by Gilo and Tony
Tony and Gilo are members of the Church of England’s Survivor Reference Group. They have done much work together to bring necessary daylight to the unethical operations of the Church’s legal and insurer framework. They were both also the catalysts for the Interim Support Scheme. It was their work with an advocate which created the template for the ISS which is now helping many dozens of survivors, and growing exponentially all the time.
The 2021 Headlinemoney Awards took place in the City of London this past week. These awards celebrate exceptional journalism from across the UK’s financial press and media. Headlinemoney website states that a central aspect of these awards is that “all the winners are decided by their peers following an extensive submission, shortlisting and judging process.” This is the industry recognising and validating its own, and signalling worthy journalists as voices to watch.
Jen Frost of Insurance Post has written half a dozen articles on the complex and often difficult-to-report experiences that survivors have of the insurance response to our situations. Frost won two awards at this week’s Headlinemoney event. The first, for General Insurance Journalist of the Year, was shared jointly with Dean Sobers of WhichMoney.
The second for Story of the Year Award was for her reporting on Tony’s case and the courageous exposure of the litigation strategies of Paula Jefferson (Berrymans Lace Mawer BLM) and Ecclesiastical Insurance (EIG). See the story below.
Why is this significant? It is the industry recognising Jen Frost as a serious investigative journalist. And crucially it is recognition of the valid criticism ranged at BLM and EIG for their unethical and aggressive litigation strategies in this case. Standouts in the story were Paula Jefferson’s use of a medical expert who delivered a report on behalf of the Church without even meeting the survivor. This was swiftly followed by sudden withdrawal of an earlier settlement offer whilst the survivor was in hospital on suicide watch. Causal percentages were applied in a derisory manner. Frost’s other reports also referenced callous language used about survivors by Ecclesiastical and BLM.
There will be embarrassment in many quarters. Not least for Mark Hews CEO of EIG who has been feverishly rescuing his company’s reputation with a £million giveaway to charities and a renewed effort to win the loyalty of clergy with sabbatical grants.
There will be acute embarrassment for Paula Jefferson who must by now be wishing she had acted with a modicum of ethical awareness in this as in many other cases. Jefferson will be aware that her working methods and the culture she has engendered at BLM has brought considerable damage to the reputation of their client the Church of England. We understand that EIG has been given clear instruction from the Church that any further deployment of Professor Tony Maden in these cases must now be considered unacceptable and unwelcome. Maden was for a long time Jefferson’s constant travel companion in the defence of other institutions in addition to the Church of England. It seems they worked in tandem and regularly deployed bewildering arguments such as ‘genetic predisposition’ and ‘cognitive predisposition’ in an alarming number of cases. In lay terms, the argument goes like this – the survivor was already pre-programmed through genetic history (birth, parental history) to develop such mental health conditions as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression, anxiety, bi-polar condition, etc. And abuse had little or nothing to do with it. You will see they used the argument against Phil Johnson below.
Abuse survivors, who typically have tried to suppress the trauma of the experiences for years (many for decades), need particular sensitivity and hand holding whilst within the civil claims process. Re-counting and re-living our experiences, as is necessary for the process, is extremely triggering and can render the survivor re-traumatised, muted and vulnerable from the cumulative impact and protracted timeline of it all. Church of England survivors instead, have been met by BLM lawyers, in expensive corporate suits, smartly disguising the strategy and ethical intention of a gangster’s disgruntled Rottweiler. The Church of England has been complicit in this gangsterism and then pretended disdainfully that this gangsterism has nothing to do with it, its hands are clean.
In Tony’s case there was an application of jiggery pokery abstract mathematics which resulted in a 5% causal figure – all of which had no relation whatsoever to his experience. These methods have been routine in the circus practised by Jefferson and her partners. This carefully calculated adversarial operation has managed the reputation and purse strings of their client. But this has been wholly at the expense of survivors who have had life-long impact arrogantly and patronisingly belittled, resulting in further bullying, betrayal and abuse of power.
This award should be embarrassing for Archbishop Welby and other bishops (Paul Butler, Martin Warner, and others) who were first told of Jefferson’s and EIG’s unethical tactics many years ago by Phil Johnson. It will be embarrassing for Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London, who had a golden opportunity to address the behaviours of the Church’s insurer following the Church of England’s Elliott Review – but chose instead to walk away and silence every request that the Church address the public dissembling by EIG. Ditto the NST who during the Graham Tilby era did likewise, presumably under instruction from their managers. Survivors were left to fend for ourselves against a cruel system of reabuse, and struggle to bring daylight to what had been going on.
It should be particularly embarrassing for William Nye, Secretary General of Archbishops’ Council, who has presided over a distinctly seedy culture in Church House of direct complicity with the insurer in a circus of reputation management. Under his watch Church House comms, legal department and disturbingly, the NST, all took part in a ‘retranslation’ of review recommendations for the purposes of reputation management for the insurer and the Church.
And yet despite the efforts of all involved within Church House to airbrush this from history.. a plucky young journalist has now been recognised by her industry peers for her exposure of the shadowy and unethical underbelly of what passes for civil litigation defence in this country in relation to survivors of abuse. The industry itself is having to wake up. Frost’s award follows hard on the heels of the Association of British Insurers issuing new guidelines to its members on many of these unethical practices that Frost has helped expose.
