Last week the Church of England published two documents which, between them, revealed much of its current thinking over safeguarding. I penned a rapid reaction to these documents over the weekend, trying very hard to be positive over the obvious efforts that are currently being made by senior officers in the Church to make things better. Since writing those comments, I have had a chance to reflect further about the Archbishops’ Council statement and the job specification for a new senior post for a Development Manager (Redress Scheme). These later reflections have picked up on the reactions by some of the online networks of survivors. I do not share the outright cynicism of some, but I have become increasingly aware of some of the practicalities of the proposed changes. The Church wants to show to its members and to the wider public a more generous open attitude, a stance of caring compassionate empathy towards survivors. To say that this shift is going to be difficult is, to put it mildly, a massive understatement.
As I suggested in my last piece, there is a great deal to be discovered about current attitudes in Church House through a careful reading of the job description for the new senior post. Everything that appears must have passed through the scrutiny of many readers. It thus represents the attitudes and opinions of many senior figures in the Church or at least has their blessing and approval. We can, I believe, read this job description as a genuine statement of intent to create good practice in the future by the Church of England.
The response to survivors by providing financial relief, is currently provided from one of three sources. The Church Commissioners, the insurers and the dioceses are all mentioned as potential sources of financial payments. In the case of the Commissioners, I read of one recent case where money was found to help a survivor going through a serious crisis. The cases involving the Commissioners are probably exceptional. Most of the money that gets awarded to those who have suffered abuse, comes from the church insurers. In practice we are speaking about Ecclesiastical Insurance Group (EIG). For this insurance compensation to be paid out, there is in operation a legal process worked out and negotiated by lawyers on both sides. This avoids the expense of a full court hearing. The dioceses seldom seem to have any money to provide for survivors and when money is paid out, the sums received have typically been paltry. They rarely exceed £500 for counselling or some other immediate need. Dioceses, as far as I know, do not ever appear to budget for the needs of survivors. Even if one or two dioceses have given money to survivors, that again would be a highly exceptional event.
The current scheme of financial redress via the EIG has been described vividly by Gilo and others. To be fair to the insurers, they see themselves as doing a job and, as far as possible, they have an obligation to protect their financial interests by paying only what is legally required of them. The payouts to victims accord with protocols which EIG and the rest of the insurance industry adhere to. EIG will pay out in accordance with the terms of the policy held by the stakeholder, the parish or diocese. Successful claims follow the production of incontrovertible evidence of abuse. The abused will normally have provided this through pointing to a criminal conviction by a perpetrator, or linking a claim to an open confession in front of witnesses. Even then, to judge from the experience of some, the actual sum of money handed over is still subject to reduction, if lawyers acting for the insurer can argue that the some of the mental damage caused by the abuse was already present. It is here that poor ethical practice can enter into the dealings of insurance companies and lawyers. If such a situation does arise, it should be recognized that the client, here the Church of England, should accept responsibility for ensuring that ethical practice is always upheld. Julie Macfarlane described her experience of standing up against lawyers employed by the Church as ‘brutal’. It felt to her as though the Church itself had withdrawn from the field and was letting someone else do what amounts to dirty work on its behalf. Those among the survivor population who do make it to the other side and receive pay-outs from the insurers do not receive life-changing amounts of cash. The Church does appear finally to recognise this. The word ‘redress’ which they are now using is a stronger word than compensation or negotiated settlements. Sums of £30,000 hardly compensate for ruined lives, the loss of profession, housing and the chance of a secure retirement.
