by Anonymous

This anonymous contribution arrived in the last couple of days. I would normally have elected to hold it over for a few days but the content appears to be relevant to our ongoing discussion about the weaponisation of safeguarding. The author claims to find psychopathic behaviour among those who currently administer safeguarding in the Church. This observation needs to be kept in mind as we watch the reaction and likely resistance to the radical proposals by Jay to remove control of safeguarding from those who currently hold this power. Ed.

Most would readily accept that paedophiles and other psychopaths tend not to thrive in normal hidden places but rather remain hidden in plain sight. Perhaps two of the most chilling examples of this would be Bishop Peter Ball and Jimmy Saville.

The psychology of the paedophile and abuser of vulnerable adults is complex but what is common among them is an absence of conscience about their crimes nor with respect to the devastating effect that they inflict on their victims. Sometimes there even seems to be a large element of personal gratification in seeing the harm they cause. Unwittingly however, the Church of England in its insistence of taking control of its own safeguarding has opened the opportunity for a new type of abuse, maybe not sexual, but every bit as devastating in its consequences.

While it would be very difficult for a sexual offender to be employed in safeguarding by the churches, what we now experience instead is the phenomenon of individuals within social welfare occupations such as social work and child protection who have a sadistic and psychopathic urge to harm vulnerable people. These people are deliberately hiding in plain sight by holding positions of enormous unaccountable authority such as diocesan or national safeguarding officers under the guise of the protection of their victims. This is of course not to say that all such office holders are in this category just as one should never suggest that all clergy, scout leaders, nurses, child protection officers and social workers are either. However, evidence is already available from their behaviours, that these psychopaths are present within safeguarding structures in the Church of England.

Taking refuge in their autonomous positions of trust, the new abusers exercise a control never dreamed of in the past by paedophiles when it comes to exercising maximum harm on their victims. This is manifested in parishes too where the local church safeguarding officer is sometimes someone who knows most if not all the people in their congregation and can consequently exercise huge damage entirely in a hidden way on people they choose to target. Long held resentments and vendettas are held by those with minimum training or supervision and while under the cover of being in plain sight and although charged merely with the apparent obligation to report rather than investigate, the parish safeguarding officer can cause immense harm to individuals without any accountability whatsoever.

In the past those who wanted to cause harm to their opponents would resort to accusations of heresy, now it is with vexatious allegations regarding safeguarding: this phenomenon has accurately been described as the weaponisation of safeguarding. (Please read the excellent book Letters to a Broken Church edited by Janet Fife and Gilo). However there is another aspect to this weaponisation of safeguarding and we see this also in the increasingly alarming behaviours of some of the diocesan and national church safeguarding personnel who although in theory are responsible to church bureaucrats (CEOs, diocesan secretaries, the Archbishops’ Council et al), these latter people have no relevant professional training or qualifications to make expert and informed decisions about the probity of their safeguarding personnel: this means that usual professional supervision is largely absent.

I am one of the so-called ISB 12 who was directly impacted by the brutal and sudden abolition of the Independent Safeguarding Board. It was said at the time that we were all told beforehand of the abolition but I am forced to write that this was a lie – I never was and nor was anyone else in the group of us that meets regularly for mutual support and planning. Alas, telling untruths often seems to be a pattern of behaviour with statements from the Church of England.

General Synod document 2336 states: “We do now have in place, through independent commissioner Kevin Crompton, a means for those seeking reviews under the terms of the ISB to continue with this. We are glad that several people are taking up this offer and working with Kevin to set in place reviews. We remain open to listening, to conversation, and to attempts to find resolution with all those affected.”

This was misinformation and dishonest on the part of the authors. As a result of this there was a request for a Survivor/Victim to read a statement from us to General Synod, but this was not accepted. Several people felt that our group should be clear that this statement contains a “lie” and it should be called out as such; in the end this was the statement to which we agreed unanimously and is now in the public domain as a consequence of the attempt to silence us:

 “GS 2336 states that the ISB 11 have a means in place to continue with their reviews – this is untrue. The necessary conditions such as data sharing agreements are not in place. It is also inaccurate to imply that the group are happily working with Kevin Crompton. The ISB 11 have instead expressed no confidence in his brief, role, or readiness to conduct our reviews on the same basis as the former ISB.  Not one survivor is currently having their review progressed with/by him. We are deeply concerned that the General Synod has been fed misinformation which we assume is designed to appease Synod members. This has exacerbated the ‘significant harm’ to survivors as evidenced in the recent Glasgow Report.” This statement has been agreed unanimously by those present.

