The Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM) of the Church of England was in action this month, examining the past actions of two senior Anglican clergy. These were the investigations and findings in the cases of Canon Andrew Cornes and Bishop Paul Butler. In the case of Paul Butler, there has been an admission of misconduct, though we have not so far been provided with the details of the complaint against him. Without access to new information, my reactions to his case, if any, will have to be held back for a future occasion. The Cornes judgement has been in the public domain for a week or two and was delivered after an examination of an alleged failure on his part back in 1982. The complaint against him was in relation to a case of serious professional neglect. This involved his failure to take appropriate action after having information disclosed to him about the behaviour of the notorious abuser, John Smyth. Cornes was then a curate at the important London parish of All Souls Langham Place. He had always been part of the Iwerne network but was never a major player. In his book on the Iwerne network, Bleeding for Jesus, Andrew Graystone only mentions Cornes once. Nevertheless, in Makin’s account, Cornes’ lapse was found to be a significant one. Having received this first-hand information about Smyth’s behaviour from one of his victims, Cornes then failed to take any appropriate action. He believed that the information he had received was being handled by someone else. We could describe Cornes’ behaviour, at the very least, as neglectful of the responsibility required of a priest to care for a vulnerable person. In his defence it was argued that modern safeguarding priorities, structures and concerns were not in operation 44 years ago. For this reason, it was argued, Cornes, in his early 30s, could not have been expected to report to anyone the information shared with him by the Smyth victim. The disciplinary tribunal considered this defence but concluded that his professional obligation to care for those who revealed such a disclosure, would have required him to act on this information, thus helping to protect other potential victims from harm. While he may have shared something of what he knew, these efforts were not followed up. This neglect allowed the abuse to continue.
I do not know Cornes and our paths have never crossed. I do however feel a connection with him and his story, since he is only a few years younger than me and the reported events took place in 1982, at a time when I was finding my clerical feet as a young incumbent near Hereford. Cornes’ clerical professional path has followed a very different pattern to mine and his career has been one of some distinction. I had begun an independent role as an incumbent in 1979. This followed two curacies in the Canterbury diocese and a self-funded time of research for two years. Attaining this post of sole responsibility brought me to a place of cherished freedom and independence, with the opportunity to create something new. Cornes’ professional trajectory went in a very different direction. Instead of moving from a team situation to one where he had sole charge, Cornes opted, after his first curacy, to serve a nine year second curacy at the high profile conservative evangelical parish of All Souls Langham Place. This is one of the London parishes which employ numerous curates. This pattern of employing a dozen or more clergy creates a very different parochial model to the traditional one. Within this system, ambitious conservative clergy are given the opportunity to polish their theological and preaching credentials so that they come to the notice of the ‘right’ people, those who employ patronage power within the conservative network. The movers and shakers within that world would see you and eventually you would come to occupy one of the ‘plum’ livings around the country that identify with the All Souls/St Ebbes Oxford style of Evangelicalism. The churches of this ilk, typically in university cities, are deeply involved with the ministry to students. The Christian Union network looks to this powerful cluster of churches right across the country to cooperate with its efforts of evangelism. Working with these churches, there is an active pattern of study groups, prayer teams and numerous other activities that make membership a demanding commitment.
