An open letter to all members of the Church of England General Synod, from victims and survivors of abuse in the Church of England
At your meeting next week, you will once again debate safeguarding in the Church of England. In February 2018 and February 2019, we sent you booklets called We asked for bread, but you gave us stones. In them, we spoke to you about the experience that victims of abuse face in dealing with your church. We also spoke to you in our book Letters to a Broken Church. We haven’t produced a booklet this year, because we have nothing new to add. For all the TV documentaries and shocking headlines, all the money wasted on undelivered schemes, and all the synod motions, not to mention the handwringing of archbishops, almost nothing has changed during this synod for victims of church abuse. The church still treats us as if we are a problem to be fixed. The restorative approach suggested by last year’s helpful ‘Ad Clerum’ from Blackburn Diocese (which you were prevented from discussing last time you met) is nowhere to be seen.
The motion that you will be asked to approve at this synod simply says that you will endorse the Archbishops’ Council’s response to the five recommendations made by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. Our response is – is that all? IICSA has been a traumatic and costly experience for many of us. The minimum we would expect is that you will accept its recommendations wholeheartedly and without hesitation. And we expect and demand that you accept whatever further recommendations come from IICSA in the report they will publish this Summer. Shame alone ought to be enough for you to do that.
We believe that you should go much further.
We hear repeatedly that the church is spending more and more money on safeguarding. Of course, we agree that preventative safeguarding should be given a high priority. But you also need to give attention to what happens when safeguarding has failed. You need to know that as far as we can see, the church has made no progress at all in caring for victims and survivors of clergy and church-related abuse. The much-vaunted “Safe Spaces” initiative has swallowed hundreds of thousands of pounds, and five years on nothing has been delivered. Without the dogged and costly work that survivors do in caring for each other, there would be even greater tragedies to report.
Synod members, please don’t issue another apology. Please don’t tell us how important it is to “listen to survivors.” Please don’t set up another half-baked inquiry or a working group. Your apologies are hollow, and your promises are empty because nothing changes. Please don’t leave this to the House of Bishops either. We don’t trust them. Too often our experience is that a small group of men at the heart of the church deploy their power, with the help of the church’s lawyers and insurers, to cover up wrong-doing and avoid caring for victims. We find ourselves constantly re-abused by the church’s responses to us.
We need you to acknowledge that you do not have the competence or the right to clear up your own mess. We need independent people we can go to to report abuse and find support; people who are not part of the church, and don’t wear the same uniform that our abusers wore. We need you to use your power as a synod to establish a properly funded scheme for support, compensation and redress for victims of church abuse. This is not
because we want your money. It is because being abused in church (or anywhere else) not only steals the victim’s dignity and self-respect. It also robs them of their livelihood, their security, their future, their health. More than half of all victims of abuse suffer long-term illness. We need you to pay for counselling; we need you to help us with living costs; we need you to fill in the gaps in our pensions. These are debts you as a church have incurred. Why should we routinely have to go cap in hand to bishops for help, only to be told you have no money and no resources? Why should we have to worry about housing costs, while our abusers live securely in vicarages and palaces? Why should so many of us find ourselves worse off as a direct result of disclosing our abuse to the church? A properly-funded redress scheme will cost many millions of pounds. But please don’t say that you have no money. It hasn’t escaped our attention that before they have attended to the needs of victims, the Church Commissioners have found £21million for a new library at Lambeth Palace.
If there is any good news, it is that an increasing number of General Synod Members in all three Houses know that radical change is necessary. Perhaps the best thing you could do for us is to set a clear and purposeful direction of travel for the next Safeguarding Bishop, and for members of the Synod to be elected later this year. The motion before you is anodyne, but the amendments we have seen seem to have some teeth. Perhaps, if enacted, they could lay the groundwork for progress. We urge you to adopt these amendments and begin the task of reconciliation with those who have been wronged.
