This morning and throughout today (Friday) the BBC and the Press have focussed on a story about the report by Sir Roger Singleton. This report was a review of the Past Cases Review (PCR) undertaken by the Church of England and published in 2010. The original review was designed to uncover any cases of historic sexual abuse by clergy and other leaders which were in the files kept by dioceses across the Church of England. In the event this highly expensive examination of files only revealed 13 cases of past abuse which merited further investigation. 40,000 files were examined over a two to three year period. The new Singleton review contains a fairly trenchant critique of the 2010 report and shows the considerable weaknesses in the PCR process. First of all there was a lack of consistency in the way information was gathered for the 2010 report. Singleton also identified a tendency to find ways of minimising inconvenient evidence and emphasising the positive whenever possible. Another fact was that only the files of active serving clergy were examined. This left out the retired clergy, of which a large number are still active, and those deceased. In short even if we were to ignore all the shortcomings of method and analysis, the PCR showed an extraordinary lack of interest in those who had been abused or harmed. Everything in the PCR was about identifying potential abusers while ignoring any victims. The enquiry was working with the principle that contacting alleged victims was to be avoided to ‘minimise the distress’ to them.
It is a curious turn in logic to do what the PCR has done which is to describe a problem of abuse by only listing a handful of suspected felons. A common-sense approach to the problem would start at the other end. Criminal activity is most obviously best described by interviewing its victims. In the event no attempt was made to speak to any of them or even allow them a voice. In some topsy-turvy way of approaching the problem, the victims were thought to have nothing to offer to the review process. The investigators preferred to deal with the information obtainable from the files. If you were a victim of an abusing clergyman who was retired or dead, the church appeared to have even less interest in your case. Even the victims of serving clergy went in many cases unheard. One of the complaints against currently serving bishops is that a suspected abuser was not inhibited in any way from active ministry for several years. On the day when his trial was to begin he took the drastic action of taking his own life.
In summary the PCR process of 2010 seems to have failed. It failed to identify more than a handful of perpetrators by the inadequate techniques that it used; it also failed the victims by shutting them out of the whole process. They had neither a voice nor any access to help that the Church might reasonably have put in place to meets their many needs.
It is suggested that the now discredited PCR process cost the church some £2 million. In the light of Roger Singleton’s critique, we can mourn the loss of such a large sum. How could things have gone so wrong? Why was the church prepared to spend so much to achieve so little. The reason for spending so much on what now appears to be a negative outcome seems to have been the vanity of institutional thinking. This will always wish to protect reputation above all else. The announcement that only 13 cases had been extracted from the files seemed, at the time, to be a triumph to boost the reputation of the Church. ‘We have a clean bill of health’ was the overall message. The fact that victims were unheard was an inconvenient and tiresome irritant to this basic narrative.
Since that date these victims have not gone away. Many of them have conveniently for the Church stayed in the shadows, unheard and unseen. A few, working courageously and largely single-handedly have attracted attention from the Press and other supporters. Their courage and persistence has been enormous. But for people like Gilo and Matt Ineson, the church as a whole might have bought into the myth that there were only a few ‘bad apples’ left to be dealt with. The IICSA process also has forced the Church of England to see that the voices of victims telling their stories is just as important as investigators poring over files looking for evidence of past crimes.
I have not attempted to give a full account of Roger Singleton’s report. It could be summarised like this. He is telling the church that an appallingly expensive attempted whitewash of the church’s reputation has been shown largely to be a sham and a failure. General Synod, meeting next month, must decide where to take the next stage of Safeguarding. Whitewash, cover-up even outright lying will no longer do. The Synod must oversee not only good practice but also justice for the hundreds of survivors of church abuse. The precise numbers of these are at present unknown but the church has not, until recently, made any real attempt to find out who and where they are. Even if there are only a few they want and need to be heard. None of them should ever be regarded as nuisances or inconvenient. By helping them the church can redeem itself by showing that it is a compassionate body, concerned with justice and healing.
Thank you Stephen. I have evidence, in the form of the dismissal of a CDM complaint I made, that Archbishop Rowan Williams knew that a senior Bishop refused to open a parcel containing documents he did not wish to see, involving misconduct, harm to children and abuse during the period of the review. i.e. the Archbishop knew that such documents were being deliberately withheld from the Past Cases Review. If anyone wishes to see this evidence perhaps you could put them in touch with me.
That’s appalling. Have you provided this information to IICSA? Early next year they will be looking at the C of E as a whole’s response to abuse.
Janet, yes I’ve provided all the documents (80 – 100 pages) relating to my CDM complaint about the bishop in 2009 to IICSA. If there is anyone who wishes to raise the Past Cases Review at Synod and wishes to know more about my evidence beforehand then I’d be happy for them to contact me.