The tribunal declared that Cornes’ failure to report about Smyth’s behaviour made him guilty of a serious lapse of professional behaviour, even judging the episode by the standards of 1982. This was long before safeguarding was a ‘thing’ in the Church. I do not intend to repeat all the arguments that led up to this judgement, apart from noting that they seem eminently reasonable. Having lived through the period of the early 80s as an incumbent I have tried to think what I would have done faced with the same situation as Cornes. I believe that in 1982, also in my 30s, and three years into my first incumbency I would never have attempted to deal with such a disclosure alone. I would have consulted the oldest and wisest priest in the Deanery (who was acting as an unofficial mentor) and sought his advice. I suspect that he would have directed me, or come with me, to the Archdeacon or suffragan bishop. Cornes’ failure to do something similar was, I believe, the result of his training and early ministry having placed him in what was effectively a cultic institution. There are many similarities between the Iwerne network and a full-blown cult. Each followed a tightly defined version of Christian orthodoxy which was set out by controlling leaders. Iwerne’s potential for good was deeply compromised by the behaviour of Smyth and both the Fletcher brothers. Certainly, the combined capacity to mediate harm by the three, John Smyth, Jonathan F. and David F. was massive, even though many still claim to be grateful for their teaching and ministry. Cornes had been, like many other alumni of Iwerne, faithfully following the teaching of his mentors while aspiring to eventual leadership in the network. At this early stage of his life, he would still have been integrated into the black/white cultic thinking of Bash and his followers. Control by mentors to ensure correct thinking and beliefs would have been part of the quasi-cultic experience. Are any of us surprised that an intelligent young Christian leader, under these influences, would have failed to take an independent stand when receiving a disclosure of abuse by a cult leader of such charisma and charm? Independence of thought, especially over moral issues, was not going to be well developed in a young Iwerne alumnus such as Cornes, even in his early thirties. My own experience of meeting members of that conservative culture during that period was to find myself encountering, not an individual personal appropriation of the Christian faith, but meeting the confident and fluent belief system of a ‘sound’ adherent. In the immortal words of Adrian Plass, the young Cornes would likely still have been still turning to a metaphorical leader to discover what ‘we think’. He would have found it quite hard to reconcile two dissonant realities. There was on the one side the heroic gospel preacher (Smyth) whose gifts of oratory had inspired and encouraged young men like him over many summer camps. Then there were reports of the same admired individual committing barbaric actions against dozens of men and boys. One way to process such unpalatable information was to minimise and supress it. That is what Cornes seems to have done.
The second cultic aspect of Iwerne theology and culture that seems to be relevant in this situation is its tribal nature. I have written about the collective mindset carried over from the English public school system and which finds a home in the Iwerne camps and in certain parts of the Church. The values of loyalty to the team and not letting the side down were extremely important in all the schools that recruited for Iwerne. For Cornes, there was likely a strong loyalty to this tribe he had grown up with through school, university Christian Unions, theological college and the All Souls network. All these encounters had made him an honoured and important member of the evangelical tribe. In this early stage of his life, he would, we have suggested, still have been operating according to the simplistic codes of thinking and morality taught by Bash and his successors to countless generations of young men of his background. There would have been strong resistance to doing anything or thinking anything that might have been considered disloyalty to this tribe. In summary we seem to be describing the behaviour of a young man enmeshed into a state of dependency and immaturity by the Iwerne cult. No doubt the post-cult mature Andrew Cornes eventually appeared, having escaped from the spiritual constrictions of his youth. I am confident that the theological method of Bash, which was to apply a favourite bible quote to deal with every problem, would eventually have been set aside. Iwerne had never encouraged theological reflection, but the needs of ministry demanded it.
Andrew Cornes is, some would think unfairly, being held to account for what he did not, and perhaps could not, do 44 years ago. He was, it seems, faced with a moral dilemma which the received theology of Iwerne was unable to resolve. The wider intellectual and spiritual resources of the Christian faith, I would argue, had been denied him by his narrow restricted cultic Christian education and so he failed to make the right call. By allowing John Smyth, David Fletcher and his brother Jonathan to act as mentors, those within the Iwerne experience were hardly likely to promote wholesome moral teaching among their hearers. Is it surprising the moral teaching imbibed by Cornes as a young man, was off-centre, to say the least? The finding of the tribunal against Cornes may be quite simply a judgement, not against him personally, but against what many would see to be a morally compromised version of Christianity. Even now Conservative Evangelical teaching is being allowed to have enormous power in our universities and other institutions where young people are being taught the faith. In some respects, the black-white thinking of conservative theology is not just wrong – it is often actually traumatising and dangerous to those who hear it.
