by Stephen Parsons
One of the battles that parents fight is in persuading their child to apologise to another child. Billy hits his playmate Joe in a fit of irritation or pique, and clearly, Joe needs to hear Billy apologise if relations are to be restored. There may be more at stake than just harmony between these two boys. The two sets of parents have an agreement about babysitting each other’s children, and they cannot abandon this arrangement without affecting adult work schedules and the after-school pick-up rota. Saying sorry with sincerity and feeling has become a matter of urgency and importance, if a carefully constructed edifice of childcare is not to be impacted, and even collapse, because two small boys have fallen out and refuse to play together in peace.
At this stage in his life, Billy has learnt how to say sorry in a way that does not signify any real content. There is a particular sing-song intonation which says, ‘I am saying the words, but I don’t really mean them’. The parent recognises this fake intonation and gets the child to repeat the words of apology until they sound more or less authentic. It is a contest of wills but the parent battles on because he/she knows the issues that are at stake apart from babysitting rotas. Authentic apologies do count for something. Without them relationships are damaged and may be broken irrevocably.
The sing-song way of saying sorry, which is the offending child’s first attempt to respond to the adult’s demand for an apology, has its correspondence in adult life. Adults do not use sing-song ways of communicating non-authenticity. They have other verbal techniques. Certain formulae, used in apologies, sound correct and sincere, but are, in fact, meaningless and shallow. Expressions like ‘I regret any pain you may have felt, but it was caused inadvertently’ are the stock in trade for insincere apologies and professional speech writers alike. Such expressions sound good but fail because, although they may appear heart-felt, they lack the quality of real remorse and sincerity which needs to be present in any proper apology. In writing this piece, I am reflecting on the ideas and thoughts of ‘Graham’ who has written a piece for Via Media https://viamedia.news/2025/01/01/justice-and-moving-on/ on the giving and receiving of apology. Graham is a Smyth survivor and disclosed to a number of bishops including ++Justin in 2013 about the abuse. What he describes is his need for real understanding and human compassion from those who received the information about what he had had to endure. What he in fact received were the sounds of drawbridges being pulled up and the castle (the Church of England) going into full defence mode. The casualties of this process are sincerity, honesty, transparency and truth. Many people (including myself) have pointed out the catastrophe that has transformed the national Church into a body that seems only to understand how to make insincere and shallow apologies. The wider public has learnt, from experiences like that of being a parent, how to recognise when apologies are fake and insincere. Listening to the crafted statements from one of the ‘reputation management’ firms, it is not difficult to spot if we have the genuine article among the fake, formulaic and ultimately meaningless statements of apology. Just as parents recognise the insincere apologies sometimes uttered by their own children, ordinary people are very good at recognising the difference between genuine apologies and the fake formulaic versions.
It would be an interesting exercise to compile a list of words and phrases used by professional writers of official statements of apology. Many such statements will include words like regret, unintentional and words implying that a decision was taken with good intentions but later proved to be wrong. Two things will normally be absent from such statements. One is any sense of real human feeling at the way things have been disastrous and catastrophic for the victims and survivors. The imagined manual for official writers of apologies does not provide for such levels of empathy. The expressions of regret provided for in our mythical manual can never plumb the depths of human feeling that survivors look for from those who are supposed to be offering words of comfort and support that a victim might find helpful.
The second thing that never appears in our statement of healing words from leaders and people of power is an understanding of the ‘institutional alienation’ experienced by the survivors. The survivor has detected, in their experience of abuse, not only a clear breach of ethical behaviour on the part of an individual, but also a sluggish even obstructionist response by an entire institution. The Church so often seems to retreat into a lock-down mode when one of their servants is accused. It is extraordinary that, even after ten years of active and supposedly professional guidance of safeguarding by bodies like the NST, people still find the ‘system’ impossible to negotiate without an incredible amount of perseverance. As we enter the New Year of 2025, it should be possible for our church leaders to provide a far more survivor-friendly environment for those seeking justice and who have already suffered. Those servants of the church who are being accused of such things as bullying and other forms of abuse, particularly when they belong to the upper ranks of the clergy, are seemingly able to call on the services of highly skilled (and expensive) lawyers. The lay person who has experienced serious bullying at the hands of a vindictive church leader normally has no support in trying to be heard. The more a church leader rises through the ranks, the greater the level of institutional protection is available. The recent resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury appears to contradict my words about institutional protection, but no doubt there are other unseen factors in the story which made this particular event inevitable.