Good for you. I imagine this must bring it all back though, praying for you.
Interesting to see that the Church Times has named the 7 Dioceses, including Winchester, that require an “updated form” of the Past Cases Review, as this is the diocese I referred to in my above post.
As I don’t subscribe to the Church Times I can’t see which Bishop is saying “We will take complaints seriously”. Can anyone who has read the article let me know which bishop is quoted as saying this please? Thanks.
It was the Bishop of Salisbury, Nick Holtam. You can see the article here. https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/29-june/news/uk/we-will-take-complaints-seriously-says-bishop-whose-diocese-is-revisiting-past-cases-review
Thanks Janet!
Do we know which bishop was reported by Singleton as having refused to cooperate? I think we should know more about this!
There seems a strange reluctance to name the bishop, but of course there’s no cover-up. Perish the thought!
The Singleton report and the church’s response to date hasn’t really gone very far in terms of re-building trust in my view – which surely is the important outcome!
There’s an awful long way to go before the Church of England will be deserving of trust. It will take complete honesty and openness, genuine repentance, and full recompense to victims and survivors before the journey back to being trusted can even begin. We seem to be a long way off that yet.
But it’s been said that ‘the tectonic palates are shifting’, and these things can appear to happen suddenly. The pressures build up and build up, and then suddenly something gives. We still have two sets of IICSA hearings to go, and the results of the SCIE survey which is now underway. And there’s a fringe meeting with survivors at General Synod.
And some of us have no intention of letting up on the pressure, while God gives us strength.
I have just read the article about Vicky Beeching in the Church Times. Interesting. She’s brought out an autobiography. I’ll be in and out of internet reach for the next three weeks.
Vicky Beeching’s story is very interesting. I am reading her story on Kindle. She identifies somewhere with the tragic story of Lizzie Low which I wrote about a week ago. I may well do an examination of Vicky’s story compared with Jayne Ozanne. Both had to suffer the abusive exorcism of ‘gay demons’. That to me is at the heart of the problem – abusing gays with a totally deficient theological world view. That needs to be challenged and challenged hard. You don’t need to be a gay supporter to object strongly to this sort of behaviour. You can decide that a child is badly behaved but that does not give you permission to beat him/her with with a stick!
I’ve just finished Jayne’s book ‘Just Love’. My roots are in the evangelical/charismatic branch, (I term myself ‘post-charismatic’) but even so I found it difficult to read her account of repeatedly submitting herself to inner ‘healing’ and exorcism to get rid of the gay ‘demons’. It was debasing, degrading, and wrong – and very damaging. I’ve had a well-known Anglican leader try to exorcise me of demons because I was angry about my childhood sexual abuse, and I know how worthless it can make you feel.
The healers will genuinely think this is the right and helpful way to proceed, of course. I’m not sure what we can do to counter these false ideas.
It’s more abuse of power isn’t it, trying to exorcise people for being traumatised or simply for being the way they were created? I wonder if the so-called healers will try to exorcise people who are born intersex to get rid of the “intersex demons”?!
I see that one person who identifies as intersex, Sara Gillingham, has decided to stand for election to Diocesan Synod which seems a great step forward and one to be applauded and supported by all those concerned about misuse of power in the church.
https://twitter.com/sarahheb1
The more visible people like Sara become, the less the opportunities for such “healers” to mislead people about exorcising demons.
Better education all round is one long-term way of addressing abuse of power. A useful maxim that I believe should be discussed with children (and in churches too) is “People in positions of power define reality”.
When I’ve tried to engage with evangelicals (either online or in person), they just see it as a form of homosexuality and therefore sinful. Which is dreadful. I’m sure not all evos believe that, just most of the ones I’ve discussed it with.
They probably think you mean bisexual! No excuse for ignorance though.
You’re right! That hadn’t occurred to me. But either way, that’s how some people are born. And as Jesus said, ‘Some are born eunuchs, some are made eunuchs by man,, and some are eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.’ Which implies he knew about intersex and other congenital conditions – or at least that some people are born without the ability to procreate.
Interestingly, my sister (an archeologist in New Mexico) tells me that Native American tribes recognised 3 or 4 genders – and also that some people born male lived as females. That was accepted by the tribe.
Did you see Michael Moseley on TV about people who start off as girls and develop male parts at 12? Naturally. It’s only a tiny change of the balance between the hormones.
No, I didn’t. Sounds interesting.
Common in an area of S. America. They even have a word for it!
