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Tag: Blackburn diocese

  • Safeguarding: How Can We “Learn Lessons” From the Read Sisters’ Case?

    by Professor Helen King, lay member of General Synod, Oxford Diocese


    When, in July 2025, the details of Revd Anne-Marie Ghosh’s emotional and physical abuse by her former husband were published by a Bishop’s Disciplinary Tribunal, the Church Times (8 August 2025) reported that a spokesperson for the diocese involved – Coventry – had said “The diocese acknowledges that there are learning points.” The Tribunal had observed “We trust lessons will be learned” (paragraph 51). It is a disturbing case because Ghosh – the adult victim – was the one who had a CDM brought against her, a CDM which this Tribunal dismissed.

    “Lessons will be learned” – four words, but do they mean anything? Here I want to ask a question: how is the wider church supposed to learn these lessons, if reviews are not made public?

    The Read sisters: asking a question

    A month before the details of the Ghosh tribunal were published, I had become aware of the case of the Read sisters. This broke in a 17 June story on the BBC news site and was followed up by the Church Times on 20 June. A Lessons Learned Review (LLR) had been carried out into the abuse they suffered as children in the 1950s and 1960s from a group formed of their GP father, a female Sunday School teacher (later to become a churchwarden) and the curate (later to become a canon). The father, Robert (Bob) Read died in 1996, and the Sunday School teacher, named in the Church Times as Mary Wairing, in 2015. The then-curate is still alive.

    The Read sisters’ case disturbed me, not least because it was clearly stated in reports that the LLR would not be published. I therefore submitted the following Question to the July 2025 Synod:

    On 17 June the BBC and then the Church Times reported on the production of a safeguarding Lessons Learned Review into the allegations of abuse as young children of Jenny, Wendy and Christina Read by their father, a female Sunday School teacher and a male curate at a church in the Northeast. The father and the Sunday School teacher had a sexual relationship. The Church Times reported that as part of the Terms of Reference, the LLR would not be published. In view of the grave seriousness of the alleged sexual offences involved, which were reported to three bishops, and in view of the fact that the victims have waived their right to anonymity, how will the learning from this Lessons Learned Review now be taken forward to inform safeguarding practice?

    The Bishop of Stepney replied in her role as Lead Bishop for Safeguarding:

    The report was commissioned by the Diocese concerned, with terms of reference designed to consider how that Diocese may learn lessons in relation to its practice in responding to this case, and the appropriateness of responses by anyone to whom allegations and concerns were raised within the Diocese. The reviewer provided the Diocese with five recommendations / areas of learning. As is the norm, the Diocese has responded to these recommendations and, with oversight from its DSAP (Diocesan Safeguarding Advisory Panel) has already implemented steps which will help inform safeguarding practice. (my emphasis added)

    Given that numerous other LLRs commissioned by dioceses have been made public to benefit learning throughout the whole church, such as the LLR into the tragic events in Stowe and Maids Moreton in my own diocese – Oxford – why restrict the Read Sisters LLR to a few individuals in York Diocese? As people move between dioceses, should any review be restricted to one diocese?

    It was not, in fact, the Terms of Reference that restricted the LLR to York Diocese; after the sisters themselves repeatedly asked for the reason, the mysterious answer was given that “more than one complainant” had requested it not be shared internally or externally.

    One of the sisters, Jenny Heimerdinger, was at the York Synod in July but I was not aware of this until I returned home; she subsequently made contact and we have spoken on Zoom. She also brought to my attention the interviews in which the sisters had been involved, on BBC Look North, from 17 June 2025 and 18 June 2025, and on ITN News at 10 on 14 July 2025.