On so many occasions Church of England safeguarding personnel and central secretariat officers engage in corrupt, dishonest and bullying behaviours towards those who have already suffered sexual and other abuse. It is also well known that some of those who wield the most power in Church House, Westminster regularly brief the press “off the record” spreading malicious untruths without their victims having any recourse to reply.

The alleged increasingly cruel, mean and bullying behaviour of members of the Interim Support Scheme office, part of the National Safeguarding Team and ultimately the Archbishops’ Council, also indicate serious questions of alleged bullying in many different forms perpetrated on some of the most vulnerable people among the Church of England’s many victims of abuse in all its forms. They are however also signs pointing to the individuals who are perpetrating the bullying: people who have perhaps been involved in safeguarding and administration in the church for many years, people who (hidden in plain sight) have exacted psychopathic cruelty on the very people that the Church of England has abused most and continues to abuse most: this is the same pattern of behaviour of the paedophile and other sex offenders.

I have often asked myself and others the question why some of the people in safeguarding in the Church of England, people with immense power, behave so badly towards the church’s victims: is it profound incompetence or is it profound cruelty? The answer invariably is that it is incompetence, not being “up to the job” and that they are “basically innocent” (to quote a former Archbishop of Canterbury about Bishop Peter Ball). I believe however that this is mistaken: some of the people concerned are far more likely to have deliberately placed themselves in their positions, under the cover of plain sight, so that they can inflict as much damage as possible on the most vulnerable of those that the Church of England has already abused.

The new abusers in the Church of England are the very same people who have been charged by their episcopal and lay leaders to offer protection: these cruel people are all in plain sight. The only solution now is for the Church of England to remove itself from all safeguarding and to put everything in the hands of an independent safeguarding board or body that will not be compromised either by the narcissistic psychopaths in safeguarding or the narcissistic sociopaths in leadership (lay and episcopal) – both who perpetrate the toxic increasing and serial assassination of souls. These safeguarding psychopaths must be finally driven out of the Church of England.

When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting-place, but it finds none. Then it says, “I will return to my house from which I came.” When it comes, it finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So will it be also with this evil generation.’ Matthew 12: 43-45

May our prayers ascend to you, O Lord, and may You rid Your church of all wickedness. Amen

One of the “ISB 12” (although writing as an individual).

Safeguarding activity in the Church of England is currently a shambles; the Church needs to hand over all its power in this area to two new and independent bodies.

The sentences above are probably an unhelpful summary of Professor Alexis Jay’s skilled overview of the current state of safeguarding in the Church.  For her report, The Future of Church Safeguarding published today (Feb 21^st), Jay has spoken to dozens of individuals involved in this area of work.  While she is impressed with the work and dedication of many of them, her overall conclusion is that the procedures and protocols that are in place for church safeguarding are not fit for purpose.  She sums up her finding by saying, ‘the Church’s system of operational safeguarding is not compatible with best practices …’  A striking finding from her questionnaire data states also that 69% of the victims and survivors were unsatisfied or very unsatisfied with the outcome of the safeguarding process as it applied to them.  With only a mere 16% declaring themselves satisfied, it is clear that the Church is involved with a system which creates many unhappy customers.  In spite of spending huge amounts of money, the Church authorities are presiding over procedures which let people down.  In the process they inflict considerable reputational damage on the Church itself. 

One important feature of the report is that the reader is allowed to listen to anonymous voices of some of the many involved in safeguarding.  Some are those who are responsible for operating the protocols, while others are the victims and survivors.  This focus on the lived experience of individuals caught up in the system is an aspect of the total picture that Jay wants to share with her readers.  Her report is independent, and thus there is no attempt to gloss over some quite serious claims of institutional cruelty or incompetence being used as a way to protect the ‘system’.  One major problem across English dioceses is the inconsistency of practice.  One member of the clergy described the safeguarding instructions emanating from the centre as ‘opaque, confusing and complex.’  Different dioceses may treat an identical issue in quite different ways.  Line management of Diocesan Safeguarding Advisers (DSA) can frequently prove to be a problem.  Also, not every DSA had worked in a profession previously which valued a sensitivity to trauma.  An absence of the skill of working with old-fashioned human kindness has the consequence that some of these survivors are forced to retreat into a hidden place where they are out of reach of the help of others.

