by Graham
https://twitter.com/mandatenow/status/1586711780251914240/photo/1
The Daily Telegraph has carried an article about some proposed changes in the way that safeguarding cases from the past will be dealt with by the Church. One of those involved in this discussion is ‘Graham’ a Smyth survivor who has been at the forefront in holding the CofE to account for their many failures in bringing truth and justice into the arena of safeguarding. This article is Graham’s reaction to the recent proposals. The Telegraph article linked to above helps to put the whole story into its wider context. (the Editor is unclear whether the link to this photo is restricted to existing members of Twitter)
Consultation on Learning Lessons Case Reviews
In early 2018, the then Lead Bishop for Safeguarding, Peter Hancock, asked me the rhetorical question: “what is the difference between an Inquiry, an Investigation and a Review ?”. I was pressing for a Church of England-instigated report into the activities of John Smyth QC and the safeguarding failures over forty years. Smyth was possibly the most prolific abuser the Church of England had ever known with approximately 30 victims in England, and almost 100 in Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Well, the answer to that question depends upon what you are trying to achieve. Did the Church want a comprehensive investigation of all that had gone wrong ? Or would they produce another Review that would be dismissed and ignored ? By early 2018, a year after the first Channel Four expose and six years after I had first come forward, there was still no formal C of E investigation of any sort.
I must declare my interest. In 2012, I disclosed the abuse meted out by John Smyth QC in the Diocese of Ely. By 2013, it had reached Lambeth and by August 2013, it is believed eight Bishops and one Archbishop was aware of the abuse and my disclosure. However, it is unclear what, if anything was done, and John Smyth was not stopped or brought to justice. Only some superb investigative journalism by the team at Channel 4 brought the story to light. Only subsequently has it become clear that large numbers of Church of England clergy had known the full horror of the abuse by 1982. I then learned of the death of a boy under Smyth’s charge in Zimbabwe. I learned just how little had been done in 2013. Surely this demanded a full investigation ? However, it was only eighteen months after the broadcast that a Review was announced, and it took another 12 months to set up. Coming up to six years after the Channel 4 broadcast, we still await the Makin Review.
Back to the recently circulated Consultation. What do the Church of England think that Learning Lessons Case Reviews (LLCR from now on) should look like ?
And to my horror, I find that they have been diluted out of all existence. The consultation starts with a section on “The reflective organisation” and this thread runs the whole way through. LLCRs might be renamed “Safeguarding Reflective Exercises” ( that is not a joke, it is in the Consultation) and it is clear they fall well short of anything that might be called a serious exercise. There is a section “What a LLCR is, and what it is not” which starts with the woolly definition that “It is a planned process of reflective learning”. But then it goes on fatally to limit LLCRs:
- It is not “an ‘investigation’ or ‘inquiry’ into the individual [respondent], the church body or the NST”
- It is not “A legal or disciplinary process in relation to personal and professional conduct that seeks to establish blame or guilt and/or recommend sanctions”
- It states that “…when the case involves abuse which happened some time ago…the outcomes of a LLCR for both the victims and the organisation may be limited”
The detail shows further considerable restrictions. It suggests: “The expectation is that the whole LLCR process should take no more than six months from the decision to undertake the review until publication”. This is farcical when the Devamanikkam Review is 658 days overdue and the Makin Review is 872 days overdue. In fact, the Review into Smyth was announced in August 2018, so it has actually been four years and two months since “the decision to undertake the Review”.
The Consultation states: “The Reviewers recommendations. These should usually be limited to no more than six recommendations which are outcome-focused and SMART” ( there is jargon in here Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, Time-related).
There is also extreme naivety. Under the theme of “reflection” it states that “In ideal circumstances [behaviours] that fall short of a reasonable standard of practice or behaviour….will have been identified by the Church Officer themselves through an iterative process of reflection and discussion….It is part of the Reviewer’s role to help bring those individuals to this place..” I do not care about “reflection”: I want to know how eight Bishops and one Archbishop failed to act on my disclosure of John Smyth’s abuse. I want to know which Church Officers, and Christian people, knew of Smyth’s horrific abuse in 1982 and did nothing, some facilitating his move to Africa.
