Dear Professor Jay,

No doubt you will have received many representations from different people who are concerned about the safeguarding crisis in the Church of England.  You will have heard from survivors and victims as well as safeguarding professionals at various levels.  Some will have experience from outside the Church, while others will have observed the safeguarding system from within the institution.  The Church, or more precisely the Archbishops’ Council and the Lead Bishop, have chosen you to look at the confusion that at present exists in the system and try to make some sense of the tangled threads of safeguarding.  Clearly you face a herculean task. You also realise that whatever recommendations you make will not satisfy everyone.

I am writing to you neither as a survivor nor as an expert.  My only claim for having something useful to say is that I have been reflecting on the problem of institutional power in the Church for some thirty years.   Before that I was, as a child, a direct witness to the power politics being played out in the precincts at Canterbury Cathedral in the 1950s.  Churches and parishes, in my experience, have always been somewhat dangerous places.  Sexual violence is only one of the potential hazards that lurks within the institution of the Church.  Far more common are simple everyday power games that can cause so much misery and unhappiness to those who are the targets.  They suffer because of individuals whose personalities make them natural bullies and control freaks.  Such personalities are, sadly, frequently encountered in the Church.

My blog Surviving Church has, for almost ten years, been reflecting on this issue of inappropriate use of power in the Church.  The comments of those who read these reflections have enriched what I have had to offer based on my experience and reading over several decades.  What follows in this open letter is not offered as advice or suggestions.  It is, rather, a series of observations on your difficult task.  These are rooted in my considerable experience of living within and working for the Church of England.  Like you I have listened to the group we refer to as survivors.  We both know how the personalities of vulnerable people subject to bullying or violent acts are damaged, sometimes very seriously.  For some in this group the damage is permanent and they are true victims, worthy of our deepest compassion and our tears.

The context of your appointment is the dissolution of the Independent Safeguarding Board, a church initiative which existed for only a couple of years. It does not take an expert to recognise that the sinews of support that have been created at a personal level between survivors and members of the Board are precious as well as delicate.  The task of bringing appropriate healing to individuals who suffer from trauma is different for every case.  There appears to be ample evidence that Jasvinder and Steve have been contributing to the slow building up of personal trust between some survivors and potential sources of help.   Survivors were beginning to feel that the Church that had often let them down was maybe allowing (and paying for) a process that might eventually allow them stand on their own feet.

Disbanding the ISB in such a sudden and brutal way has been an act of violence with, potentially, terrifying consequences.   The two images that come to mind are both medical in flavour.  The first one is a plaster covering a large unhealed wound.  For some reason the doctor in charge decides to rip off the plaster early.  This interrupts the healing process and makes the wound liable to become re-infected.  The second image is an intensive care ward in a hospital.  Here are several patients wired up to machines which keep them alive.  Closing the ISB was, for the survivors who were engaged with the Board, like having a plaster ripped off or having the electricity supplying life-support machines turned off suddenly and without notice.    One particular ‘patient’, Mr X, for whom the ISB had commissioned a report, is in imminent danger of financial ruin.  The Report, known as the Spindler Review https://houseofsurvivors.org/2023/03/28/isb-spindler-review/  recommended immediate practical support to protect him from financial disaster, especially as a financial institution is set to call in debt on Friday 28^th July.  His situation and the account of institutional harm caused to him have been known for a long time.  There is no excuse for this lapse of justice and failure in the restitution process.  It reveals a devastating institutional inertia on the part of the church authorities.

Mr X is one individual who is seeing that the hoped for institutional support is being swept away like a child’s sandcastle on a beach.  Many others, who had begun to feel bonds of trust being created by the two active members of the now dissolved ISB, had dared to hope.  Hope for something better after the experiences of devastating abuse at the hands of institutions or individuals involved with the Church is something fragile and precious. It is this collapse of hope that represents the true cost to the abused in the Church of England.  Few if any of the victims/survivors would put cash at the top of their list of needs in the aftermath of their original abuse event.   It is the regaining of a sense of justice, the removal of deep shame and trauma that the survivors seek.  The sudden closing down of one avenue to receive these things has the potential to traumatise and set back the welfare of hundreds, even thousands, of survivors.

