he could just set up boys’ camps again in Africa, with no supervision, no oversight, no intervention, despite so many being aware of his earlier abuse. Pretty soon a large number were told of further abuse. But, as I said, that period is not my focus.

    My problem concerns 2012 (when I came forward) and 2013, by which time safeguarding rules were codified, a nascent NST existed, and when Smyth should have been stopped and brought to justice. By 2013, the full horror of the abuse was plain to see.

    So, what do I make of the 2021 statement by Justin Welby, and what he meant by that: or at least what he thought he meant by that: “I have made it clear that the National Safeguarding Team will investigate every clergy person or others within their scope of whom they have been informed who knew and failed to disclose the abuse”?  Was it an echo, a reiteration, of his IICSA comments, or was it just because he could hardly say anything different ?

    And my worry is that I suggest he did think everyone who failed in 2012-13 would be “investigated”. The outside world, we victims, General Synod members, would all say “of course they will be investigated, that is obvious”. Yet, I think he so ignorant of practice on the ground by the National Safeguarding Team (NST), or so badly briefed, that what he actually said meant nothing of the sort.

    Keith Makin and NST have had the names for years, since 2017 at least. Keith Makin has under his Terms of Reference, “referred upstairs” where he believes people have failed. Yet, there is silence, inaction. We have no visible evidence of CDMs, we have no visible evidence of the removal of PTO from anyone. There has been a comment “wait for Makin” (and this was the answer from Justin Welby, when challenged directly whether he did fund John Smyth in Africa). But why? The Makin Review is an independent review, and the Church of England could do what they did to the Elliot Review: trash it, and say “he is independent, so we do not have to follow his recommendations”

    But why wait? The NST and the CofE have all the evidence they need to start their own investigation and disciplinary processes. Keith Makin has no power to start a CDM process. He may have uncovered evidence, and under his Terms of Reference, passed it on to the relevant authorities. But the CofE’s investigation and disciplinary processes can only be undertaken … by the CofE.

    So, what did Justin mean? Or think he meant? I think he tried to suggest that proper, detailed investigation of failings would be instigated. Yet there is absolutely no evidence this is the case. What I believe did happen is that NST asked an entirely different question – “is this person a current safeguarding risk?” – and have limited their investigation solely to this question. So, the failings in 1982 and 2012-13 are never investigated at all.

    But the Church must decide whether failings over safeguarding disclosures are actually a disciplinary offence or not. There are multiple examples where it is alleged that senior figures, including Archbishops, did not do what they might when they learned of abuse: from George Carey in the Peter Ball case, to Bishops in the Devamanikkam case. People knew about Mike (“it’s just Mike”) Pilavachi, and Iain Broomfield, and Jonathan Fletcher, and most recently the many clergy involved at Blackburn. And in each case, they did nothing, or at least not enough to stop the alleged abusers, to instigate the necessary investigations and Church disciplinary procedures.

    So, at the moment, as a Smyth victim, I have read of 13 Archbishops and Bishops who failed to act, yet have no evidence of a single sanction against any of them. The Church of England must codify, must publish, must make plain, the consequences of safeguarding failures around disclosure. Or just announce that it does not matter: that failures around disclosure are unfortunate but no more. But surely that is not what is intended?

    If failures around disclosure of abuse have no consequence, then the words of Justin at IICSA and in 2021 may just have been hot air.

  • Beyond Jay: Here’s What the Response Group and Synod Need to Do for a Safer Church

    by Gilo, hymn writer, co-editor with Janet Fife of the book Letters to a Broken Church, and co-creator of the House of Survivors website

    Three diocesan bishops seek my take, with varying degrees of regularity, on developments in the Church of England’s safeguarding and response to survivors. I’m careful to point out that any views I express are mine, mine alone, and do not represent those of any organisation or group. I neither seek nor receive any funds in the process. So the thinking expressed here is not the only viewpoint, nor necessarily the right one (if such exists). It is simply mine, in a field which is likely to be contentious in the forthcoming Synod.

    The three bishops have each asked what I think of the Jay report. In my view the Jay is undeliverable and, even if it were, would it necessarily result in something better than the current mess? Professor Alexis Jay has done the reverse of what she did in IICSA. The IICSA recommendations were limp and didn’t go far enough. Now she’s gone too far, and by proposing Org A she’s given CofE a possible excuse to slow down the crucial Org B. She is a political naïf, and in my view the recommendations in the Jay report arose perhaps as a form of psychological penance for not being ambitious enough in IICSA. I think this report will set the Church back, not move it forward. If you follow its course logically, then other institutions may seek Org A structures in the name of ‘independence’ and we’d end up with a multitude of safeguarding bodies creating further confusion. I think no amount of Org A, and no amount of expenditure on Org A (which would put current CofE safeguarding expenditure into deep shade) can stand in place of properly designed mandatory reporting in the statutory framework. This is the key. The best course of action the Church could be taking is banging loudly on Home Office doors to argue a case for an end to the ‘potemkin village’ Whitehall is wanting to create and instead to introduce effective mandatory reporting. Whitehall wants mandatory reporting in name only, in a watered-down version of the IICSA recommendation which was already itself a watery version.

