The idea that there is a single theologically orthodox view of the Christian God, commonly held by all Christians, is an unlikely claim. Confusing and even contradictory ideas about God exist inside our own heads and probably those of most other people.  Even if we are able fully to identify with the credal formulae of the Church, there exist in many of us less orthodox ideas that inhabit us or pay us a visit from time to time. Many of us have come to realise that our beliefs about the central tenet of the Christian faith are a work in progress.  Part of the problem is, I believe, what we were taught about God as very young children.  Teaching children about God is of course commendable and what we expect of Christian parents. But, in the mind of a 2/3-year-old, there is enormous scope for confusion over the identity of the Tooth Fairy, Father Christmas and God.  Most of our early ideas about God were probably focussed on the reassuring part of faith – the God who cares and prepares a place in heaven for us when we die.  Then at later stage, the child is possibly introduced to notions of hell and punishment.  The memories of childhood teaching about God, with all the potential for muddle that they engender, means that few people arrive at adulthood with clearly worked-out ideas on the subject.  The mature Christian may have to do quite a bit of unlearning as well as learning to arrive a place that is wholesome and helpful for the pilgrimage of the Christian journey. However hard we unlearn, elements of muddled thinking about God are almost inevitably lodged in our brains.

One of the problems I remember having, when I first encountered the Bible around the age of seven, was the different notions about God to be found in the Old Testament. There was the God who walked in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day, calling out to Adam and Eve. Then there was the God who sent terrible plagues to terrify the Egyptians. Further, there was a God sitting in heaven surrounded by celestial beings in Isaiah 6. To a small but growing child trying to wrestle with and find a workable notion of God, these wildly different pictures of what he was like were confusing. It is not surprising that Christians can grow up with some very strange beliefs. Some children, and I count myself as one of these, were left to wallow in these difficulties and contradictions in the biblical record. In many ways I was fortunate that no one tried to iron out all these problems by suggesting that such issues could be sorted out by applying a dogmatic formula.   The very untidiness of my understanding allowed me to be receptive to fresh ideas as a young adult.  These completely changed my perceptions.

 What were the ideas about God that released me so decisively from my childhood semi-fundamentalism?   At the age of 19, I was introduced to the idea of mystical vision.  Suddenly all the biblical physical descriptions of the deity ceased to be problematic.  All the writers, whether biblical or within the mystical traditions, had been struggling with the same problem.  They had to work with limitations of human language, while at the same time knowing that this was an imperfect tool.  To put it another way, all these writers were using language to evoke spiritual reality rather describe it.  The quasi-physical language about the nature of God was not to be understood as the final word or clung to as infallible teaching.  It came as a relief to be able to hear and appreciate the mystics’ teaching that the experience of God is something that inevitably goes beyond language.  Language, even biblical language, can only take us so far in the exploration of the divine.  The place of mystery, the place of unknowing was the portal into a new way of encountering God.  It dawned on me that this unknown God would provide guidance and support for the life-long journey of spiritual discovery.  This journey of discovery is one which continues to this day.

My graduate studies exposed me to the thought and language of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Even before that stage I had become familiar with one particular word used by Orthodox theologians.  This word allowed me to sense a freedom from some constraining Western ideas about the doctrine of God. The word is apothatic. It is a word which links Christian ideas about the nature of God to the teachings of a writer called Pseudo-Dionysius and through him to other Greek theologians of the first centuries.  He was an anonymous Greek theologian who was writing in the fifth century A.D. The basic idea of Dionysius was that God is beyond all human description and even words. We cannot add anything to our knowledge of God by using words of description; all we can do is to say what God is not. It may seem strange to cease to rely on words in talking about God but this tradition does find many echoes in Western theology from the mediaeval period onwards.  Apothatic theology is a healthy counterbalance to what appear to be, in the West, attempts to control what Christians think about God by what might be, sometimes, thought of as a coercive use of language.  No language or words should ever be allowed to exhaust the mystery of the divine being.

All the mystical writers, East and West, seem to have grasped the notion that God cannot be defined, or his nature described in words. In one way this inability to talk about God using words is a potential source of frustration. We are used to words being used extensively in sermons and expository preaching over the centuries. The thought that such words may be merely a pale reflection of the divine reality may appear to be making light of the work of people who have given years of effort to the study of doctrine.  But, on the other hand, apothatic theology is a gateway into a freedom and creativity. Theology is allowed to become, not a quasi-science but something more resembling poetry, an endless travelling into a deeper and deeper reality. Of course words, and especially biblical words, will continue to be used in our pulpits and in Christian teaching. But these words will be used against the background of a keen realisation of the restrictions involved in such forms of human expression.  Because God is, in some sense, beyond knowledge and human concepts, the words that are used to talk about him will always be offered with a certain humility and provisionality.

For those who write about the vision of God, there has to be a considerable reticence.  One way of conveying that unknowability found in the encounter with God is to speak of a great and all-embracing silence. This word silence is used here, not to describe the absence of sound, but more to convey the absence of human symbols and concepts. The biblical proclamation of John 1 is that out of the silence came a communication – that which is described as the Word. God speaks to us in Jesus. The eternal indescribable and unknowable God comes into a world to reveal himself in a human life. It is this extraordinary, even unexpected mystery that we celebrate at Christmas. In all the pictures and symbols which we are given at this time – light, stars and angelic hosts- there is expressed an encounter with somebody or something that goes beyond anything we can put into words. The Christmas message should help to draw us out from our normal partial understandings of God, steeped in words and concepts, to contemplate something which is so wonderful and so infinite that we recognise that we can never really get close to it.

My brief excursion into a tradition for understanding the divine nature in a different way, is a reminder to me and perhaps to my reader that it is important to understand how much about God is unknown and unknowable. When we refuse to surrender to tidy theological definitions found in the systematic textbooks, we are better able to grasp the profound mystery even in the word God.  If God ever ceases to be beyond knowledge he becomes, as the Old Testament would recognise, something like a graven image. When the early Israelites were grappling with their own battles against such false gods and the temptations of idolatry, they were helping us with our own contemporary struggles to make sense of the language connected with the divine.  I much prefer to believe in a God that defies my attempts and capacity to imagine.  I certainly do not want a God who can ever be used as a tool of coercion or fear.  That is not the God I can believe in. The God I do believe in is one who reveals himself but does not allow us ever to claim to understand or fully fathom his nature.  He will always be a God beyond knowledge.

Open Letter to Mr. Orlando Fraser KC, Chair, Charity Commission: 12^th December 2022

Editor’s Comment  This is a letter to the Charity Commission expressing something of the sense of deep frustration felt by many concerned for the work of safeguarding in the Church of England.  As a way of helping the circulation of this important document, Surviving Church is pleased to carry this letter for the information of readers of this blog.  The letter is forthright in its tone, and this reflects the sense of powerlessness and a keen sense of the lack of progress that has been made in this area over several years.  Many of the readers of this blog will share the sentiments and expression of strong feeling on the subject.  We await developments and trust that both the Charity Commission and those criticised will listen carefully to the criticisms and what is being addressed in this important letter.

Dear Sir, 

We write to the Charity Commission as a group of concerned General Synod members (past and present), clergy, laity, survivors and victims of church abuse, their advocates, as well as complainants and respondents who have been maltreated and harmed by Church of England’s safeguarding processes (including IICSA core participants). We are placing on record our common experience of the National Safeguarding Team, Independent Safeguarding Board, National Safeguarding Panel, Dioceses, Lead Bishops for Safeguarding, and those trustees presiding over this (i.e., the Archbishops’ Council). 

We are all witnesses to a highly dysfunctional church culture – one lacking in care, wisdom and responsibility – uniformly poor in responses to allegations of abuse, and subsequent complaints about corrupted, cruel and inhumane processes. These have led to despair, suicides, travesties of justice, all perpetrating much longer term pastoral and personal damage on a colossal scale. Yet nobody in the Church of England takes any responsibility for this. We have no functional leadership in safeguarding. 

We can have no further trust or confidence in these bodies, nor the individuals working within them. Nor do we harbour any hope that this will ever change. Current safeguarding processes, bodies, panels, and their personnel are incompetent, ineffective and unfit for purpose. The leadership is insincere and inaccurate in its claims that progress is being made. Conflicts of interest run rife throughout the handling of complaints.  Victims of abuse and poor process have no advocacy, and no redress. Mismanagement and misconduct are not addressed. ‘Core Groups’ lack clarity, consistency and basic competency. There are negligible signs of genuine concern for any victims. 

We judge that a General Synod vote of no confidence in the work of safeguarding in the Church of England is already long overdue. However, the Church of England as whole has demonstrated that it does not possess the will, wisdom, capability and resources to improve this work. This culpable failure and neglect stems from the persistent failure of the trustees for the Archbishops’ Council to exercise leadership and oversight. 

We believe the Church of England’s safeguarding practices must now be subjected to a formal Charity Commission investigation (i.e., a fully independent review under your auspices). This is because most recent IICSA recommendations have been treated with scant regard by the trustees, or simply evaded.  The only way forward in church safeguarding is fully independent regulation, oversight and quality control – without which there will never be transparency, fairness, accountability or proper process.

