Many of us have been following the Senate ‘trial’ of Donald Trump over in the States. The word trial here deserves the use of inverted commas since, as many commentators have pointed out, the process we have been watching fails to qualify as a proper trial. In thinking about what would constitute a real trial, my mind went back to the Prayer Book translation of Psalm 12. There we have the image that God’s word is like ‘silver which from the earth is tried and purified seven times in the fire’. The ancient peoples long ago had discovered by experiment that precious metals have a different boiling point from the other minerals with which they are sometimes combined in a natural state. To get silver back to a pure metal, you would have to heat it up to its boiling point several times so that the impurities can be removed. Eventually the mineral left behind will be the highly prized metal in its pure state.
From the rough description we have in Psalm 12 of the process of purifying silver, we can see that a ‘trial’ is no gentle process. ‘Trying’ silver was laborious, complicated and probably dangerous for the craftsmen who did it. When the word ‘try’ comes to be applied to a legal process, we need to have in mind this meaning of the word in the context of smelting. Trying an accused person who has potentially committed a crime has to be rigorous. When there is no detailed questioning, consultation of documents or hearing the testimony of witnesses, it is hard to see that a trial in any meaningful sense has taken place. When these common-sense procedures are omitted, the word trial is hardly appropriate to describe what has happened. ‘Trial’ in its biblical sense was a tough searing process. Silver does not become pure merely by washing it in a stream.
Moving on from the legal shenanigans of American politics to issues nearer home, we seem sometimes to have problems of finding honesty and truth within the administration of the Church of England. The complaint of numerous survivors against the Church of England is that many of the processes they have to face are neither truthful nor honest. First of all, survivors constantly complain of the adversarial process that treats them as an enemy to be defeated even when the facts of their abuse are uncontested. It would be fair to expect that the party who had been wronged, in this case the abuse victim, would be allowed to act as prosecutor against the authorities whose blindness and naivety may have contributed to the abuse. This of course does not happen and further, the survivor very quickly may find him/herself playing the role of an offender on trial. Instead of the Church supporting them because of their ordeal, victims of abuse routinely find themselves at the wrong end of hostile questions from church lawyers. The interview with Professor Julie Macfarlane on a recent Radio 4 Sunday programme, following her powerful testimony to the IICSA hearings, gave us the word ‘brutal’ to describe this process. As a legal expert herself, she found it difficult to endure the attempts to break her down rather than believe her clear testimony of abuse. Today Tuesday 4th, we are hearing further revelations about the way that the Church’s insurer, the EIG, has used ethically questionable tactics of legal process in order to cap their financial liabilities. There was, in one case, a reliance on psychiatric ‘expert opinion’ which was admitted to the process even when a survivor, known as Tony, had not met the ‘expert’. Julie also described her experience of the way that the Church authorities distance themselves from the process even when the clear facts of abuse had become accepted by all. To quote the interview: They (the Church) were completely at arms’ length at the criminal trial. I think that that is wrong. ……Here everybody knows that these things happened, I think that the Church should have been proactive in making a supportive statement towards the two complainants – myself and the other complainant. My experience over the years of talking to the Church about this issue is that they talk out of both sides of their mouths. In public they talk about their deep sorrow and remorse. In reality, in civil cases they are playing the most aggressive litigation game imaginable. …..They are vigorously resisting the truth of what happened. If the Church really meant what it says about being sorrowful about the thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands worldwide victims of clerical abuse, they would be finding a way to encourage people to come forward.
It is hard not to see a parallel between the Church of England and their legal representatives and the Republican party in the States. Both use the law and their wealth to manipulate the processes of the legal system. The importance of establishing actual truth does not appear to be important for either of these entities. We might expect a political party to play games with the legal system but not the Church. Protestations of ‘sorrow and remorse’ should and can be followed up but there is little sign of this in practice. All that matters, all that the Church seems to care about, aided and abetted by lawyers and insurers, is that the narrow financial and reputational interests of the institution are preserved. It is very hard for individuals to fight against such a well-funded institution which can, through its wealth, block the pursuit of real justice. Even when sums of money are handed to survivors who have made complaints against the Church, the sums involved are relatively small. No individual can ever afford the costs of a full-blown trial. The Church, represented by its lawyers, will always fend off such attempts to find full justice. A full-blown trial, complete with a jury will never happen. The Church is constantly focussed, like Trump, in never letting the truth come out fully and completely.
