The expression ‘lessons learned’ in a review of some poorly managed safeguarding episode, always fills the reader with a sense of déjà vu.  We ask ourselves the disrespectful question, how many more lessons learned reviews do we need before the Church gets the central point of how and why things can go so disastrously wrong in safeguarding events?

In every review of past safeguarding cases there are normally at least three components.   The first is the account of criminal sexual activity against a child or vulnerable adult.  Many of the cases, but not all, have ended up with criminal prosecutions and imprisonment for the perpetrators.  The second part is the reaction to the victim/survivor by relatives and people with professional responsibilities.  The third section is the examination of protocols and paper trails that help to reveal who did or knew what and when.  Of the three, the first is the most painful to read.  It is also the part of the review that provides the least scope for comment.  How many times can a commentator say, this is wicked/criminal behaviour?  The second section is worthy of comment.  If an individual has suffered and, for various reasons, they have not received a compassionate caring response, this is likely to have compounded the evil of the original malevolent act.  The third aspect, the failure of protocols and process, can be blamed on the common, but not necessarily wicked, weakness and sloppiness of those entrusted with the task of maintaining records and following procedures correctly.

When we come to examine the Independent Learning Lessons Case Review – Graham Gregory, we find all three aspects of a typical safeguarding report present.  The abuse and the failures of care are chronicled and then we have the astonishing carelessness in the preservation of records to illuminate these past events.  Girls and young women were abused over a thirty-year period by Graham Gregory.  Opportunities for checking this criminal behaviour were repeatedly missed.  Ray Galloway, the Reviewer, has produced a piece of work of high quality.  This in no way tries to avoid trenchant criticisms of protocol, management, along with a continuing failure to care for survivors in this bitterly shameful episode for the Church of England.   Abuse at the hands of Gregory took place in London and the North of England over his entire active ministry of 30 years.  Even at the time of his early retirement in 1995, the Church of England had still not identified Gregory as an active danger to vulnerable girls and young women, in spite the valiant attempts of his victims to speak to those in authority.

Of the three identified aspects of a Safeguarding Review, I intend to comment further only on the second, the response of authority figures.  Some of the accounts of the young girls trying to attract the attention of their own parents following the abuse are tragic, but it is the failure of church officers/dignitaries that I find even more shocking.  For the remainder of this commentary, I want to tell the story of three encounters between the young victims and professional outsiders.  In one case it was the meeting with a psychiatrist by a victim (by then an adult); in the other two cases it was a face-to-face meeting with a Church of England bishop soon after the abusive events.  Were things really so inept in the past, before the widespread acceptance in the Church of England that the Church had a real problem with sexual abuse among its clergy?   One sentence, repeated several times in the Review, states tellingly: No specific examples of Good Practice were identified on behalf of the Diocese of X.

One encounter that is recorded in the report is between a survivor known as Victim B occurred at a very late stage in the process after Gregory had been sentenced to prison in 2017.   Victim B had experienced abuse in the 1960s and already had been through the ordeal of testifying in court.  She then had to suffer the further humiliation of facing a psychiatrist who, no doubt working for an insurance company, was trying to claim that her abuse had left behind little harm.  The psychiatrist is not named, but such treatment by mental health professionals on behalf of the Church is recorded in other cases known to me.  Victim B told the Reviewer her story in these words.  It is shockingly awful…. it’s a travesty.   Once you have gone through the court and the man has gone to prison, you’ve gone over the awfulness so many times, blow me down, if they’re going to give you anything you have to go and say it all again to a psychiatrist, who’s desperately trying to find you have no symptoms at all, nothing at all, and they can give you as little money as possible.’

Victim F suffered a troubling and inappropriate intervention by the Diocesan bishop after her abuse at the hands of Gregory.  At that time, (in the 80s) she was still an 8-year-old child and, with her mother, in awe of such an important person.  The visit took place within a week of the abusive event.  In Victim F’s words, I remember him (the bishop) coming to see us and he said, ah well, that’s an awful thing to happen and he will have to go.  And will you promise not to tell anybody.  That was the worst thing, when you think about it now, him telling us not to say anything to anybody… I remember him saying that, I promise you, if you don’t say anything to anybody, he’ll be gone within six months.  Even though this conversation took place before church safeguarding protocols were set down, it is an appalling re-abuse of a vulnerable exploited child.  Gregory did move a year later but with a letter of commendation which did not mention anything about this episode of abuse.  The Diocese of Southwell thus had to receive a priest with a chequered past.  They were totally unaware of his history as a dangerous paedophile.

Another survivor, known as Victim G, also had a meeting with a Diocesan bishop in the 90s.  The latter felt it appropriate to invite Gregory to this meeting, as though a serious alleged case of sexual crime could be resolved by a process of reconciliation.  Fortunately, Victim G was supported by someone in the Diocese who was a highly experienced social worker.  Victim G read a prepared statement to Gregory that outlined how the abuse she had suffered had destroyed her childhood.  The bishop, who was present sat back in his chair with an air of detachment with the whole thing having, apparently, nothing to do with him.  Gregory’s response was a muttered I know, I get that now’.  The bishop himself having heard the statement then attempted to close the conversation down by outlining the complexities of a consistory court, and how difficult it would be to prove the offence.  Victim G was never offered the option of going to the police or even allowed to tell her story in full to the bishop.  Because her story had not been believed by the bishop, the whole process seemed to stall.  One feels that an act of gross pastoral failure had been perpetrated on this occasion.

The three vignettes that I have outlined from the 87-page Gregory Review may well have shocked my readers as much as they have shocked me.  One episcopal encounter dates back to the 80s and the other to the 90s.    The recent encounter with the psychiatrist took place within the past 10 years.  The biblical lament of ‘How long, O Lord, how long?’ comes to mind.  Can we eventually expect to see the end of crass insensitive treatment of survivors in the next ten years?  I have passed over the mislaying and probable destruction of records that the detailed report reveals.  This too probably reflects, on the part of someone, a callous disregard for the cause of survivors.  No one wants to hear about such episodes of cruel behaviour.  The failure of care for the abused, whether by management sloppiness or pastoral cruelty, is deeply wounding and damaging to the whole Church.  These are failures of integrity.  To misquote Scripture:  Where there is no integrity, the Church perishes!