We must regrettably accept that trustees of the Archbishops’ Council have led us nowhere. We can have no more failures, fudging or fawning self-flattery. If there is to be any hope it is time to face reality. The Church of England must become subject to public standards of truth and justice. We therefore urge the Charity

Commission, using statutory powers, to order a fully independent review into these concerns. 

Yours sincerely, MARTIN SEWELL, General Synod (Lay Member, Rochester

For complete list of signatories, please consult the Thinking Anglicans website. https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Open-Letter-to-Charity-Commission-FINAL.pdf

PRESS RELEASE ABOUT CC LETTER

News Release
Wednesday 14 December 2022
Church of England leaders and others ask the Charity Commission to intervene in the
church’s safeguarding
Signatories to an open letter say they have no confidence in current structures

51 senior leaders in the Church of England have written to the Charity Commission asking it
to investigate the church’s safeguarding practices. The signatories come from all parts of the
Church of England, including both lay and ordained members, and some who are elected
members of the church’s General Synod. They include some who have been victims of
church-based abuse, some who have been accused or complained of such abuse. They cover
the spectrum of members including evangelical, catholic, and broad church members.
Lawyers who represented church victims at the IICSA inquiry have also signed the letter.
In the letter, the signatories express serious concerns about the safeguarding policies and
practices being operated by the Church of England. The letter complains of “a highly
dysfunctional church culture – one lacking in care, wisdom and responsibility – uniformly
poor in responses to allegations of abuse”. The writers say that they have “no functional
leadership in safeguarding.”

In January 2019 Archbishop Justin Welby appeared to endorse these grievances, when he
told The Spectator “We have not yet found the proper way of dealing properly with
complainants and taking them seriously, listening to them, not telling them to shut up and
go away, which is what we did for decades. Which was evil. It’s more than just a wrong
thing: it’s a deeply evil act.” Four years later, the signatories complain that there has been
no change. They say that claims by the bishops that the church’s safeguarding is on a path of
improvement are “insincere and inaccurate.”

In November 2021, in advance of the report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual
Abuse (IICSA) the Church of England established an Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB).
But questions have been asked about the Board’s independence, resources, capacity and
expertise. The three part-time members of the ISB, were appointed and employed by the
church, raising questions about its independence. Its chair, the former Children’s
Commissioner Maggie Atkinson, has been “stood aside” from duties since the Summer
whilst multiple allegations of data breaches are investigated by the Office of the Information
Commissioner. A recent meeting called by the ISB to listen to the concerns of survivors was
so poorly advertised that it attracted no registrations or attendees, and was duly cancelled.
Mr Martin Sewell, a retired solicitor and senior member of the Church of England General
Synod, said “Trying to find where the buck stops in the Church of England has proved
impossible, so this powerful group of informed individuals have joined together to call for
the Charity Commission to hold the members of Archbishops’ Council to account for the
discharge of their trustee duties in this essential matter.”

The signatories to the letter encourage the General Synod to pass a motion of no confidence
in the church’s safeguarding arrangements at its February session. They also ask the Charity
Commission to conduct its own independent review into the Archbishop’s Council, which is
responsible for the church’s National Safeguarding Team. The Archbishop’s Council, in
common with every parish church and diocese in England, is a registered charity.
ENDS
For further information please contact
Andrew Graystone
andrew.graystone1@btinternet.com
07772 71009

Some forty years ago, at a time when I was studying the topic of Christian healing, a group of doctors came together to form the British Holistic Medical Association (BHMA).  Some of the things that these doctors were saying caught my attention, not least because they made a space for a spiritual dimension in their understanding of the healing process.  It is useful to recall some of the principles of holistic medicine as presented in 1984.  They have a certain resonance today as we find that there is a current concern for another, not dissimilar, holistic impulse.  Today doctors and members of the caring professions are being urged to become ‘trauma informed’.  In summary they are, like the doctors of the 80s, being encouraged to see illness in the human body or mind, not as the breakdown of a faulty machine, but as failures in the wider social or psychological environment to which the individual is exposed. These mental or physical illnesses are to be looked at as possibly signalling evidence of past trauma.  If such is found, it will necessitate a somewhat different approach in respect of the treatment offered as well as the ongoing care of the patient.  It will always be necessary to be alert and sensitive to the implications of this wider context of illness and distress and take steps to use this awareness to better serve the needs of those seeking help. 

The first edition of the 1984 BHMA journal set out the principles of holism as they apply to medicine. Some of these are directly relevant to the topic of trauma which we are considering in this piece. I want to list some of the key ideas of holistic medicine.  In these two parallel but related sets of ideas, the holistic and the trauma informed approaches, doctors and professional carers of all kinds are being invited to extend their horizons to incorporate fresh and broader insights about the nature of illness.  In the 80s, classical medical practice was being taken to task by holistic practitioners for seeing illness in purely material terms and failing to understand the social and spiritual aspects of dis-ease. In a similar way trauma informed care urges those looking after people who may have been affected by trauma, to be alert to all the ways that a life-changing event may have affected a patient. To be trauma informed is thus to be able to practise your caring skills from the background of a particular manifestation of holistic thinking – one that understands the wide-ranging effect of trauma on people.   

The first principles of the original 1984 statement about the then new approach in applying holism to medicine, are those that point out the error involved in breaking up the human personality into fragmented parts.  This principle has also to be strongly affirmed as we seek to attend to the needs of people who have encountered an abusive or traumatising event.  Trauma is a holistic event in the sense that it has the capacity to damage the personality at more than one level.  To pretend or assume that people can easily walk away unscathed from catastrophic episodes which they have experienced, is a betrayal of care and imagination of enormous gravity.

This point is made well in the first statement made by the 1984 holistic doctors.  Healing and harm both inevitably operate at more than one level.

The human organism is a multi-dimensional being, possessing body mind and spirit, all inextricably connected, each part affecting the whole and the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

Damage to relationships is also a matter of great importance.  The betrayal of human trust that occurs in many traumatic events needs to be responded to with considerable care

There is an interconnectedness between human beings and their environment which includes other human beings. This interconnectedness acts as a force on the functioning of the individual isolated human being.

Further holistic medicine principles focus on the one mediating wholeness.  A particular emphasis is made that the ‘healer’ should not only have healing skill but also be an individual practising self-insight.  The reference to alternative medical treatments like acupuncture may not appeal to many medically trained people today, but this was a common feature at the time.

One of the primary tasks of someone entrusted to heal, be he Dr, priest or acupuncturist, is to encourage the self innate capacity for healing of the individual industries.

To enable him to accomplish his task effectively, the healer needs to be aware of his own multidimensional levels of existence and have some expertise and ability in achieving a state of balance and state of harmony within himself – ‘Physician heal thyself’.

Clearly, the 1980s were not embarrassed by the use of the ‘he’ pronoun when talking about a healing practitioner. But the important point we take away from these insights is the gentle urging that doctors and other medical carers should break away from any narrow frames of reference.  For the 1980s conventionally trained doctor (arguably still true today), the temptation was to treat patients as living machines which operated according to mechanical laws.  Social and spiritual issues were thought to be outside the disease process.  In the 2020s, with the advent of trauma informed thinking, there is a movement to ensure that there should be a better understanding of the effects of trauma on those forced to endure the burden of experiencing various forms of distress.   The question that doctors and carers need to ask of their clients is not ‘how are you?’ but ‘what has happened to you?’ The asking of this question articulates the expectation that uncovering trauma of some kind is likely to be a regular part of helping someone who comes for help with some form of mental or physical affliction.

What exactly are we talking about in using this expression? Trauma informed approaches are not just applicable to the practice of medicine. They are relevant in all places where there are people who have experienced serious ill-usage at the hands of others during their lives. That perhaps applies to most of the population. But we need in our review of this new strand of holistic caring, some definition of the word trauma. One definition given by the Substance Abuse and Mental-Health Services in 2014, says this: ‘Individual trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life-threatening and that has lasting adverse effects of the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being’. This definition will cover many of our survivor population.  The trauma for them is, as we have attested many times, not just as the result of the original harmful event but is aggravated on many occasions by the sloppy and inadequate care received later.

Providing a caring and an appropriate response to a person who has experienced trauma is extremely important and requires sensitivity and skill.  The trauma informed literature suggests a number of principles or forms of help that are needed to provide effective help for trauma victims. Many of us reading this will be thinking about church survivors and the variety of needs they have.  But, whatever the context of the trauma, the same principles will apply when supporting anyone who has been through such an experience which resembles that described in the definition in the previous paragraph.

The first principle is the importance of giving anyone who has been through traumatic experience a place of safety. The place of safety may be found in a carefully prepared physical space backed up by a personal trusted relationship.  Such elements will provide a supportive and nurturing environment for a survivor – a place of physical, emotional and psychological safety. The Church seems to be remarkably inept in this area.  We hear stories about victim/survivors having to go to the home of a bishop or even return to the place where they experienced the original trauma. From a trauma informed approach, such inattention to a survivor’s need to feel safe is insensitive and unacceptable. The task of providing such emotional and psychological safety does require considerable imagination and insight, something that the safeguarding church experts often seem to lack.