In spite of the enormous power that the Church (and the Republican party) has with which to fend off proper scrutiny and trial of its actions in the past, there is another institution in society which does a good job of holding it (them) to account. I am of course referring to the Press and the makers of television programmes. There is little the Church can do to stop exposes of incompetent and sometimes criminal behaviour which flood into the living rooms of the nation. Because these programmes and newspaper stories are meticulously researched, they never seem to fall foul of the legal system. They offer encouragement to abused individuals who have had their voices shut down by non-disclosure agreements and the active hostility of Church leaders. Those of us who are still part of the Church are constantly puzzled and dismayed by the way our Churches leaders find it so difficult to reach out proactively to survivors. Cups of tea and the time given to listening would seem a cheap way of starting the process of healing. Employing expensive lawyers to fight every settlement claim in an environment of conflict and confrontation does not in any way promote gospel values of reconciliation and peace.
Two years ago, I attended the General Synod in London as an observer/protester. Two years on I sense that there is now a greater body of opinion within that Synod itself to do the ‘right thing’ with survivors rather just defend the assets and reputation of the institution. Members of Synod are lobbying fellow members. The effect of letters to the Church Times, active lobbying and critical broadcasts has meant that the church authorities cannot so easily hide behind legal processes and unfulfilled promises. Each time a review is announced, there will be an army of tweeters and others to check up on progress and ask awkward questions about the process. The next two weeks will be interesting. Will the Synod sense of fair play and justice be sufficiently to ride over all the legal defensiveness of the Church authorities? Will the voices of survivors be properly heard? In America, there has been a similar process in the political system, but we can hope that this desire for change and escape from the past will happen through the democratic process of an election. The process of the Church revealing and facing up to the appalling past events of sexual abuse cannot happen in the same way. But we can still hope that the trial, the purification and the cleansing of these two institutions is close. Although there are many problems for the Church of the future, we can still have confidence that it is able to go through the equivalent of a seven-fold purification and come out the other end, honest and still empowered and led by the Spirit of God.
Brilliant! Again, thank you.
Agreed. Excellent article!
Many thanks, and we do still test the content of the coinage, with the trial of the pyx at the Royal Mint, presided over by the queen’s remembrancer.
My assumption is that, at some point, someone in Dean’s Yard has sat down with an actuary in order to work out what the likely actual and contingent liabilities would be if the Church admitted liability or else provided meaningful support to victims/claimants (which might be construed as admitting liability). They may then have concluded that the ethical and reputational pain to be endured by the Church was outweighed by the financial cost of admitting liability; they may also have been warned of the multiplier effect if they do admit liability easily (because of the risk of free riding by spurious claimants).
The whole attitude of the institution reeks of balance sheet thinking, at least to me. The authorities may reason that they have a moral obligation to future generations to conserve the Church’s capital, so that the mission of the Church may continue, and that victims must be swept aside for that purpose: so the end indeed justifies the means (note the repeated references by the lead point man for the Commissioners on the bench, the bishop of Manchester, about ‘generational equity’). It is just possible that there was never a plan to ignore victims, or to treat them shabbily in litigation or otherwise, but that there has been an overriding imperative to reduce outlays wherever and whenever possible, that has affected the overall approach of the Church towards anyone not within the clerical kraal.
You mention Synod, but I fear it is a paper tiger: the ‘executive’ in the Church of England are the bishops and the Commissioners; they do not draw their authority from Synod but from other sources and, as such, they have no meaningful accountability to the ‘legislature’. Although there are a number of fluent and well-informed Synod members who will be sympathetic towards victims, I doubt they will achieve much on victims’ behalf, because of this want of executive accountability. Indeed, sympathetic Synod members might aggravate the problem Prof. Macfarlane identified: of the Church giving the wider public the impression that it talks out of both sides of its mouth.
Finally, we get back to the issue that the bishops and Commissioners do not need to be accountable to anyone because they have sources of income that obviate the need for accountability to Synod. Synod does not vote supply in the way that the House of Commons does in order to allow the government to continue. The diocesan bishops, for instance, are ex officio Commissioners, and yet their stipends are funded by means of a block grant from the Commissioners (no conflict of interest there, then). The Commissioners’ funds, in the meantime wax because they can milk the dioceses (i.e., parishes) for capital by means of legislative fiat (the Pensions Measure 1997).
