by Martin Sewell

Just when you thought the CofE ( aka “ the Post Office at Prayer ) could not make things worse on the Safeguarding front, along comes Synod Paper GS2364 in which the Church’s Jay Review Response Group delivers only one clear message –

“ Hold my beer!”

Be under no illusion; this paper is an attack on the Jay review, its clarity, its independence, its call for urgency and above all its promise to put the victims and survivors first. The General Synod is not being asked  to debate what is right about the Jay and the Wilkinson critiques, but rather to focus on how disturbing establishment group-think regards such incisive challenges.

If Jay and Wilkinson opened the Safeguarding can of worms which remains episcopally led and synodicaly governed, the good folks behind GS2364 are urging Synod to kick that can further down the road once again. With this Response Paper- which Synod will probably pass- we will not discuss it again until February 2025 and probably not conclude matters until 2026 by which time an entirely new Synod will be elected many of whom will lack historic memory.Of course many of those responsible for the abuse debacle will by then be dead or retired. It is the perfect “Sir Humphrey solution” to the embarrassments of the past.

Except it is not “the past”; talking to survivor supporters last week I learnt that new scandals are emerging with the same problems being encountered, and why would that not be the case? The same people who let victims down two years ago are still in post unchallenged and unaccountable, and there are still no conflicts of interest policies in place, or other improved safeguards for due process. Jay identifies that our Safeguarding falls well below the secular world and is inconsistent between Dioceses. That is not being addressed and will not be anytime soon.

Worse; the Archbishops have previously assured us that they deprecate the silencing of victims by the use of Non Disclosure Agreements. I already knew that these have been re-badged as “confidentiality clauses” or “non disparagement clauses” but I have now learnt that the Church has begun sending “cease and desist” letters to troublesome folk allegedly “ harassing” the institution by refusing to be fobbed off. Coming from lawyers charging £500 per hour, the threat of costs orders is plainly intended to intimidate critics into silence. Perhaps we can shame the Church into addressing legitimate grievances rather than bullying the already damaged and vulnerable in this way. Frustrated people became irritated and angry; solve the problem – not the predictable response. Think of your worst experience with a call centre then magnify it by a thousand.

If the Church’s response to its safeguarding crisis  have got worse “on the ground”, it has turned equally sour institutionally. After spending £1m on two professional and timely produced Reviews from Dr Wilkinson and Professor Jay and her team, the Church had clear narratives of how incompetently and inconsistently the Church has been led. Nobody knows where “the buck stops”, everybody denies personal effectiveness and responsibility- but all was not lost.

First Dr Wilkinson identified that after it had been arraigned before IICSA and given one last chance to put its house in order, the Church Establishment bulldozed the creation of an “ Independent” Safeguarding Board ignoring pleas from the floor of Synod to build into the process some key performance indicators.

Her report was brilliant, comprehensive, incisive and produced at pace. It stunned the Archbishops Council. It has never been comprehensively examined and debated by Synod. We learned that there was a fundamental failure to establish from the outset what “independent” was supposed to mean.The ISB members came from secular backgrounds where there is a commonly understood culture of independence, yet as former ISB member Steve Reeves, identified, what the Church actually means by ‘independent’ is “semi detached”.

This is no mere aphorism. The Church operates as a chumocracy, with a number of “good chaps” ( usually chaps ) who can be relied upon to “do the right thing” without formal limits in place. Thus it is bad form to expect the inconvenience of “conflicts of interest policies” or clear role definitions. Managerialism has been criticised for permeating the leadership culture but basic good management practice continues to evade us. Define the problem carefully before you try and fix it.

Dr Wilkinson further identified a failure to properly resource the ISB to meet its challenges; under resourced ab initio, it was further debilitated over the prolonged period during the suspension of the Chair who was thus unable to exercise her allocated role to advance the 12 critical Reviews into the acute and chronic needs ofvulnerable survivors.

It is now over a year since the ISB was peremptorily terminated without what Dr Wilkinson identified as  ‘trauma awareness’.   Those cut adrift were confirmed to have suffered ‘significant harm’ by Prof David Glasgow, a consultant Clinical Psychologist, who had had been recruited (but never deployed) by the Church to advise on such matters. Nobody within the Church has resigned or suffered any consequence for such failure, but worse has ensued.