Signed by victims of abuse by
Rt Revd Peter Ball
Rt Revd Victor Whitsey
Rt Revd Michael Fisher
The Venerable Tom Walker
The Very Revd (action ongoing)
Revd Roy Cotton
Revd Colin Pritchard
Revd Chancellor Garth Moore
Revd Jonathan Fletcher
Revd Trevor Devamannikam
John Smyth QC
Revd ** (name withheld at victim’s request)
Powerful letter that says so much of what is on my mind and heart at the moment. Thank you to everyone involved. Is there any way that it can be shared (like Jane Ozannes letter) so other survivors can sign? I would love to add my signature.
Not sure what ‘gaps in pensions’ is referencing but if it is the state pension which needs 35 years of national contributions to receive the full entitlement people should be aware of national insurance credits which can be paid to those who can’t work through illness or for caring duties. I have received them for both and the people I dealt with were friendly and helpful. Sadly this cannot be backdated and gaps can only be filled in for the previous 6 years by voluntary contribution anyway. I think this only goes up to 60 as well but worth looking into if you are too ill to work or caring for someone that is, and we will all be pushing up daisies if we wait for the church to come good.
Trish: Some overlap on this subject. See Froghole on ‘Trials in Church and State’ and my reply. Properly (and expertly) formulated, compensation can take full account of shortfalls.
Thanks Rowland, the responses of you and Froghole will be helpful for survivors seeking compensation through litigation. Whether that route is chosen or NI credits, without the need for litigation, medical evidence is crucial to the success of a claim and for abuse survivors that can be hard to obtain. Just because someone spent the year drinking or jacking up, because they could not cope with the legacy of abuse, it does not translate into proven medical exemption from work. I think the church has to accept that for many survivors the harm has been done and though they can put in place measures to help them in the future there will never be anything that compensates for all the lost years.
Indeed.
I don’t really know how you begin to quantify, and as you say, impossible to compensate with just money. I don’t like the idea that I am examined, as a survivor, first to evidence that the abuse took place, then to prove how much it wounded me. Surely it would be more just and compassionate to look at assessing compensation according to need, rather than loss? Starting with trained advocates, generous funding for therapy, a range of other healing and reparation options, depending on what survivor wants.
I couldn’t put a price on my suffering and I would find it insulting for someone else to try. But I can foresee another couple of years of weekly therapy, and weekly support from an advocate until my case is finished. And a spiritual retreat in a specialist centre would help me to resolve some of my faith issues. And a donation to a survivor charity would be a tangible apology. For example.
I’d like to see exemplary damages. That is, large enough sums to really hurt. I’m afraid I think it’s the only thing that would make the point. But I also want to see real change.
There is another avenue which I hadn’t considered until reading your post. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority is Government-funded and entirely independent. It doesn’t, of course, give any redress directly against the Church, and there are some fairly strict rules – such as time limits for claims, although the Authority does have discretion to extend them.
I put this forward, for what it is worth, while realising that it would not necessarily provide closure against the Church, but might be appropriate and certainly preferable to litigation in the Courts.
I understand English Athena’s point below, but personally feel that litigation through the Courts is probably the last thing that any survivor of abuse would want to experience.
Claims made against abusers in person aren’t likely to get anywhere – unfair as that might seem.
So, if the Church were to come up with its own compensation scheme, the CICA might be a very good model.
I have looked at this model, because I have never heard of it, I do hope other survivors look. In theory it looks fair, reasonable and well considered they even have a ‘hardship’ fund, which is a brilliant idea. If this works as well in practice I think it is a good avenue for individuals to explore.
As the amendment has been stopped at Synod, (though thank you David and others for persisting), it seems the church is nowhere near looking at a model like the CICA. If there is a slight positive in Synod rejecting the amendment it is that the disconnect between the decision makers and the grass roots people is becoming more visibly wider and in the end that is never tenable.
For what it is worth, amongst my previous experience I worked for a firm of lawyers for four and a half years before I was ordained, and my role was to assist in making claims for damages for people who had been injured in accidents. No, money can’t do everything – there are losses which cannot be compensated like-for-like, and many affects of injury are intangible and multifactorial and incapable of precise monetary evaluation. But sometimes it is only when large institutions like the CofE are forced to punt up serious money that they actually notice that there is a big problem. It is a a rather different big problem for the Church if its lived values show that it only notices these things when money is seriously at stake. (Jesus had words to say … )
The legal processes for damages claims are deeply flawed because the biggest “wrong” to the system is seen to be exploitation by opportunists rather than failure to address the needs of the genuine injured. People who are injured then have to “prove” again and again that they are not opportunists. The story of their injury is told over and over again as if it is their injury which defines their existence (what is the theology of that?) . The Church imitates the world and does much unnecessary damage to people as a result (as well as to its own reputation – though it seems to imagine that its own self-image remains mainly intact).
