There is one group in society whose job it is to know how to use language with a precision and care for detail that few of the rest of us can match.  This group is the legal profession.  Every word and phrase produced professionally for a legal document or a court presentation has to matter.  There is no room for any vagueness of expression.  This is part of the training that lawyers receive.  Everyday conversations that ordinary people like us hold may make use of all kinds of language tropes, figures of speech, metaphor and irony.  Legal terminology will always shun these, preferring definitions to a more open-ended language.  This is probably why legal language and theology do not make a particularly good mix.  Church people are typically steeped in biblical imagery and theological propositions which do not achieve the level of precision that lawyers need.  Also, when it comes to the law itself, Church people are not very comfortable at having to obey rules that may appear to restrict their activities.  Why does law ever need to be applied to church life? 

.Few people are aware of the amount of Church law that has been compiled over the centuries to deal with the complicated status of the Church of England within British society.  But that theme is not one I want to touch on today. There is however one area of church religious practice which has to take the law seriously.  Because the sexual abuse of minors has been a crime for at least 150 years, the law of the land and the courts are necessarily involved when reports of such offences within the Church are revealed.  If the police decide to prosecute then court proceedings take place.  These ensure the gathering of evidence from victims, while listening to the defence of the alleged perpetrators so that due legal process is followed.  Alongside secular law, there may be also Church legal processes to be followed.  These operate according to somewhat different rules so that criminal investigations and church tribunals have to be held in different times and places, each following their own internal rules.   One particular discussion that is now exercising lawyers, politicians and senior church leaders is whether or not churches (and other similar organisations) should be ‘required’ by the law of the land to report all cases of sexual abuse against the young or whether this is just a recommended practice.  No such requirement exists at present to make it compulsory or mandatory for church leaders and personnel to report sexual abuse crimes. The argument about whether the law should be changed effectively hangs on these two words – ‘must’ and ‘should’.  Many people both in and outside the church are pressing for compulsory reporting of offences to a body outside the church.   Others want to give the final decision as to whether to report abuse to the church authorities.  At present, information on abuse cases is normally but not routinely handed on to the authorities.  Many lay people might think the debate between ‘must’ and ‘should’ is fairly arcane but it can be shown that there is actually a great deal at stake.   The vital issue here being addressed is this.  Are children better protected when church employees are legally required to report cases of actual and suspected abuse or can the Church manage this area of its life better without outside help?

Legal compulsion to act in a particular way may seem unduly harsh on an organisation that is largely staffed by volunteers.  The real argument for discretionary as opposed to compulsory reporting is, I believe, pressed by those who fear the loss of power and control within the organisation.  At present, bishops in the Church of England employ and oversee the work of Diocesan Safeguarding Advisers (DSAs).  By all accounts the effectiveness of these DSAs varies across the country.  One suspects that some of the differences can be accounted for in part, not only by their professional competence, but by the degree of interference by bishops.  Bishop A might well want to be open about cases of past abuse in his diocese, while Bishop B, with a deeply protective instinct for the reputation of his/her diocese, might want to keep all safeguarding information completely under his/her control.  A law requiring DSAs to report every case of abuse to an outside authority would remove at a stroke the variability of actual practice over the delivery of abuse protection.  That must surely be progress.

The Church has not been very good at speaking clearly on the topic of mandatory reporting (MR).  As things stand at present there is no MR in cases of child abuse.  Those who do report, as victims or witnesses, are often treated like whistleblowers in the NHS – in other words badly.  So many cases of appalling neglect in the NHS have only been revealed by the bravery of individuals who stood out against the system on behalf of patients.  Whistleblowers are only so described in a system when reporting is not obligatory but a matter of conscience.  When it is made compulsory to report, it no longer takes courage to do so.  What had been an individual act of bravery now becomes a routine duty required by law. The entire culture changes when MR becomes the new accepted norm; now the expectation is that abuse will be routinely exposed when it occurs.  The institutional culture is no longer creates principled heroes but a healthy environment where good practice is always expected by everyone within the organisation.  To take one example of a new culture created by a change in the law, we no longer chafe at having to wear seat belts for journeys by car.  It has become a routine action which no one comments on anymore.

Back in March an interview was given by Meg Munn, the new director of the National Safeguarding Panel on the Sunday Programme.  She began the interview by appearing to claim that mandatory reporting was already in place in the Church of England.  The interviewer, Edward Stourton, and the informed listener knew that this is not actually true.  Was this inaccuracy the result of sloppy thinking or was it a deliberate attempt to confuse the listener?  Later on in the interview, when pressed, Meg seemed to concede that reporting was still discretionary and that there was not yet any provision in law to require that all cases of abuse be reported to a local authority adviser.  The confusions shown in the interview rings alarm bells for some listeners, whether those in the Church or among the wider public.  For many people the difference between ‘should’ and ‘must’ might seem tiny.  In practice, as we have shown, there are huge differences of culture involved.  Far too many cases of abuse have been exacerbated by the attempt by bishops and others who want to protect the Church from independent scrutiny and ignore survivors and their stories.  The eventual resolution of this debate when we hope new law will be created, is something that does matter a great deal.  If safeguarding professionals and those who oversee them can take the view that they are entitled, when they see fit, to bury information or suspicions of abuse, that is often precisely what they will do.  When such action or inaction becomes answerable potentially in a court of law, this should change things for the better so that survivors and victims may benefit.

The organisation Mandate Now, which campaigns for MR, has made accessible some research from Australia where MR has been compulsory in many states for a number of years.  This research shows that many of the fears articulated in this country against MR are unfounded.  There is no incidence of accidental prosecution because of making a misjudgement about a case of abuse.  After a rise of reporting when such schemes come into force, there is then a levelling off and in fact cases go down as the seriousness of the offences permeates through the entire institution.  It is my perception that the only plausible reason for arguing against MR is an attempt by the Church to avoid surrendering institutional power.  The Church of England, as revealed by the IICSA hearings, has shown itself unworthy to be trusted in this area.  The credibility that it may have possessed until 10 years ago has been damaged, possibly beyond repair.  If it is ever to recover that credibility it must eat the humble pie of allowing its safeguarding practice to be scrutinised and scrutinised thoroughly by an independent body for an indefinite period.  The level of trust it has with the survivors I know is close to zero.  It will take a full generation of ‘acting justly and walking wisely before your God’ before this trust can be restored.