Much of what has happened in the Church over recent decades has led to a serious state of anxiety in many survivors.  It is best summed up in the single word trauma.  As someone who has attempted, in a very small way, to respond to the trauma of the survivors who contact me, I recognise how the care of even one traumatised individual can be a demanding undertaking.  One problem that has bedevilled the work of advocates, therapists and those who, like me, offer friendship to those who have met abuse, is that these survivors do not normally find in those who have authority in the church any trauma-informed response to their plight.  In other words, the response is seldom ‘how are you’ but rather a display of body language which is both defensive and embarrassed.   The preservation and protection of the church institution seems to be at the top of the agenda.  No doubt this stance is encouraged by lawyers and public relations experts who regard it as their task to protect the institution at all costs. 

 As an outsider in your relations with the Church of England, Professor Jay, you have one enormous advantage.  You are in a position to look carefully at what seems to be going wrong in the church’s safeguarding efforts without having the burdens of any institutional loyalty.  The wounded and traumatised army of survivors want you to help them to find truth, integrity and justice for their situation.  They have been let down, not only by the evil behaviour of individuals, but by widespread institutional failings.  With your help, they hope to see robust recommendations which will bring light and healing to dark places.  Sorting out safeguarding will commit the Church of England to enormous costs.   These costs are not just about finance.  They are also about getting used to a better way of doing things and creating new structures that will promote integrity and justice for the future. 

A final word.  One crucial failing in the Church that we, the observers and the critics of the institution, have noticed is the way power operates within its structures.  We hope you will come to your own conclusions on this vital issue and address it in your recommendations.  Many of us want to see damaging power networks challenged, so that the forces of transparency and democracy can flourish better.   You have an important contribution to make to the restoration of the Church’s weakened integrity.  Maybe also the long process of repairing the Church’s damaged reputation in the eyes of the nation by radical self-examination is something your words can promote and encourage. We sincerely hope that what you produce in your report will help our flawed, even failing, national Church.   Somehow, we all want it to return to its essential and urgent task of proclaiming the work of God and serving the nation.

Stephen Parsons, Greystoke, Cumbria.

 One of the interesting features of a recently published Lessons Learned Review about events at the parish of Tylers Green, in the Diocese of Oxford, is the frequent use of the expression ‘spiritual abuse’.  The authors of this review, Elaine and Patrick Hopkinson, use this term often in describing the malfeasance of the Reverend Michael Hall at St Margaret’s Church between 1981 and 2000. During that period this expression was not in common use as a shorthand for a range of harmful behaviours. perpetrated by some church leaders against members of their congregations. We could speculate as to why this term spiritual abuse has taken such a long time to emerge as a way of describing poor behaviour by the clergy.  One reason is that no one then wanted to admit that a man of the cloth (women were not incumbents until the last years of the century) would ever act malevolently.   It was also not an expression available to clerical victims to help them describe their pain. Those in oversight roles in the Oxford diocese seemed, for a variety of reasons, to be unable to check the tragic twenty-year period of harsh and harmful behaviour on the part of Mr Hall.  Another new concept used by the Review authors, one that finds its origin in domestic dysfunction, is the term coercion and control.  These words have gained a currency only at the beginning of the present century to describe non—violent controlling behaviour used against another.  The law of the land now recognises such behaviour as potentially criminal, especially in the context of abusive domestic relationships where the victim is typically female.  The language of coercive control allows the law to identify a situation where men (typically) may control and humiliate others without the use of physical force. It has taken society a long time to understand fully the nature of such things as threatening and coercive behaviour against a weaker party in a relationship.

