Today, two documents have appeared in connection with the formal complaint made about the Archbishop of Canterbury by the complainant known as Graham. One is a press release from Lambeth Palace giving notice of the dismissal of the complaint https://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/news/update-safeguarding-complaint-against-archbishop-canterbury and the other is a press release from the complainant. https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/pressrelease.pdf The background to this complaint was described in my last blog post connected with John Smyth. I mentioned the way that the Archbishop of Canterbury had become aware of serious accusations made against the former chairman of the Titus Trustees in 2013. This was a year after one of his victims, Graham, had made a disclosure to a senior clergyman in Cambridge involved with the Titus Trust. We have already made reference to the fact that Archbishop Welby knew John Smyth personally. He has admitted visiting his house on one occasion. It has never been claimed that they were close friends, but Welby’s own conversion and background within the Christian faith owed much to the evangelical Christian networks in Cambridge in the 1970s. Here Smyth also had many links. The network that is now known as ReNew was very strong in Cambridge. Mark Ruston and Jonathan Fletcher both exercised an influential ministry among undergraduates in that city through the Round Church. Many of the officers who worked at the Iwerne camps were undergraduates in Cambridge at that time, including the young Justin Welby and Nicky Gumbel. Networking is something that the REFORM/ReNew network have always done very successfully. The conservative evangelical world which originally nurtured Welby always strongly sustained a sense of camaraderie. Archbishop Welby, although later broadening out in his churchmanship sympathies, did not appear to lose these connections and friendships with those in the world of conservative Anglicanism.
The 2013 complaint about John Smyth should have been a alarm call for Archbishop Welby. As I indicated in a previous blog on this topic, he certainly knew many people in Smyth’s network to ring up and ask what the story was all about. I mentioned before an extraordinary lack of curiosity on Welby’s part. Do we perhaps detect an attitude of fear and the desire not to know what was being revealed? Anyone who lived, as Welby did, on the periphery of the world of Jonathan Fletcher and John Smyth must have had some inkling that they were personalities which were at the very least controversial and possibly dangerous. While we can take Welby’s claim that he did not know John Smyth well, we would have expected that, as a newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, he would have wanted to investigate how far the scandal might go. One of the principles of safeguarding, and well established as good practice by 2013, is to establish whether an individual poses any kind of risk. Although Smyth was a long way away in South Africa, he was still a potential risk in safeguarding terms. What did Welby do? He asked the Bishop of Ely to look into the matter. A letter was written in 2013 by the Bishop of Ely to the Bishop of Table Bay outlining the risks posed by Smyth. No reply was ever received. No follow-up was made, either by Welby or the Bishop of Ely. Neither was there another letter written, as far as we know. On a television programme in 2019, Welby claimed to have sent another letter at the same time to the Archbishop of Cape Town. In spite of enquiries, no copy of this later letter has ever been produced to confirm this claim. Smyth was active in legal circles in South Africa to within months of his death in 2018, and there was no attempt by him to hide from either the Church or the civil authorities in South Africa.
The complainant, Graham, has two major issues with the core group who examined his complaint against Archbishop Welby. In the first place he, as the complainant, was never formally interviewed to establish the facts from his perspective. Both as a survivor and a safeguarding complainant he felt that he should have been properly heard. It was as though the core group had no interest in establishing facts. In the second place it was stated today in the Lambeth statement that the complaint was simply about safeguarding practice. From Graham’s perspective, the complaint was much wider than this. Archbishop Welby was in a position to stop John Smyth from having access to young people at any point between first hearing the about his misbehaviour in 2013 right down to the moment when the whole story came fully into the public domain in February 2017. Graham was also critical of the way that the chief of staff at Lambeth Palace, David Porter, approached him directly in an apparent attempt to interfere with the complaint process. This approach appeared to have the authority of the chairman of the Welby Core Group., Zena Marshall. She is also the Deputy Director of the National Safeguarding Team. Graham has made this effort to subvert the process the topic of a further complaint.