Escaping from the insurance/lawyer led culture of financial compensation will not be easy for the Church. Additionally the introduction, as the job description puts it, of ‘a form of solace designed to provide a degree of comfort to the victim for his or her injury and to make some attempt to put right the wrong that he or she has suffered’ will need a massive shift in culture. It is not just the introduction of a new way of doing things that will tax the future manager of the Church’s redress scheme. It is the sheer number of unknown victims that may emerge as the result of this new initiative. Initially the idea is to have a pilot scheme, funded by the Commissioners, to provide support for a small number of known survivors. There could then also be hundreds of individuals, as yet unidentified, out there who need to be helped. When the scheme has bedded down, there is the potential pastoral care of these individuals. Where are all these caring people going to come from? Many are looking for precisely ‘a degree of comfort’ but have not so far found it in the Church. Does the Church then look outside its boundaries to find people who can offer ‘comfort’? These helpers, whether or not professional, will need a measure of skill to do this kind of work. Also, there will need to be some sort of safeguarding process to weed out the wrong kind of ‘helper’. The list of things to be done before a pilot scheme can be extended more generally to the wider public is likely to be extremely complicated. A final point to be made is the way that any mention of money being handed out by the Church to sufferers could have a terrible corrupting effect on motives and behaviour. The lawyers who assist survivors at present are among the most ethically principled I know. What will happen if floodgates of financial redress are opened too wide? Will we get phone calls from computer voices asking us if we have ever been abused by clergy or the church? The Church may need to employ an army of new people to protect itself as well as administer this new compassionate approach.
Further ideas occur to me. Each of the 42 Church of England dioceses have DSAs (Diocesan Safeguarding Adviser). Some of these individuals are very good and their responses to survivors have been of the highest quality. Others have been less successful according to the reports that reach me. But good or less good, these DSAs would be more effective if they also could administer a modest budget for survivors so that words of sympathy could be backed up by instant help in the form of funds for specified purposes. There is something crazy about a survivor having to curtail a course of therapy simply because they cannot afford it. A initial £10,000 p.a discretionary fund for each DSA would make an enormous difference to many suffering individuals who are waiting for the full unrolling of a national redress scheme.
My final concluding comments inject a note of pessimism to this Redress project. The old pattern of controlling redress by making survivors pass through a very tight scrutiny process organised by lawyers and insurers had one advantage for the Church. It cut down those who were eligible for redress to a bare minimum. The fact that it was conducted, at times with a callous cruelty, meant that only a few came through the process to receive any money. A new scheme which apparently looks to the Church Commissioners rather than the insurers to fund it, is going to be enormously expensive. Taking away some of the scrutiny, to let many more through the process, is going to create a situation which makes it impossible to anticipate its eventual size. The people who contact me through the blog with some story of abuse, are numerous. Much of the behaviour they record is not technically criminal, but it still deserves apology from the institutional Church. Is the Church going to be better at this aspect of redress? Some of the highest officers of our national Church have found this part of the redress process harder than anything. We only have to remember the excruciating scenes at the IICSA hearing when our Church leaders seemed unable to offer any kind of apology to Matt Ineson. This single memory makes me ask whether the Church is indeed ready for this new initiative. Perhaps after all the Church is still window dressing as a way of protecting itself from the scrutiny of IICSA.
https://pathways.churchofengland.org/job/pathways/1989/development-manager-redress-scheme
On the previous thread I drew attention to the announcement by the Bishop of Southampton of a new support initiative called “Safe Spaces” being jointly undertaken by the Church of England, the Church in Wales and the Roman Catholic Church. This is another ‘pilot’ scheme, initially for two years. On my reading it will provide independent counselling and advocacy for abuse victims.
It will operate independently of all three participating churches by employing ‘Victim Support’ to provide the service with trained personnel (based in Yorkshire, we are told) and promises immediate responses. Understandably, its role does not include providing financial compensation which will continue to be the responsibility of the Church involved.
The announcements of the two schemes, literally within days of each other, seems significant although I haven’t seen any cross-reference as to how they might interact. Clearly there is possibility of overlap in choosing where to make a first approach. It may be that the two schemes can operate in tandem; ‘Safe Spaces’ could be particularly valuable to survivors wishing to have an independent supporting voice at meetings or hearings.
Both schemes on paper look good. I have more confidence in Safe Spaces because it is independent.