Mr Hall’s offences and the descriptions of them that are made in this Review, attracted my attention for two key reasons.  First, the twenty-year period of Mr Hall’s time as an incumbent of the Church of England dovetail very closely to my own time as a Vicar in in two English dioceses.  In short, the parochial environment, especially the account of the interactions with figures in authority in the Church, are similar to what I knew at that time in other dioceses.   Bishops and Archdeacons in those days were fairly remote figures and the freehold system could effectively screen the hierarchy from involvement in ordinary parishes.  A short summary of the pattern of the bonding between the parishes and the centre would be to say that it was, at best, weak.  It would also have been possible for a Vicar to remain at arm’s length for long periods of time from any contact with fellow clergy, if he chose it that way.  I have thus some feel for the situation described in the Review about the way that bishops, archdeacons and other church overseeing authorities could be, during the twenty years of Hall’s incumbency, kept firmly out of the way.   The ill-tempered and forceful actions of a determined freehold incumbent, bent on exploiting his legal status, would be enough to terrify any bishop.  While the system of freehold worked fairly well for incumbents, it never worked well for bishops when faced with a Vicar known to be harming members of his flock.  Whatever we may think now of the operation of CDMs or its current proposed replacement, the situation in the 80s and 90s gave far too little power to the those in episcopal authority to check clerical malfeasance.

The second reason that the Tylers Green Review has attracted my attention picks up my interests on a more personal level.  Having written a book on Christian healing in the 80s, I was, in the 90s, invited to join a committee in London which had some supervisory powers for accrediting healing organisations.  To obtain this accreditation, these organisations had to be open to being visited and to be free from scandal and ethical lapses.    I was present when some truly dreadful abuses by individual healing organisations were discussed.  The saga of the Nine O’Clock Service in Sheffield was not in fact within our organisational remit, but I found that the committee work had sensitised me to have some insight as to what was going on at the church at Sheffield.  The link between sexual misbehaviour and religious leadership was at that time something quite hard for many to admit or understand.  From 1995 onwards I was beginning to explore why and how certain forms of spiritual practice could be a prelude to truly dreadful and harmful behaviour on the part of Christian leaders. 

I think it was in 1997 that my reading on abusive power and forms of exploitation within the Church was consolidated into a book proposal for Lion Publishers.  The commissioning editor did not find it easy to sell my text to his superiors when I eventually presented the manuscript at the end of 1999.  Nevertheless, the work, Ungodly Fear, was well received as an attempt to explore the way that power, spiritual and authoritarian, could be abused in church settings.  People knew that church abuse was taking place but there was then little help in understanding the psychological and theological context of what was going on.  In much of my book I was writing about spiritual abuse, but this expression had not then been formulated so it was not available to me to use.

After the book appeared in 2000, I began to read more widely to see in the psychological literature whether there were writings about power abuse, personal and institutional, that could be applied to the Church.  To summarise, in my reading on the topic over several years, I stumbled on the notion of narcissism.  There I saw clearly that the so-called narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) was something that well described the self-inflation evident in many Christian and cultic leaders involved in abuse.  I pursued this idea at my first presentation to the International Cultic Studies Association at their conference at Trieste in 2011.  Being then a new boy in this organisation, I was surprised to discover that it was considered a novel idea.  Since then, the notion has become commonplace and reading the Tylers Green Review, it can be offered as revealing a further interpretation of the dysfunction apparent in the extraordinarily harmful behaviour of Michael Hall.

I am well aware of the warnings in the psychoanalytic literature against applying the diagnosis of NPD to someone who is not accessible to detailed examination.  My use of the narcissism label is not in any way offered as a professional diagnosis for Michael Hall.  Nevertheless, using the idea of narcissism we are helped to have a coherent pattern of understanding allowing us to see many of the salient aspects of Hall’s personality described in the Review as a coherent whole.   The phenomena of extreme anger, litigious and threatening behaviour and apparent indifference to the pain and suffering of others, are all part of the typical NPD profile.  The word narcissism is also now frequently used to describe an insatiable appetite for power and importance.  I would maintain that whether or not we claim the diagnosis of a full personality disorder for Hall, the categories attached to the ideas of narcissism are appropriately applied as a description of his behaviour. 

So far, we have seen how the reviewers of 2023 have had the categories of coercive control and spiritual abuse at their disposal and have made good use of them.  Thankfully the use of term spiritual abuse has passed into general use in spite of the defensive paper put out by the Evangelical Alliance in 2018, saying that it was an unnecessary expression.   No doubt they may have felt that ‘conversion-therapy’ and hellfire preaching from some of their members could be regarded as spiritually abusive.  Some of us do indeed believe that certain strands of preaching are designed to foment terror in their hearers.  When fear, reinforced by aggressive preaching dominates an institution for twenty years, as at Tylers Green, is it any wonder that the observer might describe this as spiritual abuse?

