In many ways the report that came out today contained few surprises. Indeed, it was less radical in its criticisms, even to the point of appearing to provide the Church a much easier ride than they might have expected. Much of the material was a description of the church structures that have come into being over the decades and even centuries. The Church of England is extremely difficult to fathom so it was probably necessary to describe its workings in some detail for the reader. It is impossible, for example, to liken the Church to the army or a large public company. Lines of responsibility do not work in a way that would be understood elsewhere. It is all too easy in such complicated and sometimes unaccountable structures for offenders to be hidden away and, at the same time, for abuse victims to be ignored and disempowered. The reader of the report learned, if he/she did not know already, how much power and influence a bishop possesses within his or her diocese. This has made the task of oversight for safeguarding officials sometimes almost impossible. One of the main recommendations of the Report is that the role of Safeguarding Officer in each diocese should have independence from the Bishop. This would enable them to make decisions and choose to pursue cases of abuse in a professional way.
One issue which is close to my heart as a supporter of survivors, is the pursuit of justice for this group. Many things are destroyed by the experience of abuse, as we have seen in earlier blogs. Among the things that are often destroyed is a healthy relationship with the Church and a confidence in its officers. The report refers to several stories by survivors of conversations with Church senior people which were then ‘forgotten’. The rule that disclosures of abuse must be recorded in writing by the one hearing such allegations has been a requirement for the Church since 1999. When there has been this kind of neglect and a history of incompetent care for survivors, it becomes difficult to trust these same individuals as well as the institution they represent. They feel totally abandoned in many cases. The report sums up this dilemma when it inserts a passage from a third-party report. ‘The Church of England is yet to regain fully the trust of those who have been abused. It has been slow to find ways to engage effectively with victims and survivors or to learn from their experiences.’ For me, this failure to engage with and care for survivors is one of the most painful aspects of the whole safeguarding failure that has been witnessed over two or three decades. Whatever may be promised in the recent church initiatives for safeguarding, there is still a terrible legacy of a sense of betrayal alongside a feeling that the Church cannot be trusted.
This word mistrust is perhaps a good one to summarise this bitter legacy from the past. It has done so much damage to the Church itself and to the continued well-being of the survivor population. Even if the IICSA report helps to create a new realism about safeguarding matters right across the board, this legacy issue of mistrust is one to be confronted and dealt with. It is not just the survivors who are looking out for a successful conclusion to the injustices of the past, the wider public has also felt betrayed by the Church’s failures to be a safe home for children and the vulnerable. All realise how important it is to rebuild communication between the Church, those who have become its victims and those who look on.
This task of rebuilding trust with survivors and the watching public will be a very difficult one. The situation that exists at present can be described fairly simply. Institutional power wielded by bishops and others, aided by the services of expensive lawyers, communications experts and reputation managers has, for a long time, managed to keep victims and survivors largely invisible. The emergence of some of this reality through the IICSA hearings has revealed all the ‘dirty tricks’ that have been played against this group of survivor/victims. It has caused bitterness, frustration and a sense of continuing victimhood among many. Their situation was hidden from sight so that the Church was able to preserve intact its façade of decency and honesty. Now that the IICSA report has cracked that façade, we have to set out how the building could be shored up and made a suitable structure for the future, where all may be welcomed and all may perhaps find healing.
The task of mediation has become a professional discipline, with its own principles and philosophy. Individuals can be trained to be professional mediators. In years gone by I attended several courses run by the Bridge Builders organisation and I know they still do important work in this whole area of reconciliation. From the days I spent on the course some twenty years ago, I remember one particular principle. The task of the mediator is, first of all, to enable proper communication between two parties. In other words, each must listen to the other as a prerequisite of a possible reconciliation and restoration of trust. If Bridge Builders were to be given a role in rebuilding the broken sense of trust between survivors and the hierarchy of the church, they would set up a meeting which banned lawyers and advisors on both sides, and allow the victims/survivors to speak and be heard by the senior representatives of the organisation that is felt to have betrayed them. In return the survivors would listen in silence to the words which reveal what bishops and other leaders had been feeling over the years. Perhaps abuse issues were a triggering point in their own story. Even bishops may have had to face up to power/abuse episodes in their lives. Perhaps the institutional neglect of survivors had been exacerbated by personal experiences of the past. None of that would resolve things on its own but at least the meeting would be between human beings in encounter. This would be far from survivors and sufferers falling under an implacable institutional juggernaut.
Listening to and honouring survivors by the hierarchy would be the first step along a road towards the rebuilding of trust in the Church. To repeat, it is not just the breakdown of trust between survivors and bishops that has taken place in this abuse crisis, it is a break-down of trust between the general public and the church in general that has occurred. If the public witnesses something new taking place in the interaction between the leaders and the abused, then the same public will begin to understand the meaning of reconciliation. Surely this is a concept that is both Christian and relevant to society at large? If all Christians, especially leaders, can live out this reconciliation in the days, months and years ahead so that people can see it, surely this is a fantastic witness to the power of the good news to transform and make whole people’s lives and relationships. Out of the darkness of abuse and brokenness, something good can come if we allow it to.
