In September 2018, the Church of England, as part of its ongoing safeguarding efforts, published a very comprehensive fact sheet on different types of abuse.  It is an attempt to encourage a reader to become used to recognising the great variety of abusive practices that can occur in the Church and elsewhere.  In 2015, English law codified the idea that domestic abuse is much more than just physical violence.  It may include a range of behaviours that come under the broad category of coercion and control.   Even without evidence of physical violence, a man or woman can now be convicted of a criminal offence for abuse.   Educating people to have a broader understanding of abuse in a religious context was also needed.  I have a personal interest in this topic.  When I wrote my book Ungodly Fear over twenty years ago, I was trying to explore this idea that the misuse of power in a church context was a widespread reality and the cause of much suffering.  Abusing power is a far bigger topic than just the sexual exploitation of a vulnerable person.

This morning, on a sister blog Archbishop Cranmer, we heard new details about the Dean Percy affair.  I do not propose to repeat the points made in that disturbing article, but to use some of Cranmer’s material to indicate that Percy has become the victim of many of the types of abuse mentioned in the 2018 document.  Apart from naming a wide range of abusive practices, the 2018 CofE document also provides suggestions of the way that the Church can respond to the victims and survivors.  Percy, because he has been labelled as a perpetrator, has not been offered much help, pastoral, financial or practical.  Help is supposed to be offered in such cases, according to the Church’s safeguarding protocols but only the tiniest amount has been forthcoming.  Somehow the level of vitriol in the College is such that a regime of extreme isolation has been imposed.  The help and support that Percy has been able to gather is that which has come from family and friends.  He has also seen the complete depletion of the family finances. 

The 2018 document first of all discusses emotional or psychological abuse.  I would see these two forms of abuse as sometimes distinct categories and, at other times, overlapping.   Over the past three years there have been many examples of psychological threats and abuse towards Percy.  Phone calls/emails late at night are part of the stock-in-trade for those who want to harass and put someone permanently on edge.  Also within a community like a college, it is not difficult to create an unfriendly environment for an individual.  Shunning and ostracism, when they are practised, are especially cruel.  This is a topic to which I often return in this blog as it is one of the most evil practices that can be enacted.  The 2018 document mentions this behaviour when it describes ‘causing or forcing isolation/withdrawal from family/friends and support networks’.  The extraordinary lengths to which the Censors and members of the Chapter has gone to prevent members of the clergy/colleagues even visiting Percy are described as practices that the Church should be fighting against.  Can unproven allegations of sexual harassment ever justify the rolling out of such viciously cruel behaviour?

Abuse can also be financial.  The 2018 document has in mind such things as the forcing of an elderly person to change a will or hand over property.  In Percy’s case, the financial abuse has been by forcing him virtually to bankrupt himself in employing lawyers to defend him in the first legal challenge by the College to oust him in 2018.  He was declared innocent of all the 27 original charges brought by the Censors.  Percy’s accusers were also shown up to have produced manipulated documents.  In short, the accusers engaged in lying to make their case.  Retired Judge Andrew Smith saw the lies and commented on them in his report.  In the latest attacks by College and National Safeguarding Team, overseen by the Bishop of Birmingham, Percy has been unable to instruct legal representation.  This is partly for financial reasons and partly for reasons of his health.

The CofE document mentions discriminatory abuse.  This is taking advantage of someone who is in a weaker position because of poverty, disability or some other handicap.  Discriminatory abuse is to be found all over the recent treatment that Percy has received.  The Sub-Dean, Richard Peers, has taken it upon himself to prevent even the fellow members of Chapter from making contact with Percy.   Such isolating of a sick man, socially, spiritually and psychologically is desperately underhand behaviour. 

Institutional abuse is described.  This is the kind of situation that might occur in a Home where one patient is treated badly because they are deemed to be difficult in some way.  When an institution, like a Home, turns against an individual, it is hard to see how anyone can resist such enormous pressure.  It is clearly going on at Christ Church. The financial bullying of Percy, backed by the enormous financial resources of the College, was another example of institutional abuse.   The Censors must be hoping that the Dean’s ability to fight back financially will eventually be defeated by the sheer fire power available to the College because of their endowments. 

Abuse by neglect and acts of omission are other examples of behaviour suffered by Percy.  The utter failure of the College or Canons to reach out to a sick man to offer help and support of any kind is an inexplicable failure of any institution, let alone one founded on Christian principles.  The 2018 document is not a particularly Christian document.  It is rather an adaptation of the Care Act of 2015 which wanted to show how we need to take a much broader understanding of abuse than society has done hitherto.  As with the Charity Commission, the values being articulated are human values.  If Christian individuals and institutions find these hard to hold on to, what can we expect of the rest of society?  Are we not able to hope that Christians take morality and goodness seriously?

The final category of abuse mentioned in the document is complex abuse.  This is a name given to a situation when an institution or an individual is using a variety of abuse methods against one person.  We have already indicated that Dean Percy is the target of a many-sided form of abuse.  Complex abuse might be considered to be an convenient shorthand for what is going on here.  But there is one great irony about the document Types of Abuse.  This was put together by experts in the Safeguarding world to help Christians identify those in need of help.  Here we are discovering that in fact it is, in this case, the Church itself committing acts of abuse against an individual.  If I am right in identifying six of the categories of abuse in this church document being set in motion by church officials, then someone needs to blow a whistle on this event.  We often speak about survivors on this blog, but here we have to describe Percy as a victim.  Six forms of abuse coming from two distinct institutions, operating with an extraordinary level of malice, is enough to put anyone into a breakdown.  No one going through such an experience is easily able to fight back.  Humanly, the force being used is barely survivable.  The only human strength that can operate here is that provided by supporters, family and friends.

Two things need to happen if the Church is to emerge from this disaster with any integrity.  One is that all the clergy who have been guilty of dirty tricks and abuse against Percy should be named in a new Clergy Discipline Measure process.  There have been so many procedural dishonesties in this episode.  One mentioned by Archbishop Cranmer, is what I call the dirty dossier.  This is a fraudulent risk assessment document submitted with the CDM documents to the Bishop of Oxford.  The College have admitted that they were wrong to back this document but the damage has done in creating the over-the-top risk assessment which has now been put in place around the College.  The second thing that could save the day and rescue the Church’s integrity from a mire of self- destruction, is for someone of stature to come forward.  They would then ask for all the destructive church processes to be halted for a while.  The one person that could do this is the Archbishop of York.  The Archbishop of Canterbury is likely to be entangled with the same legal firms as have been advising the Diocese of Oxford and Christ Church College, as well as the various bodies that work out of Church House.  Stephen Cottrell, hopefully, can recognise what a disaster these events are for the whole Church of England.  I believe that the paths of Dean Percy and Cottrell have crossed in the past.  If that is true, he will know that Percy is not a sex-crazed lunatic, which is how his enemies at Christ Church have been trying to portray him for their own political ends.  If the Archbishop pf York could put in place a moratorium on the church processes for three months, this might help to calm things down and stop the current madness infecting and afflicting the church in Oxford and elsewhere.   There is a crisis; we need something dramatic to happen to resolve things.  Stephen Cottrell, you are our last hope!