The reviewers of 2023 have been allowed to think in the categories of the current age when looking at the past behaviour of Michael Hall in the events that took place 20 to 40 years ago.   The expression, spiritual abuse and the ideas around coercion and control, have greatly assisted their task.  To these two expressions, I have added a third, narcissism and the various ideas that are associated with the word.  The cultic world has already widely adopted into its discourse concepts like ‘toxic narcissism’ to describe the damaging behaviour of individuals like Donald Trump and Michael Hall who seem incapable of acting in a truly altruistic way.  Perhaps we should face up to the terrifying thought that there are, among our existing leaders, a number who are afflicted in this way.  For reasons deep in their psychological make-up, some Christian leaders are incapable of acting in a way that builds up another.  Unless such leaders are named and inhibited, they will have the power to create the same appalling damage as was created in a parish in the Oxford diocese 20 -40 years ago.  One thing has changed in the intervening time, and we should use it to good effect.   This is our ability to articulate and describe better what may be going on inside the minds of individuals who lead us.  The battle to prevent another Michael Hall appearing is a serious struggle and will require enormous resources of psychological insight as well as wisdom of leadership and management. Even a small number of destructive leaders can wreak terrifying damage on an institution like the Church.  The task of neutralising the impact of toxic leaders as well as the individuals who use their power to abuse in other ways is urgent and should demand much of our energy and resources. 

By Caroline Newman

This article is sent in by a reader of the blog.  The author is of African Caribbean background. The article gives us a perspective on power dynamics and safeguarding issues in the Church that we have not hitherto encountered on this blog.  Caroline’s struggles with the ‘system’ in her battle over safeguarding will be familiar to many of my readers, but the added layer of reactionary racial attitudes gives her account a special power and topical relevance. All of us need to be sensitised to the voices of a community which historically has found it hard to make its voice heard. Caroline is thus helping all of us to think about power issues and church safeguarding in a new way.

I was born in the 1960s and my parents are of the Windrush generation. This article contains my experience of church and my opinion about ongoing matters in the diocese in which I live and worship.

 I have attended various churches throughout my life.  I started out in a Pentecostal church. Recently, I have been questioning why I go to church at all and if it is necessary.  Aren’t church people supposed to be better than the rest?  Aren’t “heathens” supposed to look up to us?  Aren’t we supposed to lead “non-Christians” to Jesus and ultimately to join us in church?

In 2012 I started attending a Church of England church in a diocese in the south of England.  The vicar was from Pakistan and of Asian descent.  Prior to his arrival the church had always had white male vicars.  Apparently this vicar was not the first choice of the members, who are mainly older and white.  Their first choice (white male) withdrew and the second choice, the Asian vicar was appointed.  Members of the church have told me he was “forced onto them” by the Bishop.

The Asian vicar told me that the members of the church “made my life hell”.  He told me that they refused to help him.  They were disruptive of his efforts at PCC meetings.  I wondered why his son, daughter and nephew were always up at the altar serving and generally helping him.  He told me that the members “don’t want to work with him or help him so he has to use whoever will help him”.  I told him “it didn’t look right” having all brown people on the altar and all the white people not on the altar but on the benches, those who still came.  Black and brown people were in the minority although that number grew while he was the incumbent.  Non-whites felt welcomed by him.

Members of the church told me “he has a funny accent”, “we can’t understand what he is saying”, he is “always late requesting assistance or in the planning of services”.  They said this is the reason why they won’t work with him.  Because he asked them too late and was “disorganised”.  The vicar stayed over 7 years at the parish after which he was promoted to Archdeacon in another area.  The vicar told me that he had implored the Diocese to introduce unconscious bias training but they had refused.  The vicar also told me that whenever he would report racism to the Bishop he was told to “hang in there”.  They took no action to provide training or to raise the issue of race discrimination with the members of the church or even with the Parochial Church Council. 

