Whilst the debates over sexuality gathered most of the headlines during last week’s General Synod, useful information has nevertheless been forthcoming for those of us concerned about Safeguarding; “Let those who have ears to hear, hear” is a good text for the attentive, so here are my principle takeaways.
• The Archbishops and Church House did not dare to have an open debate about why the project known as the “ Independent Safeguarding Board” is in such deep trouble.
• Bishop Pete Broadbent was absolutely right when he warned that
“The platform tactic (from those leading debates and carrying forward the business of Synod) has been to attempt to keep questions about the Church’s safeguarding practice, past and present, off the floor of Synod. Attempts to inquisite the shortcomings of the National Safeguarding Team, the past failures of Bishops and the various ‘lessons learned reviews’ (from which we never seem to learn very much) have been seen off and resisted, leaving victims, survivors and those campaigning on their behalf with the sense that justice will never be done or seen to be done.”
• The ISB has itself identified to Archbishops’ Council serious problems concerning its creation and functionality, which include the following direct quotes from its website
• Church inaction in one area “severely hampers the ISB’s ability to provide oversight and scrutiny …”
• “the Church of England has co-created a delivery vehicle that frustrates the ISB’s ability to assure a critical safeguarding service.
• The current position of the ISB in the Church’s infrastructure is unsustainable”
• The ISB does not consider that it is sufficiently independent from those it is responsible for scrutinising
• Half the membership of the Audit Committee of the Archbishops’ Council has raised concerns about the creation and functionality of the ISB, yet those concerns have been rebuffed.
• Nobody knows the composition of the delegation which spoke to the Charity Commission on behalf of Archbishops’ Council after governance failures were reported by a wide range of interested parties.
• The New Director of Safeguarding needs all the support he can get.
The implications of these observations are important and profound; they go to the very heart of good governance of the Church of England and the continuing problems must once again be reported to the Charity Commission. This is not just about safeguarding it is about proper governance.
The ISB was the principal response of the CofE to IICSA and already it has failed in its present incarnation. That statement is not even controversial if you talk to members of Archbishops’ Council, or of the ISB. It needs reformation and everyone- not least the Church victims – knows this to be true. The $64 question is “when and by whom”.
Church House obstructed the attempts to place this in the agenda last week; we simply wanted to note the concerns of the Survivors and the ISB, place the matter on the agenda for July and ask the Audit Committee to look into why things went wrong.
Be very very clear, it was the latter proposition that spooked the Establishment at Church House and Lambeth Palace.
For all its rhetoric about transparency and accountability the CofE leadership resists the application of the Nolan principles for good conduct in public life at a visceral level. It will accept any amount of public embarrassment rather than submit to proper scrutiny into how it manages matters such as Safeguarding.
The reason is simple; to undertake Safeguarding to the well established standards of the secular world, you have to confront the unaccountable discretionary powers of the 42 Bishops each of whom acts with the autonomy of a medieval Prince Bishop. You simply cannot reconcile good Human Rights compliant safeguarding, with a structure still significantly operating within a 12th century mindset.
Synod has just voted through the necessary legislation to make Safeguarding “Advisers” in Dioceses into “Officers” who are independent of their Bishops. But they now report not to an independent oversight body, like perhaps the Independent Safeguarding Board, but instead to the Archbishops’ creation – the National Safeguarding Team. In the 1971 words of The Who, is this a case of “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss” ?
When I began challenging Church thinking on Safeguarding in 2015 I made clear that the mantra “ Trust me -I’m a bishop” will not wash in the modern world. I was taken aside by a senior Bishop who patiently explained that I was trying to make them conform to the standards of the secular Safeguarding world, whereas “ We are building a system suitable for the Church of England”.
That turned out well didn’t it?
During the Monday evening Question and Answer session a low key drama played out, the implications of which will have been missed by many members. You have to know how to “read the game” here.
A member asked if the Audit Committee had been asked to audit the creation of the Independent Safeguarding Board. This in itself should have caused a ripple of excitement. Every year, Synod nods through the routine report of the Audit Committee but it never contains anything headline-grabbing. Not that is, until now.