As an outsider, I write my commentary based on the written documents before me. I do not have the face to face interviews with the parties concerned. With the evidence before me, I confess feeling considerable unease about what I see. Even when stripping out all the details of who knew what and when they knew it, something deeply dysfunctional is being revealed in these two documents. In 2013 (or possibly a year earlier) a huge destructive scandal came to the attention of the most senior leaders of the Church of England. This was not just about a vicar at the other end of the country committing some criminal offence. This was a complaint about an individual who was (or had been) influential and widely known to considerable numbers of clergy in the Church of England. Worse than Smyth’s original offences, which have never been contested, was the fact that these crimes were covered up for 30 years. A young man in Zimbabwe died at one of Smyth’s camps and there were some attempted suicides as well as many ruined lives. It is hard to understand how a person with enormous influence in the Church, as Welby had, did not see this as a matter of extreme priority and deal with it decisively. For a core group later to say that there had been no safeguarding concerns about his actions in 2013 and later seems rather feeble. This weak lack of response suggests that there may have been, as with recent scandals in the Catholic Church, a desire to bury wrongdoing in the hope that it would just go away. I, for one, am deeply disappointed in the way that these documents reveal a lack of transparency, candour and honesty in facing up to the appalling abuse legacies of the past. There are, I believe, at least 22 victims of John Smyth who will all be re-abused by reading these documents and the institutional failures they will see in them. Graham’s complaint against the processes set up by the NST has not been to all appearances properly answered. For all of these survivors this day, 12 November 2020, will be a day which they will remember forever as a moment when the Church of England has failed them once again. It did this by not providing anything in the way of justice or a proper path to healing.
Martin Sewell has contributed relevant information about this today on ‘Thinking Anglicans’. I expect Stephen will provide the link in the usual way.
A few days ago I posted on the earlier thread a video of Smyth appearing on South African public television in late 2014, or possibly 2015, on the subject of the then contemporary Pistorius murder trial (which, coincidentally, is back in the public eye as a result of the documentary currently being shown by the BBC). Significant matters are the date: post-2013, Smyth’s cool self-confidence, and the considerable deference shown to him by the television interviewer. As I said last time, anyone who has suffered at Smyth’s hands may prefer not to view this. I believe it provides an insight into Smyth’s character: a consummate double-act, one might say.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-huJL5tdek
We have, sadly, become inured to the dishonesty and lack of compassion in the Church’s dealing with safeguarding complaints. What I can’t understand is the sheer stupidity of this kind of process and statement. Did they really think anyone would be convinced this was a good, thorough, and fair process? Did they think it would genuinely make either the Church or Abp. Welby look good – or even less bad?
Maybe they feel so safe from repercussions that they just don’t care. But that’s dangerous – for them. Because institutions that lose their credibility eventually die; and because the individuals involved will one day have to give account to God.
The rhetoric about putting survivors at the heart of safeguarding practice seems not to be followed through, ever. From the moment Lambeth knew about Smyth in 2013 up till today, everything that has been done at the centre has been seemingly about institutional reputation and protecting individuals from the accusations of culpable blame. I wish that there had been a moment when we saw the institution and its leaders moving a little towards survivors with real compassion and a desire for justice. I am not aware of a single occasion when such a thing happened. Individuals in the system may have shown Christ-like humanity but this has never been shared across the board.
I’m going to boldly assert that people might have got hold of the wrong end of the stick about this latest ‘investigation’. I may be wrong, but my understanding is that it relates to past events and not current or future safeguarding failures. Smyth’s death in 2017 put an end to the latter, so a complaint made on those grounds in 2020 would not succeed.
Past misdemeanours can be misconduct and a matter for a CDM, but I don’t think the complaint was made in that way. There are, unsurprisingly, quite high hurdles (‘a proper interest in making the complaint’) in a CDM brought against an archbishop.
