by Martin Sewell

I recently reflected upon the implications of the Charity Commission investigation into the conduct of the Christ Church Trustees and the Official Warning that now sits embarrassingly against the charity’s name on the Commission’s website. I now set out the case for a proper inquiry into the actions of cathedral clergy, Diocese and Church institutions in this case.

Within this context, it is unavoidable that reference be made to the “vestry event” accuser; that is regrettable but sadly, the case cannot be analysed in her complete absence. I shall refer to her as little as possible, for this is not about her: her complaint was accepted and officially addressed albeit not to her satisfaction. In stark contrast, Dr Percy’s complaints about faulty and corrupt processes, bias and misconduct by individuals and Church bodies alike are currently being blocked by an institution that pretends to believe in “ transparency and accountability “ but demonstrably does not. Many many survivors and bullied clergy have encountered the same issues, and some have recently shared their stories with the Charity Commission which can increasingly see that this high profile case is indicative of a persistent deeper structural disease.

The President of Tribunals made certain findings and observations which could have reset negotiations for the Dean to depart his post early, however the College and Diocese perversely refused to accept those findings. The bullying continued and to this we now turn.

The College malcontents had seen the vestry event as a golden opportunity to renew their efforts to eject the Dean by returning to the safeguarding theme and weaving a deceitful narrative of extreme risk out of very little material. The Sladen Review confirms that they were determined to use  any pretext at unconstrained cost, whether proportionate and  justified or not, to achieve their goal. They were not spending their own money.

The evidence of institutional bullying gathered pace. Ignoring alternative dispute resolution options which might have spared all parties much anguish, they ploughed on. This is what bullies do, they take control of events and manipulate for their own purposes.

The problem confronting the malcontents and their allies was the accuser’s status. In one sense it was truthful that she was “ a student studying at Christ Church” but she was not in fact a member of Oxford University; she was a student of Christchurch New Zealand University. This appears to have been potentially problematic for, although the College asserts that they are committed to “protecting their students and members of Staff”, not all University procedures applied to a “non-student “ and for whatever reason, technical or otherwise, the accuser never took recourse to the University “anti harassment” processes.  Dr Percy’s problems, of course had begun when he urged the powerful ex-Censors to revise all such procedures, which they had resisted.

Accordingly the malcontents turned to the Church to help deliver the final blow; clergy agreed . Whether this was entirely knowingly or as “useful idiots” would be one of the issues to be clarified by a full independent inquiry.  This, the Church leadership currently resolutely and irrationally opposes.

One should not forget that this was all happening at the height of the “Me too” movement. The College malcontents no doubt hoped  to capitalise upon this, not least in the hope that further allegations would be forthcoming either from his time at Christ Church or his lengthy prior involvement in education. They were to be deeply disappointed, for nothing emerged

This may be an appropriate point to address the evolution of the narrative with clarity remembering that the event had resulted in a single denied allegation of brief duration. The President of Tribunal’s decision highlighted a) no sexual element b) no serious misconduct c) no distress  asserted at the time. This was all knowable from the outset.

Cathedral Canons Ward and Peers had taken up the challenge and they, not the accuser, filed a CDM complaint after running it through Church safeguarding procedures in questionable fashion.  Canon Ward had been a leading figure at every stage of the ejection project with 32 prior rejected allegations. He was not a fit and proper person to have been given conduct of such a matter as complainant, given his immediate past history of animus against the Dean. The Bishop must have known his hostility and agenda. Nevertheless the alleged “safeguarding” allegation was processed by the Diocese and the Bishop within 24 hours. Whether this was lack of competence, inconsistency or worse is what an inquiry would need to investigate.

Insufficient care seems to have been taken in assessing the case on a number of levels. The accuser did not fit obviously within the parameters of CofE safeguarding. The accuser was not a minor, neither did she have the slightest vulnerability, indeed  as she has vociferously and properly asserted, she was fully competent adult with no vulnerabilities. She has complained that her agency has been removed; she is right – by the malcontents, their accomplices Peers and Ward, and thereafter the Church institutions. Of course her complaint  needed investigating but not under these provisions. Proper process matters and if it is credibly alleged to have been misapplied, that needs investigating.