Many thanks. However, I regard the report as a major disappointment, and lost opportunity, despite its palpable merits and the great professionalism with which IICSA has been managed by Professor Jay and her colleagues.
You mention the DSOs. However, the report indicates that they should be funded by DBFs (p. 116). There goes any meaningful independence.
There will still be dissonance between the DSOs and the NST. We will still have 43 different ways of doing things.
The report takes the view that adequate funding should always be available for the DSOs (p. 110). Really?
The Church still gets to mark its own homework, but some of it will be audited. How the independent auditor is to be funded remains to be seen. The big accounting firms boast of their ‘independence’, but it is remarkable how often their reports validate the misfeasance of the entities who pay them to undertake the audits. Who will pay?
The Church retains substantial control of its own disciplinary processes in abuse cases. Some footling reforms are proposed, but they appear to be little more than window-dressing.
There is a painful dissonance between the body of the report (which is fairly acrid) and the recommendations. It is almost as though the latter have been drafted by an entirely different panel, and following close consultations with central Church bodies.
A good many victims have presumably staked a lot on the Church not only getting a basting, and it does, but also (since it cannot be trusted) being put into a position where it will be impossible for it to repeat the blunders of the past. Unfortunately, the report does not provide for that. Rather, it is more of the same, though somewhat differently.
Indeed, the increasing attenuation of resources and the financial desperation of the Church authorities may make it relatively more likely that past errors will be repeated in the future. Remember, the wickedness of the abusers aside, much of the oppression of victims is about money (i.e., the reluctance of the Church to disburse it on victims).
This evening we have been treated to an archiepiscopal statement which is full of contrition. I have little doubt that this is mostly sincere, though it came from an archbishop who declined to apologise in the course of the hearings to a victim who was in the room and who is in the same profession, despite being invited to do so. Some of the proposals made by the Church in recent days elide fairly closely with the recommendations in the report. Either way, the Church retains control.
I cannot help but feel that IICSA has disappointed, after so much hope had been invested in it. Fred Astaire and Johnny Mercer once wrote a song called ‘I’m building up to an awful let-down’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EHz__s4gKo). Quite.
Given that Welby has apologised for all sorts of things over the last few years, some that have left people scratching their heads, I fear that he’s got pretty good at summoning up crocodile tears, especially for the press.
IICSA was set up under statutory powers, but in no sense is it part of the governance of the Church – which is required to report back with its responses and what action it has taken on the recommendations. Does that imply possible Parliamentary intervention if the Church took an independent line? It seems to me that, if it chose to, the Church, as an example (perhaps not the best one), could say that we don’t go along with the idea of 43 DSOs and their funding, and that it is a matter for General Synod to legislate changes. I’m not advocating any kind of rebellion! Just a thought, and question mark, about respective powers.
I read the summary, rather quickly. Also some journalists comments. It doesn’t look promising.
I agree with Froghole in being disappointed. The Roman poet Horace sums up my views, harsh as they might seem. ‘parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’. The mountains are in labour, a ridiculous mouse is born!. So much effort for such anodyne recommendations. The total lack of professionalism among clergy at all levels is staggering, just look at the way + Carlisle (Monday’s news) gave a character reference to an abuser, without obviously thinking it through. As someone who worked with very abused teenagers in the 80s and 90s, I am amazed that there is so little awareness. I do pray that members of General Synod will take some control to establish a robust and above all an independent system. The comments in the press about this report make sorry reading and certainly point to a disregard to the values of the Gospel and its implictions for the way we live as Christians and our relationships with each other.They show a church , the salt of which has lost all flavour. I pray that all in positions of responsibility will seriously reflect on the damage which is being done to our Christian withess and the consequent difficulties faced by those of us in the pews who try to sustainthe church by our prayers, the use of our skills and our financial contribution. I write this in great sadness.
On TA ‘NJW’ has made the useful point that, whilst DSOs will be funded by DBFs, they will – in effect – be supervised by the NST (though that would have been the case to some extent under the existing regime).
What NJW has suggested is that this will obviate the ‘suasion’ that DBFs and other diocesan ‘notables’ *might* have hitherto been able to exert over DSAs.
All this remains to be seen. One analogy might be data protection officers, who have been appointed to those companies processing a material quantity of personal data since the Data Protection Act 2018. DPOs are answerable to the board of their company, are supposed to be ‘independent’ and are protected against the risk of the sack (except in certain specific situations).