     

    Reporting abuse: from bishops to reviews

    The three Read sisters had another three surviving siblings and the family, with the other abusers, formed a very close-knit group, functioning almost as a sect in which Jenny and her siblings were kept apart from secular influences such as pop music and were discouraged from forming any friendships outside the family and church. The abuse was ritualistic and sadistic, and some of it took place in the church building. The sisters reported the abuse to a bishop in 1993, and to the then-Archbishop of Canterbury as well as another bishop in 2003; and to a third bishop in 2005. The third bishop presided over the diocese in which the former curate, by this time retired and with PTO, was then living. The abuse was also reported to IICSA in 2019 and the former curate was arrested in 2020 but no action was taken by the police due to insufficient evidence. One of the sisters was then put in touch with the York safeguarding team and funding for psychotherapy was arranged by them and has subsequently been partially provided under the national Interim Support Scheme. The York team advised the sisters to make Subject Access Requests to the various dioceses involved; the results indicate that no action was ever taken or any record made of their complaints in the former curate’s files.

    Following an internal and ineffectual Lessons Learned Review by the diocese where the former curate was living, York commissioned a further independent Lessons Learned Review in 2021, which was released to the sisters in October 2024. The reviewer appointed by York, Simon Bass, appears to be a sole operator trading as Church Safeguarding Consultancy (CSC) and, although he previously worked at Churches’ Child Protection Advisory Service (CCPAS, now rebranded as Thirtyone:eight), there is no evidence that he had carried out any other independent reviews; the CSC website only states that the company has “undertaken several such reviews”. As a company CSC is, according to Companies House, now “dissolved” as a result of compulsory strike-off, the result of failing to fulfil its legal obligations, though the CSC website continues to be active. In 2016-17, when he set up CSC, Bass was also the independent chair of Blackburn Diocese’s Safeguarding Management Group, and he was one of the project team members for their Past Cases Review 2 in 2021. I wonder if this constitutes a conflict of interest.

    Commissioned from Bass in 2021, the York LLR was dated October 2023 so it is not clear why its release was delayed until a year later; did someone mentioned anonymously in it cause the delay? When one of the Read sisters met the Archbishop of York in January 2025, at that point he had not been given the LLR for reasons of “data protection”. When the other sisters met him in May, he had been allowed to see it at their insistence. He has given a formal apology for the abuse, though not for the mishandling of their case.

    The sisters are unimpressed by the report; its factual errors, its many typos, and its significant redactions including the removal of around 10% of the paragraphs make it incomprehensible in large measure. On these shortcomings, two sisters entered the complaint procedure which, following what seems to be questionable interference by HR, has now been stuck at Stage 3 since April 2025. Meanwhile, they themselves have given permission for the LLR to be shared.

     

    Taking it to the national team

    After the July 2025 Synod, on 12 August I wrote to the Lead Bishop for Safeguarding, Bishop Joanne Grenfell, to follow up on her answer to my question. I commented that at that stage, “I have resisted writing anything public about this case but the basic point, that an LLR can be carried out without any sharing of the ‘lessons’ beyond a small circle, does seem something that should be shared.”

    Bishop Joanne asked Julie O’Hara to respond, as Deputy Director for Learning and Development in the National Safeguarding Team; in her previous post, Julie was the lead Diocesan Safeguarding Advisor for York at the time when the Terms of Reference for the Read LLR review were drawn up.  She had accepted the sisters’ factual corrections to the initial draft of the Terms of Reference – but the Report shows that the original faulty ToRs were used. Following Bishop Joanne’s intervention, Julie and the national Director of Safeguarding, Alex Kubeyinje, replied very quickly. Their combined response was that LLRs/SPRs “should be published” but not if there were “challenges in sharing the full report due to potential identification of individuals”. In such cases an executive summary could be shared.

    Does this apply to the Read sisters’ LLR? In the LLR, the identity of the curate is not given, apparently for legal reasons; and it states that no other allegations against him were ever made. But this contradicts information given to the sisters and, as the case of David Tudor shows, identifying an abuser by name can lead to other victims and survivors being empowered to come forward. The abuser of the sisters is known to have gone to work in N. Rhodesia/Zambia immediately following his involvement with the children; in view of John Smyth’s move to Africa, with support and funding from some Church of England priests, this deserves more attention.

