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Tag: National Safeguarding Team

  • When the Music Fades: the Soul Survivor Generation

    by Dr Lucy Sixsmith, Research Fellow in English at St John’s College, Cambridge and author of When the Music Fades

    To understand Soul Survivor, I think you need to know about the shirts. This will sound trivial; I realise that. Soul Survivor, from 1993 until 2019, was an organisation running summer festivals in the charismatic evangelical tradition, for teenagers and young adults. It also became (and still is) a church in Watford. The founder, leader and constant on-stage presence at Soul Survivor festivals was Mike Pilavachi, and you could tell he was Mike Pilavachi by his interesting shirts.

    Mike always wore a particular style of multi-coloured shirt at the summer festivals, a West African dashiki rebranded as a trademark shirt for a Greek British youth leader at a substantially white middle-class British summer camp. My youngest brother remembers the shirts being on sale in the Soul Survivor marketplace, not as dashikis, with their own cultural history, but as Mike Pilavachi shirts. There was a Soul Survivor tradition of Mike’s Bad Karaoke; one year he sang ‘I’m too sexy for my shirt’ to ten thousand teenagers. In vulnerable moments, during preaching, he’d sit down on the edge of the stage, like it was just Mike and his youth group, one hand plucking at the patterned central panel that makes a dashiki distinctive.

    In 2023, when survivors came forward and the Church of England’s National Safeguarding Team investigated allegations of emotional abuse, inappropriate relationships, wrestling, and massaging, those shirts must have seemed convenient to the people choosing pictures for news articles. For any story about this latest scandal, there was a picture with an eye-catching shirt.

    Part of what I mean here is that Mike Pilavachi was a persona. A trademark shirt can be like a costume which sets the wearer apart as someone not quite like everyone else, someone likably independent, a bit of a character. A multi-coloured trademark shirt at a Christian summer youth festival belongs to a world which is not quite real. Brighter, warmer, cartoon-like, more fun, more vibrant: the holiday atmosphere of a Christian summer youth festival offered what we used to call a ‘mountaintop experience’ in charismatic circles. Kids looked forward to Soul Survivor partly as a place to have fun and partly as a place to encounter God, and Mike performed the role of lovable overseer, buffoonishly whole-hearted.

    The mythology of Soul Survivor was that everything was done in chaos by faithful amateurs and it only came together because it was God’s idea. Consequently, Mike Pilavachi seemed less like a celebrity and more like everyone’s friend. I didn’t notice that the myth didn’t match the way Soul Survivor had become a model for youth ministry across the country. If it was God, it must be good. So I joined those crowds all through the noughties, from the age of fourteen to twenty-one or so, and always thought of Soul Survivor as a healthy benchmark, a useful compare-and-contrast when other charismatic movements drew out my scepticism.

    In 2023, while the National Safeguarding Team investigated Mike Pilavachi’s immediate relationships with colleagues and interns, I found myself wondering about the whole entire thing. Clearly, there were investigations that needed to be made, stories that needed to be heard or held respectfully, in that smaller circle of direct impact; but there were also questions to think through for those of us who were just there, one among ten thousand, thinking it was all fine. What made us so cheerfully overlook the clues to Mike’s behaviour that seemed plain and obvious with hindsight? If it was God on the move at Soul Survivor, as people were still saying it was, how could it have been God in public and not God in private? Could it be that the public aspect was good while the private aspect was cruelly manipulative, that the one was healthy and the other was not? Was it good for all those thousands of kids to have sat at Mike Pilavachi’s feet?

    And what was I going to do with all the worship songs that now sounded off-key? There were so many songs that came out of Soul Survivor about humility and brokenness, about kneeling at the foot of the cross, about decreasing and bowing down, and I couldn’t sing them any more, having learnt that the songwriters were not just humbling themselves but being humbled by their own mentor, pastor, and employer. Which led to a rather pressing question, if not the most weighty one I was asking: if I couldn’t face singing any worship songs any more, what on earth was I going to play for my own local congregation in the worship time that coming Sunday morning?

    That question—the question of what am I going to do now about all those surrender songs—was the starting point for writing a book called When the Music Fades: Power, Surrender and the Soul Survivor Generation. It is a book about and for all of us who have been confused—for anyone who has been fighting through a process of questioning charismatic evangelical spirituality. If I have needed to find space to think things through, there must be lots of other people out there, similarly perplexed. When the Music Fades is an attempt to provide space, for people who are still in church, people who are now out of church, and people who are somewhere in between.