At the end of this tribunal process we have a wounded elderly priest who has, no doubt, given of himself to the Church faithfully and loyally over many years. I am certain that, with his evident gifts, he has been a blessing to many. The conclusion of the Tribunal has not made a finding against his personal morality which, no doubt, is excellent. What it has done is, indirectly, to expose the spiritual dangers of poor Christian teaching given by men (in the conservative tradition) who are seduced by the gratifications of power and influence over others. The procession of leading conservative men who have now been revealed as corrupt, abusive and self-serving is alarming to any who want the Church to be a force for good in our society. Andrew Cornes, is not, and never has been, as far as I know one, of those who directly harms others. He is, or has been, for the reasons we have started to explore, in some sense, himself a victim or survivor of an abusive cultic manifestation of Christianity.
Attending All Souls as a student I was familiar with Andrew Cornes, as one of the many curates there. Generally those present for a service would sit on the stage, and, over time we would hear the relative quality of their sermons. I liked him, but it was a bit underwhelming.
Having been given a book he had written (with the attempt by the donee to change what they thought were my mistakes) I was again underwhelmed by the trotting out of received “wisdom” (simplistic answers) that barely addressed any of what I was going through at the time
Cornes disappeared from my consciousness for decades, with the odd unremarkable reappearance, only to be forgotten of again. Until this recent judgment.
I think Stephen’s reading of this is pretty accurate. I’ve little doubt that Cornes was part of a wider praetorian guard designed not to think for themselves and certainly not to devise any fresh theology, but to sure up and buttress the agreed certainties of the central conevo core. You see this dynamic in other cultic structures.
In business you see this in “salaried partner” roles. These folk rarely make it to equity. They are dangled with that prospect of course, but most other people know they won’t “make it”. In simple terms they’re being used. They’re not really partners, don’t get the rewards partners receive, but have to work very hard trying forever to prove themselves.
And I believe Cornes has been used here. Perhaps you could say he was graciously deferring all his life to the authority of those he humbly thought were his betters. Others might just label this as weak. His delivery here for punishment (such as it is) smacks of scapegoating. He’s been sacrificed.
Make no mistake, the failure to act (by many) on the evil perpetrated by, for example John Smyth, is very seriously wrong. Cornes is but one of many, and there are others much higher in the inner circle who are more culpable.
The 13 page judgement is available on CoE website. The central issue (or issues) take up relatively little of the 13 pages.
It is possibly interesting at many levels, especially if we reflect on the massive hurdles often facing Anglican VWW (victims-witnesses-whistleblowers) who report BAH (bullying-abuse-harassment).
My own recollection, of past school use of corporal punishment, was of older secondary school pupils rarely (if ever) getting slapped or beaten. A situation arose where many older pupils were taller and broader than a lot of the teachers.
I think there was a terror and bullying component to a lot of past beatings of smaller children by schoolteachers. But teachers, understandably enough, were possibly fearful of beating older pupils.
I am not sure what to make of a line in point 12 of the judgement: ‘The beatings occurred in the era of the use of corporal punishment in educational institutions and so did not appear egregious to him, for their time’.
James, the line about corporal punishment should be shocking, shouldn’t it? But no doubt reflected the culture – at least in boys schools – at the time.
What is shocking is that while banned in Scotland and Wales, the use of corporal punishment for the purposes of ‘reasonable chastisement’ by those with parental responsibility is still legal in England and NI. NSPCC have campaigned to reform the law, but not yet successfully.
Jane, even in the 1970’s or 1980’s, in our male schools, was there a tendency for teacher beatings to cease as pupils got older?
And even in those now distant decades, would no adult male would have accepted a beating from a college tutor?
Outside of prisons, or a few other places with army recruit type discipline in that era, it is hard to imagine male adult beatings ever being tolerated.
Schools for boys often saw a lot of frictions and fighting in the junior school. But getting a bit closer to full adulthood, I think that tended to cease in my experience.
At age 15-16 years the injury or damage from a punch (or kick) is just too much to bear in terms of pain. Much beyond that age, most boys or men will be steered away from physical violence.
Quite apart from the ethics, the fear or serious retribution gets too high. I am not sure how relevant the school beatings are here.
Also, ‘six of the best’ is a great deal different from the semi-naked thrashings delivered by John Smyth QC over extended time periods. I am also curious about why the word ‘safeguarding’ features in the report at all.
The plain choice, for someone concerned in that era, was to make contact with the police or with a more senior priest. I have become cynical about the very word ‘safeguarding’, and the associated perception of ‘vulnerability’.