So, the Consultation describes a watered-down process that falls far, far short of an analysis of what went wrong and who might be accountable for safeguarding failings. And this is an enormous gap in Church of England processes. NST and the CofE have not themselves undertaken any investigation into the Smyth abuse. They have been unwilling to start disciplinary processes against anyone involved ( bar, briefly, Lord Carey). They refused to investigate my formal complaint against Archbishop Justin. They have refused to investigate Titus Trust and the Iwerne camps, despite both organisations being populated with Church of England clergymen. Among other things, the National Safeguarding Team just do not have capacity to undertake a serious investigation: last time I looked there were just two Case Officers. There has not been a Core Group ( to be called a Safeguarding Case Management Group: lipstick on a pig) on John Smyth since 2018. Bishop Peter Hancock was unable to tell me if there was even an open file.
This Consultation comes on the back of the IICSA report and the redone Past Cases Review (PCR2). Confidence in CofE safeguarding is at an all time low. The ISB is disintegrating and does not yet provide any independent oversight. PCR2 “discovered” 383 cases of abuse, not discovered for the first time, but recorded and subsequently “hidden” from PCR1. IICSA itself reports (p6 Executive Summary) that “Some internal past case reviews were flawed and inaccurate, and there was a tendency to minimise offending.”
Who has taken this decision to water down LLCRs ? Has General Synod ? Has the Independent Safeguarding Board ? Has the House of Bishops ? Have they all agreed a policy where there will not be comprehensive, wide-ranging, well-resourced investigations* of safeguarding failings ? (* call them what you like: it is the intent that is important). Would Peter Ball not get a proper investigation if commissioned now ? just a reflective exercise ? Would the John Smyth not get a proper investigation: his abuse spanned four decades in three countries, and was known about by a raft of Church Officers ? Under the current proposals, the Makin Review would just not get commissioned.
And how are victims meant to feel about a process that leads to just navel-gazing ? ( oops, sorry, “reflection”). We will get a new raft of LLCRs that name no names ( Griffin report) that get dismissed ( Elliott Review), have “themes” rather than recommendations and that hold no one to account.
If it wasn’t so serious these proposed changes to the way the church investigates what has happened when abuse and cover up has taken place could be seen as hilarious, they’re certainly provocative and obtuse.
But how the church responds should be deadly serious; it needs to be clear, straightforward and respectful: people’s lives and well-being are on the line here – so what on earth is going on with these suggestions?
Reflective practice is of course a well-respected way of thinking about one’s actions as part of a process of continuous learning – used as part of supervision in direct work with people and a way of learning from experience so you don’t make the same mistakes. It’s about really being open, vulnerable and honest about your feelings, and the way you acted, the relationship with the person you’re working with, and so on, and being able to be critical about what worked and what didn’t. The idea is that you adapt and learn – you’re open to changing your practice.
Call me cynical … but the church hierarchy has shown up to now absolutely no interest in reflecting on their actions, nor indeed any meaningful capacity to do so – either individually or collectively. Denial has been the order of the day. There has been no sense of learning from past experiences, and it seems unlikely that there is sufficient emotional literacy to imagine the effect on survivors and to make any use of this in future responses.
But as ‘Graham’ says survivors and indeed their many supporters want action – accountability and real changes. After a crime and wrong-doing has taken place you want JUSTICE – ideally the perpetrator is prosecuted and appropriate sentences handed down etc. – any reflection for anyone involved comes much later.
Abuse and cover up are both crimes – and both are a denial of the life force and personhood of the victim. The church must stop the ongoing inhumanity of their responses to survivors. I don’t think these proposals will do that.
For the last 6 years (and probably at least since the 2012 period Graham references?), Bishops and other Leaders (NST etc) have gone on and on and on about how the Church is ‘on a journey’ on safeguarding and its treatment of survivors.
I do accept that at a diocesan, deanery and parish level, much progress has been made in prevention etc. and an enormous amount of training has been undertaken based on materials produced by Diocesan and central/NST teams (as I understand it, which I have to admit is from a distance).
However I have first hand experience that the treatment of whistleblowers and survivors in 2022 is perhaps worse than any time since the early 1990s when George Carey chose to ignore all the evidence of multiple survivors because Peter Ball said they were all lying (and of course Bishops are unique people who never lie, so case closed). Such deference to Bishops and refusal to take whistleblowers and survivors seriously continues to thrive in 2022.
For at least the last 6 years 98% + of General Synod reps have chosen to walk by on the other side and failed to hold the leadership to account on the treatment of whistleblowers and survivors, even though the entire GS was given copies of ‘We asked for Bread, but you gave us Stones’.
Many Survivors would like to hope that GS reps would, amongst others,
– hold the leadership accountable for the years of delay of the SCIE reports for Lambeth and Bishopthorpe Palaces
– hold the leadership accountable for the dilution of any accountability the C of E faces on safeguarding at the very time IICSA produces its final report as Graham outlined above
– prevent the Church from changing the rules to ensure that the Makin review, the Gibb review, the Elliott review and the other dozen LLCRs of the past could never happen in the future.