    Soul Survivor is central to the book, but the book is not just about Soul Survivor. I had questions about charismatic practice, before 2023: about power dynamics, and coercion, and the temptation of putting on a show, and the difference between evangelism and bullying, and false promises, and relentless positivity, and how tiring it all is. The book is about all these things, and especially about navigating these things in teenagerhood, when you have barely learnt how to be a person yet, but you’re all the more eager to take on the duty of sharing Jesus with the world. The news about Soul Survivor, after all, was especially confronting because Soul Survivor was for teenagers. Soul Survivor had seemed so normal, so grounded, a well-balanced alternative to megachurch-style hype. Some charismatic leaders, I started to realise, I’d never trusted in the first place. I just had the habit of looking up to them, wanting their approval. I trusted Soul Survivor.

    For former Soul Survivor kids, I hope, When the Music Fades will be an opportunity to feel heard, even though it’s me doing the talking. Since it’s a book about being in the crowd, it claims that whoever was in the crowd matters. When we are talking about big churches and big movements, somehow the whole is less than the sum of its parts: the story of Soul Survivor, and whether or not Soul Survivor was a ‘God thing’, is not actually as interesting to me as the individual stories of every single person who ever attended Soul Survivor, with all the good things and bad things, the hard times, ordinary day-to-day and moments of hope. We went to Soul Survivor and believed we were supposed to be history makers and a revival generation and all that, and then, probably, we felt bad about not managing it, and then we had to figure out how to do basic adulthood, which is challenging enough.

    My biggest dream for the book is that those former history makers might feel recognised and valued. But I also hope, maybe, that a few church leaders might read it and realise that we took them seriously. We didn’t realise it was just a summer holiday, colourful shirts, a mountaintop. We took them at their word.

    And that had consequences, and it might be worth thinking about, and it might be worth doing things differently next time.

     

    When the Music Fades: Power, Surrender and the Soul Survivor Generation by Lucy Sixsmith (Canterbury Press, £16.99) is available from the Canterbury Press website and all good bookshops.

  • 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.

  • Makin, Continued: Are They Being Investigated, or Not?

    by ‘Graham’

    A point I have tried making many times is that there is a difference between a Church-led, Church-instigated, Church-ruled investigation and disciplinary process and an Independent Review. While they may overlap significantly, and be informed by one another, any independent review is exactly that: independent.

    Police investigation into possible criminal activity around the Post Office scandal, or Grenfell fire, is an entirely different process to the independent inquiries. The latter may make significant findings of fact, and may even apportion blame; however, they have no powers to prosecute and (unless a statutory enquiry) may have no powers to compel the attendance of important witnesses.

    Similarly, the Makin Review had no powers to compel anyone to testify. Keith Makin had no powers to initiate a Clergy Disciplinary Measure (CDM). Historic Reviews have often been ignored (despite earnest statements from the Church on publication) or just dismissed or undermined (the Elliott Review).

    The Church of England meanwhile has a Disciplinary process, currently built around the CDM. Most CDMs are issued without any underlying independent review. However flawed the CDM process actually is, they have to follow basic standards in process (I hear people laughing) and justice. The Tribunal will hear evidence, in layman’s terms “investigate”, before making a judgement. The Church of England will decide that something is serious, worthy of CDM proceedings, and get on with the process, without having to wait (seven years…) for the parallel process of an independent review. If the evidence is clear enough, they can just get on with it.

    Why I this relevant now? Because it appears that the National Safeguarding Team (NST) and the process post-Makin is NOT undertaking its own investigations, but is relying entirely on the findings of Keith Makin. The NST have released an update, dated 16 January, from the Director of the National Safeguarding Team, Alexander Kubeyinje, that states that the process will “not entail a reinvestigation of the issues addressed in the Makin Review”. The panel is “considering reports on criticised individuals in the Makin Review”. The letter continues that “Those who have been criticised in the Makin Report will be written to along with their Diocesan Bishop and Diocesan Safeguarding Officer….and informed of the outcomes of decisions made by the panel” (my italics).

