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 28th 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.
Many thanks. They are asking Prof. Jay to tell them what to do in order to establish ‘independent’ structures. They are doing so because they are unable to agree on the nature and purpose of such independent structures themselves. As such they are outsourcing their decision making in the hope that Prof. Jay will become a lightning rod for the fallout associated with the establishment of an independent structure. Yet this is no guarantee that an independent structure will actually be established or, if it is, that it will receive sufficient backing and, more especially, finance. Prof. Jay can then be blamed after the event if it is not established properly or if it does not work adequately. In this way, the Church authorities are let off the hook and/or Prof. Jay is used to help diffuse internal power struggles and partisan bickering.
Almost anyone under the mental age of about 10 knows what independence means, and probably how it could be established. Various contributors to this and other blogs have made proposals. The reason why the Church is incapable of defining independence and establishing independent structures is because it is too cowardly, dishonest, opportunistic and pusillanimous to do so. Outsourcing decision making is itself a sign of its cowardice, and no guarantee that there will be a satisfactory outcome.
As to your reference to Canterbury, I assume that you are referring to the bitter animosity expressed by John Shirley towards Hewlett Johnson (the bitterness was in one direction). Johnson may have been a ‘holy fool’ and ‘fellow traveller’ (per Robert Hughes’ 1987 biography, and that of John Butler, 2011), but he at least had a genuine Christian spirit. Shirley, by contrast, was a deeply unpleasant man, snob and social climber (the then archdeacon, Alec Sargent, was also quite unpleasant); ‘Fred Remembered’ (1997) was a pretty devastating collection of reminiscences and a useful antidote to David Edwards’ hagiographic ‘F. J. Shirley: an Extraordinary Headmaster’ (1969). Shirley’s visceral dislike of the highly courteous Johnson was not reciprocated, as was borne of ingratitude (Johnson had ‘made’ Shirley and had covered his back over the ‘poaching’ of pupils from Worksop, and had supported the suppression to two canonries to aid school finances; Johnson was also an exemplary chairman of governors), and also of commercial opportunism (a determination to keep prospective parents on side when the cold war was at its height). The precincts at Canterbury became notably more congenial under Ian White-Thomson, but the tone changed again in the 1980s. An exposure to the higher clergy can sometimes be sufficient to destroy any illusions about the clerical profession. Of course, Shirley was not all bad: for instance, he had the decency to aid the late Paul Pollak, a Czech refugee from the Kindertransport and outstanding polymath (most of his family were liquidated), and later hired him as a maths master.
May I ask a question?
Even with fully independent oversight will dioceses have to comply if there is no Royal Assent? Will an independent structure still only have moral not actual power over diocesan decisions? If dioceses can still ignore them how much benefit is it actually going to be.
Sorry probably very dim question!
Not sure about any “royal assent” Trish. But at present, Dioceses are independent. And it strikes me, as it does you, that they could perfectly well ignore any advice!
This raises one aspect of an issue that AC really should have dealt with years ago: indeed it should have been aired at the very beginning of the whole ISB process. (It was certainly being discussed within the AC) That is, is the new structure to have legal powers? If so, as William Nye admits in a letter of 22 June 2022 to Martin Sewell (copy at https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/20220622-Martin-Sewell-re-ISB.pdf ), legislation in Synod and Parliament would be required.
The ISB (now to be called FSP?) will need legal powers in at least two ways: and at the very least, the principle of obtaining those legal powers will need to be agreed. Firstly, as you observe, if it is to be able to enforce its rulings, it will need powers to compel the legally distinct entities within the church. Secondly, if it is to undertake effective review of cases, it will need powers to compel the production of documents, including personal data, possibly even against the wishes of the people concerned. This will require positive, and statutory, legislation: it may also need legal immunity from privacy legislation. These are highly contentious issues. The debate about them is political in the secular as well as the ecclesiastical sense, and needs to be conducted in the democratic arena.
It would have been preferable for the AC to have agreed in public that these challenges would need to be met and to have committed itself to meeting them in principle. As it is, we may expect Alexis Jay to propose a preferred option of a an independent body with legal powers and, if accepted, then AC will begin the process of obtaining the necessary legislation: a process which, as suggested by Mr Nye’s letter can hardly be less than a matter of years.
IT seems to me, then, that on the most optimistic reasonable assumptions, we cannot have a working, funded and legally empowered scrutiny body until 2025 at the earliest.