A further example of trauma-informed practice is that a survivor needs to be helped to make choices and be given goals to aim for. The trauma may have removed a sense of agency and it is the task of trauma-informed support to help give back self-determination and power to the one who has suffered. As part of rebuilding a sense of self, the interaction with the helper will demand that latter has considerable skill and patience. If anyone is to help the trauma survivor, there needs to be a commitment to the long haul.  Such care and support is expensive both in terms of financial as well as institutional resources.

Trauma informed therapy may originally be indebted to the insights of medical practitioners working with holistic principles.  But, at another level, it represents a dedication to a culture of humane care.  In the Church it behoves all of us who encounter the survivors of bullying and mistreatment of various kinds to be alert to the likely trauma burdens they carry.  When we are able more easily to intuit their needs, we will first not fall into the trap of saying the wrong thing or offering inappropriate help and support.

Coming out of a service on Advent Sunday, I commented to the preacher that the image he used to illustrate the theme of Advent was memorable.  He was telling us how he and his family once waited by the river in an area where salmon were regularly seen on their way upriver.  At any moment a fish might be seen in a flash of silver making a leap on its way back to the spawning grounds.  This waiting, he told us, was an important part of the experience. It made the whole family attentive and alert to everything else that was going on during this time of expectancy.   In other words, the enhanced awareness of the background sound of running water or the distant sound of traffic; these were all part of the waiting experience.  There was thus a focus on the present moment not often to be found in their day-to-day awareness.  And then the preacher went on to speak about Advent as a time of waiting.

As the sermon introduced a powerful and unforgettable anecdote to illustrate one aspect of the Advent message, I began to reflect on the variety and richness of the season in terms of the way it makes much use of visual symbols.   For me the most powerful image of the season is the way that we are encouraged to reflect on the light/darkness theme.  We have for example ‘casting off the works of darkness and putting on the armour of light’.  This theme is a primal one.  Everyone from the smallest child up knows the disconcerting experience of suddenly finding oneself in pitch darkness when the light fails.  Most of the time we have ways of alleviating the experience of a power blackout.  Having supplies of candles and torches if the mains power fails, our experience of absolute darkness is seldom prolonged.  But even the shortest exposure to such darkness is unsettling.  What is it about darkness that reaches to our primal fears?

In the first place, when we are in darkness, we feel vulnerable.  The vulnerability is of different kinds.  In the first place, the older among us fear stumbling over furniture or losing our balance.  Balance interacts extensively with our ability to see.  Not to see clearly is to feel unsafe.  A second reason for vulnerability and actual fear is the primitive notion that someone may use the darkness to do us harm.  Darkness potentially gives someone with hostile intent the opportunity to attack us in our state of vulnerability.  Small children, especially, project on to the dark all the things that they are afraid of.  We use the expression ‘creatures of the night’ as a generic term for all the unknown forces of darkness that we believed, especially as young children, were out to do us harm and jump out at us from dark corners.

The metaphor or symbol of darkness signifying all that is evil and frightening is, of course, balanced by the existence of light.  Just as the absence of light places most of us in a state of apprehension and fear, so the restoring of light gives us back a sense of security and confidence.  What are the features of light that change our perspective so completely?  In the first place the existence and availability of light means that we know that the dark never has the last word.  It is hardly surprising that ancient cultures believed that sun to have divine qualities as it reliably reappears each morning.  The changing of the seasons and the restoration of the ‘unconquered sun’ after the winter solstice was something to be celebrated by humans over thousands of years.  

Within the metaphor of light and darkness playing a huge part in our imaginative worlds, there are a variety of sub-themes.  There is the state of twilight, when objects appear to us, but only as shadowy forms.  Although we might be afraid of the unseen forces that we imagine can exist in the places of total darkness, the shadowy half-recognisable shapes of people may be equally terrifying.  One reason to be afraid of shadowy shapes is that we are deprived of a clear picture of the other person’s face.  Without a clear view of another person’s face, we have no means of reading their expression.  Reading the face of another person is, of course, no infallible guide to whether the other person wishes us harm, but we do gain much information from being able to see and ‘read’ the expression in another person’s face.  It is only the presence of light that makes such a scrutiny even possible. It is certainly difficult to say that we ‘love’ another person in a personal way unless we have had the chance to see their face and expressions.  Each person’s face, when illuminated, is a mirror or a pathway into their soul.

Our reflection on the symbols of light and darkness has not so far said anything directly about the theme of Advent. But somehow discussing these symbols evoked by this theme, brings us close to the central concerns of the season.  In my thinking on this imagery, I was first of all struck by some words from the Common Worship Advent blessing   In that blessing, Christ is likened to the sun working its power to scatter darkness.   The darkness presumably is a reference to the sin, the blindness and the perversity of the human race.  All this needs to be removed for the light of Christ to be able to be received by humankind.  Advent speaks of an arrival of this light as a past, present and a future event.  The advent of Christ into the realm of human affairs can be thought of in one of these timeframes or all three.  The Advent season has aspects of past, present and future in its teaching.  The symbolism of light and darkness works equally well whichever one we choose to focus on.  The Coming (Advent) of Christ inevitably involves some sort of confrontation with evil in the world or in individual human hearts.

The imagery of Advent is, in some ways, more powerful than the words we use to describe it.  Having said that, one has to be prepared to immerse oneself in the rich symbolism that we have considered.  The language of symbols is probably inexhaustible and certainly I can imagine that if two people, both with a well nurtured sense of imagination, were to sit down and think through as many ways of communicating the message of Advent using the language of symbols rather than that of words, they would likely have much to share.  I invite my reader to ponder the nature of light and darkness and the way we all relate to them as a metaphor for our Christian beliefs as well as our journey through the joys and traumas of life.  What I have in my mind is the thought of an encounter with light which simultaneously is purifying and transfiguring at the same moment.  Advent is about a triple Coming.  The Coming of the light in the birth of Christ is inseparably linked to his Coming today and the one that is to take place in the future.  Our reception to this coming of light is a kind of surrender to something gloriously bright, something that gives us the hope that God is all in all.  There is nothing inevitable about receiving that light.  It is still within our power to cower in the gloom and prefer the dark.  But the Advent and the Christmas season is a clear invitation to ‘cast off the works of darkness’ and seek to welcome with hope God’s light into our hearts and lives.  Only we know how this process of removing and scattering darkness needs to take place in each of us at a personal and practical level.  

A few words, also from Common Worship, caught my attention on Sunday.  These were read as a introduction to the Confession but they sum up well this theme of Advent as I am understanding it here.

People of God: be glad!

Your God delights in you, giving you joy for sadness and turning the dark to light.

 Be strong in hope therefore; for your God comes to save.

You are God’s children

by Fiona Gardner

A recent piece of research from Sheffield University is titled: ‘They would rather not have known and me kept my mouth shut’: The role of neutralisation in responding to the disclosure of childhood sexual abuse’¹ The research uses questionnaire data from respondents – now adults who were abused as children, and how they later experienced attempts at disclosure – and then interviews some of them. The study examines the characteristic of unsupportive responses, and how disclosures can be dismissed or denied, finding that the people disclosed to often reinforced silence by utilising a variety of what have been called ‘neutralisation techniques.’ As many readers of this website know, disclosure itself is not necessarily a ‘one off’ event, but can be a lifelong experience that is repeated in a multitude of different relationships and contexts. Ways of disrupting and ‘neutralising’ disclosures are only too familiar in the church context: denial of responsibility, denial of harm, victim blaming, questioning or blaming authority (someone else should have stopped it), and, finally, loyalty to the group (usually the institution). Such techniques a bit like rationalizations, is one way of minimising any guilt felt, and a way of avoiding the difficulties posed and doing anything about them. One technique of neutralisation that the institutional church is especially skilled at are delaying tactics – months, years, and, even decades pass with correspondence and files going missing, messages unanswered or forgotten, and changes of personnel which make following things up mind-numbingly frustrating. The effect of all this is then two-fold – one to almost ‘normalise’ abuse, and secondly, to quieten down the outrage. All this reflects something the authors of the research article suggest, which is that there are tacit social pressures not to talk about CSA openly, to not disturb things too much, to keep quiet – to minimise outrage.

However, in contrast to ‘neutralisation’ there is also a clear, explicit social encouragement for victims to speak out, to have a voice, to be listened to respectfully, to be taken seriously, to get justice, and make an impact on future responses and policies. This idea of victims ‘speaking out’ runs through all relevant reports and enquiries over the last decade. So, we have ‘Giving Victims a Voice’ – perhaps a rather condescending title, which was a report published in 2013 following the huge numbers of allegations against Jimmy Savile. Produced jointly by the NSPCC and the Metropolitan Police Service, it was described by the then Director of Public Prosecutions as marking a watershed moment highlighting various systemic failures and giving some victims serious recognition and a chance to speak out.