    Nowhere does this process suggest that those criticised will be interviewed by the Panel. Nowhere does it say the allegations made by Keith Makin will, themselves, be tested. Will Keith Makin be asked for all the transcriptions of interviews he undertook? There are people criticised in just a few lines of text in the Review, but where the underlying investigation by Keith Makin will have involved a significant amount of work and investigation. Will Keith Makin himself be part of this process: asked to justify his evidence and assertions? What is the status of testimony given, in confidence, to him? Can he, in law, share that data? Can those interviewed by Keith Makin prevent, in law, their full testimony from being shared? And anyway, was Keith Makin as forensic and thorough as he might have been? It is known that a number of key witnesses were never interviewed, remotely or in person.

    It is inconceivable that the police could or would prosecute anyone involved with the Post Office scandal without their own investigation. They might be able to use testimony from the inquiry, and might be able to access key documents and evidence presented to the inquiry. But the investigation would be theirs, would have to be theirs. And they would have to stress test, and independently verify all evidence, for it to have the slightest chance of standing up in court.

    A further issue is that no one knows what the “threshold” is regarding failure to act on a safeguarding disclosure. Justin Welby said at IICSA that such a failing was not “an acceptable human response, let alone a leadership response”. Yet, someone now accused of failing in 2013 can point to the processes around Archbishop John Sentamu or Steven Croft and ask “will I be treated differently”? What is the test that the Panel of three “independent (sic) experts” will apply? Have those criticised been informed where the line will be drawn, before they are issued with a CDM?

    So, back to my Title question: is the National Safeguarding Team and the Church of England actually doing its own, robust, comprehensive investigations? Are they independently re-interviewing all those criticised? Are they testing the evidence? Are they giving those criticised the right of reply? Apparently not; the original methodology stated that at Stage 3, which is where we are currently, “decisions will be made to determine what action will be taken in respect of individuals, including where appropriate disciplinary action”. And this is followed, not preceded, by Stage 4: “a robust external scrutiny of [the decisions of Stage 3] by an independent barrister”, at which point “the Respondent will have the opportunity to have input into the process”. It also goes without saying that this process could and should have started after February 2017, eight years ago, when the abuse hit the national media.

    The letter from Alexander Kubeyinje describes a process that surely falls outside any normal judicial process. It appears that, without interview, or independent investigation, relying on the work of a third party, the criticised will just get a letter and “be informed of the outcome of decisions against them”.

    Yet again, they are making this up as they go along.

  • 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.

  • Safeguarding: Who is in Charge?

    by ‘Graham’

    In the Wilkinson Review of the Independent Safeguarding Board, 30 November 2023, I was quoted as follows:

    “Everything in the Church of England falls between two stools. You’ve got the NSP, the NSSG, the SRG, the NST, the Archbishops’ Council, the House of Bishops, the Lead Bishop, Lambeth and individual dioceses and it allows everyone to say, ‘Well, it’s actually not my job,’ and decision after decision in the Church of England is made without anyone in control, without anyone saying, ‘Come on, enough’s enough.’” (Para 317).

    I was reminded of these words when reading about the shenanigans in Blackburn. There were multiple interested parties, multiple attempted interventions, but at the end of the day a process was undertaken that allowed a person to sue, and receive a payment. Nothing worked. There was no process, no policy, no disciplinary procedure, no forum, that allowed a comprehensive investigation and justice (whichever way it went) to be seen to be done.

    And I reflect on what all the bodies that I listed in the Wilkinson Review actually do. Who reports to whom? And who can make decisions? Where is the “Head of Safeguarding” (no such role exists) to ensure that fair process, natural justice and competence are delivered?

    Because everything falls between two stools; in fact, many more. And frequently it is not the Church of England who actually do anything. The Jonathan Fletcher Review: an outside agency, 31:8, appointed not by the CofE but by Emmanuel, Wimbledon. The Pilavachi case: an outside agent, Fiona Scolding KC, has been appointed by Soul Survivor. The Titus Trust Reviews: an outside agency, 31:8 again, appointed by Titus. The Scripture Union Review: an outside agent, Gill Camina, appointed by, guess who, Scripture Union. The investigation into Iain Broomfield, who led the Iwerne camps from 1987-2000, well, no one knows what happened there, and a group of alleged victims put out a stinging rebuke. Where was the Church of England in all of these?