    The Church has undoubtedly arrived at a car crash moment. Where does responsibility for this lie? Failed leadership. Synod must remind itself that failure at the heart of the axis of power, represented by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York in conjunction with the Secretary-General, has brought the Church to such a desperate situation. Had they resolved their differences with the ISB in a transparent and safe way there would have been no need for the Jay report.

    Let’s turn to the much-needed Org B, which is where I believe focus must be directed. Org B, as an essential body for scrutiny and oversight and the all-important handling of complaints is urgently needed, and is long overdue. The Church must give such a body effective powers if it is to avoid creating another toothless tiger (NSP anyone?). At present I believe the power to place a diocese into special measures lies within the gift of the Archbishop. This happened memorably to Chichester Diocese under Rowan Williams. This is the kind of bite Org B requires. Not the set of rubber dentures which Archbishops’ Council and their NCIs will be looking to manufacture.

    And no veto by an Archbishop. It may well be that one of the places needing such Special Measures might be the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, alongside London Diocese which would seem a prime candidate for emergency action. London is not alone in being crashy, but it’s up there amongst the worst. We only need one diocese placed publicly into Special Measures and any other dioceses currently lagging behind in handling of cases or responses to survivors will tighten up their bootlaces in a weekend. The routine blanking and obfuscation that still persists in some quarters will quickly end.

    And above all it must end within the NST.

    Whatever shape the Archbishops’ Council eventually decides to give to a new shiny ‘independent’ model, the NST must be removed from the grip of the Secretariat. Its days as an arm of the legals and comms of Church House must end. If it is to have a positive future, it must be repurposed, retrained and given a new vision of itself, with independent management which involves survivors, with all our experience and narrative wisdom. The NST leadership must face their own cognitive dissonance squarely and courageously, and recognise that its deployment by Church House in various aspects of reputation management has been disgraceful and dishonest.

    Whatever happens, ‘Delay’ is likely to be the watchword. Delay by design, but also through incompetence and systemic dysfunctionality. One thing is for definite: the CofE must never again allow one individual to hold as much unaccountable power as is currently compressed into the office of the Secretary-General. He has presided over a rotten borough in the NCIs and puppet-stringed the NST to such an extent that it has become almost impossible for survivors to have much trust in the thing. But the problem is not William Nye alone; it’s the inherited system of which he is a part, albeit a big part. We must factor in too, the lack of leadership by the Archbishops, the Lead Safeguarding Bishop and the NST.

    The House of Bishops is an enfeebled house with a poor grasp of these things. What we’ve seen across the past decade is fewer than a handful of bishops speaking out. Alan ‘Elbows’ Wilson knew that any time the media approached bishops on matters ‘survivor related’’, the traffic would immediately be centrally controlled through Church House comms. He ignored this, and spoke directly to journalists without approval from the centralized machinery of the Secretariat. He was past playing safe games with the structure and was happy to be out on the edge speaking truth to its power. He doubtless took many a kicking but it never seemed to upset him. Julie Conalty has been a courageous voice too, often a lone voice highlighting particular aspects of corruption. But I suspect she’s marginalized by a structure which expects all bishops to stay blandly ‘on message’. She needs a few diocesans to step up and publicly support her when she dares to challenge the status quo.

    Bishops must stop being cowed, stop colluding with toxic culture. They must learn to get over their fear of receiving ‘heavy shepherding’ from one or other of the Archbishops when they speak out of turn. If an Archbishop arrives on your door to bully you into submission to the rules of purple enclosure – then stand up to him. If you stick your head above the parapet, you will be marginalised. Learn to embrace this. The likelihood is that this or that particular bit of funding for your diocese will be squeezed. It’s been indicated to me that this is quietly how the culture of collegiate control operates. So the purple enclosure stays on message and lets any missives be handed out by a Lead Bishop who to all intents and purposes seems mostly missing in action as far as survivors are concerned. When a bishop dares to go off-piste and makes an authentic comment, they experience the polite scowl of the institution. But if enough speak out, especially from the top of the Lead trio, then the toxic culture might begin to change.

    Successive lead bishops have discovered they have nothing but rubber levers to work with! The real levers, those of power and any real change, are held by Archbishops’ Council which in turn is heavily controlled by a shadowy Secretariat. The wheels turn slowly because everything is hardwired to move slowly. Just as the structure is hardwired to protect hierarchy and itself. One of the bishops who listens to me recently asked me what I consider to be the three main obstacles to progress. In my view, these are:

    (1) centralised and dysfunctional power which rules an unchecked empire with disastrous consequences. Look at the handling of the ISB members and the way they were closed down at an hour’s notice.

    (2) siloed mindset of the bishops who occupy a ‘me and my diocese’ headspace. There is little public collegiate expression of responsibility and far too much collegiate fear.

    (3) the transparency gap. Too much of the structure is wedded to reputation management and used to hiding stuff. The institution has failed to grasp that transparency is the best route to salvaging reputation.

    I want to end on a positive note, because the picture is not all gloom. Some dioceses have made huge strides. I’ve been supporting one survivor in recent weeks. We sent an initial letter of disclosure to the relevant diocese, and I advised that we should hopefully expect a response within 48 hrs. The reply came within 15 mins! And was hugely positive. Not only did the diocese agree to therapy costs immediately but they are also meeting us in the home geography of the survivor’s town rather than expecting us to make the journey cross-country. The bishop also sent a positive response as soon as he could. I believe dioceses must continue to retain responsibility for the deliverance of good safeguarding and positive response to survivors. And dioceses that are operating out of a handbook that should have been jettisoned a decade ago should be placed into the equivalent of an ambulance that Org B will need to have on standby for just such an eventuality.