However no doubt the leadership is confident that GS will roll over and provide no effective challenge as is the well established pattern as regards safeguarding, whistleblowers and survivors.
I would acknowledge that a very few (perhaps single digit?) GS reps have, in each of this Synod and the last, tried to challenge, but have been swept aside by the herd of the vast majority.
I think most survivors & whistleblowers have long since given up hoping things might ever change, or that their concerns might ever be taken seriously in the face of such deep-rooted and ongoing deference to Bishops in particular.
Or as in some cases, the GS reps ARE the ones who need holding accountable.
The vicar who wrote an online, homophobic blog about me, which is recorded as a homophobic hate incident by police, and resulted in a CDM found against her by the bishop… Is a GS rep.
One of the “inclusive church” supported ones, despite that organisation’s knowledge of the events.
You couldn’t make this up.
There ain’t no justice.
Just us.
The Church isn’t going to act to address its sordid past. It’s not going to put things right. When it speaks in these (to many of us) risible terms, it speaks to its own constituency, to those it wants to keep on side. These are a slumbering majority not involved in past abuse cases. A diminishing cohort, they desperately want to hang on to the phantasy of a benevolent place of worship and still maintain their tithing in its support.
These slithering words of essentially doing nothing, are music to their ears. Nothing must change nor prick our bubble, they wistfully imagine.
To this end these ridiculous statements are predictable and will please the intended audience. Limit things. Don’t look too closely. Shut it down.
As an institutional behaviour it is of course self-limiting. Ignoring the cries of survivors of bullying and abuse, doesn’t stop it or them.
For those of us wondering what to do, having bloodied our foreheads on the brick walls of Church inaction, the target audience is not the Church at all, but its slumbering declining membership reading the Telegraph and other national broadcasters increasingly willing to ask uncomfortable questions. The Church doesn’t listen. It can’t. But people can and do. So keep up the critiques. Carry on with the blogs. Support the “Mandate Now”s of this world. The exodus is becoming a flood.
Well said Graham!
I am sure you fed back to the policy authors more articulately than me but I am sure ‘what the ****’ would have underpinned quite a few responses.
LLR’s were never up to much but the potential policy update is an insult to anyone who has suffered abuse. I told them that I found reading it to be re-traumatising and that co-production with survivors did not mean trying to get them to rubber stamp it at the end of a process.
I think there will be a massive backlash if they go ahead and sanction it.
Some suggestions as to themes which should be present in every review …
Who most needs to learn the lessons which emerge from any review? Those who have made mistakes. What processes are in place to ensure that those people learn the necessary lessons – how will the organisation ensure that the behaviours of those who have erred are changed? How will that be followed up and reviewed?
[This assumes that errors are properly analysed and attributed]
And what are the outcomes for those who have been wronged – has reparation and redress been taken seriously, and enacted promptly? (Most “reviews” I have seen don’t seem to touch this in any real or useful way). What needs to change so that the particular wrongs in this particular case are properly addressed and, so far as possible, rectified?
The rest of us can learn from the mistakes of others as well – but only if we understand how human beings like ourselves come to make mistakes so we can gain some insight into how to avoid them. How does the psychology of that learning work? How can that part of the report be written in a helpful way? How can that learning be embedded rather than shelved?
It would be useful to gather a list of key questions to be addressed in any useful review. What would be the desired outcomes – things like: the removal from post of anyone who presents a danger or serious risk; a properly accountable return to fitness to practice for those who have erred, where possible; prompt and appropriate care and redress for those who have been wronged; correction to poor systems or processes; effective wider learning for those not involved in the circumstances being reviewed. The questions should be directed to assurance of appropriate outcomes.
This has come backwards, because I’ve been thinking while writing. But I think that a properly resourced approach along these lines might have a chance of getting somewhere.
‘The rest of us can learn from the mistakes of others as well – but only if we understand how human beings like ourselves come to make mistakes so we can gain some insight into how to avoid them.’
You’re right there, Mark. It troubles me when bishops and safeguarding structures are trashed en masse – though I’m afraid I sometimes do it myself. Because while some of them do deliberately put the Church before survivors, and some are malign, others have simply behaved as we might if we were in their shoes and under the same pressures. We underestimate the power of those we are surrounded by to change the way we think and react. The book ‘To Heal and Not to Hurt’, by Rosie Harper and Alan Wilson, gives a number of scenarios which show how serious harm can be caused without anyone intending it, when those to whom abuse is reported simply handle it the way they would handle other concerns which arise in the course of their work.