Now, it is being asked – and is also itself asking – to become involved in one of the major issues for the Church. Perhaps this is not so unusual given the millions of pounds being spent on inquiries and paid out to victims of wrongdoing by the Church as well as the reputational harm the constant scandals are doing to it. Safeguarding is an important matter. If the ISB is in crisis so soon, why is this? What went wrong? Who should we trust to put it right?
The Audit Committee is a watchdog for Synod and has a supervisory role in anticipating and troubleshooting problems. In a different agenda item, one member of the Audit Committee described auditors as “always being able to find the cloud behind the silver lining”.
The question was answered by Maureen Cole who is not only the Chair of the Audit Committee but sits on the Archbishops’ Council. Curiously, neither the written answers provided nor she personally identified herself as having this dual role. She was put up to answer and repeated the mantra that the ISB is independent and not the Audit Committee business – but wait…. Why was she answering for the Archbishop’s Council if she is the Chair of the watchdog? “ A wo/man cannot serve two masters”. If Hogwarts had taught Harry Potter auditing skills alongside potions, advocating for the people you are supposed to be auditing would be one of the Unforgivable Curses.
She was then challenged by members of her owncommittee and was obliged to acknowledge that half of the committee had asked to look into the ISB creation and that the Archbishops’ Council – on whose behalf she was answering – had rejected such an inquiry. And so we are back to a common theme in these matters – that of conflict of interest and lack of proper independence.
Further, as indicated from the quotations above, the independence of the ISB from the Archbishops’ Council was called into question by the ISB members themselves. It is a mess and needs looking into but there is reluctance to do so by “ the powers that be”. It is a different problem to that identified by Bp Pete Broadbent but closely related.
Why does this matter?
Put simply, if the design of the ISB Constitution is flawed we need to understand why; nobody would ask that a replacement Grenfell Tower be designed and built by the same architects and construction company unless there had been a proper – and timely – inquiry into why the design failed in the first place.And the original architects and builders would not be trusted to report on what went wrong. The same applies to the ISB. I do not blame its members for the problems they report. Indeed, I praise them for acknowledging the weaknesses they have identifiedand clearly want to address.
I go further; I ask was the failure to give proper independence a matter of incompetence or symptomatic of a fundamental reluctance in Church House to relinquish power?
In another debate the Revd Andrew Dotchin spoke of the need to be trusting if projects are to take off under their own steam. “ If you give” he advised “ let go”.
That is a well formulated proposition and one I borrow in this context. Did the ISB fail because Lambeth Palace and Church House feared to surrender control over Safeguarding to a fully independent, autonomous body?
I suspect that this is the answer, but a proper investigation by the Audit Committee would help clarify this. Unfortunately the Archbishops’ obstruction means that the matter cannot be debated properly until July, and if Synod wants to review and oversee the new iteration of the ISB, that simply cannot happen until February 2024 . I suspect that by then another “ Bishops’ fix” will have been implemented and proper oversight circumvented again. This is not just poor governance, it is flawed governance.
I wonder what IICSA, the Charity Commission and possibly even Parliament, who are now taking a close interest in the Church’s affairs because of LLF, will have to say about this.
When after more than two centuries as a leading merchant bank, Barings Bank collapsed in 1995, it was due to the misconduct of a single employee. The subsequent inquiry concluded that Barings was bankrupted due to an absence of effective controls and inadequate auditing. The ISB must not become the next Barings, and all praise to the three members of the Audit Committee who are apparently trying to prevent this. One hopes that the other two, independent members of the Audit Committee will join them to form a united front against the stone wall of the Archbishops Council.
There is however, some good news. The new NST Director Alex Kubeyinje began his first speech to Synod with an apology for the furore that had greeted his references to NST staff being threatened. If the giving of that early sincere apology heralds a change of culture at Church House then it is is to be doubly welcomed. He appears to be a quiet thoughtful man, not given to rhetorical flourishes. That too is to be welcomed. But most welcome of all is the fact that coming from the secular Safeguarding world I knew, I am confident that he knows how to do things properly.
Whether he will be able to successfully challenge the existing Establishment mindset and culture remains to be seen. He will need all the help he can get including that of Survivors, whose contribution to the debate the Archbishops sadly preferred Synod not to hear about.