Froghole. Thanks for reminding me of the notable characters who lived in the Canterbury Precincts in those far-0ff days. We (the boys in the choir) of course only saw what was at the surface – shouting matches between senior men of the cloth but it was sufficient to alert thirteen year olds to the existence of disharmony among senior churchmen. I repeat the point that I made in my open letter. The church was never a place of sweetness and light and clergy have never set a particularly good example in this direction. This is why I worry about the creation of large teams in various dioceses to run twenty five to thirty churches each. This assumes good-will and readiness to work well together. These are not qualities I have always noted among the male clergy at any rate.
Many thanks for that! I imagine that you were there under Messrs Pare, Hopkins and Campbell (and, maybe, Dr Knight). My understanding is that Dr Johnson was very kind towards everyone in the Precincts, including the choir. What, I think, really set people off was the visit of Malenkov to the deanery (and, still worse, to an evensong where Dr Fisher was present) in 1956, when things were getting very bad in Hungary. Also, the banner ‘Christians Ban Nuclear Weapons’ draped across the Green Court entrance to the deanery, which prompted Shirley to have fireworks directed at the deanery windows at bonfire night.
The subsequent fate of the choir school during David Marriott’s time (lovely man, who did so much for the Vellore community in Andhra Pradesh when at Wye), and the botched attempt by Peter Newell to take it over, makes for melancholy reading, and it cast a shadow over the last five or so years of White-Thomson’s tenure.
The formation of mammoth groups is, of course, all about money. My specific concern with them (based especially in recent experiences in Lincoln diocese) is that they are used as a pretext to wind down a large number of parishes, sotto voce. They can work if the ‘lead’ is a good diplomat, though of course that cannot always be assured. Logistics are also vital. In one very large group in Lincoln diocese the lead – who is a perfectly nice and diligent person – actually lives about 35 miles away, so a 70 mile round trip merely to get to the area committed to his charge. The main issue is that something ought to be going on at each church on a regular basis, in order to keep the rhythm going. Whether or not it is undertaken by a layperson is a matter of complete indifference to me, for something is always better than nothing, and I regret that too often nothing is all there is to be had.
PS: It was good to see your contribution on Zoom to the Religion Media Centre, about the recent Synod.
I think that the church is a huge entity and in many places and aspects is indeed a place of sweetness and light, unless we unaccountably ascribe a realer reality to negative things than to positive. The Canterbury clergy should have kept their discussions private, nor should they have thought shouting would do other than hinder. They may have thought (a) emphatic talk was a marker of the seriousness of the principle, (b) the principle far outweighed the trimmings. In both (a) and (b) they will have been correct. They may even have thought (c) open discussion was a fulfilment of the biblical principle of open discussion and transparency, eschewing double mindedness. And also keeping short accounts by dealing with issues on the spot and thereby nipping them in the bud. I think on average clergy today are less fractious and there is more psychological awareness than before in appointing them. In no conceivable universe should they be taking charge of as many parishes as they are. Nor would they be if churches that didn’t decline were copied and looked up to, nor if Synod prioritised the new and cataclysmic threat to the parish system higher instead of squeezing it out in relative terms in favour of already oft discussed matters.
“Safeguarding” in the Church of England currently focuses on the perpetrators of abuse. This leads to a large safeguarding bureaucracy in every Diocese and compulsory safeguarding training in every parish. This is essentially about ending abuse happening and is aimed at protecting the Church from scandal and legal costs. Because this is a bureaucratic and rules based system that reinforces rather than questions the hierarchical power structure in the Church, it is uncontentious. To put it bluntly it takes money from parishes and invests it in the centre. I hope this huge bureaucracy is effective but I have seen no evidence that it has saved a single child from abuse and since it is not monitored we will never know. When I undertook basic training as a member of our Church Council, nothing at all was said about how a child or vulnerable adult could seek help. It was all about identifying perpetrators. If the Church has a responsibility to end abuse, why does this end at the church porch ? What about children sexually abused by family members, bullied by their peers or teenagers questioning their sexual and spiritual identity ? Don’t we have a responsibility to them ?
I was horrified when the Head of Safeguarding at the Church of England complained that there was too much focus on victims. Isn’t it our primary duty as Christians to care for the vulnerable and try to heal their pain ? But unlike perpetrator focused safeguarding, victim focused safeguarding raises uncomfortable questions for the Church bureaucrat. It is potentially a can of worms not only questioning the Christian witness and integrity of individual ministers but bringing into doubt the operation of the entire system of Church hierarchy.
Last night I saw a film of Sinéad O’Connor ripping up her mother’s photograph of the Pope. That is victim focused safeguarding. It is raw and filled with anguish and it threatens existing power structures which is why the Archbishops Council is resistant.
Just filled in this survey and hope others will
https://futureofchurchsafeguarding.org.uk/
Steve
Thanks.
I have. But it took me out of my sign in to this blog!