Safeguarding: Remembering a Birthday and an Anniversary

by Anonymous

Amid all the solemn events and the national mourning that have preoccupied most of us over the past week, the problems around safeguarding in the Church continue. The pain of unheard survivors and unjustly accused leaders is never resolved. Today, I include a contribution from a well-informed but anonymous source, taking a hard look at the current shambles in the Church of England around safeguarding.  The power of the piece is two-fold.  First, it brings together a great deal of information on the current (September 2022) state of play in the safeguarding world in the CofE.  Second, it asks the hard penetrating and critical questions that are possible only from a perspective of deep familiarity with all the relevant material.  Those of us who try to keep ourselves up to date with the record of the CofE in the safeguarding sphere, will be grateful for this analysis.  We can also applaud the clarity that it brings to what is a highly complex and often confusing area of church life

What do Bishops do in response to the case of a safeguarding abuse referral?  You might think that they would all, to a man or a woman, immediately refer such disclosures. This is what clergy are supposed to do according to the guidelines from the NST (National Safeguarding Team). Clergy are supposed to listen to responses of abuse in a non-judgmental way, carefully note the allegation of abuse, reassure the victim, and then report this.

Yet Bishops do not. If the complaint is about a safeguarding abuse, notwithstanding their primary duty of care  and obligations as Charity Trustees  their default response appears to instinctively incline  towards reputational management.  First their own. Second, their line-manager (if they have one). Third, their employer (CofE).  

Victims of abuse know first-hand that in the CofE the application of safeguarding protocol is something of a lottery.  In the Chichester Diocese we have heard recently how abusers can find their way back into church without proper risk assessments.  Yet elsewhere in the London Diocese, Fr. Alan Griffin was driven to despair and suicide through his treatment by a grossly incompetent, non-transparent and unaccountable safeguarding culture that, even this late in the day,  seems to be scarcely improved since the evidence given to the IICSA inquiry.

The case of the former Dean of Christ Church, Prof. Martyn Percy also involved falsified risk assessments which were disproportionate and cruel.  The Bishop of Oxford, DSA, Diocesan lawyers, head of HR and senior clergy all deemed these assessments as fit and proper while no one in the process admitted having had any hand in writing them. What is clear is that none of the ten independent “risk assessors” approved to act  in such matters on behalf of the Diocese had anything to do with them.

All these flawed examples of process were supposed to be put right by the creation of the newly created Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB).  It was designed to answer the many expressions of dismay about safeguarding practice at every level of the Church.  General Synod was treated to assurances by Bishop Jonathan Gibbs extolling the” independence” of this new body, and the huge competencies of board members. But behind the façade, things were unravelling fast.

The problem with the ISB,  apparent from the beginning of its existence, was that it was unaccountable to anybody and lacking in professionalism and competence.  In its first year there were two serious breaches of data, leading to the suspension of the Chair, perhaps permanently. The Information Commissioner’s Office ruled against the ISB over the leaking of data, and it is currently under scrutiny from the Charity Commission.

Was the ISB ever independent? No. In spite of what was claimed by Bishop Gibbs, the ISB was and remains a creature of the Archbishops’ Council. It is they who have power to appoint  and removed its Chair

In a fortnight, the first birthday (the drum roll, fanfare and announcements, welcoming the ISB) will be upon us.  But as things stand, little has been achieved and nothing has changed for victims of sexual abuse and abuses of safeguarding process in the CofE.  The decisions that are made as to who is allowed to get off scot-free and who is strung up for failings seem arbitrary. So much of what takes place seem to be about preserving good PR rather than delivering truth and justice for the Church.  

The lawyers and PR agents who enable these processes use a number of underhand practices. The Percy case seemed particularly rife with ‘dirty tricks’, like leaking false information to the press.  There are cover ups of bad practice , not least the use of anodyne “learned lessons reviews” which are designed to ensure that nobody is actually held to account for bad practice even those with fatal consequence. The Archbishops know about all this. They do nothing. 

When things go wrong there is no appeal.  If a Core Group fails you or if a Bishop abuses you through the safeguarding process there is no process for seeking redress. Remember what the Coroner said about what it described as the   ”preventable death” of Fr. Alan Griffin?  The Archbishops have opted to forget. Not one of the incompetent people or processes in this and other cases has been brought to account. Not one. That is corrupt.  There is no other word for it.

