When I was a very small child, I learnt my first joke.  ‘When is a door not a door?  When it is ajar’.  It was the sort of joke that merited a groan rather than laughter but it helped me to realise that words could subtly change their meanings according to the way they are written and understood.  I was reminded of that childhood exchange as I listened to the Sunday programme on Radio 4 this morning.  A question was at the heart of the latter section of the programme.  When is an church independent review not a church independent review?  The answer according to Kate Blackwell QC, a senior lawyer, seemed to be that such church reviews about crimes and past failures are not fit for purpose when they are overseen by the Church of England.

In preparation for the interview, Kate spoke to Matt Ineson and looked at available paperwork connected with the proposed independent review by the Church about his case.  He had strongly maintained that his opposition to the Church’s review of his case was because of the way that they were controlling its scope and terms of reference.   Kate took his side on this and was also critical of the way that the Church was seeking to close down discussion of some aspects of the case, thus compromising its ability to preserve complete independence and the full truth.  Any independent review, and she referred to the Hillsborough enquiry and the Gosport Hospital scandal, needs three components.

1 It needs a panel of totally independent experts to review the material under consideration.   The complete independence of these reviewer(s) has to be ensured so that they can gain the trust of the injured parties.  The freedom to ask whatever questions the reviewer wishes is also a requisite of pursuing and discovering truth.

2 Access to all relevant written documents must be guaranteed.  No withholding of information can be tolerated and any redaction of material can only be accepted for very good reasons.

3 An involvement by the inquiry with the survivors is to be nurtured and sustained.  These survivors need to feel themselves to be right at the heart of what is being done.  The terms of the review will also be responsive and even shaped by the contribution of these survivors.

Through this legal opinion by a top lawyer, the Church of England, as represented by the National Safeguarding Team, has been given a reprimand.  In spite of the statements by the NST, Matt’s review (and the other promised reviews) will need to return to the drawing board if they are to be considered legally and ethically adequate.  Reviews of past crimes and reactions to them need to involve and inspire confidence in those who are the centre of these cases.  Matt’s claim all the way through the process, has been that Church’s approach to reviews and inquiries has always been to put the reputation of the Church first and never the actual victims.  If we are to see this strongly expressed legal opinion by Kate Blackwell enacted, it will mean that survivors will always be at the centre of reviews.  The nonsenses of the past week, Matt being turned away from meeting safeguarding officials at Church House, will be no more.  The Church will have to start welcoming survivors, even honouring them, if reviews are to reach an adequate standard of competency.  They need this if they are to gain public respect for the Church’s procedures and ability to deliver justice for those it has wronged.  The three qualifications for what a review should consist of, as I outline above, will no doubt be refined and improved but they will surely become part of the way that the Church thinks it should conduct itself.

How did the Church of England get into this mess?  I cannot of course answer this question completely but I want to share some observations from the margins.  Back in 2015 when the National Safeguarding Team was set up in Church House, there was a sense that the Church was responding to a crisis.   The crisis that was identified seems to have been, not the widespread suffering of countless individuals who were by then starting to come forward reporting past abuses, but reputational damage.  The focus on staffing the new Team was to enable the training of clergy and others to become aware of the crisis.  Such training would lessen incidence of abuse and thus continuing damage to the wider church.    Rigorous vetting and training for all members of the church was the priority.  The NST staff were chosen from professions who were good at delivering this kind of training and all the administration and management involved.  No one on the new 13.5 staff team of the NST was given the responsibility for caring for or reaching out to existing survivors and victims.  No one, in other words, had the task of representing victims, their needs and their perspective within the huge and expensive 2015 effort.  All the efforts were to make the Church a place of safety for all.  What was done was valuable as far as it went, but there was an apparent indifference within the structure to thinking about meeting the needs of actual survivors.

Since 2015 the situation does not seem to have improved by much.  The NST culture still seems to preserve the one in with which it was set up – the preservation and protection of the institution in the face of a crisis.  The people at the very top of the Church, whether Archbishops or senior Church civil servants like William Nye and Jacqui Philips also seem to breathe the air of this same culture.  The ignoring and shunning of Matt over the past week reflects the absorption of these painfully inappropriate and unhelpful attitudes.  Thankfully another culture exists outside the church in society and is represented by Kate Blackwell.  This knows about the values of openness, transparency and justice.  Now that these two cultures have been brought alongside one another, as they were on the Sunday programme today, we can make a choice.    Do we side with the Church in making the institution and the reputations of its senior leaders the focus of our loyalty?  Do we by contrast side with the cause and needs of the survivors, like Matt, the Smyth survivors and the victims of Bishop Whitsey?  For me, in spite of my continuing membership of the national Church, there is no choice but to side with and identify with abuse survivors.