Meanwhile a message was sent throughout the College Cathedral and School that essential precautions had to be put in place; the terms of them would have needed little adjustment had the Taxi cab rapist taken up resident on Tom Quad. These restrictions were extreme, abusive, bullying, and – dare one say it – “scandalous, immoral, and disgraceful”. Gardeners could only dig the flower beds in pairs lest the Dean set upon them! ( I kid you not)

These measures  were founded upon the infamous “ dodgy risk assessments” drawn by Ward Peers and possibly others. It was an inexpert, unregulated process which was questionable on a host of levels not least that it purported to pray in aid the endorsement of the Independent Investigator, former Lambeth Palace Safeguarding Advisor Kate Wood.

When it was publicly objected that Ms Wood did not feature on the Diocesan approved list for such work ( neither did either Canon ) she publicly distanced herself from them completely She told the Church Times that she had repeatedly asked to be extricated from association with the process. Sadly, she has been reticent about explaining more. She had properly stated in her report to the College that “this not a risk assessment”; she specifically recommended that a proper assessment could be commissioned under the Safeguarding and Clergy Discipline Regulations 2016.  The Bishop and College refused and neither have explained why.

 It gets worse; why did the Bishop not use one of the 10 approved Diocesan safeguarding experts? He needs to be vigorously pressed on why he neglected to apply proper process.  Was the malcontent Ward with 31 failed allegations to his credit, really the best person to assess the risks allegedly posed by the Dean out of these facts? You cannot duck that question though the Bishop continues to try. Frankly, it  looks biased at the very least and increasingly that he became complicit in the bullying. If there is a proper explanation an independent reviewer needs to hear and assess it. It would not not take long.

Even an assessment by Diocesan approved experts would not have properly addressed the core point in issue.

The false narrative runs as follows. “The Dean did it; the accuser alone is entitled to decide if it constitutes sexual and serious misconduct; we can extrapolate from this that he posed a total generic unspecified risk to all and sundry regardless of age sex  etc . We know better than the President of Tribunals; and we are fair. This is not bullying and no external inquiry into the  procedural  handling of the case is justified.”

This is detached from proportionality, and ordinary legal standards which have evolved through thousands of cases, decades of increasing expertise, and in full compliance with the Human Rights Act principle of the right to a fair trial.

So, I turn to to the  key question – did the Dean have a propensity to act in a way which, might disqualify him from office? The expertise to answer such a question does not lie within the skill set of  ex-social workers or  police, and certainly not with amateur Cathedral clergy; the best discipline to assist here is that of a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist  – ask any specialist safeguarding lawyer – oh wait, the Church refuses to employ any!

 Every day of the week, such experts are routinely submitting such evaluations to assist Courts when they consider whether children who have been found to have suffered or be, likely to suffer significant harm should be returned to parents under suspicion of serious abuse.  There are hundreds of such cases each year.  The paths to these experts’ doors are well trodden for those who know the way.

You can commission  and secure such an assessment from the very best experts in the country within ten weeks for under £10k, so why on earth did  College and Bishop refuse to do this if they were seriously concerned ? There are only two explanations.

Either nobody handling this case had the slightest experience in how safeguarding risk assessments are routinely commissioned and conducted in the secular courts, or, they did know,  but maliciously refused  to go there. A proper assessment would have “ shot their fox” – game over. My working rebuttable premise is that the bullies and the useful idiots were not going to risk that, so things were left in the hands of the the compliant/incompetent Canons.

Dr Percy complains that when he challenged the risk assessments as bogus, not least in that  someone had improperly added the National CofE official logo to the Ward/Canon amateur  effort to give them false authority, the Bishop replied that they were not “risk assessments” but “ assessments of risk”, a distinction unknown in law or perhaps logic. If true, an independent Reviewer might conclude that attempting  to offer such sophistry to a highly intelligent but emotionally vulnerable complainant of bullying  compounds the offence.

