There is a story in the gospels about a widow who makes demands of a judge to hear her case. Time after time she is rebuffed. Eventually, her sheer persistence and a readiness to make herself a thorough nuisance, persuades the judge to accede to her request to be heard. The implication is that without having made herself a cause of serious irritation for the judge, the widow would not have received any hearing of her case.
The complaining widow finds a possible echo in the many people who cry out for justice by taking their complaints of church abuse and bullying to those in authority – the CofE bishops/leaders. Then, having failed to find there what they believe to be a just solution to their complaints, some try taking their case to what they believe to be the highest legal and moral authority in the Church of England – Lambeth Palace (LP) and the Archbishop of Canterbury who lives there. Out of sheer desperation and losing hope of finding anyone else to listen to their story and their appeals for justice, many individuals in the Church end up trying to communicate with the Palace. The recent Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) report on LP casts an unflattering view of the way that these appeals for help from survivors and victims have been processed and responded to. Even though LP employs a number of full-time staff to answer letters and receive phone calls from the public, there has been little sign that safeguarding cases have been reacted to with an adequate degree of skill, compassion or expertise. The overall message, that is shared by those who spoke to the auditors who wrote the 80-page SCIE report, suggests that few seem to be heard effectively. What might an abused person expect from a phone conversation with an employee at LP? They might expect that the call would, at the very least, be logged in some way. They would expect some kind of response if individuals or churches were mentioned as being dangerous to church members. If they made follow-up phone calls, they might reasonably hope to speak to the same person that they had poured out their story to earlier. Instead of these things, survivors have been fed with formal stereotyped responses which do not appear to want to understand the detailed content of what is being shared. Another way of putting it is to say that there seems to be no indication that those who work in the section of the Palace that deals with safeguarding correspondence and emails, possess the required degree of compassionate and intelligent understanding of the needs of survivors.
The SCIE report sets out a scenario at LP where ordinary common-sense responsiveness was not being applied. Many survivors who spoke to the auditors of SCIE, felt let down, marginalised and thus re-abused by the protocols in operation at LP. While they were hearing public pronouncements from the Archbishop, that survivors’ concerns were at the heart of the Church’s safeguarding work, the reality seemed very different. The reality was countless examples of institutional betrayal. It came over as an organisation that did not know how to care, having neither the resources of expertise or manpower to tackle this enormous task. That such extra resources were needed, in terms of training, focus and money, should have been obvious to anyone who had the measure of the abuse crisis. That things were allowed to stagger on, under resourced and without any sense of urgency, for such a long time, speaks of weak management and lack of vision at the top.
Although I am, like everyone else, reading of the institutional failures of the leadership and direction of LP from a distance, there is a sense that I feel quite close to what is being described. My reason for saying this is that like others, I am regularly approached by some of the same army of abused individuals who seek help. Having written on this blog about the broad topic of power and its abuse in the church for almost ten years, I ‘meet’ online dozens of individuals who want to tell me their story. Some of these stories become a blog contribution in their own right. The abuse survivor who is able to write up their story seems to find some comfort in seeing his/her experiences published on the blog. It is in this way that I have been cast into the role of an unseen confessor to a variety of men and women with a safeguarding story to tell.
Having accidentally become a listener to the painful experiences of others in this safeguarding arena, I have allowed myself to have some opinions on the topic of survivors’ needs. When a survivor with a level of distress contacts a total stranger like me or one of the enquiry staff at LP, there are some common factors. Those who email me out of the blue probably do not think of me as a stranger, as I have, over the years, revealed a considerable amount of personal information about myself. I do express opinions as well, which may not be to the taste of all my readers. Opinions and information about my theological perspective at least give my readers enough information to know whether they feel they can trust me with sensitive information of their own.
Those who have suffered an abusive episode in the church want to tell someone about it. Telling the story to someone without any role in the church is perhaps far easier than negotiating a complicated complaints process. My role and the role of the blog as a whole is to provide a listening post. Nobody who writes on the blog expects (thank goodness!) anyone to wave a magic wand and bring perpetrators to account and produce thousands of pounds of restitution money. They expect to be listened to with respect and patience. I want to go on to suggest what I consider to be the minimum requirements of a listening ministry from my perspective. This is normally all I can offer to those who ring, and it may be all that can realistically be offered to the majority of those who contact LP. We might hope that the Palace would be offering continuous training for such a ministry.