Demonising those who get it wrong is understandable, because the anger, hurt, and frustration build up to such a pitch when we keep bashing our heads against a brick wall. But understanding, for both the ‘bricks’ and us, is actually more helpful and more likely to effect change. It’s the whole culture that needs to be redeemed.
A strong and profound piece of writing, similarly your comments.
Yesterday I sent an email to the Safeguarding Officer at Lambeth Palace with whom I am in communication. I sent her the link to the blog, ‘The Victim Must be Believed’. The speed of her reply indicated it was unlikely she had read it. Instead she suggested I should write an official complaint to the Diocesan Complaints about Kenneth. I had explained in previous emails that this has been done three times and on the last occasion, in August 2021 without addressing the issues raised they claimed, ‘the case is now closed’! She also missed the point that I am now no longer supporting just the one person but am drawing attention to all other wrongly accused respondents. Nothing seems to have been read properly. Surely mere curiosity on her part would warrant that she read what is sent.
‘The Victim Must be Believed’ blog is central to the Safeguarding Core Groups injustices to their response to sexual allegations. If that is not read and understood it begs the question as to whether there can ever be meaningful change in the Church of England. Nevertheless I shall send her the link to this blog saying that even if she does not acknowledge it to me her position dictates that she should read it and be aware of the reality of the situation. I shall do this now.
We cannot be silenced. We must fight and write on and on.
It’s possible, of course, that she had read Stephen’s ‘The Survivor Must be Believed’ blog before you sent it to her. I’d like to think they keep a close eye on Surviving Church – they certainly ought to!
Janet! I never thought of that. I hope they are aware but it does not seem to make any difference. Surely they cannot go on forever ignoring the truth of the situation. Since being made aware of this blog I am impressed by the articles and number of people who comment. There must come a point when they are overwhelmed by sheer numbers and evidence and it is realised they will have to take notice.
That’s our hope!
Shall we call it ‘Vision’, Janet? Hope is something survivors get depleted of every single day that passes without action. At least that’s my painful experience.
Excellent article Graham and some powerful comments, as usual.
Steve’s has particularly resonated with me, as an angle of the situation which needs reminding of. The ‘slumbering majority’ HAVE to be woken up to read the news. Their ‘benevolent place of worship’ has rooms they’ve previously been swiftly ushered past – full of terrible cases of Church abuse, who need help – now.
This comprehensive, inhumane treatment of survivors has to feature rudely, abruptly, and uncomfortably in the majority’s vision – to burst the constructed facade they ‘buy’ into. Only then can the ‘facade’ break and change & repair happen – for survivors and for the Church. LOUDFence seems to be a step in that direction, giving the everyday working Church *some* visibility of victims and survivors of Church abuse.
The list of advocates, supporters, and initiatives is getting larger. The truth IS getting louder and increasingly more difficult to step over…
Tony
Earlier this year I tentatively attended one of the final IICSA survivors’ meetings. My primary aim was to survive the experience largely intact. I did find a delegate’s comments somewhat triggering. He looked a bit like me. Some of the staff were good, some a little out of their depth.
I did survive. The chips and a good buffet lunch ensured I was one of the last to leave. The fellow survivors were a powerful bunch. The energy was palpable. I wanted to reach out and rescue one, another hugged me. It was profound to be with them.
A lid was kept on the anger in the room, but I understood this had not been the case at alternate locations where the same process had been attempted.
Somehow we have to channel this nuclear powered anger into an energy which is controlled for maximum impact without destroying everything and everyone around us. Just as I was triggered by another there, and tempted to make a swift exit, we can be counterproductive if we overload others, even paid professionals, with our stuff.
I’m not saying I’ve got the balance right at all. But I’m beginning to discern when others do. To me, Vicky Beeching did get her approach just about right in her recent book. That said I was open to it after a lifetime of questioning the way we approach others and in this case, their sexuality. Her story was the tipping point away from an old set of beliefs, to a knew set, more firmly held. I should also add that a delay occurred in the assumption of these beliefs by the aggression I encountered as as a student from others trying to force their views on me. Their approach sadly put me off. Now obviously I realise how angry many were, and with good justification.
The question remains over how we approach the slumbering majority. When looking at Christ’s method, it appears he reserved his outrage mainly for the hypocritical leaders he encountered. For ordinary Jo(e)s he was rather different.