     

     

  • Safeguarding & Living in Love and Faith: Learning for the Church of England from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse & Lessons Learned Reviews[1]?

    Via Media does not normally publish long pieces, but in this case we are making an exception; we have a record of expressing concern over safeguarding.[1] The following document was prepared in 2023 by Judith Maltby, a member of the House of Clergy of the General Synod.  She was encouraged to produce this paper by one of the lead bishops for safeguarding and also received critical feedback from a diocesan safeguarding professional before completion. It was presented at a meeting of the National Safeguarding Steering Group on 30 January 2024, after which it was placed on the  CofE Safeguarding Training Portal. That site requires a log-in, so we are making it available here to ensure that as many people as possible are aware of the links identified by IICSA and numerous professional Lessons Learned Reviews between the Church’s teaching on homosexuality and catastrophic safeguarding failures. All the documents cited are referenced in the notes and are in the public domain. 

     

    Revd Canon Judith Maltby is College Lecturer in Theology & Emerita Fellow, Corpus Christi College, Emerita Reader in Church History, University of Oxford, and a member of the House of Clergy of General Synod

    1. Introduction[2]

    From 2012-13 until 2022, I served as a central member elected by General Synod on the Crown Nominations Commission, the body which nominates individuals to be diocesan bishops.  I began around the time of the time of the investigation into safeguarding failures in Chichester Diocese led by Baroness Butler-Sloss.[3]  Although I had up till then followed safeguarding issues in what I hoped was a responsible way for any priest, my election onto the CNC made me realize that I needed to be much better informed as safeguarding needed to be a key element in its discernment work.  Remarkably at the time I started on the CNC, there was no explicit focus on safeguarding in its deliberations.  That has changed in the past decade.  As part of my commitment to the work of the CNC, I started reading all major safeguarding Reviews and followed the proceedings of IICSA closely.

    In 2017, I was invited in my capacity as a professional historian to join one of the disciplinary work streams for what became Living in Love and Faith.  As a member of LLF, I raised a number of times (I was not the only one to do so) that we should be drawing on external Reviews and IICSA of our safeguarding failures in our work on human sexuality.  This work did not take place.

    This paper is the result of two areas of work for the Church of England I have been part of over many years:  the Crown Nominations Commission and Living in Love and Faith.  It is not an attempt to ‘weaponize’ safeguarding in the Church’s sexuality debate, but rather to help us hear what numerous professional, independent Reviews (LLRs) and the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) are saying to the Church:  that our lack of inclusion of LGBT+ people has a serious and detrimental impact on the Church’s ability to deliver good safeguarding.[4]  There is very little of my own text in this paper – it is almost entirely drawn from IICSA and LLRs.  So far, as a Church we are failing to ‘read, mark, learn and inwardly digest’ this growing body of evidence from the very safeguarding professionals we have, in many cases, asked to undertake it.

    1. Questions in General Synod 2018 & 2019

    In the previous quinquennium of General Synod, on two occasions, I asked the following questions about making connections between the work of LLF and the learning needing to be done from IICSA.

    General Synod Questions July 2018

    The Revd Dr Judith Maltby (Universities & TEIs) to ask the Chair of the House of Bishops:

    Q43.  How will the insights and learning from the report due to be published later this year by the UK Government’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) concerning the culture of the Church of England in respect of gender and sexuality be incorporated into the Teaching Document on human sexuality promised for 2020?

    The Bishop of Coventry to reply on behalf of the Chair of the House of Bishops:

    1. The Co-Ordinating Group for Living in Love and Faith is expected to be attentive to developments in other areas of the Church of England’s national life that are relevant for its work. When the report from IICSA is published, it will consider whether there are specific points for it to reflect on, and how to go about this. It is also likely that the report will be relevant to the work of the Pastoral Advisory Group.[5]

    General Synod Questions July 2019

    The Revd Dr Judith Maltby (Universities & TEIs) to ask the Chair of the House of Bishops:

    Q94.  The Church Times (10 May 2019) reported that the hearings of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse this July will ‘scrutinise, among other topics … the House of Bishops’ forthcoming teaching document on gender and sexuality’ and the Lead Bishop for Safeguarding, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, in his response to the May 2019 IICSA report on Chichester and Peter Ball, responded ‘It is absolutely right that the Church at all levels should learn lessons from the issues raised in this report’. Will the forthcoming ‘Living in Love and Faith’ show evidence of learning lessons from the IICSA hearings of March, July 2018, and July 2019, as well as the report of May 2019, about attitudes in the culture and practice of the Church of England towards women and LGBT people?