All my childhood sexual abusers were polite, well mannered, popular and as seemingly ingrained into the culture as the foundations of the colossal cathedrals they were harboured beneath.
The series of abuse took place over forty years ago.
I now know much more about the past and present failings of the Church. It has unfortunately been ‘my life’ over the last seven years. And I strongly believe that despite what we are being told – despite the PR – despite the spend on a front facing appearance, little has changed in the nature of the institution.
The quiet, polite responses become just words spoken, when there isn’t change.
I thank and respect Martin very much for his continued and significant support. As with other survivor supporters, sticking your neck out in this way carries stress and often conflict from those who feel the need to defend their positions. We are lucky to have your truth, Martin.
I feel fear for the future of the ISB. Anyone whose own case/review might be currently under investigation by the ISB would understandably feel extremely unsettled by the current storm surrounding it and is in my thoughts.
There is no greater betrayal and impact to a God fearing child – or adult, than evil done under his name. To repeat that betrayal, by extension of response to that victim, takes a special kind of evil.
Tony Charman
houseofsurvivors.org
Tony, I agree that the institution hasn’t changed. In fact, I think that the upper layers are more corrupted than ever. There is, of course, still a lot of good work being done at parish and chaplaincy level. But survivors trying to get justice, recompense, acknowledgement, or even a simple apology from the institution are really up against it.
We are all grateful to Martin Sewell for challenging safeguarding procedures and since 2015! A sad reflection on the Church of England that this has been so necessary and for so long.
I should like to endorse Martin’s view of Alexander Kubeyinje who was generous enough with his time to give me an hour long meeting on Monday February 6th at the beginning of Synod week. I had not realised at the time he was actually speaking on Thursday at Synod.
For the first time I felt I was listened to by someone who was interested in the safeguarding problems of Kenneth and the 5% of the other wrongly accused people.
Yesterday I had received an email from the Charity Commission saying that Kenneth’s case was not within their remit. They had not even read the information properly assuming Kenneth was ordained. I really felt I had come to the end of the line in what I could do to support Kenneth and the 5%. Not any more, not after reading this blog.
I am so grateful to Martin for writing this blog, Stephen for posting it and Alexander for listening to me last week.
Glad to hear your comments. I too was due to meet Alexander just before Synod but this was postponed because of train strikes and we will meet next month. As well as bringing up that I still haven’t been given assistance to file cdm against my Bishop, I will be bringing up two separate Diocesan complaints made to the police about my husband and myself. We were greatly distressed and frightened by being interrogated at a police station and then facing court action. I will bring up that In the end, the court acted justly and we were each, separately declared not guilty. If we had been subjected to church processes only, as was Kenneth, we would have been left damned for ever by their decision. If the Church is going to ruin people’s lives by their processes, they should keep to the same standards as our law courts. As the police would not look at my evidence disproving my charges, I had to wait for the courts system to prove not only that I was innocent, but that there was no credible evidence to show I had done anything wrong. The police kept trying to get my husband to accept a caution. My husband didn’t want to be labelled a risk, and court proceedings showed the Diocesan complaint was spurious and malicious, and declared him not guilty. As the Church has been found over and over again to act unjustly, permit conflicts of interest, and go against their own guidelines, I believe they should be stripped of their powers. At the very least we deserve an independent system with independent scrutiny if the Church is going to label people a risk to children, or in my husband ‘s case a risk to women, and in my case a risk to a clergyman who admitted guilt (because I made a complaint) , and a DSA who felt harassed because I reported breaches. However I don’t just want to be listened to. I want appropriate action taken, including about the NST member who attempted to bully me into believing I could not file cdm against my Bishop. I hope Alexander will take the bullying, harassment, threatening behaviour and criminalization of innocent parishioners seriously. I hope our case will add weight to Kenneth’s complaint, particularly as I will be handing over a great deal of documentary evidence showing unjust treatment of myself and my husband. I hope that the safeguarding reports at the next Synod will focus on the areas of misconduct by the Church, instead of the usual rather tepid phrase, “there is room for improvement” . This phrase does nothing to highlight how the Church is permanently blighting the lives of parishioners with the use of unfair processes which would not stand up in our law courts.
