Responding to Abuse in the Institutional Church
by Fiona Gardner

by Cliff James

A profoundly intelligent, insightful and inspiring book, ‘Sex, Power, Control’ is essential reading for anyone who cares for social justice. 

Much of the public discourse around clergy abuse has focused on the acts that were committed, the institutional cover-ups, performative apologies and promises that “things have changed”. This traditional response oversimplifies the issue by re-imagining the abuser as a singular problem, a one-off “rotten apple”, who is mythologised as essentially “evil” and whose casting out – or incarceration – is supposed to provide reassurance that the system has been purified, the danger safely exorcised. 

In contrast to these traditional, oversimplified discourses, Fiona Gardner casts a powerful and intellectually forensic spotlight onto clerical abuse. She delves deeply into the psychologies of individual abusers, and into the “groupthink” of institutional hierarchies that have protected the abuser and vilified the victims. Arguably more importantly, she scrutinises the structural systems of power in patriarchal society that continue to engender abusive personalities and abusive behavioural patterns. We are left in no doubt that, until these systems of power and privilege are changed, our flawed society will continue to produce abusive personality types, particularly among those who are fast-tracked into positions of authority. 

In fundamental ways, the analytical reach of ‘Sex, Power, Control’ extends far beyond the Church of England; it provides critical insights into how our hierarchical, class-based society reproduces narcissistic, emotionally damaged and damaging personality types within the higher echelons of the Establishment. Gardner highlights the fact that a significant percentage of clergy were privately educated, as were most of the senior leadership of the Church. One brilliantly perceptive excerpt from the chapter on British public schools illustrates the damaging effect of this elitist education far more clearly than I could hope to summarise:

“The training of boys on the playing fields of public schools was supposed to produce ‘manly’ men … at the forefront of empire… This outdated ethos lingers on, partly because men who went to public schools (as did their fathers and grandfathers before them) are still dominant in positions of power in the core of the establishment… This means that there is a difficulty in changing the structure of the institutional church because the commitment of a powerful group to the institution derives not only from the institution itself, but also from their earlier experience of having been formed, apart from parents and family, to be part of the elite.”

In a later passage, she elaborates on the links between such an elitist education and patterns of abusive behaviour: “It is feeling entitled to be present, entitled to be there, entitled to be heard, entitled to be recognised, entitled to be promoted and …. entitled to have sexual conquests where and when you want and to beat others the way you were beaten. This is also entitlement but destructive entitlement – the ‘it didn’t do me any harm’ kind.”

These passages take on a greater relevance when one considers that 64% of the current Conservative Cabinet went to such fee-paying schools (compared to 7% of the general public)1. It may also cast some light on why the current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson – himself an Old Etonian – infamously and flippantly dismissed the IICSA inquiry (into historic cases of sex abuse in the Establishment) as “malarkey” and said money “was being spaffed up a wall, you know, on some investigation into historic child abuse.”

Johnson’s comments perfectly encapsulate Gardner’s point, that the British private education system fosters a patriarchal obsession with rules and authoritarianism; with devotion to the team and a dislike of “snitching” and “tale-telling”; with the veneration of a “manly” toughness of character, an acceptance of (even an admiration for) the bully, and the suppression of emotions; with a distrust of women, the mocking of any feminine traits in men, and minimal empathy for those who are perceived as weak or vulnerable.

In stark contrast to the emotional illiteracy fostered by the British Establishment and its private education apparatuses, Garner’s tone throughout the book remains emotionally intelligent, humane and empathetic while firmly analytical. Her approach is informed by her extensive experience as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, as a social worker, and as a safeguarding adviser to the Church of England. It is doubtful that anyone without this range of expertise could have produced a work so rich in psychological and sociological insights, while simultaneously and adeptly navigating the Byzantine labyrinths of the institutional Church.

In particular, her personal experience of working within the Church environment gives a greater depth and resonance to her analysis. In one stand-out incident, Gardner describes how – while providing safeguarding training to a group of bishops and other high-ranking clergy – she was surprised to see that several clergymen were laughing during a survivor’s account of being sexually abused as a child. “[I] can’t understand why she doesn’t pull herself together,” one of the clergy commented of the survivor, while another said, “she [the victim] had such a boring voice and went on and on”.

It would be satisfyingly easy to simply condemn the inhumanity of these clergymen, to regard them as “rotten apples”, and to go no further than outrage. However, Gardner does dare to go further: she interrogates the elitist system that produces such patriarchal ideology and normalises such abnormal behaviour. It is the system, she reminds us, that is the problem. Unless and until the existing systems of power in our society are changed, the abuse and the defence of abuse will continue unabated.

Notwithstanding the accounts of abuse and the equally reprehensible collusion by those in the church hierarchy, ‘Sex, Power, Control’ remains an inspiring and hopeful book. Gardner reminds us that change is possible, perhaps even inevitable, and that – more often than not – it is actuated by those on the margins. In this respect, the book celebrates the determination and courage of numerous survivors – such as Gilo, Janet Lord, Matthew Ineson and Phil Johnson – who continue to fight for the transformations that the institution, if left unchallenged, would never dream of making for itself.

It would be impossible to overstate the importance and relevance of ‘Sex, Power, Control’. It is not merely an analysis of abuse within the Church of England, but an exploration of those harmful patriarchal assumptions and structures that fracture the whole of society. The essence of this argument is, I think, best captured by Gardner’s use of a Carl Jung quote in the final chapter: “Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking”.

1 – ‘Two-Thirds of Boris Johnson’s Cabinet Went To Private Schools’, The Guardian, Amy Walker, 25/7/2019

Cliff James is a novelist and the author of a philosophical travelogue, Life As A Kite. As a survivor, his work appears in Letters To A Broken Church and he features in the BBC’s documentary The Church’s Darkest Secret.