The experiences of Jayne and Vicky are truly heart-rending and deserve the true care and compassion of those who claim the Name of Christ as Lord. The kind of supposed ‘healing’ services they availed themselves of seem far away from genuine Christian ministry to me. I am appalled at the teaching which describes being gay as a sin and I really wonder at the theological grasp of sex, sin and salvation that this shows. How the name evangelical ever became attached to such teaching I do not know if being evangelical implies being faithful to the Bible. I obviously never swam in the right oceans if this was the kind of theology I was supposed to believe.
The thing about homosexuality (and the same applies to intersex and other sexual matters) is that the debate is not about something outside of ourselves which can be stood back from and coolly appraised but inside of us as part of our feelings and emotions, the things which contribute to what we understand as our identity. Care and fellow-feeling are the ingredients we need when entering this area. Taking all this into consideration we need to be careful to look at evidence from wherever it comes not merely thinking that stories give the answer. The psychologist Paul Bloom writing in the New Yorker said that empathy was a poor guide to moral judgement. It always has been and we need to make sure it doesn’t cloud our vision when we approach this area. It is possible to be caring as well as corrective, to love and seek the best for those we disagree with as well as kindred spirits.
Leslie, I like your phrase ‘I never swam in the right oceans’!
Well, not in that poisonous ocean anyway! Too much plastic theology getting in I think.
🙂
That theology makes sense within its own terms, since it quotes scripture. It’s just that the teaching of the Bible is a whole lot broader than that. For ‘the love of God is broader than the measures of man’s mind/and the heart of the eternal is most wonderfully kind.’
I realised years ago, when General Synod was debating the Nicene Creed, that most of the creeds were compiled to keep certain groups of people out. That’s why they don’t bother with those articles of theology all Christians agree on (or should). Why don’t they start with ‘God is love’? They don’t even mention it, and yet Old and New Testaments are full of the steadfast, enduring love of God.
It is hard to stay in a church with the constant recital of creeds and sitting through talks and sermons with the weight of expectancy that that you have to agree with everything. Surely this is how brain washing begins; monotonous repetition of ‘I must believe that…’
I think you are a little too hard on the creeds Janet. They started out not as initial teaching but as responses to teaching like the docetists who said Jesus was only apparently human; the Apostle’s creed said no, he was born of the virgin Mary. The Nicene Fathers on the other hand wanted to correct the pendulum going in the opposite direction by Arians saying he wasn’t God and in response they spoke of Jesus as being “of one substance with the Father”. The other early councils were of the same form. “All we need is love” is a bit like saying all we need is an accelerator pedal, we can do without the steering wheel.
On quoting scripture, I would say the more we really hear it the better. My complaint with the kind of plastic theology I am hearing being referred to as evangelical is that it just doesn’t listen, it just picks up verses of scripture and throws them like stones hoping the heads of others will get a good ‘dunt’. Not the way to do theology, it just makes for sore heads and angry tongues.
I think you’ve nicely illustrated my point that the creeds were written to exclude people!
I didn’t actually say “all you need is love’ – nor would I. Clearly love alone is not enough. What I did say is that the creeds ought to start with ‘God is love’. That doesn’t mean they need to finish there. Nor do I have a problem with the articles of the principal creeds, though I know some very good Christians who do.
Classic evangelical theology has a lot more going for it than much of what passes for ‘evangelical’ today, I’ll agree. And good evangelicals have little time for proof-texting. My father, who was an eminent evangelical preacher, used to say, ‘A text without its context is a pretext.’
No I don’t think so. The creeds were excluding ideas not people, their role was intended to be corrective. You wouldn’t say that “Keep Left” was excluding people would you? Well perhaps but I would want to be kinder to road signs.
But in identifying the people who held certain views as heretics, they were condemned and excluded – and often killed.
How you deal with false ideas is different and I agree that people used to seek the death of others who disagreed with them (on many sides). However we don’t run away from seeking to correct those whose intended path would take us off the road. We don’t string up Company Directors who fiddle the books to their own benefit but we do want to call them out and hold them to account. Isaiah had a good take on this:-
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter. (5:20)
But my point is: we agree that God is love, so why don’t the creeds say this? Why not start with ‘God is love’, and put the other articles of faith into that context?
I don’t think we are going to disagree on “God is Love”; it was the centre of the rose window in the church I was brought up in. Perhaps a good place to bring our perambulation on this to a close and not try Stephen’s patience. Blessings.
My own experience with discussing abuse in the church is that the focus often is on moving on, versus healing. Those are profoundly different things.
Also, the disciplinary canons of the American Church are useless, as they permit retaliation for filing a complaint. Thus, only a fool would ever contact the church for assistance.