I should say that since we started attending the church, black women have tolerated various micro aggressions by the white members; questions and comments about our hair and clothes, wanting to touch our hair or just touching it without permission, being misnamed and mixed up with each other. Black members of the worship team were told they could not sing cultural songs as the members would not like it.  Their attire was scrutinised and criticised.  We were told “this is not a black church”.   I was even told that if I did not like it I should “go to Jesus House” (a majority black church).

Then came the pandemic and various “lockdowns”.  In May 2021 the PCC appointed a new vicar, a white male, with whom they were happy.  I was appointed a churchwarden in April 2021.

As soon as I started to get involved with the church I experienced race discrimination.  I also heard racist and sexist insults about other church employees (eastern Europeans) by the white English members.  I was most uncomfortable with the racism and sexism.  Initially I kept quiet.  Although I felt obliged to call out the casual racism towards others, at first I did not address the racism I personally experienced. Then in July 2021 my position became intolerable when I experienced direct racial discrimination by the other Churchwarden (a white woman).

I reported this to the new vicar, hoping that he would at least use his position to tackle the issue of racial discrimination and perhaps recommend training for the leadership team. Instead, he turned on me and took the side of the other churchwarden and decided that I had to be moved on.  Together they manufactured disciplinary situations and tried to force me out of the position because I had made accusations of discrimination. It was textbook victimisation.

I also had a report of a safeguarding concern.  I reported the race discrimination and safeguarding concerns to the bishops of the diocese and the chair of the PCC.  Their instincts were to make excuses for the vicar “he’s inexperienced”; “he didn’t mean any harm”; “it was meant as a compliment” and to sweep it under the carpet.  The diocese tried to force me to sign an NDA so I could not discuss my report with anyone.  It was clear from the start that they did not want the take the race discrimination or the safeguarding situation seriously. They just wanted to protect the vicar and the reputation of the diocese.  I declined the offer of mediation and an enforced NDA. I was then told they could not investigate the vicar as only the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM) process could do that.  I would have to pursue that myself.  I had never heard of a CDM. So, while they were investigating the churchwarden and employees for race discrimination, I completed the CDM.  The investigation was of course a white wash designed to protect the vicar. 

Then the tsunami of victimisation by church members started against me and the person they believed had made the safeguarding report.  The victimisation against me continues to today. I was even subjected to verbal abuse and harassment at the church and had to involve the police. Because it was deemed a racially aggravated offence, a criminal investigation was carried out.  I have now taken my claim against the diocese, the PCC, the vicar and others who have harassed, victimised or abused me to the Employment Tribunal.  Instead of trying to resolve the issues and take responsibility and accountability, the diocese, the vicar and the PCC (funded by Ecclesiastical Insurance) are arguing that a churchwarden elected by the parishioners, appointed by the Bishop as his representative in the Parish and appointed as a trustee of the PCC (a registered charity) does not have the status or standing to take a claim to the Tribunal to address the issues.

I wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury telling him what was going on in the diocese.  I told him that I was being coerced into signing an NDA even though he had decreed that NDAs should not be used.  My first letter was ignored.  Then I wrote again and I received a reply to this second letter.  He essentially said these issues are delegated to the diocese.  This sounded very familiar to the issues raised by the survivor of abuser, the late Trevor Devamanikkam when the Diocese declined to take responsibility for dealing with abuse.

Soul Survivor Watford (SSW)

I left my church in July 2022, as a result of the victimisation.  I started going to Soul Survivor after trying several other churches in July 2022.  I like Soul Survivor and just as we were settling there we were informed on 4 April 2023 that Mike Pilavachi was being investigated for serious safeguarding issues.

There were some things about SSW that had caused me discomfort.  Firstly, the leadership had said on several occasions that SSW “aimed for family, and settled for a mess”.   With the background I have and the experiences I have had in life, in churches and in organisations I felt this would become a problem, even before this issue with Mike Pilavachi came to light.  If you settle for a mess you will have a mess.  I had checked the website and there were none of the governance policies that should be there according to the law and the Church of England’s own guidance. 