‘Graham’, in his moving piece in Via Media, to which we have already referred,has drawn our attention to the failures of the system to provide the words or the actions that might have helped him to find a greater measure of healing over the past ten+ years. He speaks for all survivors in his plea for words to be shared that truly convey empathy and feeling. Individuals in positions of authority are representative of a broader constituency; their words count and, if they communicate genuine remorse and sorrow, these may be instruments of healing. Healing is also enabled when the ‘mighty … are put down from their seat’. In other words, when important leaders express their sorrow in humble, everyday terms that ordinary people understand, something shifts in the dynamics of the whole process. The section in Graham’s piece that describes looking into the eyes of those who seek reconciliation is powerful. It chimes well with what I have said in my last blog post about the quality of reconciliation that can be achieved through a common experience of tears. Sharing together the same human emotions of joy as well as sorrow is among the ways that we learn to be reconciled with other human beings. These emotions are expressed in words but also in our body language. Graham’s reflection about the connection that can be established by human beings simply looking at one another in a kind of visual embrace is powerful. Reading his words takes us into a world where words are transcended, and primacy is given to what is real in terms of human relationships and spiritual truth.
2025 will be a challenging one for our Church of England. The might of the institution is being challenged and the status quo of power and privilege it retains can no longer be taken as the final word. Perhaps with the current awareness of the need to take the abused and damaged section of our Church far more seriously, we are glimpsing a Magnificat Church, one where the ‘humble and meek’ are ‘exalted’, taken seriously and even to be put in charge. What we are also learning in the current leadership crisis is that institutions need to be held properly accountable and be flexible so that they earn the respect of those they claim to represent and serve. The right of the Church to hold a place of honour in a society, where it no longer commands universal respect, needs to be challenged and questioned. Above all, we want those outside the Church to look in and see only honesty and truth. Our next Archbishop has the urgent task to call us all back to these basics. Let us hope he/she has the insight, the vision and the wisdom to be able to do it.
Just yesterday I was discussing with close family an incident many years ago where I was being forced to force a child to apologise. We both refused.
Even then it seemed pointless faking an apology, and certainly with the heat of lost tempers, I didn’t think a fair enquiry would be possible. He said/she said. Those relationships became much more distant afterwards, because neither side was able to change their attitude enough.
Sometimes relationships are incapable of resolution. I believe this to be particularly the case with anything to do with the Church of England. Of course there are a few good people there, some very good. But on the whole membership requires silence and acquiescence to an ugly self preservation and maintenance of a corrupt power base.
It can’t be fixed, in can only wither and die. Welby going signifies almost nothing. He was sacrificed, and had long been set up to be a patsy, just for such a time as the fallout from the Makin Report demanded.
Change occurs from large destructive events: “quantum events”. COVID obviously, was such an event, with a permanent reduction in attendance. Otherwise, apart from gradual fade away, it will be business as usual for the top brass, maintaining and feathering their own nests for decades to come, with £10b of funds to fritter away.
Would an apology help me? I’d certainly like to have full public recognition that the Church allowed a paedophile priest into my school and sanctioned his permission to officiate there. And recognition that lives were damaged. Could such damage ever be repaired? I don’t know. But I do know that the hierarchy of Church leadership is still dominated by largely men nurtured in the system of which my school was a distant part. Until that generation leaves by natural wastage, or more swifter dispatch, material change is unlikely.
Those of you who read Surviving Church regularly will have followed the story of Kenneth as part of seven episodes on this blog known as the ‘Kenneth Saga’.
Stephen unwittingly has highlighted an hitherto new problem in the Kenneth Saga. He points out that there are strong connections to Graham’s piece in Via Media on the giving and receiving of an apology and that is relevant to Kenneth’s new problem.
In 2020 I wrote to the MP for help and the answer came back, ‘As this is a purely private investigation by a body outside of the public sector she [the MP] is unlikely to be able to have any significant agency or influence over the case’. Nov 24 2020
Last week, in response to an email sent in October 2024, I received an email from a researcher for an MP for my documented evidence from the Police and LADO about Kenneth’s case in 2020. On 9th January 2025 I received a phone call from this researcher so we could talk through the issues. I was very surprised at how singularly ill informed she was although I had supplied her with details of my correspondence with LADO about the case and the details of the Police report.
Her idea was to ask the Diocesan Safeguarding Adviser to give the reasons for her judgement as to how she had come to the conclusion that Kenneth was a High Risk sexual predator. This, although she had been given a copy of the false risk assessment where some of the evidence had been based and admitted to be based, on a different person altogether.
Her further idea was then for Kenneth and myself to meet with the DSA and Dean where they would explain how they had come to this decision; we would understand and all would be peace and harmony. In other words a ‘Reconciliation’!
I explained that the Dean had categorically said in Core Group meetings that he ‘had no wish to meet with Mrs Hunt’ (from Subject Access Request Information) and also that ‘No-one was to respond to Mrs Hunt’. Significantly, the DSA has been refusing to acknowledge any correspondence with me personally since May 2021 saying, “The case is closed”.
I followed the telephone conversation up with an email to the Researcher on Thursday 9 January 2025. This is a relevant excerpt:
‘Whilst I appreciate your saying that there are only certain measures you can take within the MP’s office, there are colleagues of mine who are hoping that there will be other involvement from the MP: definitely her drawing it to the attention of the newly appointed Second Estates Commissioner Officer, Marsha de Cordova Labour MP for Battersea, Balham and Wandsworth or even raising concern with the Minister for Justice or the Ecclesiastical committee. After all, The Church of England is accountable to Parliament and this action is the only way to achieve justice’.