Anybody can be abused by NST processes, so it is worth reminding readers of what they can expect if falsely accused. Or, for that matter you have actually been abused, and are intending to report this to their bishop.

  1. Nobody working in CofE safeguarding at any level is ever subject to any kind of oversight by an external regulator, minimum standards or professional code of compliance. This is a Wild West.
  2. Each Core Group can set its own terms of reference, and is not bound by any good practice  from previous Core Groups.  No member of any Core Group has to be trained in any relevant professional skill. It is all pretty ad hoc.
  3. No person working in the Church safeguarding is required to complete mandatory training in unconscious bias. Core Groups largely comprise untrained, unregulated, unaccountable and unlicensed individuals. Conflicts of interests are not identified or sanctioned.
  4. Good news. You can complain about your Core Group. Bad news. You can only complain to the Core Group you are complaining about.  They are unlikely to respond to you.
  5. In other news, your Core Group may let you see the minutes of its meetings. Or it may not. It may meet as often as it likes, and not tell you. It can change its membership – but as you often won’t know who is on it in the first place, this can hardly concern you. It might meet frequently. Or seldom. There are no minimum moral, legal or professional standards to which CofE Core Groups work. They can make it up as they go along. And they do.
  6. Your Core Group will make important decisions that may have serious personal, legal, financial and reputational consequences for you. You can be sure that no independent legal expertise will be present in these discussions.  Nor will there be an independent person able to advice on such issues as mental health, your vulnerability and the like.  (See earlier discussion of Fr. Alan Griffin, and how to complain in 4 and 5, above).
  7. Your Bishop – omniscient – is likely to know what your Core Group have discussed and decided before you do. You cannot complain about your Core Group. Or your Bishop. Incidentally, even if your Core Group make a statement, the Bishop and his Communications Director have the total and absolute right to interpret the decision as they wish, and if needs be, alter the plain meaning of sentences, or just ignore it.
  8. You can write to anyone you like in the NST or Archbishops’ Council about this, and  they will tell you there is nothing they can do. They are only following process. They are only obeying orders. Nobody is ever responsible, as the Bishop of London can confirm (c.f. Griffin case).

Because the Church of England is exempt from the 1998 Human Rights Act there is no access to the Civil Courts for remedy even if there have been fundamental breaches to the principles of Natural Justice or the Right to a Fair Trial. The Church documents may pay lip service to the HRA, but that is all it is. The Church will ruthlessly plead its immunity as and when it suits. The CofE has its own legal system and the Bishops are judges, jury, prosecutor, pastor and friend to you, all at the same time. There is no conflicts of interest policy.

Would you expect to meet any sane person who, looking at the menu above, might take a chance on a process that has more in common with mediaeval witch trial than a system of open justice? But if you try and protest or complain, the bad news has one more twist. It is this. Nobody is actually running safeguarding. Everybody has plausible deniability for responsibility.  

Senior leaders in the CofE like to pretend they are on the side of the victims of abuse and miscarriages of process and injustice. They groom victims accordingly. But all the leadership of the CofE want to ensure is that they never, ever, have to face scrutiny, a courtroom or justice such as befell Cardinal Law. Because they’d end up in the dock on the defence team, explaining why they did nothing about the clergy they were all protecting and their hapless victims. Likewise, the CofE senior leadership don’t really want to be in the dock defending incompetent, corrupt and vindictive processes.

Reform will take a long time to arrive.  It takes moral courage and compassion to do the right thing, and this seems to be absent among our church leaders. Victims of abuse will only secure justice when the CofE accepts that it will always have an inherent conflict of interest in trying to self-correct its failings, corruptions and abuses whilst simultaneously preserving its reputation. It needs to hand over all responsibility for safeguarding cases to a proper professional regulator with the teeth, clout, resources and fearless courage to speak truth to power, and bring the CofE to heel. There is no other way.

When transparency, honesty and integrity are absent, all that is left to victims is legal action.  Repentance and redress must precede any attempt at reconciliation. At present, we have victims of abuse waiting many, many years for investigations to start or conclude. These investigations are often half-baked, and lack the resources, expertise and regulatory framework to compel subjects to engage with them.