Thank you very much Mary for that understanding and supportive message. I am glad to hear from you again and especially to learn that you and your husband received a just verdict from the court. Prayers for the future.
I agree, Mary, the C of E should be stripped of its powers. So glad you and your husband were found ‘not guilty’, but you should never have been put through that ordeal.
Hope you can now begin to heal.
It is very difficult ‘to challenge an existing establishment mindset’. Individual voices are stifled by the glacial synodical procedure, with embedded delay and obfuscation key parts of maintaining the status quo.
However we are seeing the beginning of a separate phenomenon here. Individuals are beginning to put on record their concerns, not I suspect primarily because things are wrong (although that would be admirable) but because they don’t want to have their personal reputations tarnished by institutional malpractice.
The standard operating procedure of forming a new committee, and commissioning a Report (which never arrives) has been short-circuited. The ISB is being (self) exposed for its flaws much more quickly than I could have expected. People know they are being externally scrutinised. Want a career after you leave the C of E? Do it right then. And they are, or at least beginning to.
Why now? The are probably several factors, but are key professionals working in these areas beginning to read the writing-on-the-wall for the Church’s future? Most of us can see the looming threat of disestablishment, with open challenge by parliamentarians to its representatives. Whatever your views, the Church is massively out of step with (lagging behind) modern society. With a likely change of government in the nearing future, I can’t see this being more sympathetic to the Established Church, rather less so potentially.
I have a “pastoral” interview with a senior cleric on Thursday. It is partly about my future working relationship with the church being affected by my past, which it always is, and this individual not knowing my past. But I want to sweep my coat around the way safeguarding concerns, including, importantly for me, bullying, are now dealt with in the Diocese. (Inadequately, in my view) Obviously, I will not find the conversation easy. Even revisiting my own experiences is hard. Actually, because I lack the language to talk about pain! And I expect the LLF stuff to come up, which in this case is a distraction. I have been allocated two hours, which is generous. And sufficient. It’s an exhausting business. Please pray for me on Thursday afternoon. Thanks.
Thinking of you, Athena. Hope tomorrow goes well.
Prayers and best wishes for tomorrow and coming days.
All the best for tomorrow EA!
My meeting went well. Most of what needed to be said, was. And a second meeting floated. Thanks everyone for your prayers. The big unanswered question is restitution! As always. How does the church make it right?
Is it willing to do so? Where there’s a will there’s a way.
Glad it went well, Athena. As for restitution…I’ve yet to hear of that happening, but may you be the first!
So very glad it went well for you.
Many thanks for this post.
I find it mystifying that so many bishops *want* to retain their powers. After all, many of them appear to be candidly unhappy in their jobs, as they preside over remorseless decline and as they function as lightning rods for that failure. Their executive authority and associated managerial burdens (for which some of them are manifestly unsuited) arguably impedes their prophetic mission, so why don’t they want to slough it off onto people who actually know what they are doing (specifically people outside the Church)?
I can only assume that they are apprehensive about doing so because only the tip of the iceberg of abuse has been revealed, and that if there is a comprehensive audit, then the estimated number of past abuse cases will spiral upwards. We have seen the devastating impact of ‘open book’ investigations on the reputations of the RCC in Ireland, France and (in the last few days) Portugal. The saving grace of the RCC in France was the myth of ‘le bon curé’. No longer. Now even that residual prestige has been exploded to a great extent, and the RCC in France finds its reputation in the gutter.
There is perhaps another explanation, which is that the administrative power the bishops yield offsets the dramatic fall in their public standing. I recently discussed one of my reform schemes with a Church Commissioner, and asked why the bishops don’t appear to want to lose their administrative powers, and was told “well, that’s the bit of the job they like the most”. If that is the case the Church is truly beyond help.
I explained elsewhere why the sort of independent scrutiny that the ISB was allegedly going to bring just was not going to happen. I’ll take the liberty of repeating it here (it was in the context of the ISB being told not to investigate the Christ Church debacle):
I agree that such an inquiry might be desirable, but it can and will never happen. Assessing the full picture would require the cooperation of many parties whose interests would not be to cooperate. There is no one body, other than the state itself, which could mandate the cooperation of all parties — and it seems extremely implausible that this is important enough for the state to set up something like IICSA for this. The Church, in the shape of the Archbishops’ Council has no power to compel the secular trustees of Christ Church, for example.