Since I wrote that to the researcher I have learned that Marsha de Cordova has agreed to meet the ISB victims. I shall pass that on to the researcher and also add,
‘This is but one corner of a massive national safeguarding scandal which is being increasingly recognised as bigger than the Post Office problem – certainly with more victims. The Church of England is indeed the Post Office at prayer’
Yes! Kangaroo Court Justice is worse than we can ever imagine. Victims get hammered, and further harmed. Perpetrators get protected. Innocent people get unfairly branded offenders! Here’s a letter from Portsmouth News which perhaps makes some good points?
Legacy of abuse and cover-ups
Portsmouth News10 Jan 2025
Regarding the abuse cover up In the church which has resulted in the Archbishop of Canterbury resigning.
Watching the ‘Where the Heart is’ and ‘Heart
Beat’ series from the early 1990s to 2010, I was shocked at the attitude to teacher/ pupil relations. In one case a headmaster still in post was complaining that he was being hounded still about a relationship he had with a pupil in the past and saying she was still in contact with her – another case of a teacher/pupil relationship. The mother of the pupil was the ‘bad guy’ as she threatened to report the teacher and consequently made her leave the school. The pupil was rebuked by the teacher’s friend for ruining her life and the teacher was shown as the victim not the perpetrator.
In the light of this you can see why there was so much covering up and giving people a ‘second chance.’
The Cofe wasn’t the only denomination that was guilty. A close family member of mine now RIP, was groomed and abused in a non-conformity church in the mid-60s, the elders closed ranks until it happened again then the person was told to leave but they just went to another church.
There must be many abuse survivors. It’s awful to relive it and remember at the time no one listened to you and there was no support. It looks like things are changing, but they need to!
A further Portsmouth News letter, from the same 10-1-24 edition of the paper:
Church could learn a lesson
Portsmouth News10 Jan 2025
“ZERO TOLERANCE” caught my eye on the wall of a Greggs cafe while sipping hot tea and a caramel doughnut during the current snap of wintery weather. The sublimely elegant statement on the wall ran to only 3040 words, but it provided utter clarity on how the management wanted their staff to be treated.
Could the Anglican Church fix up two similar statements-one for ‘adults’ and one for ‘children and vulnerable Adults’-both to fit into one of the old fashioned hymn number boards in our parish churches?
The one to the left of the main aisle: ‘Children and vulnerable adults’-might be pretty irrelevant.
Widespread public knowledge, of profoundly harmful child or vulnerable adult abuse, means that this situation is already pretty well policed. Furthermore, Church authorities have no choice but to adhere to existing statutory regulations on protecting these groups. Indeed, ex-archbishop Welby recently celebrated how much progress has been made in terms of fixing up the relevant diocesan bureaucracies.
The protection of ‘adults’ board is a very different kettle of fish: a blank canvas? The average adult Anglican (including ministry trainees or junior clergy) can sometimes feel they have a level of protection equivalent to a canned sardine. Witnesses, whistleblowers and victims often tend to suffer DARVO (Deny Attack Reverse Victim and Offender). This can result in victims getting perpetually ostracised and shunned. At least the sardine gets a moment of glory on a slice of toast!
I trained as an Anglican evangelist with retirement from NHS medicine pending. But I felt ostracised and excluded on account of being “unmarried”, and left my local Anglican Diocese in disgust after witnessing horrific evidences of bullying and harassment.
I now sit as part-time medical member on a judicial panel. The Judaeochristian scriptures have profoundly shaped how this country’s legal system functions.
Letting evidence speak for itself, such as is expressed in 2 Corinthians verse 1 (which itself repeats an Old Testament premise) places a well deserved primacy on witness evidence. But are our Anglican Primates dropping like flies, simply because they ignored the primacy of witness evidence?
Good for you. Do keep us posted re progress.
Sorry, that was a reply to Susan but appeared under James’ comment.
The apology I received from my current Bishop for the bullying I was subjected to has brought me a great deal of comfort. The snag is, the people who actually did it have never apologised. And there has been no attempt at restitution. I’d very much like for someone to care enough for them to try to put it right.
“Sorry that you felt excluded” from a bloke in Manchester diocese who threw me off a lay ministry course for calling out appallingly racist content. I wrote to the anti racism task force in the c of e at the time. The content got changed. Mainly I think cos they were embarrassed. The “you felt excluded” was never addressed although it’s a clear lie of an apology – I have it in writing that i was not welcome to return to the course.
If I could go back in time I would do the exact same thing again as it was totally inappropriate content. The insight into the machinations of the church of England stayed with me and I stay away from it now. There was also definite misogyny in the guy’s behaviour to me.
KCJ (Kangaroo Court Justice) lies at the heart of so many Anglican problems. The eviction-resignation of Welby is excellent news. Inquiries and reviews can disappoint. Deterrence is what really handcuffs bullies and abusers. Do it, or cover it up, and there is every chance you will get caught and thrown out. That’s what we need to see happening.