    The Bishop of Coventry to reply as Chair of the Living in Love and Faith Coordinating Group on behalf of the Chair of the House of Bishops:

    1. The purpose of the Living in Love and Faith resources is primarily educational: the plan is for the resources to be widely used by parishes, deaneries, dioceses, the House and College of Bishops and members of General Synod to enable teaching and learning. In this way LLF will demonstrate its learning from the IICSA process by promoting a culture of mutual respect, clarity, openness and transparency across the Church in relation to matters of human identity, sexuality, gender and marriage. It will also provide appropriate correctives to misinformation about human sexuality and identity. We hope that the Pastoral Principles will establish a helpful culture for using the LLF resources by enabling the Church to address the evils of prejudice, silence, fear, ignorance, hypocrisy and misuse of power, all of which have played their part in the tragic realities of sexual abuse that have been the subject of the IICSA hearings.[6]

    1. LLF’s Engagement with IICSA (November 2020)

    I served on LLF from its beginning and, along with others, attempted a number of times to have learning from IICSA incorporated into its work.  In the end, the only reference to IICSA in LLF is:

    While acknowledging the reality of abuse in the church, it is important that the specific work of theological reflection on IICSA be carried out separately from the Living in Love and Faith project… (LLF, 2020, p. 87).

    As far as I know, the work to ‘be carried out separately’ has not taken place.

    1. Illustrative Extracts from Safeguarding Reviews and IICSA

    Below are extracts from recent independent LLRs into Church of England safeguarding failures.  They argue that the Church’s teaching on homosexuality is a significant contribution to what is, from a safeguarding perspective, a more dangerous safeguarding environment.

    4.1. Dame Moira Gibb Review on Peter Ball (June 2017)

    We believe that the Church’s attitude to homosexuality at the time played a part in the failure to act appropriately. Ball’s abusive behaviour was trivialised and its consequences were set aside (p. 2).

    This issue continues to be a source of division and debate in the Church, and an important concern for some of Ball’s victims. We would simply emphasise that the Church must promote an open and accepting culture in which everyone, regardless of their sexuality or their views about homosexuality, is clear about their responsibilities towards those who might be abused or who might want to raise concerns about abuse (5.7.3).[7]

    4.2.  Independent Review by Dr Adi Cooper, OBE on Stowe and Maids Moreton, 2012-2019, Diocese of Oxford (April 2022)

    In her review on the abuse and murder of Peter Farquhar and the abuse of Anne Moore-Martin by Ben Field, Dr Cooper makes a direct connection between the Church of England’s ‘wider policies regarding homosexual practice’ and putting people at risk:

    1.3.  The closed culture of the Stowe Church in general, including attitudes towards homosexuality, meant that the [sic] Peter Farquhar’s homosexuality and the relationship between Peter Farquhar and Ben Field was a ‘well-known secret’. The wider policies of the Church of England regarding homosexual practice and approach to sexuality and relationships put Peter Farquhar at risk and vulnerable to exploitation. A culture which supported openness and transparency would have better safeguarded Peter Farquhar.  Whilst people continue to feel forced to hide or lie about their sexuality, they can become vulnerable to exploitation, as was Peter Farquhar. [8]

    Dr Cooper cites the earlier report by Dame Moira Gibb on Peter Ball:

    The recommendation from a previous review, ‘that the Church must promote an open and accepting culture in which everyone, regardless of their sexuality or their views about homosexuality, is clear about their responsibilities towards those who might be abused or who might want to raise concerns about abuse’[9] is reinforced by this review.

    She continues:

    Negative attitudes towards homosexuality and homosexual practice in the Church of England reinforce internalised homophobia. An area for applying learning from this case review would be to ask, ‘How many other older men and women in similar positions to Peter Farquhar may be vulnerable to exploitation?’ There is an issue here for the wider church to consider how it offers support to its lesbian and gay members, not to ‘cure’ and ‘heal’ them as this would be a deeply homophobic response …. However, the institutional Church of England faces challenges to resolve its own positioning on this, before it can effectively support any individuals with their expressed tensions between sexuality and religious beliefs. This case review calls for a concerted effort to be made to reduce the stigma of homosexuality within the wider Church of England communion, so that it can provide a safer place for lesbians and gay men to worship, as is its intent.[10]

    The issue of how to explore issues of personal relationships and sexuality is a complex area, particularly given current contradictory expectations from the Church of England regarding homosexuality and heterosexuality, which may lead people to lie about the reality of their sexual lives. The current position taken by the Church of England, continuing to insist that sex is for married couples only and that any other partnership has to be a sexually abstinent friendship is not conducive to disclosure, particularly from young people, as well as exposing people to risk, as discussed in section 1 above. This needs to change and the Church should consider how to make it possible for people to be honest about their relationships, as well as being a safe place for lesbians and gay men.[11]

    4.3. Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA)

    The connection between the Church’s attitudes towards homosexuality and creating a less safe environment, was repeatedly made in the IICSA proceedings.  What follows is a representative, rather than an exhaustive, sample.

    (i)  5 March 2018.  Fiona Scolding, QC, at the IICSA inquiry into Chichester Diocese  set out a number of questions such as:  ‘How far did the reaction of some within the church to homosexuality possibly inhibit the reporting of child sexual abuse?’[12] Later, she cited DI Wayne Murdock, a police officer involved in the investigation of the Peter Ball case, stating that ‘one of the factors that influenced his view of the public interest in bringing a prosecution was the risk that some church witnesses would be exposed as homosexuals in court. That would, in his words, have seen their roles within the church effectively finished.’ As Murdock put it: ‘“I believe that the issue of homosexuality had a detrimental effect in encouraging witnesses and potential complainants within the church to come forward”’.[13]

    (ii)  14 March 2018.  When Fiona Scolding interviewed the Bishop of Chichester, Rt Revd Dr Martin Warner, she asked: ‘Do you not think that the Church’s difficulty in coming to terms with the complexity of self-identity when it comes to sexual orientation may have contributed to the misapprehensions you have identified because, you know, certainly amongst conservative individuals, homosexuality is seen as sinful?’