My technical knowledge is out of date, but I think I may have more experience of the field than most other clergy, and I have seen the damage that apparently “due process” can do.
Is it really the case that money will be the only language the Church really does understand in this field? If that is the case we have deeper problems than the internal dynamics of the various groupings of Bishops.
Well, as I said, I think so. Enough money to hurt.
But this misses the point that only the civil courts can award and enforce payment of damages (particularly exemplary damages), and I agree with Mark Bennet that the litigation process is usually painful, protracted and potentially expensive. I am not up to date with the present availability of legal aid, but that in itself doesn’t lessen the pain or lengthy times involved in an adversarial process.
As I said above litigation “is probably the last thing that any survivor of abuse would want to experience”.
The CICA route is rather like the DSS procedure in claims for Industrial Injuries and Disablement. It is an application to a Government department, with usually no lawyers involved or a hearing of the issues. Importantly, it is not adversarial at any stage. Obviously the facts have to be ascertained and medical evidence will be required. That doesn’t always necessarily mean personal medical examination if other records supply sufficient detail, but some medical examination is more usual. The medical examiner is instructed by the CICA (or DSS as appropriate) and, like the whole process, is completely independent. In both cases there is a right of appeal if the award is felt to be insufficient (or if there is no award at all). It’s very many years since I had any involvement, but I certainly had experience of the ‘no-award’ cases being reversed and inadequate ones being increased.
Which is ironic as it appears to be defense against paying money that most concerns them
Thank you Stephen for covering many important issues here. Thank you for standing alongside many and being a voice for many. The organisation “Broken Rites” relate to and have experience of issues of concern you have pointed out here. Through spiritual eyes, God is merciful and shows great mercy to us all. Throughout the scriptures, history and individuals lives, He shows and has shown great mercy. He whispers the way we should go; in this case now He is not whispering any longer. He is shouting about these injustices through many voices who have had to have great courage to break the silence through respect of the organisation, church and individuals. He gives us all many warnings when things are wrong. We can heed those warnings or ignore them. Platitudes will not suffice any longer. The victims of abuse by the church need to be heard and compassion, care and action needs to be given in great measure. When abuse at the hands of the church happens to individuals, their lives in every area including spiritual are effected, this is very serious. Thank you Stephen for being a watchman and prophetic voice in these troubled times.
Gutted to read that David Lammings amendment has been ruled out of order. Another slap in the face for survivors. I cannot express my feelings politely enough to share here. I hope a procedural challenge can be made. English Athena, I think you’re right. Only when it hurts their pockets will they take us seriously.
That’s sad. I’m an old cynic who always thinks the worst. I don’t want to be proved right.
Jane, be assured that Martin, Peter and I are considering various procedural options. The chairman’s decision (that the amendments we sought to propose were ‘out of order’ as offending General Synod Standing Order 28(1)(a), that an amendment to a motion “must be relevant to the general purport of the motion.”) will certainly not be the last word on the matter, despite the terms of SO 15(2).
Shame on the chairman. But knew we could rely on our champions to be persistent! I am not au fait with synod rules. Can you move to suspend standing orders for a single item? And how your amendment can be judged as not being relevant…
Jane, things have moved on rapidly today, following widespread concern and agreement that a solution to the apparent impasse must be found. Happily, the text of an amendment, which retains the substance of our ‘composite’ motion and which is acceptable to the chairman, has been agreed and is to be proposed by the Bishop of Huddersfield – the incoming lead bishop on safeguarding. No doubt the text will be made public over the weekend.
PS. Synod can suspend a standing order, or part of a standing order, during consideration of a particular item of business [see SO39(1)(a)], and that was an option being considered, but this will not now be necessary.
That’s good news, David. Thank you and all your colleagues for all your words on this
Oops should say ‘work’ on this.
Good news.