I was shocked when I heard the content of the statement about Mike.  I felt traumatised because I had left the other church because of abuse and safeguarding concerns in a church.  I have been crying a lot since then as I weep for the church and the young people having some affinity with what they have gone through.

Mike was suspended followed by some of the other pastors in the church.  I was surprised to learn of the allegations against Mike.  I was not surprised to learn that people in senior positions in Soul Survivor and the diocese knew of the allegations and did nothing.  This fits with my experience of the Church of England.  Ignore it when it is happening and then try and sweep it under the carpet.  Protect the vicar and the reputation of the Church of  England at all costs.

I have become increasingly concerned about the investigation that is taking place by the safeguarding team in the diocese and the National Safeguarding team.

It is my firm belief that the authorities of my diocese should have no part in the investigation of the historical and current safeguarding issues at Soul Survivor.  I now believe firmly that this investigation should be carried out by an independent body.

I agree wholeheartedly with others that the Church has failed in relation to protecting victims of sexual abuse, spiritual abuse and racial abuse.

I say this not to diminish the serious issues raised in the safeguarding investigation but to point to a pattern of conduct from my diocese in relation to protecting vulnerable people from abuse.  Discriminatory abuse is included in the Bishop’s guidance on safeguarding but it has not been taken seriously locally.  Abuse in church has to stop.  In my experience the diocese is incapable of management and leadership. The Church needs to bring in professional advisers and, if necessary, professional experts to help them sort out the mess they have created.

Well run and funded corporations struggle with these issues so it is inevitable that most clergy will be incapable of dealing with these issues.

Too many people have been left broken by abuse in churches.  I agree with Gavin Drake that the Church of England is not a safe place for vulnerable people. But they don’t care.  Sadly, they are more interested in preserving the institution than protecting the people they are called to serve.

.

Last Sunday at General Synod in York, something seemed to crack.  The power dynamics that have kept the members of the Church of England hierarchy firmly in charge. shifted significantly to favour voices from the floor in a decisive way.  At a critical moment, it seemed that the rule book of Synod would prevail to suppress the manifest desire of the gathering to hear from the two sacked members of the Independent Safeguarding Board.  On the fourth? attempt, a procedural arrangement was found to allow them to speak.  Jasvinder Sanghera and Steve Reeves who, until two days ago, were members of the ISB, were allowed to present Synod with their perspective on the recent struggles to bring clarity and decency to the whole tarnished record of safeguarding in the Church of England.

 Any examination of the power struggles that have  been going on around the CofE on safeguarding will have noticed that survivors and their supporters have grown in confidence in recent times.  This is in no small way thanks to the ability of the internet to allow communication between supporters of this cause to flow freely and quickly.  The power of the ‘establishment’ to dictate a version of reality that suggests consistent competence and good judgment on the part of senior members of the Church, has been increasingly questioned and challenged.  Finally, the voice of the weak, illustrated in the Gospels by the importunate widow, has broken through decisively to claim the moral and political high ground.  It is quite clear that institutional power as represented by the Archbishops’ Council did not hold the version of truth that the bulk of Synod members wanted to affirm.  They applauded the cause of the abuse survivors and those working for them, especially Jasvinder and Steve.  Attempts by the platform to control the narrative and show the Church of England as a consistently compassionate and competent body seem to have totally failed.