Everyone in ‘vulnerable’ to be a victim, and all bishops or other church seniors are ‘vulnerable’ to bias when unfairly asked to adjudicate on bullying-abuse-harassment in their own diocese.
Can abuse and bullying ever be exorcised from Anglicanism until this is recognised? Irish Catholicism changed spectacularly when a few bishops were removed.
Those Anglican bishops unwilling to accept major reform, on bullying and abuse, must be forced to leave. Until this happens it’s hard to see real progress.
Jane, I need to do some further research but the words “those with parental responsibility” don’t appear in section 58 of the Children Act 2004. It seems to be a blanket definition of lawful child punishment, now limited to England. Presumably the abolition of corporal punishment in schools was considered sufficient to not require further definition, but what about ‘Nannies’ or other non-blood parent carers?
The author postulates: “I believe that in 1982 … I would never have attempted to deal with such a disclosure alone. I would have consulted the oldest and wisest priest in the Deanery”.
The Rat understands the usual practice at All Souls Langham Place a few years later was such that the Rector would always have been told, though a new Rector was appointed in 1983.
In paragraph 14 the respondent indicates: “Nor had he felt that he was in a position where he was out of his depth and needed to seek guidance from his incumbent” and “he he had never taken the initiative to take the matter further”
Meanwhile the Rector in 1983 does anyway know as the Makin report has on page 63 that “A victim alerted [him] to the danger that John Smyth posed when he was going on a Mission to Malawi with African Enterprise”
The reflection on ‘team think’ and Cornes’ junior position is insightful and I’m sure is a significant part of the explanation.
Inaction also remains a persistent culture in the church. I don’t know enough of the details to judge this case, only what is in the public domain. But like Steve, I can’t help wondering if Cornes has been punished because he’s low hanging fruit.
Readers of my review may have noticed that two decades later, in 2001, two bishops (then in Southwark Diocese) chose to do nothing about my report of multiple rapes. The NST, far from initiating a CDM, excused this as reasonable behaviour, because there was no adult safeguarding policy at the time. The review also observes that at least one of those bishops still thinks he did nothing wrong. Both have refused to meet me or apologise.
This is just one of many examples where the principles of accountability and culpability appear to be applied in a suspiciously arbitrary fashion.
Will the new CCM process solved that issue? I’m not holding my breath.
My education was at a Church of England primary school between 1946 and 1951 and thereafter a state (County) grammar school for boys until 1957.
I would describe life in the primary school as little short of a reign of terror, a (literally) Victorian headmaster who beat small boys severely with the cane, seemingly at random. There was a feeling of shock and extreme fear when he walked into the classroom carrying his cane, no one knowing who was to be the victim. Sadly this ethos rubbed off on other teaching staff and now, in adulthood, I recognise that one male teacher targeted individual boys for sexual gratification. Of course that simply would not have been understood by a child in those times.
At my grammar school corporal punishment was widely used by some teachers (all were male) but not at all by others – it seemed arbitrary. Again, sometimes it was used for trivial or even non-existent reasons – one teacher seemed to treat it as ‘fun’. There were two teachers who were clearly sadistic, meting out brutal beatings, one of them a surprisingly young man. The other was a very short tempered former Army PE instructor. Again, there seemed to be deliberate targeting of victims. On one occasion the PE teacher lost his temper and beat an entire class with the slipper after showering regardless of what clothing they were wearing, or if any. I’m afraid things worsened and he began “checking” to see if boys had properly dried themselves after shower. This consisted of “touching”. It could have involved as many as 300-400 boys, effectively the entire junior school (he didn’t try it on with ‘seniors!’) until one boy reported it to his mother. On the headmaster learning of this, the PE teacher disappeared literally overnight, never to be seen again.
These events occurred in Surrey. Quite fortuitously. a friend who attended a grammar school in another county mentioned almost identical experiences. I think it was in the context of the press reporting of the Smyth case.