I have little confidence in the redress scheme, because it isn’t. Having spent the last year going through the NST core group process, my conclusion is the church is not fit for purpose when it comes to safeguarding & it should all be removed to an independent body.
I am glad for the survivors already identified who will be helped by the independent pilot. I have received money from the NST & one diocese for therapy, which has been a life saver.
However I am concerned about how it will be sustainable & how many survivors will be able to access it. The church doesn’t operate on the balance of probability, but on incontrovertible evidence. Of course most abuse happens in secret, most abusers don’t confess, so most of us can’t ‘prove’ that were abused. I have just learned that my account is not deemed reliable or credible enough, so my report is ‘unsubstantiated’. My truth is not enough for the core group, so presumably will not be enough for the redress scheme either.
I am also very disappointed that there is nothing in the job description about restorative justice. Once again with the church it’s all about lawyers and money. I know that is important, but it’s not the most important thing, and should happen within a restorative justice framework. I don’t mean simplistic meetings between victim & abuser (which will often be unsafe or impossible). I mean a value base and total approach that is aiming to restore and heal the broken relationships & community, of everyone affected, and of bringing justice for survivors.
There is no justice for survivors in the current system and this would be a great opportunity to change that.
I hope the scheme works well for the people in the pilot, and it’s good to see that something has been pushed through so quickly, so grateful to all the people who have made that happen.
But the future? Tbh right now I have no hope anything will be better, but that’s probably just me.
P.S. The salary for the scheme manager did make me blink, especially when the church keeps telling survivors it doesn’t have any money!
“What will happen if floodgates of financial redress are opened too wide?”
Perhaps this explains the Church’s foot-dragging. I note that the litany of complaints against the Church’s mishandling of safeguarding issues has occurred at roughly the same time as compensation for the PPI mis-selling scandal has been disbursed. Prior to the window for claims closing in August 2019, Lloyds TSB was reporting up to 800,000 claims being made a week. According to reports in the spring of this year some £38.3bn had been paid out to claimants by the banks and their insurers. I daresay that some people in Church House have been looking at the pay-outs being made by the banks and have said “be warned”!
Whilst I suspect that there will be far fewer claims made by victims, there is a risk that in the current economic climate some people might make opportunistic claims. There is a further risk that the Church will feel constrained to apply a more demanding standard of proof, which will result in stress amongst genuine victims, arguably subverting much of the purpose of the new scheme.
All this also needs to be seen in the context of: (i) net negative real interest rates, which are putting insurers under intense pressure and robbing them of compounding; (ii) the collapse of the commercial property market, hitherto a staple source of profits for insurers; (iii) negative yields on most government bonds, also a staple for insurers (excepting the bonds of ‘high yield’, i.e., developing countries, many of which have suffered economic collapse since March); and (iv) a very fragile market in equities. The financial relationship between the Church and EIG is something of a mystery to me, but I suspect that EIG may be constrained to charge the rest of the Church higher premiums *if* the pay-outs prove to be substantial. It remains to be seen whether the Commissioners or the parishes would bear that cost; of course parish finances are a disaster at present.
The Church might therefore consider that it is walking a financial tightrope (I am speculating, of course), and that the trade-off between reputational and financial hazard is a fine one.
Stanley Monkhouse and others (I think Richard Symonds on TA) have noted, illuminatingly, that these announcements have been made by the Church only a few days before IICSA releases its findings and recommendations about the Church (I believe on 6 October). Frankly, if the Church had made these announcements at least several months ago it would look less like the Church is engaging in a form of plea bargaining with IICSA or getting its PR management in before the recommendations are published. The Church could easily have issued and implemented substantial proposals some time ago: after all, the IICSA hearings on Chichester started as long ago as March 2018, and the Church can be surprisingly fleet of foot when it wants to be.