    We know the CDM is largely discredited, but it is worth noting that in the cases of Jonathan Fletcher, Iain Broomfield, the fellow in Blackburn and Mike Pilavachi it is extremely unclear what process was undertaken under CDM, and justice was “not seen to be done”, certainly in the eyes of victims. The process that was in place, was not fit for purpose. “Learning Lessons Reviews” (a misnomer if there ever was one) have been replaced by “Safeguarding Practice Reviews”: toothless, neutered, never debated by General Synod. I mention them as it is telling that not a single Safeguarding Practice Review has been commissioned in the 13 months since they were approved in July 2023. Despite the pleading of the ISB11, and the continuous flood of abuse revelations, the CofE does not have a single current Review (Makin was under the old regime).

    Let us look at the ISB. Who was responsible for the flawed (it is claimed) Terms of Reference? Who was responsible for the paucity of resources? Who was responsible for the sudden closure? I will leave readers to look at the Wilkinson Report for some of the answers to those, but the cynical outside observer sees parties ducking and diving, and denying responsibility.

    The Makin Review is my biggest bugbear, as a victim of John Smyth, and as the victim who came forward almost 13 years ago. We still have no answers, no justice, no closure and I have written many times about that. But, I ask again and again, who is responsible? NST say it is an Archbishops’ Council commissioned review, and independent, so they cannot intervene. The AC say that oversight was delegated to NST. Does the NSP have a view? No idea. Does the NSSG have a view; no idea. Have the Lead Bishops ever taken an interest? Well, Joanne Grenfell has never replied to or even acknowledged a single email I have sent her. General Synod? Well, lots of questions, faux outrage, but nothing is done. Do the paymasters care? I shudder to think of the cost of lawyers to date, yet alone the payments to Keith Makin: and am outraged, incandescent, in the contrast with support for victims when the Redress Scheme is further delayed. So, the Makin Review can drift on at enormous expense, 1555 days late (as I write) and no one “owns it”, no one has held his feet to the fire, no one has taken responsibility.

    And where do victims go ? I am also quoted in the Wilkinson Review as follows:

    “….that there had been a number of circumstances in the last seven years where they had needed somewhere to go and had needed an independent body that provided oversight, authority and power within the Church of England…..” (para 260.2).

    As no one is “responsible” for the Makin Review, I have nowhere to go. No one to complain to. No one who will intervene. The ISB might have provided this for us, though I suspect had they intervened they would have been accused of exceeding their brief. But even the ISB lifeline was taken from us, and of course from Mr X and the ISB 11.

    What do I ask for? That the multiple layers of safeguarding bureaucracy are consolidated. The relationship between the NST, NSSG and NSP must be clarified. The responsibility for safeguarding which falls between General Synod, Archbishops’ Council, House of Bishops, all those myriad bodies, must be clarified. I would hope and pray that this can be an eventual outcome of the deliberations by Professor Alexis Jay. Though I add, the Response Group appears to be a toothless “talking shop”. The Chair, Lesley-Anne Ryder, has refused to engage with victims. Their consultation received feedback from just 11 victims: surely that reflects the lack of confidence and trust in the process. The ISB took almost two years to gain the trust of damaged, nervous, traumatised victims. Does the Response Group even want to gain our trust?

    The final thing I ask for is a prophetic voice. Someone to stand up and say “Enough is Enough”. It is not coming from the hand wringing Archbishops. It is not coming from the invisible Lead Bishops. It is not coming from the incompetent NST. I could not even name the Chair of the NSP and NSSG, neither body having crossed my path, over seven years after the Channel 4 exposé. Where is the leadership, the vision, the ambition? Where is the person who “gets it” and can blend a ruthless drive for change, and a compassion that will gain the trust of victims? A “Head of Safeguarding” might not be appropriate, but where in these plethora of organisation would they even sit?

    Until then, everything will fall between two stools. We have no Makin Review. There is paralysis over Christ Church, Oxford. There is chaos at Blackburn. The ISB has gone. The Lead Bishops are silent (as is Lambeth and “victims come first” Welby: yeah, yeah, yeah). General Synod is impotent. NST are dysfunctional.

    And victims are left by the side of the road.

  • 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: When Good Reviews Go Bad

    by Andrew Graystone, who uncovered the abuses by John Smyth in a series of reports on Channel 4 News in February 2017; he continues to advocate for victims of church abuse, and speaks regularly with survivors of John Smyth.