The Church is now having to create a Redress Fund in the region of £500m to £1billion to meet its responsibility for the repair of so many lives abused and institutionally re-abused and damaged. Ecclesiastical Insurance and its owner AllChurches Trust is being called upon by us to give £100m towards this Redress Fund as a mark of corporate repentance for its serial re-abuse of survivors.
Whether or not the Church continues to use the services of Paula Jefferson is up to them, but survivors have insisted that Jefferson and BLM are kept well away from any involvement in the Redress. Her approach to the care and repair of survivors is considered offensive and grotesque by us and renders her unfit to be involved in further work with survivors.
As to Maden? In April this year a new Practice Direction 1A protecting vulnerable witnesses came into effect (https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/part01/practice-direction-1a-participation-of-vulnerable-parties-or-witnesses). Designed to specifically ensure that both sides of the civil case are on equal footing. It will significantly improve the handling of vulnerable parties. For the first time claimants can challenge what they might perceive as adversarial tactics if they give good reason why. This does not address past cases, but has already had an impact as the following approved court judgement from Liverpool County Court earlier this year demonstrates:
“I have come to the conclusion on balance that her seeing Professor Maden, in view of the information out there on him, in view of his acting for high profile Defendants, in view of his CV and the balance of his Defendant work, on the balance of probabilities would be likely to impede the evidence of the Claimant given to him. I, therefore, accede to the request that the Defendant should have a consultant psychiatrist of their choosing but not Professor Maden.”
Ouch!
We suspect that any embarrassment any of the above experience will remain hidden. The Church has been fearful of acknowledging its part played in the gangsterism of its lawyers and insurer. And has a remarkable ability to absorb embarrassment and pretend it is not there. But they must now move on swiftly with the repair and rebuilding of lives.
We close by saying Award Well Deserved! Congratulations Jen Frost.
Tony and Gilo
In the interests of fairness and accuracy, it should be mentioned here that the two complaints against Professor Maden referred to in the link above “Former Broadmoor psychiatrist faces investigation for role in Ecclesiastical abuse claims” have been dismissed by the General Medical Council. That fact should have been made clear in this article. I have posted a link (from March of this year) to this on ‘Thinking Anglicans’. The GMC Expert Examiner also dealt with the issue of medical experts preparing reports without a face-to-face meeting with the patient (that is, the claimant) stating that this is accepted professional practice in particular circumstances.
I’m not commenting about the Liverpool County Court decision except to point out that this overrode the Defendant’s (doubtless insurers) choice of medical expert.
Rowland, in the interests of ‘fairness and accuracy’, the GMC investigation outcomes are prominently mentioned from the very first linked article.
But neither does the piece mention the total number of complaints submitted to the GMC for this individual – only those that meet the GMC thresholds go through to full investigation – the GMC state that this is only 20% of all complaints (https://www.gmc-uk.org/concerns/information-for-doctors-under-investigation/how-we-investigate-concerns/deciding-to-investigate-a-complaint-or-concern). A number of specific complaints were independently made.
Nor does it mention any of the following:
– the Insurer AND the psychiatrist obstructed the GMC investigation by refusing to hand over instruction notes provided to Maden. This is against the law (though the GMC make no action in this event). It protracted the timeline considerably. It also meant that the GMC were therefore to a certain degree ‘blind’ in their investigation. They had to source reference/ medical history reports which were not necessarily those that were forwarded to Maden.
– the GMC assess complaints against its own criteria, which are surprisingly loose. So long as their general qualification permits practice, this can be in really any ‘field’. This allows for example, for a geriatric specialist to be commissioned by an insurer or lawyer to write medico-legal reports on paediatric claimant matters. Which makes absolutely no sense, unless you can think of another good reason as to why? Or, indeed the defence could have accepted a joint expert. They did not.
– concern about the insurer here, the lawyers and their joint practice has been voiced for decades. It is only in the last few years, with the metoo movement, IICSA and support groups, that individual, previously self-isolated survivors are beginning to share their stories more. To find common experiences and examples of re-abuse. And to feel more confidence together in voicing publicly, concerns which are incredibly personal, emotionally traumatic and disruptive.
To summarise, the importance of these articles and this award, is that they have, for the first time, shed light on extremely poor practice by large Insurers and lawyers against individual victims of abuse. Sure, the practice seems to have been within the parameters of their respective regulatory bodies and above the law, but we have uncovered that it is without doubt, callous and unethical in its execution and in particular, in the context of the vulnerable abuse claimants who are emotionally and desperately seeking repair. It has been re-abusive and has to be called out. How far they go is down to their own judgement (for now) and ability to sleep at night. There are many lives significantly affected.
I’m not sure about your comment about not making a comment on the Liverpool court decision.
I am not taking anyone’s side here; merely pointing out that the two reported complaints had in fact been dismissed so that readers would be aware of the fact.
I don’t want to be involved in any dispute here but I can’t find reference to the complaints being dismissed in the first article which was dated 16 September 2020. The later ‘Post’ article indicating that the complaints had been dismissed by the GMC was dated 24 March 2021, suggesting an entirely different chronology.
I’m sure future litigation will faithfully follow the new Practice Direction. The courts will ensure that happens.