One of the ‘ISB 12’ chose to walk away from the outstanding Review process but the remaining ‘ISB 11’ continue to agitate for justice. Some have spoken of  suicidal ideation – our victims were already people acknowledged as  hurt and vulnerable.

Without consultation (a continuing grievance in this and other cases) a reviewer was appointed. Pastoral support continued to be provided to the ISB 11 by Steve Reeves and Jasvinder Sanghera on a voluntary basis because of their conscientious acceptance of ongoing professional responsibility.  Ms Sanghera became Dame Jasvinder Sanghera because of such commitment to supporting the abused.

One year later, not one of the urgent reviews has even been commenced let alone concluded. 

Let’s do that again…

One year later, not one of the urgent reviews has even been commenced let alone concluded.

The blame lies once again with the project management rather than the individual reviewer who, I am given to understand, is deeply frustrated; there is evidently not even a required data sharing protocol in place; the ISB had similar data management issues 12 months ago;  nothing has changed

The costs however continue to mount. Questions will be asked at General Synod as to the costs of the Reviewer and support staff to date.  Mr Crompton was engaged on a two day per week consultancy contract, with support from a Business Manager specifically recruited for the task. The costs to date of achieving no progress is unlikely to be much shy of £100k based upon known comparable payments. Added to the £700k costs of the Jay report, the £350k costs of the Wilkinson Report and an unknown portion of the £300k budgeted for the ‘Response Group’ and we have a lot of expenditure for not a lot of tangible outcome to date.

Our victims continue to be sidelined and to suffer.

The Response Group has recently delivered its first report. They have collated and presented views on ‘the way forward’ together with research that confirms that the closer you are to responsibility for the way things have been badly done, the more resistant you are likely to be towards the proposals of Prof Jay. The one thing it is clear about is this: notwithstanding the suffering of the ISB11 and importantly – new survivors coming forward to join the ranks of neglected victims of injustice – the Response Group lacks any sense of urgency.

Worse, it has failed to address the fundamental question which anyone examining the shambles need to ask.

‘Given that a key failure of the ISB arose from a mismatched understanding of the word ‘independence’ between secular world safeguarding experts and the Church Establishment (Archbishops’ Council, Secretariat, House of Bishops, DSA’s etc) why has the Response Group made not the slightest effort to grasp that nettle and articulate what it thinks independence means? Is it yet again a case of  ‘Not my job, squire’?

The Response Group employs the terms ‘independent’ and ‘independence’ 175 times in its report. This implies a degree of importance to be attached to it. Unless and until we have a clear benchmark meaning of the term, all discussion is mere ‘blah, blah, blah’.

The Church has dispensed a great deal of time money and cruelty yet its Response Group has failed to even see the wood for the trees.

Professor Jay has delivered a simple and effective model of how to deliver independence in accordance with commonplace secular modelling. Diocesan Safeguarding Advisors/Officers would continue to do the work in situ as at present according to the duties set out in Diocesan Safeguarding Advisors  Regulations 2016; a few housekeeping adjustments would need to be undertaken to align those duties with the new structure but the outcome would be minimal on the ground but with one primary vital change.

There would be no confusion as to where the safeguarding buck stopped.

 It would be the duty of one charity to deliver independent Safeguarding without conflict of interest and it would be the duty of a second charity to oversee the performance of the first. Both would have independent Trustees with expertise and be required to focus on one issue only – delivering Safeguarding properly.

All DSAs would work to a common standard and be independently regulated; they would equally be resourced externally to a consistent level. If the two charities were not well run by their respective Boards of Trustees, they could be suspended and  replaced without complications; now apply that test to Diocesan Bishops.

Whether General Synod members have the time, motivation expertise, and desire to examine the deficiencies of the Response Group, we shall soon discover.

If this is how we put survivor interests first one might have wondered what a low priority looks like, however we do have one useful piece of evidence of what CofE ‘business as usual’ looks like.