    There have now been seven public reviews of the activities of John Smyth – or eight if you count my own book, Bleeding for Jesus. The first was Operation Cubic, which was conducted by Hampshire Police, and ended with a referral to the CPS. Then, after the revelations were made public, the Scripture Union commissioned a review into its own involvement. A review was conducted for Winchester College, where Smyth groomed many of his victims. The Titus Trust has held two reviews – one into Smyth’s abuses and a second, by the safeguarding agency ThirtyOne:Eight to conduct a review of its internal culture. The Advance network of independent churches carried out its own investigation, which focussed particularly on the involvement of its former leader PJ Smyth, who is John Smyth’s son. And finally, we await the arrival of the Makin Review, which was commissioned by the Church of England.

    As someone who has reluctantly become something of an expert on John Smyth’s abusive career, I have participated in all of these reviews. Aside from taking a huge amount of time, this has given me some insight into how such reviews are conducted, and what makes them effective or ineffective.

    It is worth remembering that one reason why there were so many reviews into the one narrative is that the key agencies at the centre of the case refused to work together on a single inquiry.

    Speaking to Cathy Newman on Channel 4 News in April 2019, Archbishop Justin Welby explained that only a joint inquiry would be effective. “Unless you can get everyone in, you’re never going to get anywhere near the truth.” Nevertheless, having failed to persuade everyone to participate, the Church of England eventually commissioned its own review. That review – scheduled to last nine months – has now lasted five years, and there is still no date for its publication.

    It is worth rehearsing the gloomy history of delay and obfuscation in this inquiry.  The Church of England’s intention to hold an inquiry was first announced by the then Bishop for Safeguarding, Peter Hancock, on the morning after Smyth died in August 2018. By then Smyth’s abuse had already been in the public domain for almost 18 months. Justin Welby had been aware of it for over five years (discounting earlier knowledge, which he first denied, but now admits.) The first formal complaint had been made to the Church of England six years earlier. And of course many key figures in the church, some of them at the highest level, had carried the knowledge for a staggering thirty-five years.

    Even so, the inquiry was not formally launched for a further twelve months. It was scheduled to last nine months, meaning that it would be published in May 2020. Since then there have been no less than six announcements that the inquiry was going to be late. In every case, survivors were promised that it was imminent. In January 2022, survivors and General Synod were told that the first drafts would be presented in April 2022. They weren’t. Then General Synod members were told that it would be published in the Autumn of 2022. Of course it wasn’t. The National Safeguarding Team has stopped making announcements about the timetable.

    There are two important questions. Firstly, what has caused the seemingly endless delay?  Secondly, why does this matter?

    Bishop Jonathan Gibbs, the second of three “Lead Bishops” to preside over the review so far, told Synod that “There have been significant delays due to COVID and the exceptionally high volume of information.” Blaming the pandemic is convenient, but disingenuous. The review was already well behind schedule before lockdown was imposed. In any case, very little of the work has been done face to face. Blaming the unexpected amount of evidence is a nonsense too. What on earth was the church expecting? They knew when they started that there were over 100 victims, four decades of history, and scores of witnesses to hear from. If they were taken by surprise by the “high volume of information” it can only be because they weren’t paying attention to what the victims and others had been telling them.

    The core problems that have caused the delay are quite different. They are:

    1) An insufficiently experienced reviewer. Perhaps Keith Makin will yet turn out to have been an inspired choice for this important role. We have not been told by what process he was given the job. He had never previously conducted a review on anything like this scale. He had held senior social work management posts, and had been an Independent Scrutineer for local authorities, but he had little forensic experience, and nothing that would seem to prepare him for such a complex case. He also had little experience of the church’s structures and processes.

    2) Lack of resources. The church decided that the task of reviewing a case lasting over forty years with more than a hundred victims could be handled by one part-time reviewer contracted for just two days a week, with a part-time assistant. This is far less resource than you would expect in comparable reviews. Of course it is not Mr Makin’s fault that he was given such inadequate resources for such a huge task. The church either didn’t recognise the scale of the review it was launching, or simply didn’t care. For example, the review was launched without the necessary GDPR arrangements in place. It was seven months out of a scheduled nine before interviews could be recorded and transcribed. Staggeringly, the necessary privacy notice was not issued until a full year later. On the same day that the Smyth Review was announced, the church announced another review, this time into the child rapist Revd Trevor Devamanikkam. That case – though no less serious – had just one perpetrator and one known victim. Yet it was set up with the same timetable and resources. Perhaps the church was simply not thinking clearly about what it was doing. Or perhaps the prime motivation for launching these reviews was just to be able to send out a press release saying that it was doing something.