    Bishop Warner replied:  ‘Yes.’ Ms Scolding then asked, ‘The idea of civil partnerships is seen as anathema and the idea of getting married within the church is anathema. Do you think the church may have, albeit unwittingly, contributed to that by its approach to sexual orientation in the past?’ Bishop Warner replied: ‘I think there has been contribution from the church on this’. He went on to talk about how covering up homosexuality contributed to a culture in which sexual abuse was also kept secret.[14]

    (iii)  14 March 2018.  Ms Scolding’s examination of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, raised the link between attitudes towards homosexuality and safeguarding failures, particularly in the case of Bishop Peter Ball.

    1. Specifically, inasmuch as you know about the case involving Bishop Peter Ball, do you think the church’s attitude towards homosexuality may have played any role in the way the church treated him either during his time as a priest or afterwards?
    2. I think so, and, again, I’m speculating, but it does seem to me that, at a time when people were beginning to feel awkward about the traditional closeted attitude, there was perhaps overcompensation, saying ‘Well, we don’t want to be judgemental about people’s sexual activities. We may formally, in a disciplinary way disapprove, we may treat them according to the protocols, but we mustn’t be seen to be – or we mustn’t be judgemental.  We must therefore give people second chances and understand the pressures’, and so on.  So I think there is an element of that coming in, a rather paradoxical consequence of the traditional view of homosexuality within the church; you want to overcompensate a bit for it.[15]

    Lord Williams acknowledged that guilt or dis-ease about the treatment of gay men, especially clergymen, in the Church of England may have allowed Peter Ball to go unchecked in his criminal behaviour for decades.  He received a lot of criticism for his remarks, but I think he was correctly describing a pattern of disordered institutional behaviour.[16]

    (iv)  24 July 2018.  Fiona Scolding, interviewing the former Archbishop, Lord Carey of Clifton, proposed that: ‘The church was so uncomfortable in dealing with and managing same-sex relationships that it didn’t really have an understanding of what was an appropriate same-sex relationship and what was an inappropriate same-sex relationship.’[17]

    (v) 25 June 2019.  In his Second Witness Statement, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, stated:  ‘I am informed by Mr Tilby that these [LLF] resources will be reviewed by the NST before they are finalised to ensure that they sufficiently address safeguarding related issues.’[18]  That review never appears to have taken place or if it did, it had no impact on LLF.   LLF states:  ‘While acknowledging the reality of abuse in the church, it is important that the specific work of theological reflection on IICSA be carried out separately from the Living in Love and Faith project…’ (LLF, 2020, p. 87).

     (vi)  11 July 2019.  Archbishop Justin Welby was asked whether ‘there is sufficient openness about human sexuality in the church now so that there is, and can be, proper debate and discussion with victims and survivors and proper work on minimising risk within the church?’  He responded, ‘Yes. I think there is far more openness than there was. I think the Living in Love and Faith Project has enabled a culture of transparency in ways that didn’t exist before.  I’ve no doubt we have got a huge amount further to go on that ….  the project was just getting going then … It is now coming within 12 months of its end and I think that that has had a huge impact, and will continue to do so’.[19]

    (vii) October 2020.  In the Executive Summary of the IICSA final report, we read that: ‘Deference to the authority of the Church and to individual priests, taboos surrounding discussion of sexuality and an environment where alleged perpetrators were treated more supportively than victims presented barriers to disclosure that many victims could not overcome.’[20]

     (viii) October 2020.  The full investigation report of the Anglican Church by IICSA observes:  ‘There was a culture of fear and secrecy within the Church about sexuality.  Some members of the Church also wrongly conflated homosexuality with the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults.  There was a lack of transparency, open dialogue and candour about sexual matters, together with an awkwardness about investigating such matters.  This made it difficult to challenge sexual behaviour.  Mr Colin Perkins, diocesan safeguarding adviser (DSA) for the Diocese of Chichester, told us that homosexual clergy may have found themselves inadvertently “under the same cloak” as child sexual abusers, who sought to mask their behaviour “in the same cultural hiding place”’.[21]

     4.4. Chris Robson Review on Father Alan Griffin (July 2022)

    Shortly before the July 2022 session of General Synod, the report on the suicide of Father Griffin was published and states:

     This illustrates a divisive issue that has been at the centre of this review – the Church of England’s stance on homosexuality. Again, this issue is so complex that it could not possibly be dealt with in significant detail by this review. At the same time, it cannot be ignored.  There is clear evidence that the way Father Alan was treated was, in part, influenced by the Church and individuals’ conscious and unconscious bias around his sexual orientation (5.3).[22] 

    1. Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) and National Safeguarding Panel (NSP) at General Synod July 2022

    At the July 2022 Synod, during the presentation ‘Safeguarding and Independence: Update and Next Steps (GS2263 and GSMisc 1320)’, I asked the following question:

     The Revd Canon Dr Judith Maltby (Universities & TEIs): We have had a number of safeguarding reports and reviews, the Gibb Report on Peter Ball, IICSA and the most recent one on Fr Griffin which just came out a few days ago. All those reports make a connection between the Church’s attitudes towards homosexuality and being a less safe Church and I wonder if you as a panel have views on that.