I was actually offered money to pay for counselling by a Bishop. The problem was I’d been assessed as not needing it! But he knew better! So he could use my not having it as a stick to beat me with. And it delayed my rejoining humanity. Balance of probabilities can be used in secular life for compensation cases. But then again, small point in being awarded compensation that in the end, the church can’t pay!
There seems to be some coyness in quoting the sum initially available for the C of E pilot redress scheme, but it’s in print (both sides of the Atlantic!) as “up to £200 million”, a figure which I frankly found staggering. Can things really have been this bad? The Church Commissioners are said to be the funding source.
The appropriate burden of proof which claimants will be required to establish is one of the items which the appointee redress scheme development manager is instructed to address.
Absolutely O can believe things are this bad!
But I do worry about the burden of proof.
Obviously there are difficulties. The financial cost may be enormous, at a time when the Church already has problems. Deep culture change will probably take a generation; place-holders and time-servers won’t change their attitudes overnight. And the burden of proof could be a problem.
On the other hand, I do think there are some reasons for hope that these initiatives might signal the beginnings of real and necessary change.
Firstly, we have a new Archbishop of York, and one who seems much more alive to the issues than Abp. Sentamu ever did. Cottrell has admitted to one serious safeguarding error, but seems to have learned from it.
Second, there has been substantial change in the personnel of the NST, carried out quietly over the past months.
Third, there is talk of independence in safeguarding. It’s still vague, but if the Archbishops and Archbishops’ Council have finally accepted the need for independence, that’s a major change.
Finally, many survivors, including myself, have opted for to pursue the Church for compensation because we had been unable to obtain justice in any other way. An apology and public admission that the abuse, and mishandling of complaints, should not have happened would have obviated the need for a civil claim. Rosie Harper and Alan Wilson make this point in their excellent book ‘To Heal and Not to Hurt’.
Truth and Reconciliation or restorative justice approaches, combined with timely resolution of complaints, may reduce the financial burden somewhat.
I agree that there is a need for caution in welcoming the two recent initiatives, and cynicism is understandable – especially in view of the timing of the announcements just before the IICSA report is published. On the other hand, if there is a genuine wish to improve on the part of our leaders – and I think there is – we ought to encourage it.
According to your twitter page Janet my leader said sex abuse was irrelevant. Not inspiring or encouraging. I cannot hope for anything while men like him are responsible for how cases evolve. When cornered, as always, he backtracked but any survivor under his watch knows just how disingenuous that response was. How do we have hope with people like that around. I am tired of hoping it is slowly killing me.
As I understand it, Bp. Jonathan said that the issues were ‘not relevant’ to the interfaith AGM he was conducting, rather than in a general sense. I agree that his response seems to have been both feeble and evasive, but I wasn’t at the AGM and don’t know the context of the meeting or the question. For that reason only I have hesitated to comment. I’m sorry to hear that his treatment of you and other survivors has been poor.
I’m offering only a limited amount of hope, in that I think the move to change is genuine on the part of some key people. As I said, place holders and time servers – and I might have added, dyed-in-the-wool establishment bureaucrats – are not going to change their attitudes overnight. It will take years for us to see a radical change of personnel and therefore of attitude. Sadly, that means many individual survivors will continue to suffer poor handling of their complaints.
Nevertheless, I for one am prepared to welcome the first of the pre-dawn light.
Absolutely Janet we should encourage all positive signs and I have always been careful to do so.
But Trish and I are, – or at least I am , don’t mean to speak for Trish – struggling with the fact that none of these deal with the core problem, which is how our investigations are conducted and concluded, how reviews get nowhere, how the burden of proof is on the survivor to provide evidence that we have been abused, how things are still being covered up, we are still being silenced, core groups are secretive and not geared in any way to justice for survivors, and none of this helps us.
Plus there is nothing in the JD for the reparation scheme manager about restorative justice.
Sorry I am just having a hard week. Don’t mean to be negative, but Like Trish at the moment hard to hold on to any hope.
Keep at it Jane. You’re doing the right things.
