At the beginning of 2018 I could not have anticipated how much new interest there was going to be in issues around church power/sexual abuse.  Also, I did not see all the many events that would need to be covered by this blog.  The General Synod of the Church of England has visited the topic of safeguarding at both of its 2018 gatherings.  I personally attended a session of the February Synod and watched the proceedings from the gallery.  Gilo was invited to give a presentation to a fringe meeting at this February meeting.  In the July session the topic was raised again, and Jo Kind gave her much appreciated speech to full Synod on her experiences of abuse.

There was of course a reason for Synod to spend so much time on the safeguarding issue at its gatherings.  The Church of England was aware that its record of failures in this area was about to come under intense scrutiny through the IICSA process.  Three weeks of IICSA hearings in London took place in March with a further week on the Peter Ball case in July.  These hearings were all devastating for the church.  It showed that until very recently the Church at every level was unprepared to respond effectively to criminal abusive activities by certain clergy in Chichester and elsewhere. These had taken place over decades.  The question that was on everyone’s mind after hearing all this evidence was whether the Church could ever be relied upon to deal properly with these matters without help from outside.  Many of the witnesses, including the solicitors acting for survivors, asked for a system of mandatory reporting to be brought in.

The details revealed about Church safeguarding procedures and the reports of conversations and meetings that took place in the past were fascinating.  To hear that a former Bishop of Chichester actively sought to subvert a police investigation into the activities of Bishop Peter Ball bordered on the surreal.  The detective in charge of the case was thankfully able to gather all the information he needed, in spite of the church’s officers working against him.  Revelations from Lambeth Palace and the part it played in the Ball saga showed us something of the mindset of the 90s.  There was, apparently, an extraordinary reluctance to consult experts in this area of abuse.  George Carey himself was outwitted by pressure coming from the Ball brothers and persuaded to make light of the 1992 Police Caution.  Prince Charles and other members of the Establishment were also drawn into the deceits spun by Ball.  One lesson I took from the Ball saga was to observe the extraordinary charisma he possessed.  This he exercised both against his young victims and, in a different way, with the powerful individuals in society who pleaded with the Church on his behalf.  One day the 2000 letters written to support Ball will be studied.  They will reveal the power of this charisma and the charm which fooled so many and allowed them to see innocence instead of rampant guilt.

Before the IICSA hearings, there was, in January, another event that took place in the church, this time involving spiritual abuse.  A Vicar in Abingdon, Timothy Davis, was found guilty by a Tribunal of spiritual abuse and inhibited from ministry for, I believe, ten years.  This case from my perspective was extremely important.  It marks the beginning of a recognition by the Church that power abuse is not always just about sex or money.   The case against Mr Davis provides an important precedent for similar cases that may arise in the future.  Spiritual abuse is a reality.  Clergy can and do sometimes use their spiritual power in a way that damages and harms individuals.    Where power exists, there is always the possibility of it being used wrongly in some situations.

This blog has sought to provide a commentary on all these events. My posts reached a crescendo in July when I was posting a daily commentary on the Ball hearings. Over the year the blog has acquired new readers.  Most of these are anonymous but a few have taken the trouble to comment on the posts or write to me privately.  This has helped me to feel that my writing is not being launched into a great emptiness.  It may in fact be helping some people to make sense of the whole scene of safeguarding and power issues within the Church.

What about 2019?  Several things are due to happen while other things are hoped for events on my wish list.  The first event of the year is the publication of the delayed book of essays on Church abuse.  It has been written by a collection of people who have found each other on the Internet.  I am not clear on what line these contributors have individually taken, but the title, Letters to a Broken Church, is, to say the least, provocative.  My own piece considers the way that some ministers exploit the Bible as a way of promoting their power.  I will leave the other topics to be discovered when the book finally appears.

The second episode is the final hearing by IICSA on the Church of England in July.  Intriguingly the dates for the hearing coincide exactly with those of General Synod.  It will be hard for Synod to ignore the Inquiry which will be critiquing the National Church while Synod is gathered.  The Church will also need to move into high gear to respond to the IICSA written findings that arise out of 2018 sessions along with the Press interest that is likely to accompany them.  We don’t know exactly when these are due to appear.   As I have said, these IICSA findings are likely to be highly critical of our national church. 

2019 looks to be an embarrassing and uncomfortable one for the Church in this area of safeguarding and past abuses.  It is no longer possible for a bishop or archbishop to control the narrative of what is said or shared.  Too much is known and being shared through the new means of instant communication, the Internet.  Church leaders have to work on the assumption that detailed information about past events will all eventually enter the public domain. So much has already been revealed through the public hearings of IICSA.  The media and the general public will continue to take an interest in any story where issues of power, accountability and hypocrisy are involved. 

Speaking personally as a former employee and now pensioner of the Church of England, I see this body as coming perilously close to a threat to its entire existence.  To use a medical analogy, the Church has been inflicted with serious wound.  This metaphor includes all the hypocrisy, cover-up and secrecy which has surrounded abuse scandals over recent decades.  Up till now the only treatment that has been offered is a sticking plaster when what is needed is major surgery.  The medical intervention now needed would involve a serious outlay of money and resources as well as a commitment to end all the secrecy of the past.  Openness is required, not just for the sake of church members but for the entire general public of this country.  The Catholic Church in the States has been grievously damaged both financially and in respect of its reputation.  Some dioceses there may never recover from the scandals in that church and the same thing could happen to parts of our national church.  The Church of England faces many other challenges to its survival over the coming decades.  Some are not easy to resolve – declining congregations and buildings that absorb a huge amount of energy to maintain. The issue of a Church making peace with an abusive past is something we actually can do something about.  Our church leaders need to put the right amount of energy into resolving this crisis before it is too late.