The Commissioners’ AGM is perhaps the decisive…
forum, not Synod.
PS – I still had 10 characters left but was cut off.
Sorry about the 3000 letter limit. You can always go on to another comment! I did once have some fairly crazy rants which needed to be checked from going on for ever. It is good to have your comments Froghole. Obviously you are informed in a way that I cannot be and the information that you share with us helps to give my speculations added weight. A lot of the time I am only able to indulge in speculating about what is going on in the church since as a retired clergyman, I have no access personally to the ‘system’. Keep up your visits to the site. I expect like you to be following the events in London next week. Will the system win or will members make a real difference?
‘The whole attitude of the institution reeks of balance sheet thinking …’ Yes. This, sadly, rings entirely true.
Stephen,
This is the text as I and Synod colleagues, who are proposing amendments, hope will be the final amended form of the Safeguarding motion (item 9 on the Synod agenda) to be debated at General Synod on Wednesday afternoon, 12 February 2020:
“That this Synod:
(a) lament the Church of England’s abject failures in dealing with reports of abuse, as revealed during the hearings of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) and documented in its interim report, Anglican Church Case Studies: Diocese of Chichester and The response to allegations against Peter Ball (May 2019), and accordingly welcome the terms of the Diocese of Blackburn ‘Ad Clerum’ letter dated 17th June 2019, reflecting on the IICSA report and commend its victim-centred approach to all in authority within the Church as a suitable model for developing reconciliation with those who have been wronged by our sins of commission and omission;
(b) affirm (in the words of the National Director of Safeguarding at para 4.1 of paper GS 2158) that the Church of England “remains committed to ensuring that words of apology are followed by concrete actions to improve how all worshipping communities across the whole Church in its many forms – across its parishes, dioceses, cathedrals, religious communities, national church institutions and other church bodies – respond to concerns and allegations of abuse and to all victims and survivors of abuse and others affected by this, whilst at the same time working to prevent such abuse from occurring in the first place”;
(c) endorse the Archbishops’ Council’s response, set out in paper GS 2158, to the five recommendations made by IICSA at pages 206 to 207 of its said report;
(d) request the Archbishops’ Council, National Safeguarding Steering Group (NSSG), National Safeguarding Team, and House of Bishops to respond immediately to the recommendations of the final IICSA report on the Anglican Church when it is published, and bring their response to General Synod for debate no later than July 2021; and
(e) request the Archbishops’ Council, NSSG and House of Bishops, working in conjunction with the Church Commissioners, to bring forward proposals for an appropriate and properly resourced compensation and redress scheme, so that words of apology are matched by actions that truly reflect the justice and righteousness of God’s kingdom.”
This amended, composite, motion has the support of survivors of clerical abuse.
Hear, hear. Thank you, David.
Looks good to me.
Bravo on the amendment and thank you. Going through reporting now and hoping they will use my case as a pilot for a positive response. Clear, accountable actions like this are what we need.
Thank you for this excellent motion. Please forgive the impertinence, but I wonder whether sub-paragraph (e) should require the authorities to submit draft a draft measure for approval by Synod by a certain date – perhaps prior to the next winter session.
My suspicion is that (e) will result in the usual protracted consultation process, which might result in some timorous proposals being submitted by the authorities within two or three years (or longer) because of ‘complexities’…
Query whether, assuming that there is stasis within the Commissioners and on the bench, it would be best to consult with a parliamentary agent to prepare your own draft measure over the next few months (which would establish an indemnity fund), which could then force the Legal Office to come up with a credible alternative proposal. I’d suggest a law firm like, say, Bircham Dyson Bell, which prepares a lot of private legislation for parliament, rather than a firm like Lee Bolton or Winckworth’s (that also have roll B agents, but which are so close to the Church). Alternatively, there must be retired parliamentary counsel who might be able to assist.
Then, if the deadline by which the Commissioners must produce something plausible passes without their proposing anything substantive, Synod could vote on the draft measure prepared by your team.
Where I think things become complex is in calculating the amounts of compensation to be paid; I note for instance that some claimants are requesting increments to their pension funds because of shortfalls which may have been attributable to shortfalls in contributions (presumably because their ability to earn enough at work has been a function of the distress they have suffered). It is at this point that questions of causation/remoteness can become difficult, not least actuarially. Presumably, the administrators of a compensation fund (whom I suggest should be entirely separate from the Church) might have to perform a quasi-judicial function in determining the quantum of any award; this might well increase the levels of ill-feeling amongst claimants and their supporters. However, I do not think that this should necessarily be a blocker to the establishment of a decent compensation fund.