However, ultimately, people’s behaviour will naturally be informed by the sources of their sustenance. As with a DPO, a DSO would not be human if s/he were to think twice about compromising the people who fund his/her livelihood. An individual, working alone, or as part of a small team, cheek by jowl with people whom s/he may be constrained to ‘shop’ is going to be subject to a number of conflicting and difficult emotions which might impair his/her ability to act impartially.
It is for this, and other, reasons that it would make sense to consolidate safeguarding in a separate national agency, with investigatory powers, with its own funds, working from separate premises.
Mr Wateridge has made a customarily excellent point about IICSA being established by the imprimatur of the Home Office, and answerable to it and to parliament. In effect, IICSA is inviting the Church to initiate its own legislation, but of course it remains open to parliament to legislate on its own motion. It is possible that, once the work of IICSA has been completed, parliament may decide to pass legislation which has a comprehensive application to aspects of national life touching upon safeguarding; however, since 1969 (if not 1919) parliament has – with one or two exceptions – sedulously avoided intruding upon the Church’s own legislative capacities. My suspicion is that any legislation prepared by the Legal Office will probably elide quite closely with IICSA’s recommendations, not least because the Church may be wary of being exposed to national legislation.
My specific reference on TA to the 12 month rule was with respect to the experience of Mr Ineson, whose complaint about the handling of his own abuse case by Dr Croft and Dr Sentamu (whom I note has not [yet] received a peerage) was barred under Section 9 (1) of the CDM for being made out of time; as many will know, this was widely reported in 2018 and 2019. There is a risk that, if the Legal Office does prepare legislation, it will probably do so in a manner which will result in Mr Ineson not being able to revive his complaint against Messrs Croft and Sentamu, because of the taboo against drafting legislation which has a retrospective effect.
I won’t comment on that specific case, but as pointed out on TA and in an earlier post here, the President of Tribunals has a power to disapply the twelve months’ rule, and did so in the case of Bishop Peter Forster, the former Bishop of Chester. The twelve months aren’t written in stone, but it’s probably fair to say that they aren’t easily overcome. The CDM against Bishop Forster was instigated out of time by Sir Roger Singleton as Acting Director of the NST.
As were two CDM complaints against the Bishop of Lincoln, the Rt Revd Christopher Lowson, which the President of Tribunals, Dame Sarah Asplin, ruled in April 2020 could proceed out of time on grounds I consider to be legally problematic. Disgracefully, the bishop, who was suspended by Archbishop Justin on 16 May 2019 (again, on legally dubious grounds), remains suspended nearly 17 months later with no public indication of when the case against him may be resolved.
The timetable published last week for the General Synod group of sessions from 23-25 November (to be held virtually, subject to Royal Assent being given to the Remote Meetings Measure) includes a one hour slot on the Tuesday evening (24 November) for a debate on “First Consideration of Measure amending Safeguarding and Clergy Discipline Measure 2016.” I understand that this is a draft Measure to “implement the specific recommendation [in the May 2019 IICSA report] to replace the current duty to have due regard to guidance issued by the House of Bishops with provision for the HoB to issue a safeguarding code (or codes) which may impose requirements and give guidance.” It is also intended to take the revision stage in full synod in February, rather than send it off for revision first by a revision committee, which would probably mean that Synod would not consider the revision stage till July.
While a Measure to reform the CDM must await the outcome of the working group chaired by Bishop Tim Thornton (see the IICSA Report page 63, with proposals informed, one hopes, by the working group of the Ecclesiastical Law Society chaired by Peter Collier QC – see the Church Times report on 18 September 2020, page 4), it seems to me that the IICSA proposals to “disapply the 12-month time-limit for all complaints with a safeguarding element brought under the Clergy Discipline Measure” (first bullet point on page 116) could be implemented immediately: if it is not in the draft Measure next month, I shall seek to add it at the revision stage in February. No doubt the question of retrospectivity would be considered.
That’s good news, David, about the 12month rule, thank you
‘A cracked façade’ – oh dear. This recalls Isaiah 30:12-14 : “Because you have rejected this message, relied on oppression and depended on deceit, this sin will become for you like a high wall, cracked and bulging, that collapses suddenly, in an instant…”
The repentance and new ways had better be in earnest it seems to me.
Our Bishop has used the IICSA report as the subject for his weekly on line sermon. Could be promising. I’m planning to write to him. Please pray that I can set a ball rolling.
The first half of the report was good, although it said nothing that we haven’t all been saying for 20+ years. But it has their authority so impossible to ignore.
The second half I found disappointingly short on the kind of concrete, radical changes we need. DSOs instead of advisers, ok, but there’s no independence there. And more problematic, no mention of a reform to the awful core group process, which to me is equally essential.
Stephen I wish I could engage in a mediation process such as you describe. Sadly the NST don’t seem able to engage in such a process.
I am trying to stay hopeful as we see how things develop.
I went straight to the recommendations and thought i had lost a page.
My mind kept saying “IS THAT IT ? ”
One word sums it up for me….PATHETIC.