Overall the dynamics of power within the Church of England have proved remarkably stable over the centuries.  Looking at the office of bishop, we see how anyone achieving this rank in the past acquired automatic access to the highest social and legal institutions in the land.  Even the manner of your dress was meant to impress your social inferiors with an aura of high status and power.  The ordinary folk did not disagree with a figure who could claim superior learning, the authority of God and the law of the land on his side.  Whether the advent of women to the status of bishop will do much to change this still powerful dynamic is unclear.  What still seems to be true is that, despite many changes in society, bishops still possess considerable power and influence over others.  Synodical government in the CofE and the later institution of Archbishops’ Council (AC) by Archbishop Carey attempted to inject a more collegiate feel to the office but the influence of each individual bishop is still strong.  Currently, particularly over the past day or two, the role of the AC has come under scrutiny.  Although the membership of this body, which includes lay and clerical members is known, much of what they do and the way decisions are reached is shrouded in mystery, since no minutes are published.  It is also unclear who has the most powerful voice within this Council. The episcopal voice nevertheless appears to be strong. We are also assured that the Council decision to dissolve the ISB was unanimous.  There is however a suggestion, based on some informal remarks of Archbishop Justin, that both Archbishops wanted a pause in putting this decision into effect.  It would be expected that someone on this Council would have realised how utterly devastating to survivors the precipitate dissolution of the Board would prove to be.  The sudden withdrawal of support to dozens of survivors would be a reckless action and probably seriously detrimental to their well-being.  A ‘unanimous’ decision on this point would indicate a lack of heart as well as a political insensitivity to the mood of Synod as well as the wider Church. It is hard to believe that a true representative body containing so many illustrious members of the national Church would be so totally lacking in emotional intelligence and good old fashioned common sense.  If the decision to abolish the ISB was indeed unanimous, then this should give us serious concern for the calibre of those who manage the affairs of the Church at the highest level.

July 2023 will be remembered in the CofE as the time when some of the old patterns of unquestioning obedience to bishops and their power was challenged.  Another momentous day took place in the Winchester diocese two years ago when a group of courageous clergy and laity made it known that they intended to propose a vote of no confidence in their bishop.  For those in stipendiary positions this was a high-risk action.  Bishops have considerable power over the careers and livelihoods of active clergy, and it was possible that some careers would be blighted for ever because an individual had been identified as a ‘troublemaker’. Promotion in the Church seems to work well some of the time, but it is easy to become ‘non-grata’ for taking a strong line or taking up an unpopular cause.  I am also aware of at least two recent cases of the opposite – favouritism.  Two individuals have been preferred or promoted in the middle of serious CDM processes against them.   The question arises:-  Was this individual being promoted to remove them from indiscretions in their old post? Was there a hope that all the CDM problems would thus somehow vanish?  Are sending or receiving bishops in the CofE, by ignoring an unresolved CDM, colluding with what is effectively a corrupt procedure?  I mention these two CDM processes left hanging because they indicate that at least four bishops are using their authority to steamroller the statutory systems of justice so as to favour individuals.  Arbitrary decision making by bishops is likely to be an issue in many parts of the church, but it is only occasionally, as during this past week, that the curtain is pulled back sufficiently for us to see arguably dishonest, even shameful activity among our leaders on the AC. Perhaps it is only a matter of time before laity and clergy routinely question episcopal decisions that are made.  Of course, the bishops may be correct in their judgements but equally they may be wrong.  No one should ever be penalised for not adopting the necessary awe and deference to the fathers and mothers in God.

The speeches given by Jasvinder and Steve this week at York will have considerable impact on the future of church safeguarding.  They will also make it much more difficult for people with power in the church to ignore the needs of survivors and the abused. I suspect that every bishop in the CofE will feel the effect of the fresh air of decency, justice and fair play that were on display at York.  Any future attempt by those In authority to favour the institution over abuse sufferers will find that task far harder.  They will be less inclined to ignore or suppress systems of justice because they can.  Rather they may be inclined to look for the path that indeed puts the survivor at the centre rather than the reputational and financial interests of the Church.  We will see.  At the very least we hope to have a clearer sense of the way that everyone in the Church, from archbishops downwards, can work together with the standards of love, justice, openness and healing right at the top of the agenda.

       by Janet Fife

Originally published in The Church of England Newspaper and reproduced with permission

Trying to get the Church of England to deal with a complaint of sexual abuse is like wrestling with a jellyfish – you can’t get a grip on it, and the tentacles keep whipping round and stinging you when you least expect it.