One important way that Jay shows her helpful understanding of the negative dynamics of some safeguarding activity, is when she refers to ‘weaponisation’.  This is the habit of making an otherwise lightweight issue of behaviour into a ‘safeguarding matter’ so that it attracts to itself a disproportionate weight of process.  Most disagreements between colleagues or within a parish setting can be resolved by mediation.  Instead, we hear that clergy can now be intimidated to the point of breakdown by lay people threatening a safeguarding process against them.    Jay is clear that safeguarding is an area of church life which is about offering protection to children and vulnerable adults.  It is not a method for disgruntled individuals to settle scores against others by defining the word vulnerable in a loose way.

Some of Jay’s report concerns itself with incompetent and less than professional breakdowns of communication and understanding between safeguarding officials.    She notes the highly variable structure of personnel across the dioceses in England.  Some employ up to six full-time staff (Chester) while others (Carlisle) have a single Safeguarding Adviser with some secretarial back-up.  The key proposal in the report is to set up two new independent organisations, A and B.  These would be to coordinate all the national safeguarding work and would have the effect of removing the ‘post-code lottery’.  Organisation A would serve all the safeguarding work of the dioceses in a even-handed manner.  Local Diocesan safeguarding committees would disappear.   Organisation B would act as a supervisory body overseeing the work of Organisation A, thus removing responsibility from bishops to act as the place of last resort.  Jay had noticed, not infrequently, that crucial decisions were expected of personnel who did not have either the interest or the professional skill to make such decisions.  A house of Bishops, such as the one we have in the Church of England, which finds it difficult or impossible to nominate a Lead Bishop for Safeguarding, should surely not want to protest if the responsibility was removed from their control.  It would be a popular change among the survivors I know.  Most recent Lead Bishops for Safeguarding have appeared to become demoralised by the tasks placed on them.  Some have responded to their role by becoming invisible while others have demonstrated all too clearly in their words and demeanour something of the toll that this responsibility has placed on them.

The basic message of Jay’s report is to indicate to the Church of England that it is out of its depth when seeking to provide safeguarding for those who need it.  I have not attempted to give the detail of Jay’s Organisations A & B in this short commentary, but suffice to say, it is a radical departure from what is in existence at present.  The suggestions of Jay would appear to be based on good common-sense, but, likely, they will be firmly resisted by those who exercise power in the Church of England.   The power that has accrued to senior lawyers and senior church civil servants will not be surrendered easily to two independent bodies that cannot be controlled and bent to the will of William Nye and his circle.  The management of safeguarding in the C/E currently seems to be all about power. We must hope that the evidence of mishandled power in the Church up till the present, will allow parliament and public opinion to force these necessary changes on the C/E.  We need a safeguarding regime which will allow transparency and justice.  Such a new system may help to provide healing for all who have suffered power abuse or institutional re-abuse at the hands of their fellow Christians.

This blog piece and the title that is given to it, is one that I would rather not have to write, The reason I am writing it will become, clear to the reader as I set out a series of events and correspondence that began on January 16^th 2024.  The Open Letter from Martin Sewell and others to the two archbishops who chair the Archbishops’ Council (AC) concerned the sudden, some would say shocking, termination of the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) in November of last year.  The issue with the closure was not just the event itself, but also the brutal insensitivity and apparent absence of any trauma awareness with which it was done.

Sewell’s Open Letter to the Archbishops began with a call for the immediate suspension of the Secretary General of the C/E, William Nye.  This was to enable his conduct and responsibility for the disastrous ISB episode to be properly investigated.  By his actions and negligence in this affair, Nye had forfeited the position of trust placed on him by General Synod. ‘The misconduct that we identify hereunder has resulted in the complete forfeiture of trust in him and in the institution which he serves across the survivor community and beyond’.

The recent Wilkinson Report has identified many failures in the way the ISB closure had been mishandled but Sewell’s letter focuses on one particular issue of great importance to the survivor community.  Specific expert advice had been given to the AC, and to Nye as its CEO, by Steve Reeves of the ISB about the risks involved in leaving vulnerable individuals without proper support. This had to be in place when they were informed of the drastic decision to close the ISB.   Any professional opinion would have concurred with the view that a sudden closure was a risky, potentially disastrous, action.  In short, to quote Sewell’s letter,  ‘(Nye) chose to prioritise his perception of the interests of the AC and/or General Synod over the needs of the Church’s survivors.’  Further ‘he owed a duty of care, both personally and as an institutional leader across multiple iterations of safeguarding within the CofE.’