    The combined response from senior officers of the NST continued:

    In some cases, it seems that only the recommendations from a review are shared. In such cases, as you have identified, it can be difficult to understand the rationale and indeed there are various reasons why a full review might not be published. These can include the wishes of victims and survivors, or situations where the reviewer did not follow the agreed terms of reference, making wider sharing inappropriate. When the NST has not commissioned the review, NST colleagues may also not have full visibility into the decision-making process around publication.

    They concluded that only the commissioning diocese could comment. But we know that the three sisters wish the LLR to be shared.

     

    Keeping it local: what makes a case ‘national’?

    The lack of sharing does seem very odd. Lessons Learned Reviews (LLR) have now been renamed Safeguarding Practice Reviews (SPR) but the whole point of them remains to identify how the church, as a national body, can stop making the same mistakes. But that, of course, depends on how and with whom their findings and recommendations are shared.

    In this case, no part of the Read sisters’ LLR was shared even with the NST until one of them sent it to them in summer 2025. The response to me from Bishop Joanne and the senior NST members also stated that “The case you refer to was never seen as a national case”[1]. Why not? With three bishops and an Archbishop involved and an alleged abuser moving around the country and, indeed, overseas, it seems to be far more than a diocesan matter. Although the Terms of Reference of the Read sisters’ LLR did indeed state that the review was only about those within York Diocese to whom “allegations and concerns” had been raised, this did not rule out York sharing information with other dioceses and explicitly stated that information was to be shared with the chair of DSAP, NST and local safeguarding bodies – which did not automatically happen.

    The Read sisters’ LLR itself says “it is recognised that other dioceses hold material”. There were discussions in 2021 about York doing a joint review with the diocese where the former curate was living, but they declined. Here again it is worth comparing this situation with an ongoing case, that of abuse by David Tudor, where a review has been “jointly commissioned by the National Safeguarding Team, and the dioceses of Chelmsford and Southwark”.

    Furthermore, the letter I received from Bishop Joanne stated that NST “does require all completed reports to be shared with them and will see this one”. So, while it can’t be published and was commissioned by a diocese and not by the NST, NST “sees” it. Sees it and then what…? The senior members of the NST ended their letter to me by referring to the ongoing thematic review of the last five years [2] of LLRs, noting “we are hopeful that the themes will be learning that we can share publicly”. That leaves me asking: whyever would they not be?

     

    [1] Bishop Joanne, in giving me permission to quote or share her reply, noted that the definition of a “national” case needs work.

    [2] I would be interested to know precisely what dates are to be covered by this review.

  • Thirty Years of Women Priests in the Church of England and Still Two Thirds of Paid Posts Are Held by Men

    by Rev Martine Oborne, Chair of WATCH (Women and the Church), a group that works for gender equality in the Church of England

    Suppose you are a senior leader of a major institution in the UK, two thirds of whose customers are female, and you are asked to set a gender diversity target for all the paid posts in your institution. You would probably come up with a figure of 50% for women or even more.

    Now suppose that you work for a major institution in the UK whose customers are two thirds female and which publicly states that it is committed to all roles in the institution being open equally to all people irrespective of gender. Then you would probably be upset when that institution sets a gender diversity target for paid posts at 70% for men and 30% for women.

    Welcome to the Blackburn diocese in the Church of England, which has set these gender diversity targets – apparently matching the national figures which, after thirty years of women priests, show men holding over two thirds of stipendiary posts.

    I don’t know what the current statistics are for Blackburn diocese, because the Church of England has stopped producing gender diversity statistics since 2020. But in 2020 the Blackburn diocese was said to have 24% of its paid posts held by women. So it’s hardly a very ambitious target for this to increase to 30%. And, when we look at the small print more closely, we see that the target is not a percentage of all the posts available in the diocese but only of the ones that are open to women.