    3) Lack of purpose, drive and consistency in the commissioning body. The church still appears to have little idea about how reviews work. They don’t seem to be able to distinguish between a review, an inquiry and an investigation. To this day it remains unclear who wants the Makin Review, why they want it and why it needs to be done in a timely way. As usual, nobody even knows what will happen to the report. Will it be read by bishops? Debated at Synod? Or just sit online somewhere for a few weeks before it is lost?

    4) Lack of oversight. Best practice for a review like this is to appoint an independent accountability body, separate from the reviewer and the commissioning body, whose task is to monitor the progress and scope of the review. That body might include interested parties, including representative survivors. When Thirty-One:Eight reviewed the abuses of Smyth’s fellow-abuser Revd Jonathan Fletcher, just such a body was appointed. They were able to provide assurance about the independence and thoroughness of the review, and also added their own statement to be read alongside it. Makin has not had this advantage. He has had no one asking him what is going on (with the exception of dogged Smyth survivors who take it upon themselves to do so informally). He has had no one asking him awkward questions about such crucial areas as record-keeping, confidentiality, resources or timescale. And when (or if) the review is published, there will be no one independent to give it an imprimatur. It will be, effectively, an undefended reviewer saying ‘This is how I see things.’ I fear that the lack of an independent scrutiny body is going to be particularly awkward over the next few months, if those who find themselves criticised by Mr Makin decide to cut up rough.

    So there are several reasons why this review has struggled from the start, and why it is so shockingly delayed. But why the rush anyway? Conducting reviews is a lucrative business. The author of an earlier church review reported privately but proudly that he had bought a London flat with the proceeds. In 2019 the NST themselves inadvertently leaked Mr Makin’s day rate – at that stage, it was £650 per day. The Church of England has been extremely chary about revealing the overall cost of the Makin Review. Bishop Jonathan Gibbs was asked about this directly twice in General Synod questions in November 2022. He would only say “There is always a financial cost associated with any Independent Review, however this must be balanced with establishing the truth and listening to the voices of victims and survivors.” Synod members might feel they have a right to greater clarity.

    Why does all of this matter? Well, first, because the delay makes the review weaker. In the time between the disclosure of Smyth’s abuse twelve years ago in 2012 and the publication of the inquiry (2024? 2025?), some key figures have conveniently died. They include Smyth himself, who consequently managed to escape justice from the church, as well as the criminal courts. Revd David Fletcher, who probably did more than anyone else to enable Smyth’s career of abuse, has also died. Others have retired, or will do so before publication, placing them beyond the effective reach of the church’s disciplinary measures.

    In the course of writing my book, I approached a number of senior clergy who were implicated in the failure to stop Smyth’s abuse. In several cases they said they weren’t willing to speak to me until the Makin review was complete. That was now several years ago. The Archbishop of Canterbury gave assurances that if any currently serving church officers were found to have failed in their safeguarding duties, they would be investigated and disciplined whilst the review was in progress. To my knowledge only two very junior clergy have been sanctioned, and one of those was long retired. My book, published in October 2022, identified nine currently serving bishops who appeared to have failed in their safeguarding duties. They include Archbishop Justin Welby. Have any of them been disciplined?

    The delay also matters because there are two over-riding reasons to hold such an inquiry. The first is to restore confidence in the church. The hope is that the inquiry will draw a line under a terrible episode. Ideally it would show that the church did not make any mistakes in its handling of disclosures of abuse, but that’s unlikely to be the case. The alternative is that the inquiry should demonstrate that, even though the church made mistakes, it will not do so again. Lessons have been learned; processes have been changed; staff have been retrained or removed.  This is the basis on which trust can be rebuilt. But for that trust to be rebuilt, the process of the review must itself be sound. If there is any suspicion, justified or not, that the church has not been fully transparent, then the measure of trust will decline instead of increasing. If there is any hint that the church has tried to avoid, delay or manipulate the publication, it will do itself more harm than good. As things stand, those suspicions are hard to avoid.