The next section of the letter spells out some of the clinical observations of Professor Glasgow which we looked at in an earlier blog.  The clinical analyses he had made backed up all that Steve Reeves had indicated in the advice he had earlier given to the AC.  By rejecting this advice, the Secretary General had caused serious harm to some of those who had come to depend on the ISB, for the sustaining support they needed to keep them at a minimum level of psychological well-being. Taking away such support with no notice or any replacement available was experienced as an act causing ‘significant harm’.  Such harm needed to be responded to, and anyone responsible for causing such serious damage to individuals should face suspension.  This would enable the whole episode to be investigated by independent individuals who had no connection with the governing structures of the C/E.

The reply that Martin Sewell has received was sent on Tuesday 6^th February, some three weeks after his original letter to the two archbishops and members of the AC.  It bears the signature of Carl Hughes, the Chair of the Finance Committee of the AC.  It has all the hallmarks of a letter written by several hands.  It is not hard to see the language of both lawyers and the publicity professionals employed by the Church.  The letter predictably contains expressions of ‘regret’ and ‘learning lessons’, but there is absolutely nothing to persuade the independent reader (me) that anybody involved in the letter has any real understanding of the trauma and pain that survivors, such as those at the heart of the ISB episode, carry every day of their lives. 

The kernel of Carl Hughes’ letter was to reject Martin Sewell’s request for the immediate suspension of the Secretary General, William Nye. The reason given was that an opinion given by a specialist employment law solicitor declared that there were no grounds for this suspension.  We need to pause for a moment to consider the implications of this statement.  A senior (and well-paid) employee is accused of reckless and highly damaging behaviour but there are no grounds for suspending him, even when the accusation involves serious ethical lapses as well as raising concerns of apparent administrative incompetence.  Does employment law protect the Secretary General in every circumstance?  Does Nye’s status at the very top of the Anglican pinnacle of power mean that he cannot be challenged, let alone suspended for what is arguably a serious failure of professional competence and judgement?  The misdemeanours that Sewell wants investigated are not only serious administrative failings but severe breaches of Christian principles.  Hughes’ letter does not engage with any discussion of whether Nye’s actions created harm; he simply appeals to employment law and what is legally possible.  In noting the absence of any apparent attempt to show the AC as being a place of compassion and kindness, we catch a strong sense of an organisation where the chill winds of pragmatic managerialism blow strong.   I would not feel comfortable working for an organisation that could not discuss and resolve issues which should be rooted in Christian morality.  Did the AC in their deliberations about the ISB really fail to realise that their response to problems there needed to engage with realities beyond the realm of legality and contracts?

The previous paragraph is a personal response to Carl Hughes’ words which were written in reply to Martin Sewell’s demand for the suspension of William Nye. Sewell’s own response, sent on Thursday 8^th February , contained much more in the way of legal rhetoric and style of argument.  At one point he accuses the Hughes’ letter of containing a claim that is ‘quite plainly untrue’.  This concerns the status of a law firm working for the AC, Farrer and Co.  Sewell notes that this is the same firm that was suggested for the ISB in the dispute with the AC.  There was an attempt to force the ISB members to use this firm even though the firm was already much involved in AC business and thus would not have been able to act in the best interests of the ISB whenever they conflicted with the interests of the AC.

What struck me as an important point In Sewell’s four-page response to Carl Hughes letter is his discovery that the Church of England has placed legal obstructions on anyone ever investigating the Secretary General. When Sewell asked for a copy of the NCI (National Church institutions) code of conduct for their employees, he was told that the policy is not a public document. It is not clear to me whether the terms “code” and “policy” are interchangeable; perhaps one cannot have a code without a policy, but whether one has followed the other we cannot be sure because the head of HR at Church House advised that this is a private document. Survivors have from time to time been told that the terms of their complaints do not fit within the terms of internal policies, yet if those policies and procedures are not publicly available, how can they complain and be sure that they are receiving justice, and how can a church that constantly issues platitudinous statements about “transparency and accountability” justify secrecy in such areas. Employment law is deeply dependent on contract documents and procedural compliance. When these are kept hidden, it is hard to see how justice can be done or be seen to be done.