The Makin Report into the crimes of John Smyth, first reported to Lambeth Palace in 2013, is now 1500 days late; the copies were due to have been sent out to named persons in the report for the process known as Maxwellisation on the 13th May. They were  sent out last week to some organisations, some of whom might be significantly ‘lawyered up’.

How long it will take to assess their representations is anybody’s guess. Prof Jay delivered a clear functional structure for reform with a plea to act urgently and not to tinker; the Church knew better.

The Church always ‘knows better’ and therein lies the root of the Safeguarding shambles we are in.

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For a variety of domestic reasons, I have not been very active recently on the blog. One thing that is preoccupying me at present is the paper I am preparing to present at the ICSA (International Cultic Studies Association) conference in Barcelona at the beginning of next month. I may have something to share about the conference as a whole on my return to England. Meanwhile I can reveal that my topic is about the way that some Christians speak about exorcism and deliverance in the context of pastoral care.  All too often the discourse becomes far from being pastoral but abusive in the way it is used.  Conversion therapy, the controversial method of ‘healing’ LGBTQ individuals, is one that sometimes uses ideas from what we can call Christian demonology to reinforce its ideas and methods of practice.

There is a theme that binds together two recent stories that have been drawn to my attention about safeguarding.  Both illustrate the way that important safeguarding stories often get overlooked.  One suspects that those involved want them buried in a sea of information.  There is the hope that they will achieve minimal publicity in spite of their importance for the maintenance of high standards right across the Church.  The first story concerns the Diocese of Sheffield and some ‘final recommendations’ from the Bishop of the Diocese following an ‘independent Review of Safeguarding Arrangements in St Thomas’ Philadelphia Church’.  St Thomas’ is an ecumenical parish in Sheffield known as the Network Church.  It is jointly run and overseen by Baptist, Independent and Anglican trustees.  The Review was in connection with a complaint about abusive pastoral practice towards a gay man, Matt Drapper.  The details of this episode, involving an attempted exorcism and its outcome, are vividly described in his book Bringing Me back to Me.  The authorities of the Church of England, and the other Trustees, commissioned Barnardo’s to carry out an independent Review.  One of the outcomes was a formal apology by the Trustees to Matt for the episode which took place in 2014.  This apparent triumph of safeguarding protocol is marred by the fact that the Barnardo’s Review is being placed under an embargo so that no one, not even Matt, can read it or have access to it in the future.  It is not surprising that the complainant feels aggrieved when, although he has received an apology, he is shut out from knowing anything that was recommended in the report.   Matt makes the valid point that any discussion about healing prayer, exorcism and conversion therapy has implications for the wider church.  An apology with no attempt to attribute responsibility or explain how things went wrong is a poor thing.  Theological differences about the nature of prayer, healing and deliverance are maybe just too difficult to find agreement on. In this way the church finds it easier to close down the details of any discussion on the topic.  Thus no one has to face the issue of how some Christian beliefs raise profoundly important pastoral issues.  Should Church leaders ever tolerate ‘biblical ministry’ harming and abusing vulnerable individuals in the name of following biblical values?  Readers of this blog will be familiar with the way that the criminality of John Smyth was backed up by some deft quotes from Scripture which suggested that the suffering of Christ was a path to be followed by his followers.   The Sheffield episode leaves us with an admittance that abusive practices took place, and which needed to be apologised for, but currently, no one wants to discuss the implications of what happened.  It is also scarcely credible that such practices were only a one-off event.  It would be very interesting to know what the Barnado’s reviewers had to say about this question.  What is described in Matt’s published account described practices which go way beyond the authorised guidelines published for the Church of England’s deliverance advisers.

The next story, involving the shutting down of information in a safeguarding case, comes from Northern Ireland. It concerns a Church of Ireland priest by the name of Bill Neely.  In October 2022 Neely was revealed to have been a prolific child molester when a survivor of his abuse forced a substantial settlement on the Church of Ireland (COI).  The offences went right back to the 1970s and it was clear that senior churchmen had been aware of the situation.  Neely had been quietly shuffled off to a parish in Co Tipperary from his parish in Belfast, no doubt in the hope that his past behaviour would be forgotten.   No sanctions were ever taken against Neely.  The move, from the Belfast parish of Mount Merrion to a rural outpost across the border is suggestive that senior churchmen were anxious to remove a problem rather than concern themselves with the danger he posed to children in the new parish.   The Church of Ireland is not large, and Neely as the founder member of the prestigious Church of Ireland Historical Society, would have possessed a certain status and importance and this was never challenged while he was alive.  This allowed him to be buried in the Cathedral of his diocese.  It appears that the COI, through its solicitors, went to considerable trouble and expense to try and protect the posthumous reputation of Neely and that of the wider Church.  They were however compelled to pay out a substantial sum to Edward Gorman, the persistent and courageous survivor.  Sadly, he did not live long to enjoy his legal victory but died shortly afterwards.