This May 2022, the Ministry for Justice published a consultation called ‘Delivering Justice for Victims’. The foreword by the Secretary of State for Justice, Dominic Raab (still in post at the time of writing), gives much emphasis to giving victims a louder voice; making sure their views are heard; supporting them in the search for justice, and strengthening transparency and enhanced scrutiny when victims are let down. Raab – who of course is himself under investigation for bullying – writes that no victim should ever feel like an afterthought, or peripheral to the process, disillusioned and, at worst, compound their ordeal. The cultural shift is one where victims’ voices are amplified alongside the strengthening of clear lines of oversight when things go wrong. This document may or may not come to anything, but the intention to emphasise the perspective of the victim is relevant when we consider the response of the C of E and the latest suggestions for re-working Learning Lessons Case Reviews. ‘Graham’ wrote about this in October when he commented on the draft review as a watering down – a dilution of what went before. So, given the spirit of the times, where is the amplification of victims’ voices – where the transparency, and oversight for when things go wrong. Far from amplification it seems there is a process of neutralising going on through the idea of the rather inward-looking reflective process, and limited time frame.

There is a paradox between national policies encouraging those who have been abused to speak out, at the same time as a reluctance to listen and hear what is being said. The Independent Learning Lessons Case Review on Revd Graham Gregory (GG) by Ray Galloway (February 2022)² reminds us both of the importance of really listening to victims and of the techniques of neutralisation that often hold sway. The report, which like others is a deeply upsetting read, gives us the attempts of victims to disclose – there were at least 10 known and 7 contributed to the review. Almost all disclosed at the time to their parents, and sadly of these nearly all were disbelieved. However, they did come forward as adults to speak out again –and their disclosures were poorly handled by the church.

Take the experience of one referred to as victim B, who, in 2006, attended a church Safeguarding event. Reading the course handbook caused a profound physical reaction which convinced her that she needed to report her abuser GG, and using the contact number in the handbook eventually got through to Southwark Diocese: ‘I said I’m ringing you because I don’t think I can go any further with my responsibilities at my church until I’ve actually laid to rest the ghosts of this past abuse that I’ve suffered’. Worried that GG might still be offending, victim B expected a positive response, but instead was advised that she should contact the diocese of York as GG was no longer in Southwark, and she was given the details for the archbishop. Intimidated about the proposal that she should call the archbishop herself she decided to leave it: ‘I thought, no, I can’t ring this man who I hear on Thought for the Day and see on Songs of Praise … I made that call, he told me to ring Sentamu … I did um and ah for about a week and I thought, no, I can’t do it.’

She had a better response in 2012 after Savile, when victim B phoned the NSPCC who with the police immediately acted which led to a successful criminal prosecution against GG. Her good support from the police was in sad contrast to the response of the church. The C of E sent a male pastoral support listener to the trial for both victims A and B, but as B says: ‘The impartiality of the police, or the NSPCC, was never in doubt, but how far, at that stage, has the Church of England still got one eye out for GG.’ Both victims wanted the Church to be demonstrating contrition, ‘nobody ever said sorry, until I wrote, a year after the man was convicted, to the archbishop and said … I’ve waited a year for you to reply to me.’ A personal apology was eventually given.  Irritated by the ‘cagey’ response of the church she had particular criticism for the process of gaining compensation: ‘Once you’ve had all this, you’ve gone through the court and the man’s 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 that you have no symptoms at all, nothing was wrong, and they can give you as little money as possible … it’s probably worse than the trial.’ On summarising her view of how the Church dealt with the issue of her abuse, victim B, whilst referring to the outcome of her abuse as being the ‘blighting of a childhood’, made a distinction between the actions of an individual DSA in Southwark and the organisation.

The report analyses the sadly familiar diocesan response of techniques of neutralisation to victim B’s disclosures – although she had kept notes of who she spoke to, and, what was said in 2006, it was stated that they had no record, or recollection of this: ‘The clear inference … is that it was not they with whom victim B had spoken, despite her having their name recorded’. The first relevant record in the diocese was made 8 years later, in 2014. Galloway states that the request for an apology lacks any real clarity in the diocesan records. The delay was put down to the bishop being abroad, the chaplain’s move to another role and an appeal from GG against his conviction. Nothing happened until victim B made her further complaint.

The report states: ‘Other than positive feedback for the DSA, when she had assumed management of the case after GG’s conviction, no examples of Good Practice were identified during the Review,’ and later referred to as ‘poor and unreasonable professional practice’. The initial telephone contact in 2006 was neither caring nor supportive. ‘The needs of the victim who reached out to the diocese were not identified nor appropriate records made. Harm had occurred to the person making contact yet that fact was not established … the advice provided, was wholly inappropriate. It not only served to inhibit the victim from disclosing the fact of her abuse, it also allowed the fact of the ongoing risk to children that GG represented to sustain.’

The report details the dreadful experiences of 7 young girls and the destructive responses of 5 dioceses (as GG moved around) including after the publication of ‘Giving Victims a Voice’ – victims were not listened to rather techniques of neutralisation were prominent – and included unkindness, lack of empathy and professionalism. For once I’m in support of Raab that the only way forward is to amplify not neutralise the voices of those who have been abused.

1. ‘They would rather not have known and me kept my mouth shut’: The role of neutralisation in responding to the disclosure of childhood sexual abuse, September 2022, Qualitative Social Work DOI: 10.1177/14733250221124300 Claire Cunnington and Tom Clark.

2. https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Independent%20learning%20lessons%20case%20review%20-%20Graham%20Gregory.pdf

Almost fifty years ago I was privileged to begin a self-funded research project for a B.Litt back at my old college in Oxford.  This was to be on a theme within Orthodox theology.  One of my pressing preoccupations in the months leading up to my arrival, was the task of amassing sufficient funds to be able to pay all the bills needed for two years of study.  The whole economic environment in the UK at that time was extremely fragile and inflation was approaching 25%.  The college authorities were anxiously seeking assurance that I would not end up destitute in the middle of my studies.  One lifesaver was the offer of a part-time curacy at a parish in Oxford.  This promised to pay me just enough to pay for a room in a student house run by an ecumenical charity. 

My tasks at the parish in Oxford were not onerous and there were, apart from the Vicar, other ‘extras’ helping out at the church.  One was an extremely distinguished chaplain from Balliol College.  He appeared during the vacations, and his sermons were a privilege to listen to.  There were also two public-school chaplains in their twenties who worked most of the week at their school.  I did not get to know either of them particularly well, but I noted that they were potentially high-flyers.  Both these chaplains did in fact go on to achieve promotions within the public/private school chaplaincy network and beyond. I followed their progress with interest as both of them also rose eventually to the rank of bishop in the Church of England.  Each of them also became involved a number of serious safeguarding episodes.  Tragically, in one case, the involvement was accompanied by considerable notoriety and personal shame. The one caught up in shameful events was Bishop Peter Hullah.  I have here no new information to add to what has already been reported about him recently in both the religious and secular press. What follows is a response to the reported events and some reflection on the way that stories such as these can have a terrible impact on the entire institution.  The reverberations of the story cannot be quickly dismissed or left behind.  In summary, a story of this kind is never just about a single offender; every member of the institution who knows about a shameful episode is affected by its lasting poison in some way.  Disgrace and shame involving those at the top of an institution damage trust right through the fabric of the structure.  To some extent the safeguarding failure of a single individual creates an increased burden for all, especially in the way it increases institutional suspicion.  Meanwhile, we learn that Bishop Peter Hullah has received a lifetime ban from exercising any form of priestly ministry.

In the past I have discussed the case of Bishop Peter Ball and the effect his dramatic fall from grace had on me personally back in the 1990s.  I have reflected long and hard about the appalling institutional damage that such erring leaders can cause.  The cynical outsider believes, with some understandable justification, that these positions of status and power are sought by those who want to exploit privilege for their own benefit.  The old honourable idea that you accept rank or promotion in order to be able to serve more people, is, in these cases, completely turned upside down.  The disgrace that has come to Hullah for the admitted sexual misbehaviour towards young women, is just one part of his story.  There is another widely known strand to the narrative.  This has been around in the public domain for some time and was revealed as evidence in the IICSA hearings.   Hullah, then a headmaster at Chetham Music School in Manchester, failed to respond appropriately in the case of a member of staff caught by him abusing a pupil. The more recently revealed information is about Hullah’s earlier abusive behaviour in the 80s and 90s. it is not unreasonable for us to suggest that his own status as an abuser may have been a major contributing factor for his failure to deal correctly with the flagrant abuse which took place in front of him later.  His earlier offending would have made him potentially open to blackmail, thus completely undermining his power and effectiveness to maintain discipline across a school. ‘Do not report me otherwise details of your past abusing behaviour may come to light’.  Institutional blackmail of this kind may be far more common than we imagine.