Secrecy will always be an enemy of transparency and it is hard to see the Church easily achieving such transparency and thus obtaining the trust of the English people.  Once again, we express the hope that Alexis Jay has found a way to cut through the brambles of obstruction and impediment to help us to become a body that flourishes in the light and can be trusted to tell the truth.  Lying is an attempt to abuse power.  It belongs to a different arena of human activity to sexual violence, but both are abuses of power which sadly are found too frequently in our national Church.

               by Janet Fife

It’s a year since Brandon died. That was the first time in 36 years I hadn’t felt afraid of him.

The Very Rev. Brandon Jackson was Provost of Bradford Cathedral when I first met him. He was visiting the theological college where I was in my final year and he was a trustee. He was charming, and I warmed to his vision of a cathedral for working people. I was ordained there on 5 July 1987, to serve a curacy as congregational chaplain. The first warning that something darker lay behind the charm came early, when Brandon said to me, ‘People here will go for the jugular, and you’ve got to get in first.’

I told an anonymised version of my curacy at Bradford Cathedral in Letters to a Broken Church; the chapter titled ‘The Deacon’s Tale’. That was an account of the sexual harassment and indecent assaults I endured. I didn’t then feel safe to  identify myself, the offender, or the place. Nor was I alone in my fear of retribution from Brandon. I have spoken to people who were experienced clergy when they knew Brandon, hadn’t seen him for 30 years, and were still terrified of him. ‘He is a dangerous man,’ one told me. Well, I knew that. In my two years at Bradford I watched Brandon set out to destroy one person after another, with no scruple as to the methods he employed. Some were pursued on false criminal charges. Some never recovered, either professionally or psychologically.

Nor was I the only woman to receive unwelcome sexual advances from him. He was blatant about it and his reputation well known. A young woman, a recent convert, had a wardrobe malfunction at a cathedral meeting. She said Brandon peered down her cleavage and said, ‘you look a million dollars’. Another told me Brandon had asked her intimate questions about her sex life. The wives of civic dignitaries seated next to Brandon at functions would find his hand on their thigh. Speaking to the cathedral youth group, Brandon referred to an elderly man with Parkinson’s as having ‘w*****’s hands’.

When I went to the bishop to ask him to move me, therefore, I didn’t expect any difficulty. But Bishop Roy heard me out, then said, ‘I’m not going to move you. And I’ll tell Brandon you’ve been to see me.’ After that an already intolerable situation became impossible. Brandon instructed the Cathedral treasurer not to refund my expenses, and the bullying grew worse. If York Diocese hadn’t stepped in to offer me a post, I think I might have had a complete breakdown, and would probably have left Anglican ministry permanently. Bishop Roy strongly objected to my move:  ‘If you leave now, the scent of failure will follow you throughout your career.’ He told me he had written to the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of Selby, and my new incumbent to complain. Already badly damaged by two years of extreme bullying and sexual harassment, that didn’t make it easier to start in a new ministry.

Brandon moved too, to become Dean of Lincoln, and immediately became embroiled in what became known as the Lincoln Wars. The conflict between him, the subdean, and the cathedral chapter was headline news; an internet search will find some of the coverage. It was tragic for all concerned, and for the reputation of the Church, but I no longer had to worry that people would think I had failed in not being able to work for Brandon.

In 1995 a young female verger, Verity Freestone, claimed to have had an affair with Brandon. He was tried in a consistory (church) court on a charge of ‘conduct unbecoming a clerk in holy orders’. It was a cumbersome but sensational procedure which dominated headlines not only in the UK but also abroad. (It was this case, and the whole Lincoln Wars saga, which prompted a review of clergy disciplinary procedures and eventually resulted in the Clergy Discipline Measure being passed by General Synod.) Brandon was found ‘not guilty’ – a verdict which surprised most of those who had followed the case.  Verity had been traduced, made out to be a fantasist and a liar.

I was immediately stricken with guilt. I had felt I ought to come forward to give evidence of Brandon’s highly sexualised behaviour, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was still very much afraid of Brandon, and the thought of describing his indecent assaults in that adversarial public forum appalled me. It was only a year after I and other women had been priested, in a blaze of publicity and after a bitter conflict in the Church. In Manchester Diocese, where I was then working, the battle had been particularly fierce. The DDO admitted giving us women a hard time ‘in order to placate your opponents’. To cap it all, my married parish colleague had been outed by the News of the World after advertising for sex. I had seen what the tabloids could do, and didn’t want it happening to me.

