Dear Bishop Emma,

I am writing to you as one of many who want to congratulate you on your new appointment to the post at Lambeth, helping both our Archbishops.  No doubt you will be receiving plenty of advice from those who know you and from others who have expectations of what you might be able to contribute through this position to help the Church move into the future.  I write as one of the numerous retired clergy in your current diocese, but we have never met.  My interest now is to offer thoughts on one important part of your job.  This is the aspect of your role which is to advise the Archbishops on how to respond effectively to the avalanche of safeguarding and abuse issues that swamp the inboxes of those in authority in the Church.

I note that Gilo has already written to you recommending reading matter.  As you have responded to him, saying that you visit my blog, Surviving Church from time to time, I am going to assume that you will see this open letter at some point.  It comes with some thoughts of mine on what you might seek to achieve in this very complex, even messy, world of safeguarding.  First of all a word about my own ‘qualifications’ in this area.  Simply stated I have none, not even that being a survivor.  I also have no training in any of the relevant skills around safeguarding, like social work, law or psychology.  But I can claim to have taken an informed interest in the issue of power abuse in the Church over twenty-five years, having written a published book on the topic in 2000.  I also have had the experience of an ordinary parish priest.  My blog has posted well over 600 articles, the majority written by me.  This writing has, over time, resulted in an extensive correspondence with a variety of survivors of church abuse.  I remain in touch with many people who, I believe, have a great deal to offer the Church in terms of making things better in the future.

This issue of what the cohort of survivors have to offer to the whole Church is the first thing I want to raise with you.  Obviously, the oversight of safeguarding is only one element in your future job specification at Lambeth, but I hope you will regard it as an important one.  I want to state my firm conviction that the witness of abuse survivors is one the most valuable untapped resources the Church possesses in terms of successfully sorting out safeguarding for the future.  Financial compensation for survivors may be a part of it of what is needed.  Equally as important, I believe, is the creation of a new culture where survivors are properly listened to.  Their suffering and lasting pain must never be treated as merely something to be managed, before being lost in a large filing cabinet somewhere.  

One of the problems you will find very quickly is that the current crop of survivors’ testimonies is bringing much damage to the Church’s reputation and credibility in society.   Stories of predatory clergymen and organists abusing children of course sells newspapers.  The temptation is for the Church to attempt to respond to such stories by reassuring the public that vetting is better, training is better and that the future promises a safer Church for all.  These attempts to create the conditions for the Church to be a safe space are commendable.  But they lack one important ingredient.  This ingredient is one that I have already mentioned, the task of effective listening.  Some dioceses have made strides in this area … whilst others hardly at all.

There are two important ways that listening to survivors is a vital ingredient of the Church’s future response to the Safeguarding crisis.  The first thing is that it is only by listening to their stories that the solid foundations of future reform can be built.   Survivors need to know that the team of highly trained specialists are starting from a place of real understanding and insight before they start to plan and build for a better future.  The key to understanding is, above all, empathetic listening to existing survivors’ stories.  I believe that these stories are vitally important for you and others to hear in at least two ways.

Listening intently to what survivors have to say is crucial, as we have already indicated, because new policies can only work when they are rooted in what has already happened.  Sticking plasters cannot work unless there is a surface for them to be attached to.  So often the cry from survivors is that the authorities are trying to find solutions for the future when the Church stills seems determined to ignore or bury so much of what has already happened.  The first thing that survivors need to know is that the raw pain of abuse and re-abuse has been acknowledged.  This might lead to any one of number of potential responses.  One idea could be be a survivors’ day in the Church calendar, with special liturgical resources provided to be used by all.  A Day of Reconciliation between survivors and leading bishops might be organised at a major cathedral.   Above all, the torrid story of what sufferers have been through has somehow to enter the consciences and awareness of everyone, especially those who are making policy and taking decisions in this area. 

Survivors have another gift for the Church which has not been used.  They have memory which is not only of their personal stories.  One of the problems that has accompanied the never-ending renewal of the safeguarding structures at the centre of the Church, is the loss of corporate memory.  However skilled or highly qualified a new appointee may be, they cannot do the job properly if they do not know the stories of abuse that are scattered around in the Church’s memory.   Many survivors are walking encyclopaedias of the reports, the notorious individuals and parishes where abuses took place. They will have a finely nuanced understanding of the wider narrative that lies behind the IICSA reports.  They know the bits of the jigsaw, including many missing pieces.  One hour with a survivor will teach you far more than five hours of reading reports.  For one thing, a report cannot evaluate the impact of an abusing individual.  It cannot fill in the real emotions of fear, disorientation and deep loss that were experienced in the abusive event, nor the frustration of dealing with decades long of disclosures that were walked away from, or the corruption and cover-ups that survivors have had to fight a way through.  Written reports may record facts, but they can never reveal the raw emotion of past shameful events in the Church.  If you watched the recent Panorama programme on racism, you will remember the dramatic moment when Clive Myrie slapped down the  great pile of reports connected with the Church and racism in front of the Archbishop of York.  A similar quantity of reports and reviews have been made in the Church’s response to safeguarding – and their recommendations frequently ignored or ‘retranslated’ to suit the spin of lawyers and communications people and the PR management of Archbishops Council. Gilo has recommended books, most of which you appear to have read.  I am going to recommend that you meet survivors as a matter of urgency.  They will probably have a quite different perspective to the professionals and the experts on safeguarding, but you will get closer to the raw truth of what needs to be done in the next few years.  It is so important that you meet these people who carry all this knowledge in their heads and have strong well-informed ideas about how the Church might get things right in the future. 

Bishop Emma, there is an enormous urgency for you to help to put things right in the area of safeguarding.  The greatest contribution you can make on day one is a determination to listen carefully to all the voices clamouring for your attention in this area.  There will be professional input as well as the voice of survivors.   But as you hear each voice speaking, I would like you to think and ask yourself what each one represents.  The question that might be going through your head is this.  What perspective does this person represent?  Do they speak on behalf of smooth management and control, are they on the side of legal correctness, or are they promoting gospel imperatives of reconciliation, truth and goodness?  Gilo has a powerful image that he often returns to, the idea of bureaucratic institutions ‘hoovering up’ those who come into their orbit.  What he is saying and perhaps I am also saying is that the survivor community are urging you to retain your independence, your gospel convictions and your personal integrity as you enter what has become the political minefield of safeguarding in the Church of England.  Independence in this area will be hard to maintain, but if you succeed you will be doing something historically important for the Church. This may help to redeem the culture of a church leadership which has seemed very broken, but will also bring some healing to survivors.

Stephen Parsons Retired Priest living in Greystoke Cumbria.