Some individuals in positions of authority in the Church have likely been compromised in some way by making bad decisions in the past.  When others get to hear about these, it is possible that such knowledge is used as a lever to exert pressure on the one with the official responsibility.  If this is ever the case, it is easy to see how the process of justice in the Church’s disciplinary system will be seriously disrupted and undermined. This distinct possibility may perhaps account for some recent puzzling failures within the system.  When a bishop allows a priest with a serious CDM outstanding to take up a job in a new diocese, questions are likely to be asked.  Sending a ‘safe to receive’ letter to another diocese when a candidate is, to all appearances, not safe, raises a red flag over the sending bishop.  When such things happen, confidence in the system is undermined.   The cynic in each of us asks what does he/she, the bishop or archbishop, have to hide?  One speculates about the possibility of secrets from the past weighing down the man or woman holding ecclesiastical power.   There must always be among the leadership of the Church and its public relations department, a constant fear that something new may spill out into the public domain.  Should they suppress the information, as they appear to have done in the Bishop Hullah case for several months, or should they make a frank open disclosure of what has taken place with the hope that the watching public will be understanding?  Secrecy is a very hard thing to sustain.  When it is locked up in an institution, it has the tendency to ferment and swell before the inevitable explosion.  The Church of England seems to be holding many secrets at present in the safeguarding world. Each of these has the potential to do enormous further harm to the Church. 

My memory of two bright talented young clergymen in their twenties, beginning a journey towards preferment in the Church of England, is not an account opening up new detail about past scandal. Nothing then indicated that Hullah was to be a danger to women in the future. These later reports of sexual misbehaviour on the part of a bishop are still painful and wounding matters. Other stories about similar conduct from every level of the Church continue to disturb us.  To be fair to the bishops and those who have to manage these cases, it must be a cause of justified resentment that they have to spend so much time seeking to manage these narratives.  There is absolutely no glory or prestige in being the one who has the difficult task of containing scandal, so it does the least damage to the Church. Safeguarding failures such as these will feed into an overall narrative of sleaze and corruption.  The reputation of an institution is something that can take decades to build up but a short time to destroy.  We can argue about whether the polls connected with public attitudes to the institutional church are deserved or not. Justified or not, they present a powerful statement of current attitudes.  If the public believe, for example, that bishops should leave the House of Lords, this suggests that the public has a declining respect for their office.  Institutions, particularly those espousing Christian ideals and values, need everyone involved to be people of complete integrity.  There must be nothing about church people at any level that compromises their ability to ‘act justly’.  Hullah’s reported offences will have damaged and devastated many others beyond the circle of the directly abused.  How this behaviour reached out to demoralise and shock whole groups of people, staff, parents and students can only be known by those directly involved.   Hullah’s betrayal of trust is serious.  We have to remember that the Church had entrusted him the ‘care of souls’ for a large area of central southern England.  The darkness of his betrayal cannot be removed quickly.  Only time will tell how other scandals in Chichester, London and Oxford will affect the long-term safety felt among the laity and the clergy working there.  If the ordinary clergy ever feel that the failings of their senior clergy, especially bishops, are not faced up to and dealt with properly, this will have a corrosive effect on their sense of well-being.  It will take far more than platitudinous expressions of regret to extinguish the sense of institutional failure and even corruption within the system.

I end this blog post with this rather sad reflection.  At the beginning of my ministry some fifty years ago it was normal for me to look up to more experienced and senior clergy with a combination of respect and admiration.  The recent years of observing at close hand the less salubrious aspects of power and privilege in the Church, have left me with far less of that automatic deference and respect.  Each public disgrace of a church leader does affect what I feel about the Church.  I want to honour the ‘bishops and curates and all congregations committed to their charge.’  Any betrayal weakens what I desperately want to feel.

It is one of the features of the internet age that we are frequently invited to join customer surveys online.  Typically, we are asked to express our satisfaction, or lack of it, for goods or services that we have received.  Our satisfaction is to be rated on a scale of one to five or one to ten.  This scale idea, rating something according to its intensity or power, has another name, a continuum.  At any one moment we might judge ourselves high or low on a particular continuum scale when trying to assess internal sensations like our happiness, satisfaction or pain.  The continuum concept in general is a useful one because it enables one person to indicate to another something of the intensity of their feelings.  This, of course, may oscillate over a period of time. 

The continuum idea, or the concept of a sliding scale of intensity or involvement, is a helpful notion when we examine a pair of words common in safeguarding vocabulary, survivor and victim.  It has become common practice to place these two words together, connecting them with a forward slash symbol.   This is because each of the words is related to the other in meaning.  Each word represents a response to an experience of abuse.  One might be considered to be finding a place of resilience after a deeply traumatising event.  The victim on the other hand is having to endure a possibly greater level of ongoing pain which may be combined with a profound sense of powerlessness.  An abused individual may, of course, internalise aspects of the survivor and the victim experience simultaneously.  The survivor will however probably see him/herself at a different place along the continuum scale to the one who finds him/herself closer to the status of a victim.  The continuum idea is of course far from a perfect analogy.  It will be pointed out that survivor and victim are by no means at a fixed point on the scale.  Their place on our notional scale will be constantly shifting.  It will change according to a variety of factors, both internal and external.  There is always the hope that the support offered to the abused will help to move them to the position of survivor.  Beyond that we long for the survivor to find eventually a place of complete healing. 

We need to examine each of our two words in turn.  As we have already suggested, the abused individuals who lie neatly at either end of victim/survivor continuum will probably be a minority.  The rest, perhaps the majority, lie somewhere near the middle of the continuum in a constant state of oscillation.  They will have mixture of needs, some relating to their survivor identity and others to their victim status.  It is, however, helpful to set out a range of helpful responses to abused individuals in accordance with their proximity to the poles at each end of the continuum.  Let us first consider the likely needs of the individual who occupies a place which identifies them as a victim.  The word implies that the pain of their abuse is still raw and largely unprocessed.  The very core of self-identity has been assailed; their peace of mind and self-determination may have been thoroughly undermined.  If we were to summarise the likely needs of someone who self-describes as a victim, we would probably focus on their practical and therapeutic needs.  Their practical needs will relate to disturbed relationships, employment and housing needs, as well as money problems.  For help with those practical needs, the victim may need the support of a mentor or advocate.  In addition, there will be an urgent need for a range of psychotherapeutic skills that may be on offer.  As I have said elsewhere, the skills needed to help an individual abused in a religious context are rarely fully understood by psychotherapeutic professionals.  The abused will also find it difficult or impossible to accept help from representatives of the organisation which in some way enabled the abuse.  Bishops and clergy are seen as representing the institution that abused the victim and the attempts to reach out to these victims are often pushed away with anger and hostility.  Engaging with an abused victim who has been traumatised and damaged psychologically at a number of levels may be a demanding task.

The word survivor is used when we detect that a victim has moved on from the first stage of raw vulnerability and is beginning, with the help of others, to rebuild and heal.  To use the word survivor is not implying that the individual is morally or physically superior to the victim.  Rather we are encountering someone who is at a different stage along the continuum in their healing journey away from abuse.  There is one serious problem with this journey analogy.  Those who set out on a path of healing may at any point be suddenly jerked back along the path to a previous stage.  This may happen because of a triggering event which causes the body-memory of the abusive event to be re-activated in the survivor.  Another way in which a survivor re-enters the status of victim, is as the result of the crass and insensitive responses of those in authority.  These can sometimes be described as re-abuse. There is thus no steady or invariable path from to victim to survivor, only a series of moves in the right direction punctuated by periodic setbacks from time to time.

The individual who counts him/herself as a survivor may have had as torrid a time in dealing with the abuse as the victim. However, factors such as time and competent therapy have allowed him/her to move to a stronger more resilient place.  The individuals who write to me as the editor of this blog tend to be from the survivor population.  They are still vulnerable but have found the strength which allows them to use their voice to reach out to supporters.  Their needs are distinctive.  They are no longer constantly at the point of desperate vulnerability and pain.  The pain and the brokenness may be still alive and present inside them, but they seem to have reached a point where they can also look at what has happened to them and feel something other than the original pain and numbness.  Above all many feel anger.   This anger is normally focused and clear-sighted.  It recognises that abuse has taken place and that the perpetrator will have likely been responsible for abusing others.  The anger is thus often the anger of an activist and campaigner. Many survivors are ready to work hard to make sure that their suffering does not go any further.  The survivor is therefore often like a political activist.  He/she has a determination to make sure that what they have suffered has, ultimately, some meaning and can be used in some way to help others.

In thinking further about this idea of the survivor sometimes taking on the role of activist, even campaigner, there is another passion often at work.  This passion is the desire to see truth and justice firmly placed on the agenda of the institution which in some way enabled the abuse.  The word truth implies that there is a deep desire to know exactly what happened and who else may have been involved.  The survivor knows that every abusive event is part of a wider whole.  Their individual story fits into a broader narrative with many actors.  As I have said on this blog, for every individual case of abuse there are those who knew at the time that something was not right.  They hid from any kind of action which would have involved awkward questions or the disturbance of the status-quo.   Then there were others who were friends of the perpetrator but, for reasons of loyalty, did or said nothing.  A further group are those who were told at some later date about the abuse but responded with no desire to know anything more and may have tried to close the disclosure down.   Finally, there are the authorities in the church who had the responsibility for learning from the event.  This ability to engage successfully in a ‘lessons learned’ process has, as we all know, a very chequered history.  All too often the instinct of leaders is the protection of the institution at all costs and thus they are blinded to the needs of the hopeful survivor.