Requirements for a listening ministry.
Confidentiality
The sharing of deeply personal information is an act of trust. I need hardly say that such information, though shared, still belongs to the sharer. As such it cannot be divulged without the permission of the one revealing it. There are obviously some exceptions but, in practice, the disclosure of actual criminality is not an everyday occurrence. Far more typical is the disclosure of cruel and incompetent care by so-called professionals in the aftermath of an abusive event.
Background knowledge
One particular strength among the small band of advocates for and members of the survivor community is that they understand well the setting and background of what has been going on. They have read and studied the reports and enquiries and will know other people active in the field of survivor advocacy. The expertise and background knowledge of survivors and their advocates is far greater than the majority of the professionals employed by the National Church Institutions (NCI). It is a constant source of frustration that events that took place more than a year or two before are not known about among many professionals. The really vital task of remembering and providing ‘narrative wisdom’ has been easier since the launch of the website ‘House of Survivors’. I strongly commend it.
Humanity and trauma informed experience
Some understanding of the psychological pain of survivors is important. Dealing with trauma in another person is never easy but the listener can at least learn not to be surprised at sudden outbursts of anger or emotion that can appear within the listening process. Listening will be articulating our desire to understand even when it may be difficult both for the one who is entrusted with such information and the one who is sharing it.
Continuity so that story is only told once.
One of the constant irritants for the one who is raising a complaint against an individual or an institution is the need to tell the story repeatedly to different bodies. Also, the last thing a survivor wants to hear is that, having painfully told their personal story, he/she then finds it has not been properly recorded or that it has disappeared into the system. The survivor is desperate to be heard and, if the story is not thought important enough to be listened to with real attention, it is experienced as a profound betrayal. This was evidently a frequent event at LP in their interactions with the survivor community.
Practical support where possible. Contacts, resources and practical help.
A large institution like the CofE should want to be seen to support survivors in every possible way. Placing resources into the effort to help those whom we now know to form a considerable cohort of abused individuals, is a sign of compassion but also of seriousness. LP has access not only to funds but also to people with considerable experience of legal and therapeutic matters who are needed to help the wounded back to a path of wholeness. A lot can be done to help and rebuild the CofE’s safeguarding reputation if imagination and energy are put into the task.
This blog, especially the second paragraph, describes the experiences I had in the past when advocating for Kenneth. On my first phone call, September 2021, when describing the excuses given by the Diocesan Safeguarding Adviser for not instigating an investigation, I was told, ” That’s not true. I don’t believe that. You must have misunderstood”. In vain did I explain I had documented evidence of this in an email; I was dismissed out of hand. This attitude reflects the findings of the SCIE investigation and the people Stephen has listened to, including myself,for which I am very grateful.
However things are different now. The present Safeguarding Officer rightly received praise from the SCIE investigation. She actually listens and responds quickly to emails. She has made it clear that she cannot act in our case but, since July 2021, has passed my present complaints and information to the Diocesan Safeguarding Team asking them to respond to me. They have not done so. I have tried not to burden her with too much information but this case is still ongoing and active. The Core Group show no respect for anyone in authority, including high profile lawyers who I have quoted to them and who say that conflict of interests in a Core Group is illegal and unlawful. They have ignored all such messages. That is until this week.
On February 28th 2023, this very week, I had an email from the Diocesan Safeguarding Adviser. The first message from her since Septermber 24th 2021!
However she did not respond to any of the information in my messages which had been forwarded to her by the Safeguarding Officer at Lambeth. Instead she said that as the complaint had been through the diocesan complaint procedures their processes regarding the allegation had been concluded.The case is closed. She also said it is no longer necessary for me to support Kenneth therefore any further communication with Kenneth would be directly through the Dean or herself. She still did not understand that Kenneth’s health is such he is now not robust to have such stressful conversations.
Yes indeed I relate to the importunate widow Stephen speaks of at the beginning of this blog and, like the importunate widow, I am going nowhere.