What I want to do is to take this three steps further. Firstly, it must have been clear to those tasked with setting up the ISB in the first place that their task was simply impossible, for the reasons just given. Why did those people even attempt something that was impossible? Secondly, it was clear to all that the structure of the ISB as it was set up could not achieve what it was suppose to achieve (irrespective of whether it was even possible in the first place). Why were charitable funds and resources spent on setting up something that could not possibly work? Thirdly, it must have been clear to the ISB members that what they were being asked to do was not possible, and indeed that there was a realistic probability that they were being set up to fail. Why, being experienced and expert in such matters, did they lend credibility to a doomed mission by accepting an impossible task?
My answers to all these questions are pure speculation, of course, and will follow in another post.
As to the first, I assume that people of goodwill did not wish to believe that what they wanted to do, being so very desirable and indeed necessary, was actually impossible, and that at whatever stage they realised it was indeed impossible they were unwilling or unable to contradict the instructions of the Archbishops’ Council . I suggest that there were others who simply felt that something needed to be seen to be done and were relatively unconcerned about whether it would be effective or efficient.
As to the second, there would have been the sunk cost, unwillingness to admit that effort had been wasted, and the “fix it as we go along” mentality, coupled with an over-optimistic belief in the ability of the high-calibre appointees to make it work anyway. There would also have been the cynical calculation that the ISB members could be blamed for any failures, however inevitable those failures might have been from the beginning.
The third question is much more interesting. It is clear that one member of the ISB, Jasvinder Sanghera, has realised the inherent deficiencies of the structure she is expected to work with, and has made public comments to that effect. My guess, and it is a mere guess, is that she will have seen the likelihood of the ISB failing from a very early stage, and intended to be on the inside documenting that failure as being the most constructive thing possible given its inevitability. As she said in her blog “This is a real opportunity to influence change and make a difference in contributing to the vision that the Church on safeguarding.” but perhaps not in the way the Archbishops’ Council expected.
As she wrote on 19 December 2022
“The Independent Safeguarding Board has a responsibility to make clear recommendations and to seek assurances of their implementation. ‘Don’t Panic – Be Pastoral’ was published on the Independent Safeguarding Board’s website on 3 November 2022 and sent to key Church of England leaders, including the National Safeguarding Team. It provides 38 recommendations, 46 secondary recommendations grouped into specific focused areas and 16 key recommendations requiring immediate improvement.
“To date, there has not been any response to this report from the leadership of the Church nor, from any of those seeking change by signing the open letter. This is extremely disappointing and is a missed opportunity to build on the very areas raised by the open letter.”
The phrase “extremely disappointing” is presumably a euphemism for “morally reprehensible”. Those commenting here may have even stronger words.
I have had only good experiences with the ISB. However they do not have the authority to countermand decisions nor to hold disciplinary proceedings. The Church, as we know, refused to give up its authority and always has the last word. I do know ISB members are bringing cases to demonstrate to the Church showng clear wrong doing, either with conflicts of interest, misconduct in regard to safeguarding and so on. In effect, they are like a battering ram, as are all who are complaining and taking actions of various kinds. Kenneth’s case and mine , and others, show that disregard of, and downright contempt of safeguarding guidelines and justice are rife. My own cases shows it stems from the top, and that even our laws are disregarded if they don’t suit those at the top. If the ISB were not getting under the skin of those still covering up, they would have been free to report at Synod. Instead they report the Church is deliberately making difficulties for them and are hampering them in their efforts. The Church is finding it increasingly difficult to ride the waves made by the ISB. I hope that the new national director of safeguarding, having met personally with Kenneth and shortly with myself, and no doubt others, will use his position to safeguard victims of abuse, and victims of malicious allegations. I too hope both will use stronger language than has been used in the past. It is time the truth was starkly revealed to Synod, in the hope they No longer close their eyes to the problem. So far the government has not stepped in for adults, as it did with a national review into child abuse. Stark words, repeated at every opportunity , are neeeded. The polite pussy footing around can and has been ignored. It is time to call a spade a spade and not use euphemisms which allow those concerned to keep their eyes shut with a clear conscience.