    Professor Maggie Atkinson: Chair, thank you and thank you for the questions. I am going to take the first question and Meg is going to come forward and answer the second, because this is in collegium …. Meg is going to take the one that was asked about safety or otherwise if you are homosexual or an LGBTQ person, LGBTQIA and so on.

    Ms Meg Munn: Thank you, Maggie. The reason I volunteered among us to answer this one is because it sounds to me like this is a policy type question and, as I said at the outset, one of the things that the National Safeguarding Panel does is look into issues of policy, procedure and process. Looking at some of the issues that come out, including practice, of those reviews is the kind of scanning of the horizon that I would do with the panel when we are determining the kinds of issues that we might look at. That issue has not been one that has been discussed by us to date. It could well be one that we would discuss [my italics].

    The National Safeguarding Panel currently only meets six times a year. Well, in fact, we meet five times a year and one of our sessions we use for good practice workshops and to discuss issues of importance. I will certainly take that issue into our discussions. One of the things I tried to do is to make sure that we have our discussions when they are going to have an impact. If we know that policy procedure is being reviewed or due to be reviewed, then we will choose those kind of subjects.

    But we also try to and look at issues which we think are important and that the Church is not taking enough notice of – I mean the Church as a whole not just the National Safeguarding Team. For example, in the past we have put issues like prevention on our agenda and we have put issues like adult safeguarding on our agenda because we felt that they were not getting enough focus. This could well be an issue that we might look at in the future but, to date, the National Safeguarding Panel has not looked specifically at that.[23]

    1. General Synod February 2023

    In the LLF debate on the morning of 9 February 2023, I returned to the learning to be done from IICSA and the contributions from major reviews of safeguarding failures to our discussion of sexuality.[24]  In the afternoon of 9 February, there was an opportunity to ask questions of the new Director of the National Safeguarding Team (NST), Mr Alexander Kubeyinje.  Both the Revd Robert Thompson (London) and I asked Mr Kubeyinje about the NST’s engagement with the connection made in IICSA and other independent reviews concerning attitudes toward LGBT+ people and safeguarding failures.  I asked:  ‘When we have these major Reports like Robson on Griffin and material from IICSA, what is the process for learning and absorbing from those Reports by the NST?’  Mr Kubeyinje replied:

    Judith, with regards to your question, we have plans, we have a lot of meetings with other people. We are starting to do audit activity. We are trying to triangulate and close the loop. We know we still need to work on our quality assurance element, but we do take those recommendations seriously, and some of those recommendations have actually moved along quite well. [25]

    It is good to know that there are ‘a lot of meetings’ and allowance must be made for Mr Kubeyinje’s newness in the post at the time, but it is not at all clear what ‘triangulate and close the loop’ means or which recommendations in regard to sexuality and safeguarding ‘have moved along quite well’.  Synod was not provided with any actual example.

    1. General Synod July 2023

    7.1.  Questions.

    I returned the issue of the connection made by IICSA and various LLRs in a question at the most recent General Synod.

    The Revd Canon Dr Judith Maltby (Universities & TEIs) to ask the Chair of the House of Bishops:

    Q100.  Archbishop Welby said in his Second Witness Statement to IICSA (June 2019): “I am informed by Mr [Graham] Tilby [at the time National Advisor, CofE Safeguarding] that these [LLF] resources will be reviewed by the NST before they are finalised to ensure that they sufficiently address safeguarding related issues.” The only reference to IICSA in LLF (2020) is: “While acknowledging the reality of abuse in the church, it is important that the specific work of theological reflection on IICSA be carried out separately from the Living in Love and Faith project…” (p. 87). May Synod know what group is carrying out the separate work of theological reflection on the learning from IICSA to ensure the LLF process does “sufficiently address safeguarding related issues” as stated by the Archbishop in 2019?

    The Bishop of London replied:

    The Bishop of London to reply on behalf of the Chair of the House of Bishops:

    A The question asks about two separate things. Theological reflection on the findings from IICSA underpins the work of the National Safeguarding Steering Group in overseeing the implementation of IICSA’s recommendations. Meanwhile, the materials arising from the Living in Love and Faith process are still in development, as reported in GS 2303. Material on pastoral guidance and pastoral reassurance will be reviewed from a safeguarding perspective before they are finalised.[26]

    Bishop Sarah’s answer indicates that it is the responsibility of the NSSG/NSP to undertake the work in the area of attitudes towards homosexuality and safeguarding.  However, in July 2022, in the Presentation from the NSP and ISB to General Synod, the then Chair, Meg Munn, stated that the topic has not been discussed:

    That issue has not been one that has been discussed by us to date. It could well be one that we would discuss …. But we also try to and look at issues which we think are important and that the Church is not taking enough notice of – I mean the Church as a whole not just the National Safeguarding Team (see 5 above).