So, Happy Birthday to the ISB – a body launched with such fanfare, but was rapidly shown to be no more than a ‘sleeping policeman’. It had no legal, financial or any independent identity apart from its creator, the Archbishops’ Council. 

Fortunately, the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority (SRA) have already stepped into that argument.  Plexus, the lawyers acting for the ISB, are currently under investigation for possible “serious breaches” under the SRA code. This follows Plexus’ plea that the ISB cannot be taken to court because it has no real kind of existence. Much like a Core Group for the NST. Or indeed, the NST itself. Here the Archbishops would  do well to bone up on what has happened in other parts of the world to churches and dioceses that refuse to accept responsibility for their failings, misconduct and sins. In the end, the law will change.  Perhaps  the best example of this comes from Australia, with the ‘Ellis Defence’. 

There was once a commonly used device by denominations that wanted to avoid vicarious liability and responsibility for the actions of its clergy, boards, dioceses and committees. For a  long time you could never sue churches. The Ellis Defence arose in the case of Trustees of the Roman Catholic Church for the Archdiocese of Sydney v Ellis & others, in New South Wales in 2007.In this case, Mr Ellis brought a claim against the Roman Catholic Church for the Archdiocese of on the basis that he had suffered historic sexual abuse.

The Diocese argued that while all the property of the Church was held by the trustees in each diocese incorporated under the 1936 New South Wales legislation, those same trustees were not responsible for the conduct of the clergy and there was no legal entity available to be sued in respect of the misconduct of the clergy themselves. They kept playing this ‘get out of jail card’. It had always worked.

So the Court originally upheld the Diocese’s argument, and crushingly, Mr Ellis was ultimately denied the opportunity to have his case determined on its merits as it was found there was no proper defendant to sue.  (NB: Memo to Bishops Gibbs, Faull, Conalty and to Archbishops Cottrell and Welby – this is exactly as you are currently doing with the ISB. As for bringing Bishops Croft and Mullaly to account, must we keep on waiting for you to act?).

Mr. Ellis, however, was not finished. His case went to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and in 2018, law reform was introduced across Australia to protect the victims of institutionalised child sexual abuse. New legislation was enacted that forced unincorporated organisations including religious institutions to nominate a legal entity with sufficient assets for child abuse survivors to sue. In passing legislation of this nature in the State of Victoria, it noted it was designed to, “quash an unfair loophole preventing child abuse survivors from suing some organisations for their abuse”.

So, where Cardinal Bernard Law (Archdiocese of Boston, USA) and others had gone before, so in Australia, eventually, did the courts decide that somebody had to pay, with some body ultimately responsible.  The demise of the ‘Ellis defence’ was a watershed moment, and marked a significant step in offering redress and protection for some of the people in Australia that had been abused by or failed by the churches.  It now meant that churches were no longer allowed to hide behind the law. May the CofE learn, mark, and inwardly digest.

The other anniversary coming soon is the Coroner’s Report on the preventable death of Fr. Alan Griffin.  Most of those involved in that scandalous tragedy remain in post without so much as an adverse note on their file. The Archbishops say and do nothing.  Nor does the Episcopal Triumvirate running the NST, nor any of the various advisory bodies allegedly  advising and overseeing this shambles. They’re all doing things behind the scenes, apparently, working under the radar to reform this debacle, just like the Archbishops claim too.  

Frankly, you’d be a fool to believe such assurances. This safeguarding sock-puppet show just goes on and on.  It is a grim performance, earning nobody’s trust, respect or confidence. It is a national tragedy that the CofE is led by such people in our time – a leadership lacking in moral courage, compassion and intelligence.  As long this continues, the Church of England does not deserve to survive.  At all.

About Stephen Parsons

Stephen is a retired Anglican priest living at present in Cumbria. He has taken a special interest in the issues around health and healing in the Church but also when the Church is a place of harm and abuse. He has published books on both these issues and is at present particularly interested in understanding how power works at every level in the Church. He is always interested in making contact with others who are concerned with these issues.