Much of the problem for the public at large, clergy and laity alike, is that we are never told any details other than a bald ‘guilty’ or ‘not ‘guilty’ outcome. People can, and I fear do, sometimes make wrong assumptions. If I have done so in this post, I will be happy to be corrected.
The complainant has asked me to post this reply on his behalf:
“Part of the complaint did refer to past behaviour, particularly Welby’s failures to investigate or stop Smyth in his tracks, and bring him to justice. I have been told that past behaviour cannot be looked at under the current Practice Guidelines. The “wider issues” relate to the fourteen untruths ( er……lies ?) that Welby said on the Channel 4 interview. Again, I was told, this is not a safeguarding matter. However, I argued that his failures and cover up of Smyth was not a one-off in 2013, but was repeated with cover up and failure to investigate his friend Jonathan Fletcher in 2016. This is a pattern of behaviour. Would he repeat it ? The Core Group was not prepared to address this, boldly asserting he is not currently a safeguarding risk. With regard to his inability to tell the truth, I asked whether he would tell the truth in the future. I was told this was not a safeguarding issue, but would be subject to “learnings” in the future ( and I think the Lambeth statement makes a nod to this with the phrase “striving to keep developing and learning in his own ministry”). Yes, so in one sense you are absolutely right: the Core Group would not look at the past, they just addressed “is the Archbishop currently a safeguarding risk ?” And decided not. However, they were not prepared to address the issue of “the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour” and deemed his failure to give a full, frank disclosure of his knowledge and actions over Smyth as of no concern to them. I will add a PS: three NST people asked why I had not taken out a CDM, as that would have been more effective. I have been offered help filling out the forms. I may do so.”
Ouch. Prayer needed I think.
There is so much that needs to be considered and carefully weighed up in this complicated saga. I have pointed out on another blog that if a letter was sent to South Africa in 2013, as we are told it was, and they did not act on it, then any culpability must rest at the South African end. Although the Archbishop of Canterbury is as a courtesy treated as the head of the Anglican Communion (strictly as first among equals), he has no jurisdiction outside England. For my part, I firmly believe that everyone should wait for the outcome of the Makin report.
‘Wait for the outcome of the Makin report’ is not a helpful response to a survivor whose years-long battle for justice has met with yet another rebuff from an uncaring Church. If you can’t imagine what it feels like to be on the receiving end of this, Jane Chevous’s very helpful reply below gives a clue. The suffering is enormous.
The complainant can have little hope that the Makin Report will solve anything, either, since previous reviews have either been whitewashes or have been comprehensively ignored by the Church.
As for the letter to South Africa, there are questions about that. Even if it was sent, and to the right person, lack of a response should have led to a further letter and/or a phone call. The archbishop cannot be excused so easily from acting to save more young men from the brutal sado-masochism of Smyth.
Janet: I’m ducking out. I have had to post a similar reply on TA. I’m bitterly regretting becoming involved in this. It seemed to me that people had got hold of the wrong end of the stick and the claimant himself has confirmed that my diagnosis was correct. It is entirely a matter for him how the matter might be carried forward.
Possibly you know more, but how can anyone say whether or not there was a follow up by ‘phone or other steps taken by the Archbishop, or on his behalf? Incidentally, he was new in post, February 2013, I believe, and I can see no objection to his delegating to the Bishop of Ely, if that is what happened. As far as I am concerned, nearly everything I have read in condemnation of the Archbishop has been conjecture, very heavily reinforced by hindsight.
The possibility, which doesn’t seem to have crossed anyone’s mind, is that the South African ‘authorities’ chose not to take action. I have posted a video of Smyth, immensely important evidence, which clearly shows that he was being treated as a respected and respectable person in South Africa post-2013, possibly as late as 2015. When the police became involved, extradition proceedings were required in 2017, but thwarted by Smyth’s death. A moment’s thought should be obvious to everyone that the Archbishop’s ‘powers’ were limited, if they existed at all. To repeat, yet again, he had no jurisdiction in South Africa.