    In this case, the process of the review has served to diminish, not enhance, trust in the church’s safeguarding practices. The review itself has been marked by delay, mismanagement, amateurism, poor communications and obfuscation. These are the same characteristics that allow abusers like Smyth to operate. However good the text of the Makin review is, if and when it is eventually published, no one who has watched the national church’s handling of the process will be able to say with confidence “This could never happen again.”

    The second reason to hold such an inquiry is for the sake of the victims. It is a vital part of the church acknowledging that it made mistakes. Only when the church recognises this publicly is it possible for victims to begin to rebuild their lives, and even in some cases to forgive. If the church, by its acts or by its omissions, allows victims to imagine that it might still be hiding facts, or avoiding facing up to the truth, then instead of healing, victims are re-abused by the process.

    For what it’s worth, I think publication of the Makin Review into John Smyth is still a long way off. Even if the first draft of the text is complete, there is a long way to go before publication. Parts of it have been seen by a number of Smyth’s victims, but it has not yet begun the lengthy representation process known as ‘Maxwellisation’. In other words, anyone who is referred to critically in the text will have a right to read it, and respond to what they perceive as factual errors. This isn’t going to be quick. There are likely to be many people on the wrong end of Mr Makin’s pen. Many of them will call in lawyers. Those who are unfamiliar with the process of reviews may not realise that before a text is published there can be endless legal battles over what it can or can’t say. The church is almost continually waging these battles with reviewers. Given that one of the individuals criticised for his failures over Smyth is almost certainly going to be Archbishop Welby, I would be surprised if the report is published before his retirement is announced.

    When it is published, what can we expect? Will anyone take responsibility for the largest abuse scandal in the Church of England for a century by offering their resignation? I doubt it. Will there be sanctions for those who enabled Smyth to abuse, or failed to act on what they knew? There’s no precedent for that. Will the report be debated by General Synod? I don’t suppose so. What then? I imagine there will be the usual apology from Lambeth Palace, posted on a website somewhere. Such apologies are now so familiar that I could have a good stab at drafting it for them. Then it will be business as usual for the church. If there is another John Smyth out there, and to my certain knowledge there is, he will surely breathe a sigh of relief.

    The scope of the Makin Review was always limited. For instance, it doesn’t look into Smyth’s time in Africa, where most of his abusing occurred. Nor will it look at the influence of the Iwerne network in the Church of England, nor the theological drivers that motivated the cover-up of his abuse over three decades.

    We are on to our third Lead Bishop and our fifth Director of Safeguarding since the review was announced. Synod and Archbishops’ Council are hopelessly distracted. In the absence of an independent supervisory group there is little support or accountability for Mr Makin, and little pressure to get his work over the line. What if he has found himself out of his depth in the scale, detail and politics of the process? In the meantime, he is earning handsomely from the delay – although that hasn’t prevented him from taking another role as Independent Scrutineer for the London Borough of Croydon. Perhaps most significantly, a significant number of senior church leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, have good reason to want the review to continue indefinitely.

    Perhaps there is another way forward. The Church could acknowledge that the Makin process has broken down. Given that there have been seven reviews and a book, a barrister could be appointed with two months to produce a digest of what is known so far.  There would be unanswered questions, but they could be identified as such. Without such a breakthrough, my own growing expectation is that the review will never be published.

  • Archbishops’ Council: Reset Required

    by Gilo, co-editor with Janet Fife of the book Letters to a Broken Church, and also co-creator of the House of Survivors website. He also writes post-modern hymns.

    This past week saw the Deputy Safeguarding Lead Bishop say on social media: “Today the church is less accountable. To remove, at short notice, the strongest independent voices holding the CofE to account for its safeguarding failings makes us look resistant to robust scrutiny and challenge – which, of course, we are.” And in a BBC interview shortly afterwards: “I don’t entirely trust the church, even though I’m a key part of it.”

    Bishop Julie Conalty is correct in her assessment, and sadly one of the few bishops with sufficient spine to say it publicly.