29 thoughts on “Safeguarding: Remembering a Birthday and an Anniversary

  1. Thank you Stephen for this superb dissection of the scandalous situation in the C of E.

    If I were to mention a bishop who tried to bribe a clergyperson to leave his post, but said bishop gave message that if the offer was refused, and it ever leaked out that the offer had been made, it would be denied; because clergyperson refused to be bribed – (several times his annual stipend I gather, which would be paid out of diocesan funds of course) – who then tried to force said clergyperson to leave and told him if there was a conflict of law between what the bishop said and the local law in force, said clergy person was to break the law and obey the bishop: one would be somewhat scandalised by such actions.
    But such actions took place, and Lambeth Palace, knowing all the facts, did nothing. That bishop stayed in post for a further 7 years until local ferment forced early retirement…
    I have the evidence and said person should have been suspended for both offences but LP closed ranks and brushed it all under carpet.
    Those who knew at LP should themselves be called to account – but how?
    I remain anonymous for this post just in case this finally gets full coverage as there are implications for my ongoing ministry… let’s see if this can be added to the utterly disgraceful situation we face – one rule for the elite, another for those who do the work…

    1. Pastoral Evangelist, this sounds like a dreadful situation. I hope you have managed to find some kind of redress – or at least a good position somewhere more congenial.

      The C of E’s abuses of process are truly shocking. And the longer they’re covered up, the more the rot proliferates, and the greater the stink when it all comes out. As it will.

      1. “Judgement begins with the household of God” says 1 Peter 4:17; I think the C of E does not know what to do about these scandals except to pick off clergy in parishes or blame whistle blowers.. In the case of said bishop above, he retired, his chief executive who should have been sacked, resigned when I pursued his lies, but neither were called to account. I think the view taken was “well, they’ve gone, let’s try and repair the damage.” But that fails to address justice; lots of folk caught up in the situation have not once been contacted nor have they had a direct personal apology, because there are some who refuse to acknowledge there was anything wrong – I don’t think those in power now know the details, and refuse to hear it if they were approached and the truth were told.
        Taking a line of grace, forgiveness is important, but that’s possible only when there is an acknowledgement of sin: Jesus has forgiven every sin and sinner, but they can only receive it when they confess their sin and repent of it. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and there is no truth in us”(1 John 1:8); no-one else is deceived for very long.
        However, grace abounds much more and many of us have “moved on” – we know where to take our pain, we know there is a Living God who delivers us from unforgiveness and we can sleep easily at night.
        But the institution is populated by well-meaning but sometimes utterly inexperienced people who don’t know what to do except to guard the reputation rather than confront the sin which so easily besets human beings.
        God is shaking His Church, and like a tree with rotten fruit, things are falling off.
        Look out for the External Safeguarding Audit report of Lambeth Palace – was due to be published in June, then pushed back to August, and still not published – just wondering if there might be an attempt to bury bad news when there’s lots of other things going on that are taking people’s attention…

        1. Thanks, I have been looking out for the Lambeth review and wondered what had happened to it. Also wondering what happened to the independent review which asked whether it is safe to make a safeguarding complaint in my Diocese. No updates on the Diocesan website.

        2. And the SCIE report on Bishopthorpe Palace which ABY promised the Feb 2022 General Synod would be published by Easter (2022 FAOD)?

          1. Reports and reviews are just a way of delaying the reckoning indefinitely. It’s the Sir Humphrey school of church leadership.

            But what does FAOD mean, please?

  2. I am the Anonymous who has supported Kenneth for 30 months. To avoid confusion with the writer I call myself ‘K. Anonymous’. I would agree that this blog expresses exactly our experiences; there is nothing there that is different from the injustice and suffering experienced by Kenneth, especially points 1-8. We have contacted fifteen organisations for help and have been refused. The reasons are generally that Kenneth is not ordained or that our case is Canon law not Civil law.

    I have spent time, daily for the past month, writing all the same complaints previously submitted, but this time based on Subject Access Information. In the material that we received there were 91 pages missing and much of what came was redacted. However, there was still a considerable amount from the past 30 months which was usable. Every complaint about the biased and prejudiced way in which Kenneth has been treated is now confirmed by dated emails, telephone conversations and details of Core Group meetings. These are facts and undeniable.