As there have been pending CDM hearings I have studiously avoided comment about the Smyth case. It’s worth mentioning, perhaps, that some have already been dismissed and one ‘no further action’. The CDM itself will shortly be a thing of the past, replaced by the Clergy Conduct Measure with an entirely different regime and approach.
Rowland, that sounds grim. I’m sorry.
I attended American schools, where the principal always kept a wooden paddle for use on offenders. It would hang in his (it was always a him) office where everyone could see it. Physical discipline wasn’t exercised by classroom teachers, egregious offenders were sent to the principal. The mere threat of it was enough to keep most pupils in line; I rarely remember hearing of it being used. When it was, the rumour would run round the school in hushed voices.
However, I did have a junior high math teacher who enjoyed dreaming up unusual punishments for students he disapproved of, such as maintaining the stress position at the front of class for up to 40 minutes at a time. Math was never my strong subject, but in his class I was too terrified to learn anything at all. Such methods are counter-productive.
With similar experiences to Rowland at school, which my parents paid for, either experienced directly, witnessed or told of by other pupils, I’ve had a lifetime to reflect on it, but only did so in the last decade or two. It was a church school of course.
Similarly it was arbitrary as to whether the “masters” (teachers) were sexually motivated or sadists or both, or bizarrely neither, but kind. The effect on me was terror which persisted unconsciously into adulthood.
The idea of this sort of education was to “make you”. Of course for many brokenness emerged as an unfortunate side effect at inconvenient times.
For others the effect was quite different. Being savagely beaten and surviving, seemed to carry a perverse kudos to it. The northeast where I grew up, was a tough area, and “hardness” was highly prized. Many ended up in senior leadership positions in the professions, business or the Church.
I repeat my belief that Welby and others who looked the other way, actually believed in what Smyth was doing. They thought it was right. This wasn’t just weakness, this was tacit support. “It did me no harm” is the privately muttered mantra.
The Anglican priest teacher who preferred us boys to be young and pretty, declared his system to be “forfeits” a language echoed by J Fletcher’s “light hearted system of forfeits” that he used to damage young men in Wimbledon. I reported my teacher’s actions to my parents. They laughed.
Preposterous as these egregious abuses seem now, there is a lingering legacy still working itself at glacial pace through the ancient hierarchy of the Church. Rooted in a “spare the rod, spoil the child” twisted theology, some of the resistance to change can be thus explained.
My education parallels Rowland but was quite different. (I’m not stalking you, Rowland!) My infants and junior schools (at Weybridge, Surrey) in the 1940s used canning but I only saw it rarely in the juniors where we were 42 to a class and many of the children just didn’t want to be there, and neither did their parents. The latter wanted them working on the small holdings as they did in the evenings, weekends and holidays. These kids sat at the back and provided they didn’t cause trouble all was well. I can’t see how such a large disruptive class size could be managed otherwise with only one teacher.
In the 1950s I was at Strode’s Grammar in Egham and again canning was possible but I never saw it used. And us post war kids were a bolshy lot, something of a trial to older teachers used to a pre-war private system.
Altogether, the world was different then, MikeN.
By the standards of those times I think you were fortunate! Well, at primary school we were 50 to a class (mixed of course) and regrettably corporal punishment of boys was fairly frequent, usually for speaking without permission (“one word is enough” the teacher said). Girls were never physically punished, possibly made to put ‘hands on head’. In truth they were better behaved, but the boys’ ‘crimes’ were never anything other than trivial. Rightly or wrongly, I strongly resent that this happenied in a C of E school, incidentally, 14 miles from Weybridge.
I am old enough to remember the threat of various physical punishments being a grim feature of school life. But if we look at sadists like John Smyth QC, then the scale-duration-severity-chronicity-motivation of punishment beatings is surely of a different order or category. Also, as mentioned above, my recollection is of beatings ceasing almost entirely at sixth form level. Older, or middle aged teachers, were quite likely scared of senior pupils at secondary school seeking immediate vengeance for being beaten. The Smyth canings, of young adults, is arguably not really connected to school beatings. Also, there was a cultural understanding, shared among parents, teachers, children, that the teaching profession were allowed to(expected) to administer physical discipline.