Hi K Anonymous glad you got a good response from Lambeth safeguarding officer because she has been downright rude to me. I have shown her correspondence to retired DSA’s who have been appalled as I gave her absolutely no reason to respond in that manner. It could be though that as I come from a neighbouring diocese and holiday cover etc is sometimes provided by Lambeth it is yet another postcode lottery thing.
The SCIE diocesan audits were so bad, no survivor voice, non compliance of GDPR, no ethical compliance on the survivor survey and jobs for the boys in the church for some of their staff that I couldn’t bring myself to contribute to the LP audit.
There will be diocesan audits starting again later this year and will include the survivor voice. They will run over 5 years and presumably not be conducted by SCIE. It would make sense that the earliest audited ones are the first this time, but I dont know that, so you may be able to estimate when yours is likely to be. They will of course be as banal as PCR2 in terms of getting any personal action but may allow you another arena to raise concerns you have.
From Josephine Stein Thank, Trish!
Back in 2016, I published an article in a special issue of Crucible using the term 'ecclesiastical abuse'
to explain the four phases experienced by survivors. Here is a paragraph from my section on the
secondary phase, the responses of the Church to disclosures of abuse:
'Using proceduralism in place of pastoral listening, up-front demands for written ‘evidence’,
miscommunication, delays, errors, selective memory, denial, dishonesty, jumping to conclusions
about who was responsible and acting upon assumptions without having first spoken to the person
making the allegation, claims about ignorance of Church policy or safeguarding issues, refusal to
become informed or to properly investigate allegations, breaking confidentiality or threatening to do
so without justification, inappropriate referrals, cancelling meetings at short notice, refusing to
acknowledge conflict of interest, and further aggression when the target refuses to ‘shut up and go
away’, can be devastating.'
It is interesting to read what Archbishop Justin wrote in the Foreword to this special issue on
safeguarding:
'As you read Josephine Stein’s article so it becomes apparent that the culture around how survivors of
abuse are heard has in effect been to tell them to be quiet, and to keep them away from the love of
Christ. This has happened for a variety of reasons which might start with the inability to believe what
is being said about those who abuse. Then there are various legal approaches that have in the past
encouraged distance, and even advice that suggested abuse that happened a long time ago was not
possible to address. Then there is the sheer bitter frustration that comes from survivors themselves
who have had to endure the pain of disclosure and then been ignored. If they are difficult to encounter
in that bitterness, then that is absolutely no excuse for not facing what they have to say. '
Both my article and Justin's Foreword can be found in the 'Papers and Reviews' section of the House
of Survivors website.
https://houseofsurvivors.org/papers-reports/
It seems to me that Justin does indeed 'get it'. However, his moral authority is clearly limited.
I could see for myself how Justin’s executive authority is constrained as well when attending the
IICSA hearings….. However, this is no excuse for the disgraceful responses of Lambeth Palace to
survivors. We need to hold all those responsible for the mismanagement of safeguarding to account.
They can include bishops, but also DSAs and other Church officers as well as influential consultants,
lawyers and insurers.
The Church of England spends a great deal of money on people who are responsible for listening to
survivors, but they are often not listened to themselves and often have no authority to investigate
cases or to discipline those who do not respect clearly stated safeguarding policies or the findings of
‘lessons learned’ reviews.
Survivors are routinely ignored, even after having been ‘listened to’. This must change.
Hope readers will forgive the awkward formatting. One of the quirks of the software after Josephine had to send to the blog via my computer!
Is it structured malevolence or organisational incompetence? Whichever it is, it’s not very efficient.
The idea is to handle complaints so ineffectively, that most survivors give up and go away. This has been the experience of many, but a vocal core isn’t going quietly; rather the reverse. And by re-wounding those it has hurt, LP has compounded its problems, not alleviated them.
They’d be better off structuring a coordinated and caring response, along the lines Stephen has suggested. It would take a lot of effort and I suspect this is what’s putting them off. But the standard operating procedure of employing belligerents to do their response work, losing the record trail deliberately and the top brass keeping their eminences away from the proceedings isn’t working.
I believe they could tackle this properly if they wanted to.
K-Anonymous. The importunate widow did win through in Luke 18 so that is perhaps an indication that it is necessary to go on making a nuisance of ourselves until justice is delivered. We want the powers that be to say with the judge ‘I will see her righted before she wears me out with her persistence.’