    The facts are an appalling indictment on this particular church. Lord Carlile (Micah 6:8 Initiative) and Dr Godfred Boahen (‘Declaration of Interest’) say it is unlawful for those with a conflict of interest to sit on a Core Group. Yet, Senior church members acting in Core Group meetings in Kenneth’s case have claimed on a formal Diocesan document, twice, that they have no knowledge of the boy complainant or Kenneth the respondent and therefore ‘no conflict of interest’. On the form it reads: ‘Declaration of interest’, ‘Does anyone know personally the Respondent and /or the victim/survivor? The answer is listed as, ‘No’. ‘ In fact they have worked closely with both for nine years since they joined this particular church as senior clergy members; the boy with his involvement with the choir and Kenneth because of his many voluntary activities within the church.

    It is claimed, even in Core Group meetings, that their reason for declaring Kenneth to be ‘High Risk’ (without any investigation or scrutiny of any evidence) is based solely that: ‘ i) The Complainant has not withdrawn his allegation ii) There was no CCTV available iii) There were no witnesses’. A witness statement from a chaperone to say it would be difficult for a boy and man to leave the vestry unseen because the boys are chaperoned even if they wish to go to the toilet, was ignored on the grounds that she knew Kenneth. A year later the boy changed his story to say the three incidents took place in a crowded vestry.

    There is so much more detailed and dated evidence of bias and prejudice which is indisputable.

    I have sent this document which I have called ‘Abusive Safeguarding Practices’ to Lambeth Palace where I received a serious promise that the document would be read. However, having read Pastoral Evangelist’s comment above I do wonder…..

    1. This is an excellent post laying out the true state of safeguarding. I’m sorry to hear you’re still battling on but not surprised. It is hard and tiring work with apparently little to show for it. But If survivors do not battle on, I feel sure there will be no real reforms. I myself am still battling after about ten months to receive the assistance, required by law due to my disability, to file cdm against my Diocesan Bishop. My Bishop gave assistance to file cdm against my Rector by commissioning a barrister to leave out my complaints and ignore my instructions. My Rector, feels safe to criticise me in writing essentially for being blind and also categorically refusing me pastoral care and writing that I must not ask for it. He also maintains that a safeguarding report given at our APCM claiming all parish safeguarding guidelines, for the year our vicar admitted safeguarding failures and for which he received a penalty, was correct and refuses to have the report corrected despite the written decision of the investigating Bishop. My case shows safeguarding failures at parish, Diocesan, and the most senior levels. As my Diocesan Bishop is being protected from disciplinary proceedings because the Diocese charged me with the “criminal” offence of making legitimate safeguarding complaints, I feel that it is most unlikely real safeguarding reforms will take place for victims. As others have written, it is the reputations of clergy and the church which are “safeguarded”. I suppose the church will be permitted to abuse it’s own safeguarding guidelines and reforms for As long as our government does nothing to bring about change. So we battle on in the hope of bringing change about. Every little helps. I myself continue to worship despite My Rector streaming a sermon complaining about the use of sticks in church after I was forced to exchange my usual mobility aid for a guide cane following almost weekly harassment. So yes, I continue to use the much despised guide cane. But I feel it is highly unlikely our Rector has made his views know to the Bishop about the use of his crozier in our church, at least not whilst the Bishop protects him from disciplinary proceedings for abusive behaviour and other misconduct. It is probably more difficult for Kenneth to attend services. I wish you both well. Survivors know that we will labour under injustice, falsehoods and threats unless, and until our senior leaders remember their Christian vocations and decide to actively uphold the Christian faith and their own guidelines. I fear it will be a long wait.

  3. In my document I have referred throughout to Kenneth as the ‘Respondent’ so that the unsafe processes for other Respondents in a similar position can be seen. This document has wider applications for safeguarding processes.

    1. I am pleased you have done so as my husband also became a victim of the Diocese who did not wish to have the fact that one of our key team members required monitoring made known, and he became a respondent. Sadly, innocent respondents fail to receive justice and suffer unjust church processes. My husband was vindicated and declared not guilty in court after our Diocese made malicious charges against him. Sadly innocent respondents who are only dealt with by church procedures will not be as fortunate. My heart goes out to you both. I write to show that not everyone who is a respondent is guilty, but that that will not stop the church from treating them as such.