I phoned the Bishop of Lincoln, Bob Hardy, speaking first to his chaplain.  They were kind and I felt I had been taken seriously; both told me they had been contacted by other women with similar stories. A few months later the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, announced an Archbishop’s Inquiry into the situation at Lincoln Cathedral. Bishop Bob rang to ask if I would put my complaint against Brandon into writing, to be submitted to the Inquiry. I did so, at considerable psychological cost – but only after arranging with a Prioress that any of her order’s houses would take me in without notice in the event my letter leaked and I was doorstepped by the press. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

When the Inquiry concluded Archbishop Carey found both Brandon and the subdean to be at fault, and asked them both to resign. That was the limit of his powers. The subdean stayed in post; Brandon hung on for two more years, and retired early only after negotiating a large payout. I felt that my evidence had made a small contribution to the Inquiry’s findings and some of my guilt for not having spoken out earlier was assuaged. I also had considerable respect for Bob Hardy and George Carey, the only two in authority who had the guts to stand up to Brandon. However, Verity’s reputation had not been restored and she had not been vindicated. I felt partly responsible for that.

In November 2017 Gilo and Jayne Ozanne wrote to Archbishops Welby and Sentamu regarding sexual abuse in the Church of England and poor treatment of complainants. I wrote to support them, mentioning my own experience. Neither of the archbishops replied. Instead, I was phoned by a member of the National Safeguarding Team (NST) at Lambeth Palace. Thus began a saga familiar to survivors, and justly termed ‘re-abuse’. I actually find it more difficult to write about this than the two years of sexual harassment, indecent assault, and bullying I endured from Brandon – excruciating though that was.

In a series of phone calls with the NST in late 2017 and early 2018, I was:

– Asked to describe the indecent assaults (always a harrowing experience)

– informed that my written complaint of 1995 was not in the files of the                                      Archbishop’s Inquiry, nor in any other files at Lambeth Palace

– Told that I was right in saying ‘everyone knew Brandon couldn’t keep his hands           off women’

There was no more contact after that. It seemed my case had been dropped. But I was now in touch with other survivors and with survivor advocates. That was a great help.

When it became clear I was going to get no further with the NST, I sent data subject access requests (SARs) to every C of E body that should hold data on me and my case against Brandon: Bradford Cathedral, the office of the Bishop of Bradford, York Diocese, Lincoln Diocese, Lincoln Cathedral, and the office of the Bishop of Lincoln. Bradford Cathedral charged me a search fee, but then said they had no information on me in their records. That was odd, since I had worked there for two years, and had attended or chaired numerous meetings of which there must have been minutes. I had also, of course, signed the service register a number of times. The Bishop of Bradford’s office said they had nothing in their files either. York Diocese sent me my entire clergy file. That turned up a few surprises, both good and bad (the lies that are told!) – but nothing on my complaint re Brandon. I had no reply from Lincoln.

Eventually I followed up on the Lincoln SAR, and finally began to get somewhere. But it was not easy. The Lincoln DSA (Diocesan Safeguarding Adviser) was good – empathic and conscientious. She left. I was referred back to the NST, while continuing to be in contact with Lincoln. I was advised to make my complaint to the police, and did so. A bobby in a marked police car came round to interview me, prompting questions from my neighbours. I was having to deal simultaneously with two officials from Lincoln, several from the NST, and the police – and having to recount the story of my abuse with each of them.

The police dropped my case because too much time had passed. Lincoln could find no trace of my written complaint from 1995, nor of any other complaints against Brandon. The NST told me they couldn’t progress my case. Then they took it up again, setting up a core group. I was not represented on the core group, but was asked to submit all my evidence over again. A staff member assigned to support me phoned with what I thought was a pastoral conversation – only to tell me after half an hour that she was gathering information for the core group.

I was told that it was not their role to investigate cases, then that they were investigating. When after some months I hadn’t heard the result of the core group, I chased it up – only to be told they had dropped it again, without letting me know. Safeguarding staff would set up a telephone appointment, then fail to ring, leaving me waiting by the phone in distress. None of these people were bad, but they were too often incompetent and seemingly unaware of the trauma they were causing me.

Despairing of making progress with the C of E, I decided to pursue a civil case. I was lucky to get Richard Scorer, a highly competent abuse lawyer, to act for me. Richard is Vice-President of the National Secular Society, but I found in him a compassion, integrity, and passion for justice I had sought in vain from the Church. Going to law is a gruelling procedure, but after several years I at last obtained a result. The case was settled out of court.