Many apologies if you have considered this already (as I suspect you have), or if you have much better ideas. In any event, please accept my best wishes for your endeavours.
However, I am afraid that I am finding it hard to alter my views about the efficacy of Synod; to me, it is like the Wilhelmine Reichstag: a platform with no power. Legislatures throughout history have only been meaningful and successful deliberative bodies when they have gained the ability to control supply; Synod hasn’t, so isn’t (though I am by no means wishing to deprecate the very valuable contributions made by a number of Synod members, like yourself).
Thank you David for honouring this blog with such important material. I hope it is accepted. A survivors group has also availed themselves of this platform to communicate with Synod. I hope members find their way here to read that important material.
Froghole refers to the difficulties of causation and remoteness of damage when considering reduced pensions resulting from inability to work and maintain pension contributions. But such matters are regularly dealt with by senior judiciary and the legal profession.
No one would willingly wish this to be a monopoly function of the Courts, with adversarial procedures and attendant expense. Tribunals were created by the Government in the mid-20th century with the avowed purpose of avoiding both of those features. (But see the necessary note of caution below about duplication of compensation.)
I am probably out of touch, but about 25 years ago the Courts (in England and Wales) were using a formula “The Lost Years” to deal with precisely the above scenario. Unless things have changed, the Courts were always wary of actuarial evidence, preferring, and relying on, their own tried and tested assessment of past financial loss and applying a multiplier and multiplicand formula for continuing and future loss which took into account accelerated receipt of payment of future loss. Of course, there was a rough and ready kind of built-in actuarial element in all this. And, of course, medical evidence is an essential element of the compensation equation. It may sound very complicated, but the general principles were straightforward.
Any independent Church compensation scheme must recognise that any claimant has a separate right of action in the Courts. Presumably there should be some provision which would prevent duplication of compensation.
Possibly a recently-retired High Court judge or QC (practising or retired) would be an ideal chairperson of any compensation scheme. I understand that people are wary of lawyers, but this is a field of work where legal expertise is essential.
Thank you so much! This blog has a very useful function, which notes how many characters have been consumed within the 3,000 limit. It said that I had 10 characters left by the time I finished the note above. For some reason it lopped off the last ten or so characters. I should have known better as this has happened before. Also, I suspect that I might have been one of the culprits in writing prolix notes, so I must say that the limit is a useful one in disciplining me into brevity.
Thank you also for your kind remarks. I think this blog has become one of the best, of the available blog sites relating to the churches. I very much appreciate what you write about the Church as a whole and, in particular, helping to give voice to people who may sometimes feel voiceless. I don’t mean to be patronising, but what you are doing here is a vital pastoral task and your ‘speculations’, as you describe them, seem always to be right on point.
I actually have nothing to do with the Church; I am no longer even on an electoral roll. However, I have been undertaking a pilgrimage around the country for over a decade (including to Lechlade), and so have worshipped at a silly number of parishes. Inevitably, I get to hear a number of things usually to do with local issues, but – periodically – they can be germane to the topics you tackle on this blog.
A skilled physician makes her diagnosis from outside the patient. She takes takes a history, examines him and may request special investigations such as blood tests or in more recent years, more elaborate endoscopic views for example. But the majority of her data are obtained from the outside.
The Church is a sick patient. A skilled and experienced observer can “see” what’s going on from outside the Body. Often it takes a second opinion, or a synthesis of eclectic views to produce a more reliable and comprehensive view of what’s wrong. There maybe and often is, comorbidity.
I’m sure Froghole is right about the value of this blog, and I believe it makes a valuable contribution in getting to the heart of what’s wrong.
As to how the patient may progress, and what treatment is needed, we’re all probably working hard on this in our various ways. Some of us are scratching our heads as to what can be done to improve things.
Ironically, those at the heart of the Church seem to be the last to realise anything is wrong.
Many thanks Stephen. I love the use of Psalm twelve. It opened my eyes as to why we refer to the court process as a trial. Regarding the consultant physician looking from outside, I recalled Jeremiah – “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why is there no healing for the would of my people?” (8:22)