These are the reasons why people should wait to see the evidence in the Makin report.
You’re right that Stephen and I have seen more evidence than you appear to be aware of, but I’m not going to go into that now.
What strikes me most is that you apparently can’t find it within yourself to express any concern or sympathy for the complainant, or for other survivors who unquestionably have had a very rough time. I think that’s sad.
Janet: That comment is uncalled for, and I’m surprised that you should make it. I am saddened that you have done so. I would have expected better.
I have tried to help with factual, accurate information. I don’t know the complainant, but if you were to go back through my many posts here and on TA you will see that your comment is unfounded.
Apart from his personal victims, I suspect I know more about Smyth than anyone else who has written here. I met him in court, I can date accurately, before 1974, my marriage was blessed in the church where he was apparently a Reader, I played the organ for 20 years in another church literally next door to his country house – but in both cases without being aware of any connection with him. I have followed closely all of the information which has been made public since the facts were revealed in 2017. No one was more astonished than I by that announcement. I have posted very significant evidence in the form of a contemporary 2014/ 2015 video, to which there has been no reaction. A necessary forensic analysis, because no one else seems to do it, is no reason to assume lack of sympathy.
I hope you will reconsider and withdraw your unwarranted slur.
Dear Rowland and Janet,
I just wanted to post to check that you are both ok; I know you both from here as people of integrity keen to see truth and justice upheld and it saddens me to see us falling out, when I believe we all want the same thing.
A wise ACE & trauma specialist I follow always talks about meeting disagreement with curiosity; I must admit I completely failed to do that at my recent complaints meeting with the NST, when I was as defensive of my position as she was of hers, with the result that we didn’t really understand each other any better at the end of it. I am trying to pluck up courage to try again, with more curiosity to understand each other better than just winning an argument.
I would be grateful for other people’s thoughts about how we manage differing views safely in space like this. Its something we frequently wrestle with in Survivors Voices too; its always difficult with such an emotive subject, that has such a big impact on our lives.
Anyway I am sorry of this is an unhelpful interference, in which case please ignore me; but just wanted you both to know I am thinking of you.
A CDM would bring definite closure for the church, not so much for you I suspect. Please think carefully before putting yourself through this. At a time of financial crisis for the church it is most unlikely that a CDM against the Archbishop would bring much more than a teary apology and lessons learnt going forward.
I suspect Welby is losing little sleep over either past or future actions, that is incredibly hard because understandably you want him beating his brow and pacing. You have shown courage, and a moral compass that is well adjusted, you deserve meaningful justice but sometimes that simply never arrives and letting go of that need to find it can be the hardest thing any of us will ever face. Your life is precious dont let Welby rob you of it.
https://twitter.com/justin_31v8/status/1327541334543114243
A telling sign when the CEO of a professional safeguarding organisation (dependent on CofE for much of its work) calls out CofE structure for dishonesty and injustice.
In a structure with almost no accountablity (variable and ineffective at best) how does this vital component become part of necessary culture change? As part of my submission to the Interim Support Scheme I am calling for published apologies from a raft of senior figures for their cruelty and dishonesty, and their complicity with the dissembling by the Church’s agents, and for frankly rotten sets of behaviour.
This may be one of the ways forward – a procession of apologies across much of the senior layer published in Church Times. Survivors gradually bringing accountability to a structure where there is none at present – to hopefully shift the chaos, dysfunctionality and quiet corruption which we see yet again in the car crash of the Welby core group. And which so many of us are familiar with. These infamous core groups operate like a kind of Star Chamber with foregone conclusions. But I suspect the latest attempt to shield Archbishop Welby from questions might now be considered a home goal by Lambeth Palace advisors who have made an omnishambles of this cul-de-sac situation.