Survivors, through their frequent experiences of acting as passionate spokespeople, have a distinct set of needs.  They are often found ‘difficult’ because they have the habit of asking awkward questions of those who occupy positions of leadership.  The difficulty that leaders have in responding to survivors’ groups is that they, the leaders, are deeply committed to the protection of the reputation of the Church.  A leader inevitably will also be solicitous for the assets of the organisation.  The passion and activism of some survivors towards finding justice and redress for themselves and other survivors is a threat to both.  If the abused tell too much of their truth, the outside public may come to see the leadership in an unfavourable light.  Sources of income and other forms of support may start to dry up.  One of the extraordinary features of recent church scandals is that even if it becomes abundantly obvious that Leader A or Leader B has failed in terms of competence or truthfulness, they are never required to resign or even retire.  This institutional refusal by church leaders ever to own up to serious failings does not allow the Church to move on beyond the scandals in a healthy way. This means that many bad situations are left unresolved.  Like rotting meat that is not disposed of hygienically, the problems of denial, avoidance and unaccountability remain within the structure and are a permanent threat to the well-being of those on the recovery journey.  Thus, the health of the wider church is badly compromised.

Survivors and victims, in spite of setbacks, travel hopefully along a path which they trust will enable them to recover fully from their past abuse.  Both these categories of the abused are on a journey which, all too often is not completed. Those of us who belong to the band of supporters look on and note the enormous efforts being made by the Church to inhibit future cases of abuse.  The record of really meeting past survivors’ and victims’ needs is, by contrast, at best patchy.  Those who have been abused do have serious needs.  We long to see understanding and compassion on the part of the Church and its leaders for these individuals, alongside the sort of real relevant help so that they find the healing they require and deserve.

Discussion is enabled for this post

by Martin Sewell

I recently reflected upon the implications of the Charity Commission investigation into the conduct of the Christ Church Trustees and the Official Warning that now sits embarrassingly against the charity’s name on the Commission’s website. I now set out the case for a proper inquiry into the actions of cathedral clergy, Diocese and Church institutions in this case.

Within this context, it is unavoidable that reference be made to the “vestry event” accuser; that is regrettable but sadly, the case cannot be analysed in her complete absence. I shall refer to her as little as possible, for this is not about her: her complaint was accepted and officially addressed albeit not to her satisfaction. In stark contrast, Dr Percy’s complaints about faulty and corrupt processes, bias and misconduct by individuals and Church bodies alike are currently being blocked by an institution that pretends to believe in “ transparency and accountability “ but demonstrably does not. Many many survivors and bullied clergy have encountered the same issues, and some have recently shared their stories with the Charity Commission which can increasingly see that this high profile case is indicative of a persistent deeper structural disease.

The President of Tribunals made certain findings and observations which could have reset negotiations for the Dean to depart his post early, however the College and Diocese perversely refused to accept those findings. The bullying continued and to this we now turn.

The College malcontents had seen the vestry event as a golden opportunity to renew their efforts to eject the Dean by returning to the safeguarding theme and weaving a deceitful narrative of extreme risk out of very little material. The Sladen Review confirms that they were determined to use  any pretext at unconstrained cost, whether proportionate and  justified or not, to achieve their goal. They were not spending their own money.

The evidence of institutional bullying gathered pace. Ignoring alternative dispute resolution options which might have spared all parties much anguish, they ploughed on. This is what bullies do, they take control of events and manipulate for their own purposes.

The problem confronting the malcontents and their allies was the accuser’s status. In one sense it was truthful that she was “ a student studying at Christ Church” but she was not in fact a member of Oxford University; she was a student of Christchurch New Zealand University. This appears to have been potentially problematic for, although the College asserts that they are committed to “protecting their students and members of Staff”, not all University procedures applied to a “non-student “ and for whatever reason, technical or otherwise, the accuser never took recourse to the University “anti harassment” processes.  Dr Percy’s problems, of course had begun when he urged the powerful ex-Censors to revise all such procedures, which they had resisted.

Accordingly the malcontents turned to the Church to help deliver the final blow; clergy agreed . Whether this was entirely knowingly or as “useful idiots” would be one of the issues to be clarified by a full independent inquiry.  This, the Church leadership currently resolutely and irrationally opposes.

One should not forget that this was all happening at the height of the “Me too” movement. The College malcontents no doubt hoped  to capitalise upon this, not least in the hope that further allegations would be forthcoming either from his time at Christ Church or his lengthy prior involvement in education. They were to be deeply disappointed, for nothing emerged

This may be an appropriate point to address the evolution of the narrative with clarity remembering that the event had resulted in a single denied allegation of brief duration. The President of Tribunal’s decision highlighted a) no sexual element b) no serious misconduct c) no distress  asserted at the time. This was all knowable from the outset.

Cathedral Canons Ward and Peers had taken up the challenge and they, not the accuser, filed a CDM complaint after running it through Church safeguarding procedures in questionable fashion.  Canon Ward had been a leading figure at every stage of the ejection project with 32 prior rejected allegations. He was not a fit and proper person to have been given conduct of such a matter as complainant, given his immediate past history of animus against the Dean. The Bishop must have known his hostility and agenda. Nevertheless the alleged “safeguarding” allegation was processed by the Diocese and the Bishop within 24 hours. Whether this was lack of competence, inconsistency or worse is what an inquiry would need to investigate.

Insufficient care seems to have been taken in assessing the case on a number of levels. The accuser did not fit obviously within the parameters of CofE safeguarding. The accuser was not a minor, neither did she have the slightest vulnerability, indeed  as she has vociferously and properly asserted, she was fully competent adult with no vulnerabilities. She has complained that her agency has been removed; she is right – by the malcontents, their accomplices Peers and Ward, and thereafter the Church institutions. Of course her complaint  needed investigating but not under these provisions. Proper process matters and if it is credibly alleged to have been misapplied, that needs investigating.

Meanwhile a message was sent throughout the College Cathedral and School that essential precautions had to be put in place; the terms of them would have needed little adjustment had the Taxi cab rapist taken up resident on Tom Quad. These restrictions were extreme, abusive, bullying, and – dare one say it – “scandalous, immoral, and disgraceful”. Gardeners could only dig the flower beds in pairs lest the Dean set upon them! ( I kid you not)

These measures  were founded upon the infamous “ dodgy risk assessments” drawn by Ward Peers and possibly others. It was an inexpert, unregulated process which was questionable on a host of levels not least that it purported to pray in aid the endorsement of the Independent Investigator, former Lambeth Palace Safeguarding Advisor Kate Wood.

When it was publicly objected that Ms Wood did not feature on the Diocesan approved list for such work ( neither did either Canon ) she publicly distanced herself from them completely She told the Church Times that she had repeatedly asked to be extricated from association with the process. Sadly, she has been reticent about explaining more. She had properly stated in her report to the College that “this not a risk assessment”; she specifically recommended that a proper assessment could be commissioned under the Safeguarding and Clergy Discipline Regulations 2016.  The Bishop and College refused and neither have explained why.

 It gets worse; why did the Bishop not use one of the 10 approved Diocesan safeguarding experts? He needs to be vigorously pressed on why he neglected to apply proper process.  Was the malcontent Ward with 31 failed allegations to his credit, really the best person to assess the risks allegedly posed by the Dean out of these facts? You cannot duck that question though the Bishop continues to try. Frankly, it  looks biased at the very least and increasingly that he became complicit in the bullying. If there is a proper explanation an independent reviewer needs to hear and assess it. It would not not take long.

Even an assessment by Diocesan approved experts would not have properly addressed the core point in issue.

The false narrative runs as follows. “The Dean did it; the accuser alone is entitled to decide if it constitutes sexual and serious misconduct; we can extrapolate from this that he posed a total generic unspecified risk to all and sundry regardless of age sex  etc . We know better than the President of Tribunals; and we are fair. This is not bullying and no external inquiry into the  procedural  handling of the case is justified.”

This is detached from proportionality, and ordinary legal standards which have evolved through thousands of cases, decades of increasing expertise, and in full compliance with the Human Rights Act principle of the right to a fair trial.

So, I turn to to the  key question – did the Dean have a propensity to act in a way which, might disqualify him from office? The expertise to answer such a question does not lie within the skill set of  ex-social workers or  police, and certainly not with amateur Cathedral clergy; the best discipline to assist here is that of a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist  – ask any specialist safeguarding lawyer – oh wait, the Church refuses to employ any!

 Every day of the week, such experts are routinely submitting such evaluations to assist Courts when they consider whether children who have been found to have suffered or be, likely to suffer significant harm should be returned to parents under suspicion of serious abuse.  There are hundreds of such cases each year.  The paths to these experts’ doors are well trodden for those who know the way.

You can commission  and secure such an assessment from the very best experts in the country within ten weeks for under £10k, so why on earth did  College and Bishop refuse to do this if they were seriously concerned ? There are only two explanations.