    Confused? You may well be, but the situation in the Church of England is that, while it claims that all its roles are open to all people irrespective of gender, it still allows churches to pass resolutions saying they do not want a female vicar and they do not want to be under the oversight of a female bishop.

    Blackburn Diocese’s recent Statement of Needs, which was issued when it was looking to appoint a new bishop, said it has 235 parishes and 30 of these have passed resolutions saying they will not have a female vicar. For 18 of these, this is because they do not think the Church of England has the authority to ordain women as priests. For the other 12 it’s because they believe God created men to be leaders and women to support them in that leadership in the Church, a theology which is referred to as Complementarianism but is also described, more accurately, as Male Headship.

    So Blackburn’s target is 30% of a smaller number of posts than the 24% of a slightly larger number of posts in the official statistics three years ago. Which is hardly ambitious or encouraging.

    But it’s not surprising. If senior clergy in Blackburn had any serious intention of increasing the number of female clergy in their diocese, then they would not have supported the recent selection of a diocesan bishop who does not ordain women as priests.

    It will be said that the Bishop of Blackburn is highly supportive of women and has encouraged the appointment of many women to posts in Blackburn, but many female clergy will not apply for posts in a diocese where the Bishop overseeing them does not believe the Church had the authority to ordain them. And, furthermore, that bishop would therefore not receive bread and wine consecrated by them – even though he is happy for parishioners and others to receive their sacraments.

    If the decision makers for this appointment had had any doubt about this issue, they might have researched the situation in the only other diocese in the Church of England that is headed by a bishop who does not ordain women: Chichester. Chichester has had the same diocesan bishop since 2012, two years before women were allowed to be made bishops, and he does not ordain women as priests. And I believe this is a major factor in why Chichester is at the bottom of the league table in terms of the percentage of women holding stipendiary posts. Again, we don’t have up-to-date official statistics but in 2020 16% of stipendiary posts in Chichester were held by women, 84% by men.

    Talking with a senior leader in Chichester recently, I asked whether things were getting any better there for women. The leader told me that the statistics are probably slightly worse now, despite the fact that they were all working very hard to attract women and could not understand why more women didn’t apply for posts in Chichester. I suggested that the problem might be that many female clergy, myself included, would not take on a job in a diocese when the most senior bishop had any question over my ordination or my ability to consecrate the sacraments. And only when a fully affirming Bishop is in charge is this likely to change.

    Goal 5 of the UN’s Sustainable Development Targets is to end all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere – recognising, among other things, that understandings of male privilege are drivers of abuse against women and girls.  The UN asks us to imagine what our world might look like if we achieved this by 2030. And I would say that, if this were the case, then the world would look a lot more like the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed two thousand years ago – in which there is no last, no first, no lesser, no greater – but all human beings are treated equally.

    The Church of England, as the country’s established Church, has the opportunity and responsibility to take a moral lead in ensuring the human rights of all people are protected. Women’s rights are human rights, and our Church cannot advocate for human rights while it has institutionalised discrimination against women and other groups – which legitimises sexism and sometimes abuse.

    I was at a large meeting of female clergy recently and was shocked to hear story after story of putdowns and underminings, everyday sexism, that women were experiencing in the Church. They said they could not raise these issues with senior clergy for fear of being seen as difficult or moaning – so it was only in the safe environment of an all-female group that they were comfortable to share their experiences. Which, to my mind, is a very unsafe culture that the Church has now created.

    Many women do as we are told and show so-called ‘gracious restraint,’ but this is wearing female clergy down and affecting their well-being. One woman, on the point of resigning her post, said to me, ‘Taken alone, each incident can be brushed off as not very important. But it’s like death by a thousand cuts and one day you realise that you are done.’

    Let’s set some new targets in the Church of England for bringing about true gender equity and balance. First, to get rid of the institutionalised discrimination. And, secondly, to seek that 50% of stipendiary posts are held by women and 50% by men. I truly believe it is just that simple.