Almost a week has now passed since the publication of the Whitsey Report. This was a very thorough independent examination of the events surrounding the revelation in 2016 that a serving Bishop had, some decades before, committed abuse crimes against children and young adults. As Bishop Whitsey, a former Bishop of Chester, had died in 1987, the focus of the Report was about the process, both nationally and locally, that had followed this disclosure. The Report, entitled A Betrayal of Trust, was chaired by David Pearl, a senior judge. Having read the whole Report, I have to say that it is extremely thorough with a great attention to detail.  In reading it, we learn quite a lot of the inner workings of the Church’s safeguarding profession, both when it works well and when there appears to be a measure of shoddy process.  At a time when the Church of England is reviewing once again its safeguarding structures, the Report is a useful and helpful document to have in setting out the way things should be done in this area.

In this blog post, at the cost of ignoring many of the strands in the Report, I want to focus on one individual who played a key role at the centre of this safeguarding drama. This is the Diocesan Safeguarding Advisor for the Chester diocese. The report does not give her name, but I see little purpose in finding it out when the absence of a name is likely to be a deliberate decision by the Report’s author. We shall, like the Report, refer to her as the DSA or the Chester DSA.  That gives the emphasis to her role and actions rather than to her personality. Overall, the Report is complimentary about her work.  She appears to have been efficient and conscientious but, as the Report shows, she was impeded by a number of factors outside her control.  These compromised her effectiveness and created a great deal of extra stress for her. What I shall be describing in this blog indicates that a detailed job description  for a Diocesan Safeguarding Advisor has yet to be given its final form.  What this particular advisor had to put up with was sometimes unreasonable and almost impossible to carry alone.

The recent part of this story begins in early January 2016 when the Chester DSA was contacted by a local clergyman.  He had received a disclosure from an individual claiming to have been sexually assaulted many years before by a deceased Bishop of Chester. A meeting was quickly arranged for the DSA to meet with the survivor, henceforth known as M2.  Further, as was required, a report was sent to the current Bishop, Peter Forster.  Because the safeguarding allegations concerned a diocesan bishop, emails were also sent to the National Safeguarding Team in London to request advice and support. By the end of January, the DSA had met Jane Dodds, the National Senior Case Work Manager.   Jane promised to convene a core group meeting to take the matter forward. The DSA waited patiently to hear further about the core group. The protocols, then as now, suggest that this should be done within a matter of days. When nothing seemed to be happening, the DSA then contacted Graham Tilby, the National Safeguarding Adviser and Jane’s boss to hurry things along.  In spite of numerous emails sent by the DSA, the core group process seems to have stalled and the Report does not get to the bottom of why this happened.  There is a suggestion that the NST was under enormous pressure of work and without adequate resources.  Meanwhile the DSA was coming under some pressure from the survivor M2.  He wanted to know what was going on and the DSA had to explain that she did not know.  Valuable time was being wasted without any proper explanation forthcoming. It was not until 25 July that the first Whitsey  Core Group meeting was finally held. In the meantime, another survivor had emerged.  The same Core Group that met to discuss the case under the chairmanship of Jane Dodds included the case of the other survivor, known as M1, as well.

One consequence of the long delay was that M2 had formed a strong bond with the DSA.  She, after all, represented the institution from which justice was being sought.  When the Core Group finally met, the members were happy to see this pastoral relationship continue, even though, as we shall see, it created complications for the DSA trying to manage the whole case with its many facets involving police, the safeguarding officials in London and the current Bishop of Chester.  The Whitsey Report did look into the long delay from the disclosure to the first Core Group meeting.  There seems to be no single explanation but plainly there were somewhere administrative failures and, as we noted above, excessive work loads.  There was also an inability by Jane Dodds (who had by then moved on to a new post) to recall any details, and this led to the Report having to admit defeat in its attempt to explain the delay.

The DSA in the early part of 2016 was thus in the unenviable situation of being caught between the needs of a survivor and a bureaucratic body in London that seemed unable to provide support or facilitate further progress in the affair.  The successor to Jane Dodds, Moira Murray, who came on the scene during 2016 also maintained a somewhat uneasy relationship with the DSA, having adopted a more centralised style of working.  To add to these stresses and strains, there was another still equally serious impediment to the DSA’s work in this case. The Bishop of Chester, Peter Forster, who was the DSA’s effective boss, took it upon himself to do his own research about his predecessor.  Without informing the DSA, he stared to ring around to find out what else might exist within the memories of the clergy who had been in the diocese during in Bishop Whitsey’s time. This ringing round produced at least one new survivor.  The Bishop then took it upon himself to interview the survivor without telling the DSA. This made for a difficult situation. According to the rules current at the time, the first task of anybody who hears a disclosure, or even a rumour of abuse, is to contact the DSA for advice. It was a difficult situation for the DSA to negotiate – to discover that your boss is, without any expertise, questioning a survivor.  Such situations can, not only create a pastoral minefield, but also add greatly to the stresses placed on a DSA.  One hope is that in future the DSAs’ authority in all safeguarding matters will be strengthened to overrule everyone, even bishops, so that nothing like this can happen again.   A further difficult situation with the Bishop arose in the November 2016 when the DSA accompanied a female survivor to see the Bishop. Because the Core Group had laid it upon the DSA the task of supporting survivors in addition to all the other work, the DSA sat in on that meeting at the Palace with two, possibly contradictory, roles. As an adviser she had a responsibility to advise the Bishop. As the pastorally competent person on the Core Group, she also had responsibilities to the survivor/victim. Which role was she supposed to play at that meeting? Whatever she decided to do it might well have compromised or contradicted the other role.  Things between the Bishop and his DSA did not improve and the Report gives details of the strained relationship into 2017.  The Bishop seemed unable to grasp that safeguarding management was best left to trained professionals. At one point a suggestion was even floated that the DSA might consider a CDM against her own bishop. 

As we have mentioned, the Chester DSA is not given a name and this has enabled us to examine the role and not a person. Out of the Report I take this confusion about exactly what are the responsibilities of a DSA as one of the main lessons to be learnt. If DSAs are to do an effective job in the future, there must be clear job descriptions and proper codes of practice to support them. It must also be possible for them to hand over at an early stage pastoral responsibility for survivors. Among the IICSA recommendations to the Church is one that commends the idea that DSA’s become officers and take a place among the senior staff in a diocese. In view of the confusions that were present in 2016 in Chester and in London, such a change cannot come too soon. It should also be impossible for any official in London to delay the setting up of a core group by six months. The consequent stresses on the local DSA as well as the survivor were considerable.  She was also having to carry other strains caused by a bishop straying into her area of responsibility, as well as a certain ambiguity in understanding exactly what her role was in the crisis that was developing. Everyone deserves to able to work with clear expectations and boundaries. When these are constantly in flux because of the whims of those with power, this is a cause of intolerable stress.

The anonymous DSA in Chester is in some ways the hero of the saga revealed by the Whitsey Report. She appears to have acted compassionately, promptly and professionally at every turn. Unfortunately, she was at different points failed by structures, human incompetence and a lack of proper support. Let us hope whether she is still in service or not, that she has fully recovered from the emotional and professional battering she received while working for the Chester diocese. Perhaps out of her stress and suffering, something good will come.  Perhaps there will be brand-new set of professional standards in the terms and conditions for all DSAs. This, after all, is possibly the main recommendation of the IICSA report. If anyone was in any doubt that this is necessary and urgent, they should read the Whitsey Report.  This is what I have done and I invite others to feel the same empathy for the hard work and stress experienced by the brave Chester DSA.