As a counterbalance to these two stories, involving cover-up and apparent zeal for reputational protection, we must mention the recent honouring by King Charles of two champions for those afflicted by institutional bullying.  Alan Bates’ organisational skills and eventual triumphs against the juggernaut of the Post Office and its well-paid lawyers are well known.  We should be allowed the conjecture that Jasvinder Sanghera’s award to become a Dame in the King’s Birthday Honours, was at least in part an acknowledgment of her recent part in representing and gaining the respect of the survivors of church abuse. This hard-won trust was itself a notable achievement.  It stands in marked contrast with the way that hardly any of the internal church appointees have earned the confidence of survivors. Clearly the main work of Jasvinder’s professional life has been the support of women in situations of forced marriage and honour abuse, but this recent stage of her work on behalf of church survivors may yet prove to be just as important, even though of brief duration.  Although Dame Sanghera is no longer working for the Church, she helped many, just by being a person of integrity and honour, at a time when these qualities seem in such short supply within the Church itself. We will never be permitted to know exactly what was discussed by the Honours Committee but the reputation of the former Independent Safeguarding Board remains high even after its demise.

It now appears that the Barnado’s Review is to be published, following pressure from interested parties.

There is one well-known popular expression which is often trotted out when some policy decision relating to a large organisation fails to gain much traction or support from those who work for it.  Too many people within the organisation stand to lose something if the policy is implemented.  People declare that to vote for the proposal would be like ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’.  For an organisation like a company or a school, new policies often involve the loss of jobs and the slashing of budgets.  It is not difficult to persuade a substantial group to vote to attempt to see off the threatening proposal.  To pass a proposal that in any way challenges the existing power and privilege of the status quo is seen to work against the apparent interests of all in the organisation.  The turkeys being fattened for Christmas have no say in their inevitable fate but, if they did, they would not permit something so obviously contrary to their interests to take place.  The recent survey taken by the Response Group that is trying to find a way forward after the Wilkinson and Jay reports for the Church of England has found, unsurprisingly, that the Jay report is unpopular with many senior church officials and the newly created profession of safeguarding ‘experts’ within the Church.  Jay’s conclusion is that the entire safeguarding enterprise should be handed over to two new safeguarding charities, entirely independent of the church structures. This radical proposal was never going to win prizes for popularity.  I dare also to suggest that the level of acceptance would be the lowest among those who have spent the least time reading and studying it. 

The Church of England should have counted itself as extremely fortunate to gain the services of the most qualified expert in Britain (the world?) on safeguarding to advise it.  Jay was asked by the Archbishops’ Council, in the aftermath of the ISB debacle, to show the Church ‘how to form an independent and scrutiny body for the C/E’.  Now that the Church has received her report and has had its first opportunity to read the conclusions, it is showing strong indications of cold feet.  Clearly for many the independence that is pointed to, as an important ingredient of future safeguarding, would have substantial implications.  These would challenge the total independence of the 42 dioceses and the vested interests of those with power in the national church.  Organisations always stand to lose something when any power at the centre is devolved to groups on the edge.  The common-sense interpretation of independence will indicate that, unless it is truly detached, as Steve Reeves pointed out in his memorable speech at General Synod, it will not fulfil the criterion of proper independence or be worthy of that description.   Those with the most power to lose, the bishops and those employed to be diocesan safeguarding officers across England will be among those likely to resist a radical understanding of independence.  The proposed new structures would continue, according to the proposals, to work with existing employees.  Clearly there would have to be changes in areas like professional accreditation and oversight and this would, no doubt. be seen to challenge existing patterns of power and control.  The fact that Jay has identified serious examples of failing and dysfunctional process in the course of her numerous interviews with individuals involved at every level of the safeguarding process, is quietly overlooked by those anxious to oppose her recommended reforms.  Whenever power in an institution is threatened, those who stand to lose power will always be found manning the barricades.  That is what we see.  Broadly speaking the survivors’ groups and their supporters are most supportive of Jay, while the individuals with the most to lose take a stand that, with honourable exceptions, wants to resist any move in the direction of an outside body taking independent responsibility for the implementation of all safeguarding activity. 