  4. Having been bullied for twenty years, and suffered the usual experience of having those in positions of power and influence ignore what was happening, I moved. I’ve mentioned before on this blog that my new bishop does seem to get it, and sent me a formal apology. Tomorrow I am going to talk to him both about restitution, and the future. Please pray for us both.

  5. I have spent time reading this blog several times. I particularly find the last paragraph powerful. It would seem everything that is done is just a PR exercise with no sincerity or intention to change the system. All words. Anonymous describes the Truth of it so well. Yet, as I wrote previously, I have sent a new document of complaint based on Subject Access Request which it was suggested by the Safeguarding Officer at Lambeth Palace I should write. It was not my idea. Now she has sent me a link to the NST who, I am told,

    ‘ has launched a national anonymous survey to listen to victims and survivors of any form of abuse and how they would like to be involved in the development and implementation of a survivor engagement framework.’

    I have been asked to alert as many people as possible, so I am alerting you. Could this be the beginning of change or yet another desperate PR exercise? We shall never know unless we try. Goodness knows much has been said and powerfully on this issue, especially this very blog. Surely those in power must start to listen at some point because if not, as Anonymous truly writes ‘As long this continues, the Church of England does not deserve to survive.  At all’.
    Perhaps if we all of us write they will at least be overwhelmed by sheer volume of complaints and experiences. It would at least be a sound base for them to work from.
    The survey can either be by email or a tick box reply to questions. The deadline has been extended from September 18th to October 9th.(I wonder why?).
     
    The link: https://www.churchofengland.org/safeguarding/survivor-engagement

    1. I think it’s another PR exercise – or a cynical ploy to keep us all busy and distracted. I’ve had dealings with the NST and Lambeth Palace safeguarding over several years, they convened a core group into my complaint, and they’ve not contacted me about this survey nor asked for any input from me.

      If they were serious about wanting input from survivors they would take the initiative to contact those already on their books.

      1. I agree with Janet. It was a member of NST who bullied me in an attempt to get me to give up my complaint against my Bishop. And another senior safeguarding member who had previously acted in my case who then “independently” reviewed it for past cases 2 . Not to mention all the criticism of NST in the public domain. As to the state of safeguarding at Lambeth palace under the safeguarding officer all I can say is why has the safeguarding review not been published? I could say more but regular readers of this blog will appreciate I have no wish to be dragged into court once again for making legitimate safeguarding complaints. I am afraid that everything is made to sound good to those who have not experienced at best ineptness, and at worst cynical corruption of safeguarding processes. Don’t hold your breath. I wish I could be more positive.

  6. The survey has been extended due to the period of national mourning. As of August there had been 114 responses to the survey. I have a deep level of cynicism regarding survivor engagement in the church and survivors that take part in feedback or ‘co-producing’ work are currrently rewarded with sizeable honorariums which could be viewed with some scepticism. Do survivors lose their independence if they accept the money? I never accept it and have told the NST they have to be clear that accepting it could impact benefits and tax. Personally I would rather see these sums of money going towards redress.
    However why I engage is because there are some survivors who always have a voice, who always get consulted so the more of us that get involved the more the power that certain survivors have dissipates.
    I understand why people don’t want to get involved and maybe it is just PR but equally what is there to lose because nothing else has worked and maybe survivors getting to meet eachother can begin to add leverage to situations even if that is not the intended outcome.

    1. I have several times offered to assist, but have never yet been consulted on anything. They seem very selective as to whose views they want.

  7. That was very true in the past Janet and I do remember that you got invited to a survivor meeting with the SRG a while ago. As I have said on this blog before anyone wanting to get involved with survivor engagemnet just needs to send an email to:

    engage(dot)safeguarding(at)churchofengland(dot)org
    Transferring the words in brackets to symbols and asking to receive the newsletter.

    Anyone doing this, be they clergy survivor or laity survivor, can then select what opportunities to engage in. It is not a selective process (though most opportunities happen in the day time so it benefits people that don’t work more, a point I have raised) People still have to fight their own personal battles but the hope is to change things going forward for everyone especially those that come after us.

    For ages I wanted survivors not to engage at all because I believed, and still do, that the quickest way to change an organisation is to not engage because these days they can’t survive without service user input. However there was always a hard core group of survivors that would engage and the church doesn’t care if they have 2 survivors or 200 as long as they can say survivors were consulted. So in the end I gave up and decided it was better that a lot of survivors engaged because the power is equally shared.