Fear closes down the ability to learn, as Janet touches on above. I hated maths too, but for different reasons. But I developed a distinct aversion to abuser’s subject history. I still tend to avoid it, despite finding it interesting.
Briefly, you do wonder what the purpose of our education actually was. Ours was betterment: not for us individually, but what we could bring to society, and we were forcibly taught to ignore ourselves and take others, by extension, “over the top”. Ours was a cheap public day school (although cost is relative: 3 of us there nearly bankrupted our parents).
The ethos of the top boarding schools was to create leaders to perpetuate the empire (see A Renton, N Duffell, C Spencer, J Schaverein). School gives you connections and preference. It isn’t really about academic achievement, in this system, although my school focused on this output as a proxy for its lower standing in the “empire” rankings.
So when you get to near the top of the conevo tree, as Andrew Cornes would have found, only those from the very centre of the Iwerne-Smyth-elite-boarding-school axis called the shots. Judging by his demeanour at the front of ASLP in the early 80s, he wasn’t a top player. He found his level and knew any divergence would end his career most likely. I recall a sermon he gave on “fasting”. Judging by the body language and response on the platform, I wouldn’t have thought he’d achieve much of a rank in that world, but who knows?
If you intersected with this world at all over the years, you may recognise what I’m saying. Most will still struggle to understand it, unless they’ve studied or worked with survivors of school abuse.
Odd how so many medieval type vestiges, or older imperialist philosophies, have vanished or else gone underground. But is the Anglican Church one place where these are still not challenged?
As a medical student I remember basic teaching on ethics which was quite good. The four domains in one classic and important model were beneficence, non-malevolence, justice and autonomy.
When we use those themes on the contemporary Anglican Church it opens up a lot of questions. There has been a huge disregard for autonomy and fair play.
The Smyth type cases grab the headlines. But far more adults just quietly drop connection to the institutional church.
Encouraging lay Anglicans to think is a major antidote to the crisis. That’s where we should celebrate this Blog and its creator: A toast to SP!
Coming from a completely different perspective, the Scottish state school, the main form of physical punishment was the ‘tease’ or leather belt. While most teachers carried one, use was often reserved to a senior teacher, especially in primary school. There it was often informally part of the job description of the depute head. In senior secondary, belting was more evenly distributed among the staff. In my experience there was a link between belting and class control – those who could control a class belted least, and those who couldn’t belted most. In the first category, often the threat of being belted was sufficient maintain order. Our senior classics teacher would display his belt, a very long one, stored in between two huge Latin dictionaries to maintain its firmness! Of course the Church had no part to play in these matters. The school was officially non- denominational. Gossip had it that RC schools were more associated with belting. And of course any cases of abuse in Scottish schools were supposed to be directly reported to the police. I’ve often thought that the separate system of C o E courts is a barrier to “safeguarding” effectiveness.
Correction :
In line 4 of my post, the word ‘tease’ should read ‘tawse’
In my Surrey grammar school we had a music master (and a distinguished musician) who introduced and used the tawse. He was an Englishman who had taught in Scotland. He kept it rolled up in his waistcoat pocket. I think you need to explain for the benefit of some readers that the tawse was applied to the pupil/ student’s hand(s). There are a few places in England where the tawse was used. A lady I know was evacuated during WW II to a place in the north of England where it was applied to girls as well as boys (did that happen in Scotland?) and she admitted to being in constant fear of this.
My late husband was in two “Anglican” private boarding schools in what was then Rhodesia. He and a couple of other Scout “patrol leaders” screwed their courage to the sticking place and requested an interview with the Head to pass on reports from younger boys of unwelcome attention from the teacher who was also the Scoutmaster. They had thought long and hard about where their duty lay. The Headmaster dismissed them and said they should be ashamed of themselves for making up such stories. During the ensuing long holiday (over Christmas/New Year) it transpired that said teacher had got into trouble with the police for sexual misconduct with African women (a worse sin than fondling small boys, in that context?) The Head called the boys in, explained that the teacher had left the school, and had the grace to apologise for having disbelieved them. In the associated prep school compulsory “nude swimming” (echoes of Smyth) was routine, even in the cold winters in the eastern Highlands.
Very gracious.