Like many people, I heard the announcement of Peter Ball’s death on Sunday evening on the radio.  My first thought was to realise how this news would stir up pain for the dozens of survivors of his abuse just as John Smyth’s death did last year.   My initial reaction was to say to myself, I have nothing further to say about Peter Ball. I commented on my blog every day last July during the IICSA hearings when for five days the focus was on his offending and the way the wider Church dealt with it.  The Peter Ball event is, however, bigger than the man himself.  It continues to represent a crisis for the whole Church which needs to be faced and dealt with if it is not to undermine the institution that Ball was supposed to serve.

History may or may not confirm my opinion that Peter Ball single-handedly did more damage to the Church of England than any other individual before him.  This claim may seem to be exaggerated.  I would support it by pointing out how the Ball offences were not just those he committed against the unfortunate young men who came under his influence in the 70s and 80s.  The harm that Ball did caught up countless others, the individuals who saw him as a man of God and someone representing a true spiritual life.  Everyone who modelled their idea of God on him and his life of holiness has had to suffer the appalling let-down of realising that much, if not all, of this outward show was a charade, an act designed to draw in individuals, often then to be manipulated and used.

The 21^st century has given us the expression ‘gaslighting’.  It is based on the story line of a film where the man of the family attempted to drive his wife mad by manipulating reality in subtle ways around her so that she could not be certain what was real.  Items of furniture are moved, lights left on, so that the target of gaslighting starts to have no confidence that her memory and mental functioning is operating properly.  The fixed points in our lives around which we build our sense of coherence and certainty suddenly become fluid.  Many people regard the social/ political situation in the States as an example of mass gaslighting.  The extensive lying by the President makes many people uncertain about what is true and real.  It will take time for American society to recover from the subversive attacks on truth by President Trump.

One way of reading the Peter Ball story is to suggest that a large segment of the church and the upper echelons of British society were the objects of a kind of gaslighting by the Bishop.   For many years he was set on a programme of manipulating the church and parts of establishment society to advance his social and other ambitions.  Ball was a man possessed with numerous gifts.  As an ex public-school boy educated at Cambridge, he understood well the class system and seems to have had no difficulty obtaining wealthy and influential friends.  But he possessed a particular gift which capped all the other advantages of class and education.  He possessed the gift or quality we call charisma.  Charisma is remarkably tricky to define.  At one level we experience it when certain individuals enter a room and somehow fill it with their presence.  The Conservative party is at present being seduced by the extensive charisma of Boris Johnson in his attempt to become Prime Minister.  Charisma is normally accompanied by charm, which, as the word suggests, has an almost magical quality.  A person with charm and charisma like that possessed by Ball will nearly always get their own way because the other person will feel swamped and overwhelmed.  The sheer power of the charismatic personality is disorienting and it is the mental confusion created that links charisma to the gaslighting process.  How do you stand up to someone who simply oozes charisma backed up by other forms of social influence?  Most people surrender to this kind of charm without fully realising that they have been manipulated and coerced into thinking and doing what the charmer requires.

The story after the 1993 Caution of Ball is, in part, the story of the way that he used gaslighting techniques to confuse and manipulate large numbers of people from the Prince of Wales down.  Most were taken in by his narratives that he was not a serious threat, or that he always had the interests of young people at heart.  The IICSA hearing heard how Ball persuaded public school headmasters to allow him to perform confirmation services even after warnings were being issued.  The boys at these schools were bowled over by the displays of charisma from Ball, as were their masters.  The sheer crowd pulling power that he could demonstrate never seems to have dimmed.  But we know that there was something artificial going which ultimately can be seen as highly damaging to the Church.

Charisma, as shown by numerous studies, often keeps close company with the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).  This short piece cannot go on to say definitively that Ball suffered from this syndrome.  What I can say, relevant to this attempt to understand the appalling damage that Ball did to his church, is that the kind of charismatic power that Ball exercised over others is often a cover for vulnerability.  Studies show that the flamboyance of narcissistic types is often found with a core of loneliness, pain and unhealed damage from childhood.  This may be the pattern we see in Ball.  The sheer charismatic energy that he exhibited, enthralling so many, was perhaps the sweet coating over a manipulative and empty interior.

Whatever the truths about Ball’s behaviour and his apparent ability to manipulate so many in and outside the church, certain uncomfortable facts remain.  First of all, Ball maintained his influence over many people for a long time so that they could not let go of their devotion to his ‘persecuted man of God’ persona until the trial in 2015.  The 2000 letters written to Lambeth by the great and the good in Ball’s support after his Caution also speaks of massive personal charismatic power.  How the writers of these letters have come to terms with Ball’s imprisonment and now death is of course unknown.  One can only speculate that, for some, if not the majority, faith in God and the Church has taken a considerable knock.  Most of us are buoyed in our own faith and encouraged by the faith of others that we admire.  The second uncomfortable fact is the apparent complete lack of remorse on the part of Ball for his crimes.  No attempts at reconciliation with victims appear to have taken place.  Did his faith and theology somehow justify his actions in his own mind?  We will now never know.  We are left with the damage caused not only to the victims of his attacks but also to the many individuals who wanted, even needed, him to be a model of holiness that their Christian journey required.  The numbers of this latter group must run into the thousands.  There will be many unhappy people today who are feeling the stab of a sense of being deeply betrayed by a man of outward holiness.  This quality was the outside husk of an inner devious exploitation.   That betrayal by Ball of those who looked up him is the most damaging part of his legacy.  The Church must own up to this damage and do something about it if it is to go forward with integrity.