The amount of attention given to safeguarding for children and vulnerable adults in churches across the world varies enormously.  We should, nevertheless, be able to expect that the abuse of minors and women would be universally recognised as evil, and that all Christian leaders will treat it with the seriousness that it deserves. Sadly, however, we read reports of Christian leaders themselves being involved in cases of abuse and these are distressingly common.  In the last blog piece, we encountered another familiar theme – the tendency of many in positions of seniority in churches to put the protection of institutions and financial interests above the pain and damage suffered by abused individuals.  The story of the Church’s failure in this area is well documented in Australia, Britain, the States and no doubt, in other nations.  What does vary from nation to nation is the speed and effectiveness shown by the secular authorities in their response to the abuse problem.  One nation, and I am here thinking of Australia, was ahead of the game in setting up a government Royal Commission to examine the whole issue.  We in Britain were two years behind in seeing a government-sponsored body set up to look at the problem of child sexual abuse across the institutions, including the churches.  This setting up of IICSA nearly did not happen because of a flagging political will to see the process through.  Also, there was the difficulty of finding a suitably qualified person to act as Chair.  The IICSA process is now almost complete and the whole conduct of safeguarding in the UK will draw on its truth-finding and recommendations for decades to come.

Across in America there is, as far as I can ascertain, nothing resembling the IICSA process or the Australian Royal Commission.  The size of the country and its fragmentation into individual states no doubt makes such a project impossible.  Nevertheless, America does have certain organisations equipped with both money and expertise to undertake important work in this area.  I am in particular thinking of the work of the powerful and effective organisation known as GRACE.  GRACE is a much larger set-up than our nearest UK equivalent, 31:8.  Its expertise covers all the areas that the British organisation is involved in, namely responding to and analysing the institutional failings in the area of abuse.  There is one major difference between the two organisations apart from size and budget.  GRACE is deeply embedded in the legal aspects of safeguarding.  It does not just offer consultancy advice to churches faced with abuse allegations.  It will, when necessary, involve itself in the pursuit of legal claims against individuals and organisations.   GRACE was founded by two individuals in 2004, one of whom is Billy Graham’s grandson and a lawyer, Boz Tchividjian. The acronym GRACE stands for Godly Response to Abuse in a Christian Environment.  Boz brought to the organisation all his background of being part of a premier American evangelical family, but he added to this the incisive understanding of a lawyer who possessing a passion for protecting the weak and vulnerable. 

The work of GRACE across the churches has had considerable impact on American church life in the twenty or so years of its existence.  Several important investigations have enhanced its reputation and demonstrated its skill and effectiveness. Among its early pieces of work was a report which identified terrible abuse of all kinds being inflicted on the children of missionaries, popularly known as MKs or Mission Kids.  These children had been taken with their parents to countries overseas to live in boarding schools while the parents were working in remote villages which were unsuitable for children. The GRACE report focussed on one group known as the Twelve Tribes Mission working in Senegal.  GRACE located as many of these children as it could and learnt from them the appalling conditions that they had been subjected to.  This included sexual and physical abuse.  The report published in 2009 was meticulous and highly critical of the Mission.  The organisation was severely censured for showing little interest in the interests and safety of these vulnerable American children under their care. The work of GRACE included in this case legal action against the Mission and a number of involved individuals were fired from their posts.  Some congregations involved with the Southern Baptist scandal described in the last blog piece, also drew on the forensic wisdom possessed by GRACE in the task of understanding the corruption and failures of the SBC.  It should be mentioned that Boz is no longer, since 2021, the executive director of the organisation, but he remains on the advisory panel. 

One of the features of the safeguarding world in the CofE is that when we look for the church lawyers involved in abuse cases, we find many of them firmly lined up on the side of the institution.  Survivors do not find legal assistance from the firms of lawyers who specialise in church law.  The legal assistance they do receive comes from a number of specialist ‘secular’ lawyers.  These are the ones who negotiate with the CofE’s insurer for compensation claims.  I have good reports of their understanding and compassion towards survivors.  There is also a third strand of legal activity in this area which my readers will be familiar with.  This is found in the work of two doggedly independent retired lawyers, David Lamming and Martin Sewell.  They are a source of much appreciated help and advice for survivors.  The moral support they offer victims and survivors caught up in the Kafkaesque structures of church law is incalculable.  Alongside this important task of supporting victims and survivors in their gruelling confrontations with the church authorities, these two also are constantly questioning and attempting to interpret for Synod members the application of church law to safeguarding.  David is no longer on General Synod but still works tirelessly for survivors.  One suspects that the Archbishops’ Council would prefer ordinary members of Synod to leave all legal matters to their ‘experts’.  The notion that the legal opinions of senior church lawyers close to Church House and Lambeth Palace can be thought to be beyond the need for scrutiny and close examination by ordinary Synod members and clergy has proved to be a dangerous assumption.  Anyone with the slightest sense of what is legally appropriate will have been alarmed by the conflicts of interest apparent in the Percy affair.  One does not need to be a legal expert to realise that an ‘independent’ core group should not have known opponents of the one accused allowed to sit in judgment. With 60% of the current Synod unfamiliar with the history of the tangled legal trails around safeguarding over the past ten years, the legal memory and skill of the remaining independent lawyer on Synod, Martin Sewell, is needed more than ever.

This piece is meant to encourage the reader who is interested in holding the Church to account in its legal and moral failings over safeguarding, to have a look at the work of GRACE in America.  We already possess high professionalism and insight in the organisation 31: 8.  This needs to be combined with the probing questioning of GRACE or lawyers like Sewell and Lamming.  In other words, we need the independent and informed work of both these independent entities, legal and professional, working together.  Perhaps the Charity Commission will respond to Sewell’s recent challenging letter about incompetence and failure in the CofE and Archbishops Council with a similar suggestion.  Might we dream that the Charity Commission demands that the CofE submits itself to a professionally competent body, outside its control, to offer advice and support in all matters to do with safeguarding?  Independent is a word that perhaps needs to be avoided, as it has been thoroughly misapplied in recent months.  The ombudsman role that is needed will need to be ‘third party’.  They could do worse than consulting the directors and staff of the GRACE organisation in the States as well as talk to the two real ‘experts’ in this area that we have in Britain.  Between them, they seem to be doing much that we need in our present safeguarding crisis in the Church of England.