As to some of the comments made on this thread over the course of today, I hope that any amounts disbursed by the Church would be sufficient to put the victims back in the position they would have been in had the applicable abuse (including any procedural abuse) never happened. I suspect that will not happen, and I am not certain that the £200m (and thanks to Mr Wateridge for the reminder) will be sufficient. I suspect it will not have been released in any communique without some actuarial input, which suggests that abuse issues really are quite extensive.
Also, I am not certain that the £200m will be a gross or nett amount, not just of tax but also of disbursements on possible cross-charging by Church institutions, administration, legal and other fees. *If* it is a gross amount then the Church could well stand accused of disingenuousness.
As Mr Wateridge notes, it is “up to” the £200m, which suggests it could be far less, and that the £200m is presumably an absolute cap. Presumably, the Church believes it can wash everything away for that money.
Remember, the Commissioners have – or had – £8.7bn earlier this year, and that their fund increased by c. £400m over the preceding twelve months. The proposed £200m could therefore end up depriving them of little more than a few months’ capital gains which, in view of the Commissioners’ charitable status, are largely tax free. The victims, by contrast, will presumably be taxed on any compensation they receive.
TA has covered the CT leader, which seems have adopted the cynical view that a lot of the activity is belated window dressing or reputation-management.
As mentioned before, I am highly sceptical of any TRC process if (as in South Africa) it simply amounts to a form of finger-wagging, so that everyone in positions of responsibility can – more or less – carry on as before, subject to the application of politically correct rhetoric. Culprits in Church House, EIG, on the bench, etc., need not only to be sacked and/or sanctioned, but must be seen to be sacked/sanctioned, and not discretely let go (as per one person in EIG, presumably with a pay-off), if any TRC process is to have credibility.
So, I would urge victims to pay the closest attention to any small print in the torrent of proposals currently being released by the authorities, and I feel that the authorities should be asked some very searching questions about the details.
A number of victims have found the Church to be utterly untrustworthy. Does the appointment of a new primate or a shuffling of personnel in the NST mean that this ecclesiastical leopard has done little but change its spots?
I suspect the pending IICSA findings will be damning and might well recommend that the Church is stripped of its safeguarding and some of its disciplinary functions. This is something that the Church will have wanted to resist to the last, hence the recent hyperactivity.
Damages for personal injury (including interest on the damages if awarded by the court) are exempt from UK income tax or capital gains tax on lump sums. Settlements come in many shapes and forms, but the rules are the same.
Apologies for that. I should have checked as I had the (incorrect) impression that it was just an award by a court or tribunal. Very many thanks!
I reckon that getting on for half a million would put me back to where I might have been. Restitution. Recompense for twenty hideously hurtful years? And what about the damage done to my reputation? And now, how to ensure I never get treated like that again? They couldn’t do it, could they?
In the recent announcements by the CofE where is there any mention of investigating and holding to account and of those, including bishops, who ignored abuse, disclosures of abuse and have not only lied to protect themselves but have also used every method possible to avoid accountability at the expense of anybody? Has Justin Welby’s mantra of ‘take no further action’ really become the 5th Church of England gospel?
Holding people to account, that’s a bit radical Matthew! I think the shiny new proposals are supposed to deflect from that sort of nasty thinking so play the game!
I always think of the church as a leg ulcer which has to heal from the bottom up, sometimes healing can take place on the surface and it looks good but soon foul smelling pus bubbles up and explodes out. Holding people to account will be in that pus.
Great analogy! I think of it as a group of abscesses, some surface (eg leg ulcer), some visceral (internal), encroaching on the healthy tissues between them, and contributing to rapidly approaching sepsis.
Gilo and Bp. Jonathan Gibbs, lead bishop for safeguarding, were interviewed re. the Interim Pilot Support Scheme this morning on the Sunday Programme, BBC Radio 4. You can listen to the interviews from 24.50, and they last for about 10 minutes. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000n4vy