Either nobody handling this case had the slightest experience in how safeguarding risk assessments are routinely commissioned and conducted in the secular courts, or, they did know,  but maliciously refused  to go there. A proper assessment would have “ shot their fox” – game over. My working rebuttable premise is that the bullies and the useful idiots were not going to risk that, so things were left in the hands of the the compliant/incompetent Canons.

Dr Percy complains that when he challenged the risk assessments as bogus, not least in that  someone had improperly added the National CofE official logo to the Ward/Canon amateur  effort to give them false authority, the Bishop replied that they were not “risk assessments” but “ assessments of risk”, a distinction unknown in law or perhaps logic. If true, an independent Reviewer might conclude that attempting  to offer such sophistry to a highly intelligent but emotionally vulnerable complainant of bullying  compounds the offence.

Illogically, the risk assessments  were not recalibrated in the slightest degree after the President of Tribunals had ruled that the vestry event could not not constitute “serious misconduct” even if the complaint were taken completely at  face value.

The Church was variously warned about the bullying, especially after the President’s decision was delivered. The Bishop and Canons  did not like the outcome and, like the College, shamefully refused to publish a fully redacted version onto the Diocesan or Cathedral websites . This reticence was no better explained than the “confusion” over the false attribution of the dubious risk assessments to Ms Wood.

A meeting in the Cathedral heard repeated reference to “the alleged sexual assaults” unchallenged, even though the legal decision did not uphold that terminology. The Bishop never accepted the President’s authoritative expert adjudication,  the abusive risk assessments remained in place until the final settlement was concluded when all these fearful speculations……just disappeared.. magically, with the mere passing of money. They remain on record as  the Diocesan contribution to the mobbing  of the Dean – and the national Church stood by in silent complicity – and worse.

When emails were shared with Church leaders, demonstrating that the Church’s lawyers and PR team ( simultaneously acting for the College and Church in the same matter ) were trying to place defamatory stories with newspapers ( shared with the Dean by outraged journalists) nothing was done. Journalists evidently had higher standards and a better nose for impropriety than Church leaders.

Dr Percy had sent all the evidence to Church House Lambeth Palace and Bishopsthorpe Palace; still nothing happened. No “serious incident report” was sent to the Charity Commission despite  each limb of the requisite test for such a report being met. Someone had been harmed; the Dean met the criteria for being a  a “vulnerable person”,  having suffered a medically authenticated nervous breakdown ; erosive reputational  damage was being perpetrated to both victim and simultaneously, to the largest religious charity in the country It was a qualification “slam dunk”. The trustees had neglected their duty.

When pressed,  it was explained to the, by now, ex-Dean,  that he was ” not recognised as a victim” and with that revelation  the cat was let out of the bag. They just wanted him to go away.

Like many other abuse  survivors and victims of clergy bullying, the Dean was alleging institutional bullying from top to bottom, but what he brought to the table which could not be properly ignored was an evidential trail in writing. Post Sladen, institutional bullying within the secular half the Christ Church Foundation  is now established and the evidence on the ecclesiastical half is so blatant that one has to be a member of the House of Bishops to even consider denying it.

The Church Establishment had decided he “was not a victim” but crucially they did so without first asking the key basic question  “ Is he a Complainant?”

The correct approach is “ Always listen to the complainant and take what they say seriously”. Dr Percy was complaining about cathedral clergy, Bishop, Lawyers, Church House NST staff Archbishops and Archbishops Council – so who within the Church could possibly make the necessary impartial decision that he was “not a victim”? Such abandonment of analytical thinking is a consequence of bullying becoming “institutional”. The mobbing narrative grips all, and critical thinking goes out the window. Unconscious bias permeates every discussion. The Dean had become “not a victim” – just a persistent nuisance. We call this “victim blaming”.

With the implosion of the so-called Independent Safeguarding Board which now acknowledges that it has neither the independence nor capacity for such a big piece of work,  all the trustees of Archbishops Council face a problem. The Sladen Report makes it clear that each trustee has an individual duty to speak act and decide things with integrity; there is no hiding place. Cover-up is not an option,  yet there is no internal mechanism to properly investigate institutional bullying of this widespread character.

In a press interview in 2019 Archbishop Justin Welby told the Spectator “ We have not yet found the proper way of dealing with complainants and taking them seriously, listening to them,  not just telling them to shut up and go away, which is what we did for decades, which was evil- its more than just a wrong thing, it’s a deeply evil act”

I agree with 2019 Archbishop Justin; I hope 2022 Archbishop Justin does too, and that he will now lead his fellow trustees to appoint a proper, independent, senior lawyer-led inquiry into Dr Percy’s complaint of institutional bullying in this deeply disturbing case. There is no other option of integrity.

by Martin Sewell

“Actions have consequences” : this observation certainly applies in much of the everyday world and it must surely apply in the legal world of regulation and governance. Last Thursday the long awaited Review into the conduct of the Governing Body of Christ Church Oxford was published by the Charity Commission after a lengthy process of study, interviewing and fact finding; the official warning and the 20 page Sladen review are publicly accessible here

http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/SCHEMES/491278.PDF  

 and

https://www.turbulentpriest.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/20221109_Christ-Church-Decision-Review.pdf

they make worthwhile reading.

The persecution of Dr Martyn Percy has become one of those iconic events that may change how institutions are viewed in future. It may not be inappropriate to make a comparison with the Dreyfus Affair in Edwardian France and the UK Profumo scandal, where the standards of the old Establishment intersected with the changing standards of “Swinging Britain” in the early 1960s. One might even add the bungled bugging escapade known as  “ Watergate “ – initially dismissed by actor John Wayne as a “panty raid” but which ended with the resignation of a President.  Each began on a small scale, but then grew to have enormous cultural consequence; so, I suggest, might the Oxford debacle in College and Church alike. This is a major Establishment scandal.

We are, of course, used to hilarious caricatures of Oxford life in the novels of Tom Sharpe or Colin Dexter, where malevolence and jealousy simmer under the surface of civilised eccentric institutions, and powerful cabals plot, scheme, and even murder each other. In measured terms the Charity Commission reveals that life does indeed follow art, revealing very much a patriarchal culture in need of reform.

The report is very correct. It emphasises that the Commission does not take sides and thus confines itself to applying proper governmental standards, carefully weighing the Trustees  in the balance and finding them seriously wanting. Yet disapproval and deep concern permeates the report and consequences must follow. For all the bluster as the Trustees face their University fellows and students, they know that they have been shown to be very morally compromised indeed.

From Andrew Billen’s podcast “The Feud” we can hear much of the background story and it has featured in several blogs https://archbishopcranmer.com/tag/sir-andrew-smith/ 

The identification of the “weaponisation of safeguarding” by the malcontent dons is certainly confirmed by the Commission’s Reviewer

The significant “takeaways” from the Report are these

•          “There is a sense from reading the papers that whatever the cost of taking action against the Dean, the Charity was prepared to take it, which is not consistent with managing the Charity’s resources responsibly.”

£1.9m was spent on the Sir Andrew Smith Tribunal, which considered 27 allegations of financial misconduct against the Dean, which were dismissed and the Dean returned to office. Thereafter, the costs escalated to £6.6m largely on account of failed allegations concerning safeguarding . There are 66 Trustees; a rough and ready equal sharing of restitution to the Charity would cost each £100k.It is also noteworthy that the Dean had been prepared to leave after the Smith tribunal decision in 2019 in return for a proper Governance review and a severance package to include his legal costs of then approx £400k. That settlement eventually occurred but not until after the malcontents had rejected that option, setting themselves on a path to wasting millions. The malcontent defensive line appears, from the Sladen review, to be to blame the Dean as he would not buckle to their bullying so they had to keep throwing charitable funds at the “problem”.

•          “The Reviewer also observes that it is hard to avoid a view, having read the case files, that the trustees, or a proportion of them, were determined to remove the Dean from the Charity at almost any cost and this is exactly why the Commission has had such concern about the size of the costs incurred in the dispute with him and that this warranted consideration of an Official Warning.”

This is hugely significant. It confirms the presence of institutional bullying. If you are prepared to do whatever it takes, at whatever the cost, (using charitable funds) and your project becomes divorced from proportionality, and even due legal or accountancy process, this is the quintessence of “institutional bullying.”

One helpful external definition identifies this phenomenon as “when bullying behaviours become so entrenched within an organisation without being challenged that they become the accepted norm, and are tolerated either consciously or unconsciously or even condoned”.

•          “There was an obligation on the trustees to be accountable for the way they spent the Charity’s funds and this requires openness amongst the Governing Body about costs.”

When it comes to culpability, the trustees appear to fall into three groups. There was a core group to whom management of the ejection project was delegated. They must have a primary responsibility for the waste of funds; they have been loosely described as “the malcontents”  – the strategists who worked with the lawyers to devise and execute the plan. The second  group – the majority of trustees – let the malcontents get on with it, without exercising the proper scrutiny and control which is the fundamental responsibility of all trustees, from those of the National Trust to the smallest church PCC.

The third tiny group spoke up for integrity and proportionality but were constantly overused or ignored, they could either resign or hang on, hoping to bring their colleagues to their senses.  They were effectively victims of coercive control. They should be exempt from criticism and financial consequences.