Now at last, I thought, I might obtain from the Church of England an admission that I had been mistreated by Brandon, and an apology. I had proved my case was credible, providing evidence to back up my account, and since the case had been settled the Church was at no risk of incurring further liabilities. Accordingly I wrote to Bradford Cathedral asking for an apology. There was a delay, partly due to there being no Dean in post at the time, but eventually I did receive a reasonably satisfactory apology.

Stephen Parsons kindly wrote to Archbishop Cottrell, asking him to apologise on the Church’s behalf for the original abuse and the Church’s mishandling of my case over more than 30 years. I didn’t get a response from Archbishop Stephen, who is my diocesan and in whose province the original abuse occurred. Instead I had a phone call from a member of the NST in a different city. The Archbishop’s reaction had not been a pastoral one, nor had he kept the request confidential. It had been discussed by a number of safeguarding personnel, and presumably also by diocesan lawyers and communications advisers. After some months, and a number of further contacts, I received a letter from Archbishop Cottrell which was not a real apology at all. I stopped considering myself a member of the Church of England.

In one respect at least I had some limited success: Private Eye and the Church Times ran short items reporting that an unnamed female cleric had received a settlement for sexual assault and harassment by Brandon Jackson while serving as his curate. It was on the record that he had indecently assaulted a woman; that was some vindication of Verity, whose reputation I had been belatedly trying to restore. However, press coverage was limited. Brandon had been out of the news for too long for the media to be interested. (As an aside, I have noted that the cases of women sexually abused in the C of E seem to gain less attention than those of the men. Is that a reflection of the Church’s deeply ingrained misogyny, I wonder? Or do some people feel, as my father did, that abuse ‘is worse for boys than it is for girls’?)

The coda to my story came in the aftermath of Brandon’s death on 29 January 2023. A journalist researching for Brandon’s obituary was told that Bp. Hardy, on retiring in 2001, had committed his entire file on Brandon Jackson to the Lincoln County Archive and placed a 25-year embargo on it. I duly passed this information to the Lincoln safeguarding team, who worked on recovering the file. It took several months of legal manoeuvres and bureaucracy, but eventually they succeeded. And there, sequestered out of sight and out of knowledge, was the complaint it had cost me so much to write 28 years before. It had never been submitted to the Archbishop’s Inquiry.

How do I feel now? I’m thankful for the real fellowship among survivors, many of whom no longer call themselves Christians. I am deeply grateful for those survivor advocates who, at considerable cost to themselves, continue to fight our cause. I thank God for a good lawyer. But I regret giving 27 of my best years to the ministry of a church which I now recognise to be institutionally corrupt, and whose leaders are without compassion or even a mild concern for justice.

From time to time I look back over my life and thank God for people and institutions that I have been able to trust and rely on.  As a child I learnt that many friendships with those of my own age could be extremely fickle.  A friendly face one day could change into a scheming bully the next.  Life taught me that you had to be on the alert for the frequent changes of mood in the children around you so you could adjust your response accordingly. In contrast to these constantly changing moods of my contemporaries, the world of adults offered an opening to something much more stable.  It is among these adults, or a number of them, that there were some who were prepared to befriend a child and help in the task of interpreting a confusing world.  Parents, however good, could never answer all the questions one had about life.  I remember the proprietor of an antique shop who for years tolerated my browsing through his wares even though I was not in a position to buy anything.  Then there was an old man who sat day after day near our playground and welcomed conversation and the sharing of his wisdom.  The elderly of the 50s were all Victorians and they provided a glimpse of another world, one without cars or machines.  The existence of terrible disease and shorter life-expectancy seemed somehow to be partly compensated for by a strong moral order and decency in society. 

It is this cohort of adults who offered friendship to me when I was a child to whom I owe an enormous debt   Some were teachers, some clergy and some were random people I met elsewhere, even on the bus or train.  Yes, I was allowed on occasion to travel on a bus alone at the age of 5 with two old pennies in my clutched hand to pay the fare.  Adults, known or unknown, were a breed that my young self saw as a resource for help, friendship or information.  There were obviously places that were off-limits but fortunately my overall sense of trust in the stranger was never betrayed.  Others of my generation will no doubt look back to their childhood and also remember a sense of overall security with adults who had not been through anything resembling our safeguarding training.   There was an inbuilt wisdom in the child that knew that accepting sweets from someone who was a stranger was somehow risky.  We also knew that in a crowded place, the vast majority of the adults present were on one’s side and would react instantly if a child showed signs of fear or discomfort.