    My concern is not for survivors that know there is an opportunity to engage but who choose not to but for those not on the internet, in special units or without sufficient capacity to know there is the opportunity. However the only way to change that is by engaging so I will plod on.

    1. You’re right, Trish, that my statement was too sweeping. I have had 3 Zoom meetings with with senior church reps; though two of these were organised by survivors rather than the Church. I’ve never been a member of the Safeguarding Reference Group and never attended one of their meetings, though. There were a number of members of the SRG at one of the Zooms; that was the first time I’d heard of the SRG’s existence. Since I didn’t know what it was or what it did, and the members who were there clearly knew each other well, I felt very much wrong footed in that meeting.

      The third Zoom meeting was with Stephen Cottrell and was at his initiative. I enjoyed that conversation and he did ask if I had any suggestions to make. I gave him several but don’t know if he followed through on any of them. I subsequently sent him my CV as regards safeguarding issues (including my liturgical experience) and again offered to help. HIs only response was to suggest I support some survivors. Which I’m already doing.

      What I should have said is that I’ve never been consulted in a meaningful way on anything I wanted to be consulted about – shaping survivor engagement, designing services for survivors and their supporters, raising awareness of issues with congregations and clergy generally.

      And if I were asked now I would decline. I’ve utterly lost faith in the C of E and its leaders’ good intentions and I’ve been messed around far too much by the NST. I don’t intend to waste any more time on it.

      1. I do completely respect your decision Janet, trust me I am as fed up with the church as the next person. I think what really annoys me is that after having been involved in mental health service user engagement for many years because of my own diagnosis I am aware that they start from the premise that a lot of people won’t have internet, or only shared access and a lot of people they want to reach will be in units, prison or are educationally disadvantaged.

        The church seems to start from the premise that service users went to public school and have the latest high speed broadband which they can fiddle around on all day long because they don’t have to work.

        I count myself extremely fortunate now but that scraggly girl from the estate hanging round in gangs that I once was really objects to that middle class entitled assumption by the church and kicks back at it.

  8. I found your comments illuminating and informative, especially you Trish saying that some survivors taking part in feedback receive sizeable sums of money.This shocked me; genuine question: what are they paid for? Surely not for complaining about abusive safeguarding practices? What am I missing here? This payment is particularly confusing on the part of NST as Janet has found they are selective in whose views they want.

    I too have had bad experiences with the NST which is the reason I put this survey to you. I did not understand a seeming change of stance. I did wonder if it was the result of the Lambeth Safeguarding Review but now I learn from Mary that has not been published. Could NST be aware of the outcome even if it is not in the public domain? Nevertheless I do agree with Trish that we have nothing to lose in taking part in this survey and if we could make a massive response we might be able to shock them by the numbers and strength of feeling. Even if they ignore this they will know and be aware.

    Trish I have just read your latest comment and I will plod along with you, shoulder to shoulder.

    1. The payments I am aware of are compensation for taking time off work, which not all the survivors involved could afford to donate. Others waive it.

  9. Hi K. Anonymous, thanks for the support, as you sound healthily interested (you don’t have rose tinted glasses on) do consider writing to the email address I gave, as well as doing the survey ,and asking to be put on the newsletter emailing list, you don’t need to say anymore than that.

    Once you have that you will be able to better understand about the honorariums. The opportunities are about engagement not support (though that does sometimes come with it) so you might feedback on documents, or sit on a zoom meeting (loads of people are useless on zoom especially me so don’t panic about that) and discuss a particular topic. People do get a right old moan in but the primary objective is to improve things for everyone. This means people are giving up their time to take part and the survivor engagement officer is keen that is rewarded. For me the jury is out on that but the survivor engagement officer is almost impossible to dislike and I am a right grump! The suggestions from survivors are on the whole taken on board and I personally would have been most grateful if large numbers of survivors were able to have had input into policies, core groups, lesson learned reviews, CDM etc before I had to tackle them alone.

    If you do decide to forge ahead please do give a shout out to the marginalised. Thank you.

  10. Thank you for your advice Trish. I shall certainly support the marginalised if I have any opportunity to do so.

    I wish you well with your plod!

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