We have to find a way to hold individuals who consciously hide behind dysfunctional processes to account. Bishops are clearly not going to hold themselves voluntarily to account, and Lead Bishops are not able to tackle the problem. Complaints are a waste of time. The NST, unfit for purpose, protects the hierarchy within a fortress of bewildering confusion, and perhaps hope that bishops will address their own culture. So survivors must take the lead. As burnt out and exhausted as many of us are – we will have to do the necessary work of continuing to fight through the fog and corruption, until the bishops’ house becomes the culture it should already have been.
As example, a letter was signed by 7 of us about one senior figure, and sent to the Lead Bishops, Chair of the NSP, and Director of Safeguarding. Further letters were sent in connection with this complaint by two others. Those supplementary letters were if anything written in stronger tones than the original. Response? A ‘holding’ acknowledgement sent four months ago – and nothing since. This kind of protection enables senior figures to hide behind a cordon sanitaire.
My own view is that change is unlikely until figures across the top of the Church resign. There has been too much lack of integrity, too much investment in reputation management, and too much wilful reliance on bad process – over and above basic decency and honesty.
Senior resignations are unlikely, but even if they did occur, the next cohort of “leaders”-in-waiting would gladly move in to the empty positions and move up in power and privilege.
The CofE’s problems of indifference and lack of accountability are structured in. The top people are tasked to maintain the status quo, and its systems are designed to ensure inertia.
People on the ground, pew fodder, congregants, those who give, are the only place where our voices may be heard. Let’s remember to address them.
Some ordinary folk find tales of abuse too hard to stomach. The idea this has happened under the very noses of their esteemed vicars and bishops is a step too far to conceive. That a few at the top are actually perpetrators and in prison is an appalling thought.
It’s denial at the bottom tiers of church community that we must target. Not by force or by brutal verbal assault, but communication with real nurturing skill and compassionate action. And offer something better.
Of course many do get it, and vote with their feet, anxious not to say anything for fear of being seen as gossiping. We must work to change the culture from deference to the Organisation to deference for the Suffering Servant.
The difficulty with resignations is that it places the culprits beyond reach. Off they go with their pensions and become honorary assistant bishops elsewhere, and case closed. And the new person says, “I can’t change the past”, and there it ends.
I feel so desperately distressed for the complainant and all the other Smyth victims, because I know how this will feel like another act of callous indifference by the church.
My case is in a very similar situation.
Rowland is right in a way, that we are asking a system to do something it is completely unfit to do. Core groups are ONLY interested in current risk; they are unable to hold people accountable for past misconduct, and do not seem to see that as evidence of future conduct. They also rely on statutory authorities to do the bulk of the investigative work; so if the issue you bring is not a police or adult safeguarding matter, you will not get a thorough investigation. And they do not make judgements based on the balance of probabilities; so they end up in the oxymoronic position of saying they believe everyone’s account, even when it is impossible for both to be true.
The CDM is the only place to make a complaint about clergy misconduct, but it is by all accounts a brutal process for all involved. Until it is significantly reformed then it is hard to recommend it to survivors as a good route. However, it would seem entirely appropriate in this situation for someone else, say Melissa Caslake, to take out a CDM; or alternatively, to wait for the Makin Review to provide a judgement as to Welby’s inactions. Then based on that judgement, Welby and the church would need to decide what was suitable accountability.
I see no reason why the core group process cannot be totally redesigned to be survivor-centred and include accountability and justice as well as risk assessment; but I haven’t found much willingness to look at that yet. Meanwhile I don’t see why core groups cannot do more than what it says in the policy; since when did we need policies to dictate every action, when we can see what is the right thing to do? I have tried to complain through the NCI complaints policy about the way the core group has conducted the investigation & reached its conclusions, but have been told that NCI HR department state this does not come under their HR policy. I have challenged this (as it appears to contradict what the NCI complaints policy says) and have been waiting over a month for a reply from HR.