In writing this piece, I was guided by the videos prepared by Martin Sewell and Clive Billenness entitled the Jay Report.  I do not intend to repeat all their points but one particularly useful statement, defining ‘independence’ located by Clive,  would help the Church if it became part of the of the Church’s thinking.

Independence of mind is the state of mind that permits a member to perform a service without being affected by interests that affect professional judgement, thereby allowing an individual to act with integrity and express objectivity and professional scepticism.

The reason for Jay recommending two new totally independent bodies managing and overseeing safeguarding in the Church came from her observation that the existing functioning of safeguarding protocols in the Church was highly variable in quality.  An individual could be in a position where life-changing decisions about their future could be taken by individuals ‘with little safeguarding knowledge or experience.’  Jay interviewed at depth dozens of individuals and received written submissions from hundreds more.  Safeguarding in the C/E, even from my limited experiences of listening to the stories of those who have gone down the rabbit hole of seeking justice and accountability, is a postcode lottery.  In some places, to back up what was said above about ‘life-changing decisions’, rulings and decisions are made with no possibility of any appeal. Core groups sometimes seem intoxicated by an access to a power over peoples’ lives when at their most vulnerable. They seem sometimes to ignore common sense and the right of everyone to a fair hearing.  The European Court of Human Rights speaks about the right of everyone to a fair trial.  The two words used are independent and impartial.  Also, the importance of being free from conflicts of interest is a basic principle of justice.  If church institutions ever think that they can offer justice without the counterbalance of separate structures providing checks and balances, they are likely deceiving themselves.  Jay’s gathering of evidence to add to the material that she had already heard and read in the 7-year ICSA hearings, has given her the status of knowing more about the implementation of safeguarding than anyone else in Britain.  Her concluding recommendation for two properly independent bodies to manage safeguarding on behalf of the C/E is not just an idea sketched out on the back of an envelope; it is a compellingly argued position that has the ability to convince, like a well-presented case in a court of law.  

The current hesitancy, shown on the part of many church leaders and safeguarding professionals in the survey recently conducted by Church’s Jay/Wilkinson Response group, should not surprise us.  For such a surrender of institutional power to be a reality, there has, in addition, to be an honest recognition by the Church that the past thirty years have frequently been a disaster area in this arena of safeguarding.  A system which allows the top layer of management to be the chief pastoral figure while expecting them to be judge and jury with regard to suspected miscreants, is never going to operate well. There are still hundreds of damaged survivors and victims who seek healing and justice from harmful episodes in the past.  Some trust, against all the evidence, that the Church is an institution able to provide balm for the wounds she has inflicted on them in the past.  The history of safeguarding has not been a story of binding up wounds and providing compassionate care for the afflicted.  Rather it has revealed itself to be, for those of us who scratch below the surface, an institution that consistently puts organisational reputation ahead of pastoral integrity.

The provision of safeguarding services to all, providing love and healing to all who have been wronged or harmed by the institution is perhaps an achievable task.  It will however not be achieved in any system where reputation and a illusion of goodness are upheld to the exclusion of honesty and integrity.  There is a verse in the Bible which comes to mind, but in a parody form. ‘What gain is it for a Church like the C/E to gain wealth, status, privilege and power, if it is obtained at the cost of honesty, integrity and truth.’  The answer to the question in the title of this piece may very well determine the future of the Church over the next fifty years.  Jay is calling the Church to honesty and truth.  A failure to respond to the values of our founder can only end in emptiness and tears.  I hope the General Synod are fully aware of their responsibilities when they come to discuss this matter in July.