The labyrinthine complexity of the Church’s safeguarding structures is partly to blame.  A couple of years ago I put together a safeguarding glossary in an attempt to  help survivors and others  in their dealings with the Church. https://survivingchurch.org/2020/12/15/alphabet-soup-a-glossary-of-safeguarding . It ran to 5 1/2 pages.  If I were to write it now it would be even longer.  The remit of the various church safeguarding bodies is often unclear and they overlap. We may contact our bishop or diocesan safeguarding officer, only to have staff from one of the 5 national safeguarding bodies reply.  We may get no response at all.  Our case can be picked up, dropped, resumed, then dropped again. This would be unacceptable if we were dealing with the gas company – but our complaints concern the most traumatic, painful, and humiliating events of our lives. Each time we speak to someone about the abuse it takes courage and enormous amounts of psychological energy, and at that time we are very vulnerable. And when our complaint is passed from pillar to post within the Church of England’s ‘safeguarding’ system, we are forced to retell our stories over and over.

Reviews, inquiries, and data access requests have revealed lies told by bishops and other personnel. Survivors are sometimes referred to in internal correspondence in denigrating terms, rather than with compassion. It’s no wonder that the Church’s treatment of survivors has been labelled ‘re-abuse’. This would be terrible if the Church were doing it to people who had come for help after being attacked by an atheist.  To treat in this way people who are victims of crimes committed by the Church’s own representatives is unforgiveable.

The damage done is real. Survivors subject to this re-abuse have become depressed and unable to work. Many have lost their faith; some have lost their businesses or homes. A few have taken their own lives. The Church of England is answerable to God for their blood.

The Church’s abusive treatment of survivors has been repeatedly criticised by reviews and inquiries, and by the statutory Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). The latter identified the culture of the Church as of serious concern, contributing to both the poor treatment of complainants and to opportunities for abuse to occur.

The Independent Safeguarding Board was set up in 2021 in response to recommendations by IICSA.  There were concerns from the beginning:  the Board was not independent. It seemed yet another deception practised on vulnerable people by Church authorities. Understandably many survivors, having had such shabby treatment already, didn’t trust the ISB or anyone working for the Church.

Three very highly qualified people were appointed to the ISB. Steve Reeves and Jasvinder Sanghera CBE, the Board’s Survivor Advocate, slowly and painstakingly began to gain the trust of the survivors they were working with.  The Chair, Dr. Maggie Atkinson, proved a different story.  She ‘stepped back’ and then resigned after three complaints of confidential data breaches were upheld by the Information Commissioner.

The two archbishops imposed Meg Munn on the ISB as temporary Chair, without consulting the two existing members or survivors, and in violation of the Board’s terms of reference. Ms Munn had a serious conflict of interest, since she also chaired the National Safeguarding Panel and was a member of the National Safeguarding Steering Group. As Chair of the ISB she would be required to audit her own work on the NSP and NSSG. And in her NSP role she had gained a bad reputation among survivors for her refusal to engage meaningfully with victims, and what was considered her poor response to people in critical situations.

Around 80 survivors of C of E abuse protested Ms. Munn’s appointment; a number requested that their data not be shared with Ms. Munn. Jasvinder and Steve also objected. It was obvious that Ms Munn could not function as Chair of the ISB under these circumstances. But the Archbishops, instead of backtracking, doubled down.  As Jasvinder commented, ‘‘I have to say that in my role I have experienced a disregard for the wishes of the survivor community at every point. I’ve been an advocate for victims/survivors for over three decades and I have never experienced anything like this before.’

Last week the two ISB members who many survivors had begun to trust were sacked, leaving the one survivors didn’t trust to tidy up. Those working with the ISB had their support suddenly withdrawn without notice, and without alternative arrangements being put in place. Everyone who has done C4 safeguarding knows how dangerous that is. There is uncertainty about who has now has access to survivors’ confidential data. What happens to the case reviews that were being conducted by Jasvinder and Steve?  The message tweeted by the ISB on Monday, 26 June didn’t reassure survivors:

‘Morning. We’re back from annual leave and what a week to miss! Understandably there is a lot in the inbox and we will be in touch with everyone who has reached out to us over the next couple of days. Please email contact@independent-safeguarding.org if you need anything.’

The anxiety and psychological damage inflicted on survivors is immense – and it was done knowingly and deliberately by the Archbishops and the Archbishops’ Council.  They should heed Ezekiel’s words: ‘Should not shepherds take care of the flock? …You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost.…. This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock (Ez. 34:1-10 NIV).’