Stephen, thank you for that encouraging reminder from Luke. Yes indeed I am quite prepared to make nuisance of myself and wear them out.
After all, although the email from the Diocesan Saferguarding Adviser was an irrelevant response to the emails I had sent, she did reply for the first time in nineteen months!
Stephen, once again many thanks for a superb piece. Many points raised. One all too often response is that of unbelief; which is dreadful.
From my own experience, in writing to LP with a particular name as an addressee was to receive, in writing was to receive a ‘formatted letter’ hardly personal. I replied and you might guess what the response was… yes! The very same letter. I virtually threw it at a DSA.
Over a period of communicating with a DSA & her side kick, a report was eventually put together; assuming one might think : for boxing me off! And from beginning to end it read as a subtle character assassination. Referencing items that had no business in there, but nonetheless peppered in deliberately. So too was a malign reference to a Survivors Charity! I wasted no time in contacting the particular charity who then went on to challenge the DSA… one wonders what the outcome was!
Myself like so many view Safeguarding as being principally in place to protect the interests of the Institution (Institution: as that what it comes across as!).
Another poignant point to air, is the alarming turn over of Safeguarding Officers! And if begs questioning, is it that individuals can’t cope with the volume of awful information they have to deal with. Or is it that they can’t sustain being the public face and having to deal with survivors in a certain prescribed manner? But, it is most lamentable that the Institution can not seemingly retain its officers.
P.S . One realises this is a public platform…
A useful way of looking at institutional arrangements for safeguarding is through the lens of GDPR. The GDPR requires an organisation to articulate the purposes for which it is holding personal data, and everything else falls into place from that understanding. The audit seems to have missed the opportunity to ask the question, since (very sensitive) personal data is integral to handling safeguarding issues. A functional organisation should be able to explain what functions it expects to carry out with with respect to safeguarding; what personal data it requires to execute those functions; to state its policy about the collection, holding, processing and retention of that personal data for those purposes; to describe the operational procedures for correctly implementing that policy; and to demonstrate adherence to those procedures. Instead we see almost none of that, merely the usual low-level stuff about locked filing cabinets; even these operational procedures are in a mess. It’s rather clear that at the GDPR level the institution has no coherent policy or procedures, and is retaining personal data without adequate justification, which is illegal: there are some clear red flags about retention in 6.4.12. It’s also pretty clear that the institution simply doesn’t know what it is trying to achieve under the banner of safeguarding, and hence, of course, is unable to express a policy for processing personal data for achieving those unformulated goals.
This is not rocket science. The predecessor of GDPR came into force in 1995 and the current version in 2018. There is no excuse whatever for having failed to address these issues. Clarity of purpose, efficiency and effectiveness of implementation and compliance with the law have simply been wilfully neglected for decades.
Yes it is clear that ‘safe guarding’ means keeping the institution safe from the complaints of the abused survivors.
Stephen’s blog has been persisting for ten years. Fortunately the love and compassion of the Christian church can be found here.
Thank you Stephen.
Coming late to the party, I understand Trish’s reasons for not engaging, but I decided to contribute to the LP audit because I was so disappointed with my treatment by them. I was trying to get information & support to take out CDMS against 2 bishops, which does come under ABofC. I was given wrong advice & no support (under the previous postholder).
The SCIE report does at least reflect our experiences. But with the appointment of the new bishop being someone who has so badly failed to safeguard, I’m not confident it will make any difference.
I wonder if disinformation is the first step in attempts to stop cdms against Bishops. When I insisted on taking out cdm, I found the second step was bullying. I believe the third step is to ignore your complaint, or in my case, ignore your request for assistance. One good thing about the review of Lambeth Palace is that it gives further credence to the complaints of survivors. However when establishment forces want to escape justice, it seems to take decades of protest before injustice is addressed, or partially addressed. I am thinking of the Hillsborough disaster and Bloody Sunday. I have good news on a personal front. I have finally, after sixteen months, been given assistance to file. After all the machinations to protect my Bishop I feel very cynical about the level of justice my complaint will receive. The fact that a guilty Bishop received a public apology also saps my confidence in justice. And how can you defend a system in which my former vicar was found guilty of several offences, but allowed to get away with them by the simple expedient of not admitting them? However it is important to call my Bishop to account, so I soldier on.