    7.2. Safeguarding Code of Practice:  Safeguarding Practice Reviews GS2295

    At the same meeting in July 2023, Synod approved a proposal to replace Lessons Learned Reviews (LLR) with much more detailed Safeguarding Practice Reviews (SPR).  GS2295 speaks in numerous places about the dissemination of learning from Reviews to inform the Church’s practice.  For example:

    From the Cover Paper for GS2295

    4.4.1 Some concern was expressed that these Reviews would not hold people to account for what they had done and they would not establish guilt. We have tried to be very clear that the purpose of this process is not about managing allegations or about findings of guilt/responsibility. It is about understanding the reasons why events have happened so that an organisation can learn and improve its safeguarding. As explained in 1.3 above, there are other processes for holding individuals to account (p. 8).

    6.3 The reflective exercises we suggest are exactly that: they are suggestions to help people find the way that works best for them and for their organisation to learn from safeguarding events in a variety of circumstances. The key thing is the move away from focussing only on what is wrong with individual practice or processes, into what is hampering or enabling good safeguarding practice at an organisational level. We will continue to work on developing tools and resources to help this. 

    Main Document GS2295

    1.2 What a Safeguarding Practice Review is and what it is not

    The main features of an SPR are that:

    • It is a planned process of reflective learning by a Church body designed to improve the quality and impact of that Church’s body’s safeguarding activity.
    • The aim is to identify a limited number of key themes which, if implemented, will result in improved outcomes for victim(s)/survivor(s) and respondent(s).

    1.3 The outcomes of SPRs

    SPRs should seek to achieve the following outcomes:

    • The identification of systemic and organisational factors or failings which impacted on what happened. This should include any issues of organisational culture, the nature and quality of human relationships, resourcing and governance, and any inappropriate use of power within the Church body.

    It is worth noting that there is no mention of the Church’s doctrines or teaching on sexuality in its references to ‘organisational culture’ in this extensive document.

    From the section describing the structure of a SPR, GS2295 speaks of the importance of understanding the ‘why’, not only the ‘what’, of a safeguarding failure (pp. 26-7):

    Why answers might include;

    Whether any ‘contextual factors’ impacted on the case and in what way, for example:

    • Availability of adequate guidance;
    • Resourcing of safeguarding/workloads/staffing levels;
    • Training/supervision/support for relevant Church Officers;
    • Organisational culture and relationships;
    • Personal constraints (e.g. excessive or onerous responsibilities);

    The Reviewer’s conclusions: what are the key lessons and changes required of specific Church Bodies and/or the whole Church system?

    The Reviewer’s recommendations:

    1. These should be focussed on a small number of high priority, outcome focussed, SMART recommendations, normally between six and ten in number. The aim is to have a smaller number of achievable, impactive recommendations, rather than a large number of recommendations which are not impactive.
    2. Recommendations need to be aligned to the Safeguarding Standards:
    • Prevention
    • Culture, Leadership and Capacity
    • Recognising, Assessing and Managing Risk
    • Victims and Survivors
    • Learning, Supervision and Support
    1. Within this, recommendations should be grouped under the following headings:
    • Strategic: Recommendations relevant to the whole Church system.
    • Local/operational: Recommendations relevant to the specific Church Bodies involved in the case. This must include whether further action is needed to manage on-going risk, and whether consideration of further investigatory action should be undertaken by Church Bodies within their capability and disciplinary frameworks (These latter would not be published.)

    The section on Tone and Methodology (pp. 28-9) states:

    Adopting an appropriate tone and methodology is essential if the Review process is going to help to deliver learning which results in actual change. This is particularly the case if change in beliefs, values, behaviours and culture are needed.

    An approach which:

    • treats all involved (that is victims, survivors, respondents, clergy and staff, volunteers) with empathy, respect and compassion as valuable and complex human beings who matter;
    • is dialogical, seeing all those involved as partners in the development of understanding and solution finding;
    • is marked by genuine curiosity and transparency;
    • is marked by creative ways of exploring issues relevant to the circumstances;
    • prepares those who will be involved to address anxieties and fears, is more likely to help bring about genuine change than one marked by fear, threat, fixed and strongly held positions, and inflexibility.

    GS2295 speaks of ‘disseminating learning’ from Reviews (p. 42):

    The Church Bodies involved in the case under review should give consideration at the earliest possible point as to how the learning from the Review will be shared and disseminated …

    GS2295 continues:

    On a wider scale, the NST will have a role in reviewing the themes that are emerging from all the Reviews carried out. This will feed back into the NST’s planning cycle for learning and development thus closing the learning loop. Linking the recommendations to the Safeguarding Standards also allows for them to be included in any further external audits, again ensuring that the learning is captured and implemented.

    It isn’t clear how the ‘learning loop’ operates or how it impacts on learning and development – especially in the light of the evidence of multiple references in IICSA and LLRs, connecting discriminatory policies towards LGBT+ people and catastrophic safeguarding failures.

    1. Conclusion

    On the basis of the evidence gathered and presented here, it appears that none, or very little, of the insights and learning from IICSA and other independent Reviews on catastrophic safeguarding failures in the Church of England and the connection to discriminatory attitudes towards LGBT+ people, are being incorporated into our safeguarding policies, structures and training or are part of our deliberations about the inclusion of LGBT+ people in the life of the Church of England, in any meaningful way.  External Reviewers cited in this paper are consistent in making the connection.  Despite this, over its six years, the LLF process did not incorporate the learning from IICSA and LLRs.