The majority generic failure of control, curiosity and moral courage is what is termed mismanagement by the Reviewer, but a careful reader will note that the issue of “misconduct” has not been removed from the table. The review goes only to the financial element of the matter but there is also something fundamentally rotten here – and that applies equally to the Church, there were sins of commission and omission. At all levels, there have been too many moral bystanders reaching for plausible deniability.

The malignancy needs investigating wheresoever it occurred; this is not just a story about inadequate standards of accountancy . The Review looks for deeper inquiry to the independent Governance Review being conducted by Dominic Grieve KC . He is working however in accordance with terms of reference drafted by the Trustees and their lawyers. How critical that report will be and how much it examines misconduct retrospectively remains to be seen. However, things do not have to wait.

Those trustees who were kept in the dark have a continuing duty to hold the more compromised trustees to account. They certainly should ensure that they are independently legally advised, during a process what may become a competitive allocation of blame – some are plainly more guilty than others and there, possible misconduct remains the issue rather than negligence.

The Report discloses that the Trustees instructed their lawyers to persuade the Commission not to publish their proposed ‘Official Warning’ but instead to agree an action plan. The lawyers filed over 800 pages of ‘evidence’ in an attempt to prevent donors and public alike from learning about the Trustees’ failings. That is an additional cost to the Charity and one hopes that someone will make a Freedom of Information Request on that subject so that donors can see where their money has gone.

At the Oxford Diocesan Synod on 12^th November, I understand that those attending (on Zoom) were addressed by the Bishop, the Censor Theologiae, and the Archdeacon of Oxford, each of whom is in varying degrees under scrutiny as we try to unravel this sorry tale. The case for the defence was certainly adequately represented as Christ Church began to implement its crisis management strategy. The case for early resignations… not so much.

The College is was an esteemed public institution; notwithstanding assets of approx £500m.  It receives significant public funding, not least £928,000 from the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. Following very recent public political resignations there is a public mood and expectation that where those in responsible positions have been found guilty of “mismanagement or misconduct”, they should resign. Why not at Christ Church, Oxford – secular and clerical?

At the next Governing Body meeting those who knew the full picture,  can – and should – resign en bloc. The other Trustees need to act in accordance with their responsibilities for the inadequate oversight identified by the Reviewer, even if one can have a modicum of sympathy for the newly appointed and the less worldly. It may not have been easy for them as they sat as mute witnesses while the malcontents delivered a brutal and very public punishment beating to the only person with the moral courage to stand up to the patriarchal culture represented by the powerful unofficial committee of ex-Censors.

There may be greater sympathy for the silent majority however if they now find the backbone and moral compass to require each of the core malcontents to step back immediately and hand over the control of the College into new hands.

This may not be an option for long. The Charity Commission is still involved, and that issue of misconduct is not yet off the table. Pretending £6.6m of hidden expenditure (and the additional consequential loss of donor income) is not a resigning issue would be a very powerful indicator to the Regulator that the trustees still “don’t get it” and that would signify ongoing mismanagement and perhaps wilful misconduct in closing one’s eyes to the obvious.

When Martin Sergeant, the Director of Operations at the Diocese of London, stole and gambled away £6m of charity funds, he was told by the Judge to expect a custodial sentence. The malcontent trustees used the funds for which they were responsible to pursue their own disproportionate and unregulated imprudent enterprise, like reckless gamblers chasing losses: the least we can expect is resignations.

The malcontents responsible need to recognise a simple truth; they gambled the House – it is they who should bear the loss.

Because of the nature of this material, the SC editor has decided not to accept comments for this blog post.

Thursday 10^th November was a significant day in the Christ Church Oxford saga with the publication of an Official Warning by the Charity Commission (CC) to the College.  The trustees of Christ Church are found to have failed to manage the charity’s resources responsibly.  This Warning does not bring about a retrospective resolution of the dispute between the former Dean and the Governing Body (GB).  Rather it focuses its attention on what has been an extraordinary disbursement of funds by the College authorities in their attempts to rid themselves of their Dean, Martyn Percy.  The intervention by the CC is welcome as it appears to ask some of the many questions that people have been asking over the long period of this dispute.  The CC Official Warning does not address the origins or the rights and wrongs of the College dispute.  Its main finding is that £6.6m has been spent by a charitable body in ways that involve mismanagement and/or misconduct.

Surviving Church has carried several pieces on the Christ Church story and on two occasions the contributions have been challenged by lawyers working for College or the Diocese of Oxford.  It is good to be able to have one simple undisputed fact in the current story, namely the total sum spent by the College on the dispute.  This figure of £6.6m is given for the first time in the Official Warning.  The first thing that might strike anyone about this huge sum of money is that it is actually quite hard to spend on this scale. Even lawyers and public relations firms charging top London rates need to do a lot of work to be able to earn such large fees.  Having felt some surprise at the total amount of expenditure, we need also to recognise that in order for lawyers and publicity agents to do their work, there have to be clients giving instructions.  The industrial scale of the Percy dispute suggests some of the censors/members of the GB had themselves to work extremely hard in managing the dispute process. Commissioning millions of pounds of legal work and reputation management takes time and a lot of effort.  In other words, there were, among the Christ Church fellows or Students, some who gave sacrificially of their time to coordinate this work of removing the Dean. 

When someone in an organisation gives a great deal of voluntary time to further a project, we can assume that there is strong motivation to do this.  The £6.6m project at Christ Church was, at one level, a simple one, to rid the College of its Dean. Here we may pause and recognise that a group of senior members at the College seemed ready to put themselves in a place of vulnerability as well as considerable effort to accomplish this task.  There would have been numerous meetings to attend and endless conversations with lawyers to discuss strategy.  The question we have to ask on a human level is, was it worth it?   It goes without saying that the dedication of so much time to this project required persistence and energy.  It would have been a source of considerable disappointment when various legal schemes were shot down along the way.  From the Dean’s point of view all this effort to remove him from office was experienced as severe persecutory bullying with elements of cruel sadism mixed in.    He and his family did suffer appallingly but, in a kind of perverse way, to an extent so did his persecutors.  There was something mega-obsessive about what they were doing in trying to destroy the Dean professionally and reputationally.  It is hard to see that any greater good was being served, even if the Dean had been a person threatening harm to others in the College.  No, what we observed at Christ Church was what might be described as an exhibition of entitled power, mixed up with jealousy, vindictiveness and poisonous hate.  These toxic emotions will continue to sully the lives and happiness of the persecutors over many years.  The £6.6m spent on the Dean’s persecution achieved fairly little in the end.  Its main legacy is a dark shadow which even now must impinge on the happiness and well-being of the persecutors and persecuted alike.

The persecutors of Christ Church, and those who joined in from the ranks of the CofE clergy, may have lost something more than their peace of mind.  They have put at risk another important possession, personal reputation. The College itself has also severely damaged its own institutional reputation for at least a generation or two.  This would be true even if the Dean had been shown to be a malefactor, which he has not.  Any moral high ground claimed by the College was also especially undermined when one of its team allowed the (expensive) reputation managers to feed salacious and defamatory stories about the Dean to a Sunday newspaper.  Most of the story will eventually be forgotten but some will remember the narrative of an Oxford college spending extravagantly to get rid of its head.  No one will explain why this happened.  That part of the story has not really been explained to us who live as contemporaries of these extraordinary events.

Losing one’s peace of mind to engage in persecution of an individual is one thing.  To be also part of a group that is being held to account for wasting massive sums of charitable money on an ultimately futile witch-hunt is another. This will add to a feeling of acute discomfiture among some residents of Oxford.  Sadly, the Church of England, which is tied up with the College, has not at any point covered itself with glory.  The same lawyers working for the interests of the College were also working for the Diocese of Oxford.  This has created some serious conflicts of interest.  The poison originally found in the College was allowed to spill over into the Cathedral and thence out into the diocese.  The effect of the whole episode will be around with us for a long time to come.

In summary the CC has spelled out to the trustees of the College that they must put their managerial house in order.  The CC had been shocked by its discovery of the £6.6 million spent on the persecution of the Dean.  Also, it was revealed that as much as £5.3m was approved by the trustees only retrospectively.  The CC calls on the trustees to submit to the Independent Governance Review under the oversight of Dominic Grieve KC and keep the Commission informed at every stage of this process. 

The decisive intervention by the CC in the Percy/Christ Church affair will not resolve the past injustices committed against the former Dean.  That was never the aim of the CC intervention, but the Dean’s case (and thus his reputation) will be helped by the revelation of the arbitrary and irregular practices until recently in operation in the College’s administration.  When we go right back to the beginning of the dispute between Dean and College, what we find are not stories about pay and rumoured scandal but about governance and good practice in the management of the College.  Dean Percy made valiant attempts to reform this governance. He was constantly frustrated by the obstruction of vested interests who did not welcome any involvement by the Dean in administrative matters that they regarded as their own.  It is now the task, maybe, of the CC to oversee the task that the Dean had tried to put in place but was never allowed to complete.