There is also some very simple issues here that would save a lot of suffering and agony. There is nothing in writing to explain to survivors what the core group process is, what it can and cannot do, what kind of conclusions it reaches, what support is available, what to expect at the end of it. And no-one goes through that with you properly at the start of the process. I understand much better now that I am battling to get a system to do something that it was never designed to do and never will be able to deliver. If I had been better prepared for that from the start, it would have saved a lot of distress and suffering. It would still be wrong and unjust, but at least we wouldn’t get our hopes up.
The infamous ‘core group’ fulfills different, often overlapping, functions in my view.
It has served all the following, and probably others as well:
i) investigation of case
ii) management of abuser
iii) management of reputation to Church
iv) management of reputation to insurer
v) management of survivor pastoral and other needs
It has barely moved on much from 2016 when Ian Elliott tried but failed (through no fault of his own) to address the dysfunctionality and corruption of the core group to the then NST leadership. The carcrash of the Christ Church core group this year showed how chaotic and grossly unfair the whole process still is.
The CDM? Personally, I’d rather wade through hedgehogs. It delivers the embarrassment factor and that may be about all. And it’s in process of substantial reform – and cannot currently address the issues survivors are bringing. Disclosure denial – forget it. The CDM won’t address this. Dishonest behaviour – nope can’t do anything. A bishop or diocesan figure has probably got to have clearly and evidently covered stuff up for the CDM to achieve anything. And then there’s the hurdle of the notorious times limits. The best approach with CDM as you say – is to hope the NST or diocesan safeguarding will be sufficiently alert to take out a CDM. See below.
https://www.chesterstandard.co.uk/news/17546847.clergy-discipline-measure-cdm-lodged-bishop-chester-peter-forster/
https://www.iicsa.org.uk/publications/investigation/anglican-chichester-peter-ball/case-study-1-diocese-chichester/b6-complaints-under-clergy-discipline-measure
But even then, as in the Chichester CDM, there’s no guarantee it will lead to a successful outcome. Many think that perhaps the reason Sir Roger Singleton took out the Peter Forster CDM was tactical – to show the House of Bishops how meaningless the outcome would probably be. If so – that was a clever strategy. And it may have helped lead to current reforms.
NCI complaints? Not sure that they recognise corruption and bad practice when it’s laid before their eyes with arrows pointing inwards to what’s going on. I tried to bring a complaint against Archbishops Council leadership for obviously dishonest and corrupt practice. We had cast-iron evidence from SAR. It couldn’t be pursued because all the various components of Archbishops’ Council had no further record or memory of events that they had all taken part in. We realised that many emails and various minutes had been carefully destroyed or disavowed.
What we are up against is systemic corruption mixed with chaos and institutional sociopathy. It will only change with root and branch reform.
CDMs if they progress far enough will reach the President of Tribunals, the Right Honourable Lord Justice Mummery, who is a member of the Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved, and Chairman of the Clergy Discipline Commission and Clergy Discipline Tribunal since 2004.
He received the Canterbury Cross in 2017 from the Archbishop for services to the Church of England. And has been a Nobody’s Friend member since 2003, where the tables of power are graced by the presence of many bishops, as well as the upper echelons of ecclesiastical lawyers, Dean of the Arches, legal advisors to Archbishops Council, etc.
It’s hard not to wonder why the Church’s legal eagles have never thought to challenge the time-barring feature of the CDM which enabled figures like Benn, and other bishops more recently, to claim that they have in effect been ‘exonerated’. One might be forgiven for thinking that common sense would tell them that these bishops had questions to answer.
Sounds all too familiar. Welby talks a good game, even as he prepares to take a three-month sabbatical from the stresses of his office.
I’ve been quite critical of Welby, but I don’t blame him for taking a sabbatical. He’s been looking tormented and ill for months and he’s well overdue for a sabbatical. He may even come back better and with new ideas and attitudes.