    Many questions arise from these comments. Did Archbishops’ Council alert DSAs (Diocesan Safeguarding Advisors) prior to the sacking of the ISB statement? Were DSAs across dioceses given any time to prepare for victims’ and survivors’ confusion and distress? I know one wasn’t. I alerted him about forty minutes prior to the release of the statement. Steve Reeves and Jasvinder Sanghera had been given less than an hour’s notice before the statement went up on the Church of England website. They urged Archbishops’ Council for time to prepare the survivors in their care; they urged the Council to think about possible impact. They were told no. So in desperation they reached out to alert a few people quickly so we could contact several others in very vulnerable situations as quickly as possible. I rang and gently told one survivor what was coming as I knew that it could be devastating for them to find out suddenly in this impersonal way by the Archbishops’ Council. Several DSAs later commented that they were appalled that *good* safeguarding had to happen in this unofficial and ad hoc way and that it was necessary for the two ISB members to act fast in the face of such recklessness by the national Church.

    The heads of this Council are the two Archbishops. Why are they not ‘stepped back’? Could they face clergy disciplinary measures? They and others on the Council have presumably done C4 safeguarding training and Senior Leadership training and should be fully aware of the danger of their reckless conduct. They would know that many survivors speak of the ‘re-abuse’ we experience from the Church’s own treatment of our disclosures.  Such misconduct would not be ignored if done by clergy without mitres. Will the Lead Bishop, Joanne Grenfell, act? Will Alexander Kubeyinje, Director of the National Safeguarding Team, act? But an NST Director who is reported to have told the Survivor Advocate that she is “too survivor focussed” is unlikely to see through a lens other than the matrix provided by his controllers. And a Lead Bishop who has remained largely invisible and inaudible since appointment is unlikely to tackle misconduct by her seniors.

    I met with a senior figure this week, a bishop and his team, to ask for help in preparing CDMs for the heads of Archbishops’ Council on the following grounds

    • disregarding safeguarding policy
    • jettisoned lessons learnt
    • putting comms strategy above safeguarding
    • disregard for survivors in acute situations
    • putting back the work of DSAs, and safeguarding across the wider Church, by years
    • ignoring basic Christian principles, or perhaps ‘conduct unbecoming of a clerk in Holy Orders’

    It is bewildering how a group of very senior people who have the running of the Church in their hands could agree to go along with such unsafe practice. The placing of strategy above the needs of survivors in acute and precarious situations is particularly egregious.

    Why are those in governance willing to destroy what is left of their Church’s credibility in this way, and what is the motivation? Who in the Council ‘advises’ (or instructs) them to jettison ‘lessons’ they tell us in their many published ‘Lessons Learnt Reviews’ have been learned, and to abandon good practice? Two figures in public office have overarching power and prestige in this institution. This affords them the freedom to turn to this advisor and say clearly “No, you are tearing a hole in the hull of this Church’s credibility and your direction in these matters makes the Church look delinquent.” In this disastrous sphere of the Church’s life where so much coverup and corruption from the past still needs facing, where there has been so much complicity with unethical activity, and where much honesty and healing is required – how much more credibility capital are the Archbishops willing to burn protecting disastrous advice?

    Everyone knows the answer to the question ‘Who’, but nobody really understands the ‘Why’. The Secretary General to the Archbishops’ Council is also the Secretary General to the Church of England. Why is one éminence grise allowed to wield such enormous and unaccountable power through a web of tetrarchies across the national Church? Why is such obvious systemic harm to the very soul of the Church allowed to continue? Why is cruelty permitted to permeate through the safeguarding structures of the national Church? There is an evolved culture of ‘learned helplessness’ ° across the National Safeguarding Team (NST) and all the National Church Institutions (NCIs) which manifests itself in a polite but ruthless pillar-to-post systemic cruelty. Ask those survivors in urgent situations of crisis where repair and financial aid is needed not next month or next year, but last week. These survivors know this culture horribly well. They are the recipients of its ongoing harm.

    The scandal of Archbishops’ Council’s misconduct last week is as serious as it gets at the top of the Church. There must now be questions in Parliament to the Second Church Estates Commissioner from MPs about the misgovernance of the Church of England. Synod members must find a way to bring real and shining anger to the orchestrated State Flower Festival with its absurd safeguarding presentation that the forthcoming Synod appears to be set to experience. Not mere exasperation or frustration… but real anger and a sense of revulsion.

    Both Archbishops must own their misconduct. There must be serious accountability. And serious repentance.

     

     

    ° indebted to Carl Chambers for the phrase ‘learned helplessness’