I could go on to describe particular people that helped me gain a perspective on life and provided the mentorship within an environment of trust that was so important when eventually making the choices I made about the future.  I am aware from the perspective of today that I may have sometimes been in risky situations.  There were, no doubt, dangerous adults who used more relaxed attitudes and access to children for their own nefarious purposes.   Fortunately for me, at any rate, the freer atmosphere between adults and children did provide the many benefits of knowing and interacting with a wide range of people.  Growing up in this pre-safeguarding era may have had some dangers, but for those whose trust was not betrayed by deviant adults, there was a sense of a society of people who were generally good, friendly and looking out for us.

I mentioned the existence of trust in the minds of most children that coexisted with a sense that grownups were a breed on your side for the most part.  There were also trustworthy institutions like the corner shop, the public library, the church, the school and the doctor’s surgery. Each represented to the child the wider society, one which had predictability and security.  It comes as something of an unpleasant shock to discover how far the general public have withdrawn from trusting these same institutions and those who work for them. The results of a recent survey which suggests that trust in society’s institutions has severely diminished over the decades. This contrasts with the positive way that many of us experienced them as we grew up actively trusting both people and the institutions of society.  One might have hoped that the Church had retained some of its traditional standing    It would appear that the Church of England elicits the same diminished amount of trust and confidence as our political parties.  The figures are well below 50%.  Other institutions like the police and schools have also seen their standing downgraded in the eyes of the public.  The decline of trust in the C/E is striking, even alarming.  The one institution still attracting our loyalty and confidence is the National Health Service, though it remains to be seen whether this trust will survive the Letby scandal and the results of midwife failures in parts of England. 

The Church of England, in losing a large amount of the goodwill that it used to enjoy a few decades ago, faces a crisis.  The trust that a clerical collar used to attract to itself can no longer be taken for granted.  Indeed, there are many places in society where the dog collar invites ridicule and/or hostility.  What are the reasons for this diminishment of trust?  There are probably a number of reasons we could bring forward.  Some of them are particular to the Church, while others relate to a distrust of institutions in general.  Safeguarding scandals that have reached the public domain have obviously poisoned attitudes among many people.  It is not a single scandal that creates a change of atmosphere.  It is in the way that people see a scandal-racked institution  which appears to do nothing obvious or effective to change the situation.  The Church of England employs quite a large number of people to manage its reputation both nationally and locally.  When these professionals merely repeat formulaic words about learning lessons and tightening up protocols and no one in the organisation ever resigns or accepts any responsibility, the public is not going to be impressed.  The horrors of abuse and the incredibly damaging cover-ups that follow have poisoned attitudes to the church institution.  Can we really be surprised that trust in the Church has fallen to levels that now threaten its very survival as a national institution?

In a blog post as short as this I cannot solve the problems of the C/E in a few words.  I can, however, point to a few principles that could help to rebuild trust above its miserable trust score of 38% before it is too late.  One of the most important aspects of the Church is that it finds much energy as a body when it successfully relates to local areas.  It tries hard to employ people who are recognised as honest and trusted within their local patch.  Forty years ago we used to hear the slogan: Small is beautiful.  We need a rediscovery of this principle and relearn that large complex but anonymous structures are not what most people hanker after.  The mega-church has little to offer an elderly person who remembers a parish church where all were valued and all had a place within the  whole.  The Church must be a place where the traditional values of trust and honesty are highly honoured.  People must find in their local church not only a sense of safety and trust but the opportunity to discover their giftedness for love and service.  The church should become a place where all ‘know even as they are known’ – to misquote St Paul.  Honesty, transparency and justice are all values that everyone wants for the Church, both those within and those looking in.  If we can rediscover these simple moral truths to replace power games, secrecy, greed and emotional gratification, then the Church might once again connect with the British people.

These thoughts are written with a sense of nostalgia for the possibility of living in a society and a Church where trust is taken for granted.  Perhaps it is an unrealistic dream to have, but we can still hold out the thought that it should be possible to find it in a group familiar with the teaching of Jesus.  The greatest frustration for any Christian is to see dishonesty and failure of trust becoming endemic among Church leaders.  In another area of society – politics, there is the constant cry of citizens is to find politicians who genuinely serve their constituents and not themselves.   Such figures do appear on the scene from time to time but all too easily they seem to be outnumbered by those on the make.  Can we not expect the ethical honesty we ask of politicians to be found among our church leaders?  It should be a simple matter to find Christ-like values in a Christian organisation but somehow even that assumption of goodness still seems often to be absent!