Illogically, the risk assessments  were not recalibrated in the slightest degree after the President of Tribunals had ruled that the vestry event could not not constitute “serious misconduct” even if the complaint were taken completely at  face value.

The Church was variously warned about the bullying, especially after the President’s decision was delivered. The Bishop and Canons  did not like the outcome and, like the College, shamefully refused to publish a fully redacted version onto the Diocesan or Cathedral websites . This reticence was no better explained than the “confusion” over the false attribution of the dubious risk assessments to Ms Wood.

A meeting in the Cathedral heard repeated reference to “the alleged sexual assaults” unchallenged, even though the legal decision did not uphold that terminology. The Bishop never accepted the President’s authoritative expert adjudication,  the abusive risk assessments remained in place until the final settlement was concluded when all these fearful speculations……just disappeared.. magically, with the mere passing of money. They remain on record as  the Diocesan contribution to the mobbing  of the Dean – and the national Church stood by in silent complicity – and worse.

When emails were shared with Church leaders, demonstrating that the Church’s lawyers and PR team ( simultaneously acting for the College and Church in the same matter ) were trying to place defamatory stories with newspapers ( shared with the Dean by outraged journalists) nothing was done. Journalists evidently had higher standards and a better nose for impropriety than Church leaders.

Dr Percy had sent all the evidence to Church House Lambeth Palace and Bishopsthorpe Palace; still nothing happened. No “serious incident report” was sent to the Charity Commission despite  each limb of the requisite test for such a report being met. Someone had been harmed; the Dean met the criteria for being a  a “vulnerable person”,  having suffered a medically authenticated nervous breakdown ; erosive reputational  damage was being perpetrated to both victim and simultaneously, to the largest religious charity in the country It was a qualification “slam dunk”. The trustees had neglected their duty.

When pressed,  it was explained to the, by now, ex-Dean,  that he was ” not recognised as a victim” and with that revelation  the cat was let out of the bag. They just wanted him to go away.

Like many other abuse  survivors and victims of clergy bullying, the Dean was alleging institutional bullying from top to bottom, but what he brought to the table which could not be properly ignored was an evidential trail in writing. Post Sladen, institutional bullying within the secular half the Christ Church Foundation  is now established and the evidence on the ecclesiastical half is so blatant that one has to be a member of the House of Bishops to even consider denying it.

The Church Establishment had decided he “was not a victim” but crucially they did so without first asking the key basic question  “ Is he a Complainant?”

The correct approach is “ Always listen to the complainant and take what they say seriously”. Dr Percy was complaining about cathedral clergy, Bishop, Lawyers, Church House NST staff Archbishops and Archbishops Council – so who within the Church could possibly make the necessary impartial decision that he was “not a victim”? Such abandonment of analytical thinking is a consequence of bullying becoming “institutional”. The mobbing narrative grips all, and critical thinking goes out the window. Unconscious bias permeates every discussion. The Dean had become “not a victim” – just a persistent nuisance. We call this “victim blaming”.

With the implosion of the so-called Independent Safeguarding Board which now acknowledges that it has neither the independence nor capacity for such a big piece of work,  all the trustees of Archbishops Council face a problem. The Sladen Report makes it clear that each trustee has an individual duty to speak act and decide things with integrity; there is no hiding place. Cover-up is not an option,  yet there is no internal mechanism to properly investigate institutional bullying of this widespread character.

In a press interview in 2019 Archbishop Justin Welby told the Spectator “ We have not yet found the proper way of dealing with complainants and taking them seriously, listening to them,  not just telling them to shut up and go away, which is what we did for decades, which was evil- its more than just a wrong thing, it’s a deeply evil act”

I agree with 2019 Archbishop Justin; I hope 2022 Archbishop Justin does too, and that he will now lead his fellow trustees to appoint a proper, independent, senior lawyer-led inquiry into Dr Percy’s complaint of institutional bullying in this deeply disturbing case. There is no other option of integrity.