    GS2295 speaks of the importance of ‘reflective exercises’ (p. 43):

    One of the marks of a healthy organisational culture is when the individuals who comprise the organisation are personally self-reflexive and welcome feedback from others. Self-reflexivity is different from just self-reflection because it contains the idea of turning self-reflection in to actual action that brings about change.

    Dr Cooper, in her Stowe and Maids Moreton LLR, states:

    Recommendation 13: Provide strong leadership in responding to the recommendations of the case review, to ensure that they are delivered both within the Diocese and raise for wider action within the Church of England.[27]

    It remains to be seen where this leadership is being shown or where the ‘turning self-reflection in to actual action that brings about change’ is being done.

    Notes:

    [1] See also Helen King:  https://viamedia.news/2020/10/16/why-the-church-of-england-must-connect-the-dots-iicsa-and-llf/#_ftn1

    [2] This paper predates the publication of Makin on John Smyth and what will almost certainly have to be an independent Review of Soul Survivors, given the network of conflicted interests.

    [3] IICSA identified a number of deficiencies in the Butler-Sloss Review, which failed to mention the abuse committed by Bishop Peter Ball.  https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/investigation/anglican-chichester-peter-ball/case-study-1-diocese-chichester/b5-butler-sloss-report.html

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82HzdoOAC-4

    https://audioboom.com/posts/2765739-on-31-12-14-phil-johnson-released-this-march-2011-recording-of-his-discussion-with-butler-sloss

    [4] The LLR on Jonathan Fletcher (March 2021) notes how the removal of his licence was seen as weaponizing safeguarding: ‘“When the announcement was made by Southwark [Diocese] about [the] removal of Jonathan’s licence – I thought and others – this is [a] stitch up – yet again Southwark having a go at the conservative constituency”’.  See C5.3 and C4.6.2.  https://walkingwith.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/Final+Report+of+ECW+Review_March+2021.pdf

    [5] https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2018-07/general-synod-july-2018-questions-paper.pdf

    [6] https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2019-07/general-synod-july-2019-questions.pdf

    [7] https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2017-11/report-of-the-peter-ball-review-210617.pdf.  See 5.7.

    [8] 1.3; see also 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, 5.10, 5.11.  https://d3hgrlq6yacptf.cloudfront.net/61f2fd86f0ee5/content/pages/documents/20211012-doc-events-in-stowe-and-maids-moreton.pdf

    https://www.oxford.anglican.org/stowe-maids-moreton.php

    [9] Gibb on Ball, 5.7.3.

    [10] Cooper on Stowe and Maids Moreton, 5.10.  https://d3hgrlq6yacptf.cloudfront.net/61f2fd86f0ee5/content/pages/documents/20211012-doc-events-in-stowe-and-maids-moreton.pdf.  Dr Cooper cites the House of Bishops’ Report (2017), ‘Promoting a Safer Church policy, the Church of England’s policy for Children, young people and adults’, p. 5.  https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2017-11/cofe-policy-statement.pdf

    [11] Cooper on Stowe and Maids Moreton, 5.11.

    [12] IICSA (5 March 2018), p. 116.  Ms Scolding also queried:  ‘How far did the church’s position in respect of the ordination of women and the fact that the church was, until 1992, a largely male-led-and-run institution impact upon the management of safeguarding, if it did so at all?’  https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20221214224622/https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/4335/view/5-march-2018-anglican-public-hearing-transcript.pdf

    [13] IICSA (23 July 2018), pp. 77-8.  https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20221215041430/https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/5977/view/23-july-2018-anglican-public-hearing-transcript.pdf

    [14] IICSA (14 March 2018), pp. 84-8.  https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20221215014004/https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/4690/view/14-march-2018-anglican-public-hearing-transcript.pdf

    [15] IICSA (14 March 2018), pp. 143-4.  https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20221215014004/https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/4690/view/14-march-2018-anglican-public-hearing-transcript.pdf

    [16] For critical responses to Lord Williams (14, 15 March 2018), see https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/2018/03/.

    [17] IICSA (24 July 2018), p. 25.  https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20221216171917/https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/6029/view/public-hearing-transcript-24-july-2018.pdf

    [18] See p. 12.  https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/12831/view/ACE027710.pdf.

    [19] IICSA (11 July 2019), pp. 204-5.  https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20221215044054/https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/12777/view/public-hearing-transcript-11-july-2019.pdf

    [20] https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/investigation/anglican-church/executive-summary.html (October 2020).

    [21] 4.5.  See also 14.  https://www.iicsa.org.uk/document/anglican-church-safeguarding-church-england-and-church-wales-investigation-report.html

    [22] https://www.london.anglican.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/AG-report-Final-Report.pdf

    [23] See pp. 283-85.  https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2023-01/general-synod-group-of-sessions-july-2022_0.pdf

    See above Archbishop Welby’s Second Witness Statement on 25 June 2019:  ‘I am informed by Mr Tilby that these [LLF] resources will be reviewed by the NST before they are finalised to ensure that they sufficiently address safeguarding related issues.’

    [24] 9 Feb 2023, p. 172.  https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2023-06/updated-report-of-proceedings-feb-2023.pdf

    [25] pp. 370-71.  https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2023-06/updated-report-of-proceedings-feb-2023.pdf

    [26] https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2023-07/questions-notice-paper-july-2023.pdf

    [27] Stowe and Maids Moreton (7.7, p. 26).