Recently, on the 26^th October, a 94 page document was published by the safeguarding charity, Thirtyone:eight, on the group of churches known as The Crowded House (TCH).  It is a document well worth studying because, among other things, it allows those of us who have never been part of a house-church environment to understand better how churches within this model operate.  I have chosen to focus on two aspects of this report which, between them, take us to the heart of the issues encountered by many independent churches led by single individuals.  One is  the leadership style.  The other is the question of whether the congregational members receive appropriate pastoral care for their individual needs.

TCH was originally a mission plant with indirect links to an Anglican parish, Christ Church Fulwood in Sheffield.  It was set up at the end of the 90s largely through the initiative of its founder/leader Steve Timmis.  He and another leader wrote a book exploring his vision for the congregation, called Total Church.  This appeared in 2007. I have not seen the book, although I understand that it explores the ideas of radical commitment both to God and to the church community. The small cluster of congregations that came under the umbrella of TCH in the Yorkshire/Sheffield area remained independent but developed an association with Acts 29, an American church network which strongly emphasises mission and evangelism.  Steven Timmis was later employed by the Acts 29 network to be an international director of the group.

The request, by Trustees for an independent learning review from Thirtyone:eight in February 2020, followed a critical article in the magazine Christianity Today appearing in that same month.   The article recorded the unhappiness of 15 members with the leadership style of Stephen Timmis.  They claimed that there was a pattern of spiritual abuse, bullying and intimidation.  It is impossible to attempt to summarise what the review revealed in this area, so I am taking a more global look as to why church members may sometimes find leadership oppressive.  There seems to be a tendency in churches which are initially attractive to young people and which provide exciting new experiences of church life, to go down such a path.  The main clientele of TCH when it was first set up was certainly fairly young.

It goes without saying that churches attractive to large groups of the young will feel quite different from established traditional congregations.  The main distinctiveness about such congregations is that there is great deal of youthful idealism and energy, with a readiness to be committed to a variety of programs involving, perhaps, evangelism or working in deprived areas.   Many young people will pass through large student congregations and enjoy the buzz of lively worship and preaching for the time they are students.  Because of the large numbers involved in these congregations, many will be happy to be attenders and observers rather than becoming deeply caught up in the inner life of the congregation.  Even those deeply involved have to move on for work and family reasons. They can look back and see the church of their university years as a stage in their pilgrimage.  It was never meant to be a place of permanent Christian residence.  Whatever new church they end up in, it is unlikely to demand the same things that were expected from them when they were young, free and full of energy.

TCH seems to have operated with a different model from the typical university student congregation. Although it appealed to the idealism and energy of young people when it was founded, it was also trying to create a pattern of church life for the long term. What seems to have been happening is that Timmis was expecting as much from older (30+) more mature congregants as he was from the youngest cohort.  When these older members resisted, they were told that they had ‘lost the vision’ or were no longer committed to God in the way that he, the leader, believed to be required of them.  The other issue was that some older members were expecting to grow into positions of responsibility and decision making.  Timmis had other ideas.  He wanted to preserve the same pattern of dependency that he had established when the church was first founded.  Whatever his gifts of preaching, evangelism and teaching, Timmis apparently lacked the gifts of empathy and discernment.  These would have enabled him to see that he needed to adapt to the congregation pastorally and in other ways.  His congregation was changing in terms of what they needed, and he was failing to respond to this fact.

In an interesting interview on The Pastor’s Heart, an Australian website, an Australian church leader, Stephen McAlpine, who had spent time with TCH in 2007, spoke of the tension that can occur when a highly committed group of young followers starts to grow up. Members initially come to a church excited by its offer of a vision and wanting to make their contribution to that vision.  But once they arrive, their own needs gradually come to the fore.  In short, they need to receive something back in terms of pastoral care as well as to give of themselves to the church’s vision..   The move from being idealising, energetic young believers to people facing ordinary life challenges is something that churches are not always ready for.   It is up to the leadership in any church to cope with these inevitable changes in the needs of its members.

In offering my personal take on this report, I am suggesting above all that the leader of TCH, Steve Timmis, was failing lamentably to respond appropriately to the needs of some individuals in his congregation.  This was becoming particularly apparent as these adherents of his church were growing and changing over time.  At the beginning of the journey, Timmis, as their leader, had understood well how to draw in a group of impressionable young people to share his gospel vision.  His sermons were universally appreciated.  He also found it easier to manage people when they were still in this state of dependency as they had been in the beginning.  Many of the problems uncovered by Thirtyone:eight were problems of a Timmis’ failure of flexibility to deal with individuals who were 15 -20 years older than when they had joined. He was a leader who needed to be in control, and this had the result that a part of the congregation was living in a state of suppressed frustration. Eventually this dissatisfaction exploded into a revolt and the article in the magazine Christianity Today.  A few days later Stephen Timms resigned, and the congregation asked to have a review commissioned by the safeguarding charity.  Their report is this document that we have today.

Most of the reports published about dysfunctional congregations and abuse situations in the Church of England over the past few years have involved sexual misconduct. Refreshingly there is no hint of this in the conduct of the leadership at TCH. We meet instead spiritual abuse alongside harmful examples of control, coercion and simple love of power.  The report deals helpfully and usefully with these concepts, ensuring that reader is up with the latest scholarly opinion on these topics. The Thirtyone:eight report is thus a model of informed commentary on all this material.  It can be read as a mini-textbook of applied theology and psychology which is completely up to date. 

The one thing that is missing from the TCH account is any speculation as to why Timmis should choose, consciously or not, to abuse his power.  As readers of this blog will know I have often discussed the potential issue of narcissism in religious leadership.  There are plenty of clues to suggest that Timmis, in his inability to delegate or share responsibility for the leadership of the church, was afflicted by narcissistic tendencies. In short, his identity had become so bound up with his position of controlling leader, that he could not let go of any of it without this threatening his sense of self-esteem.

Among those who suffered as the result of this narcissistic ministry were those who simply walked away.  Timmis discouraged any attempt to reach out to these leavers and they were normally ostracised as being people who had lost the vision or chosen the world in preference to radical discipleship.  According to my interpretation, these were people who had grown up and now needed something that they were not being offered, a way of living a life of discipleship compatible with family responsibilities and the demands of a career.  The remaining congregation got used to the simplistic explanations to explain these departures.  These rationales were both untrue and deeply unjust. It was also deeply damaging to declare, as TCH did, that any thought or action not coinciding with the will of the leader was sinful. Binary thinking like this always needs to be challenged. In TCH, as the report indicates, there was little in terms of challenging the leader.  A need for subservience was what was required.

The failure of TCH was a failure to allow balance and compassion to reign in the congregations.  Instead of allowing the Christian faith to enhance and enrich life, Timmis demanded from his followers a harsh and inflexible adherence to a vision that could never change.  I become very concerned when any Christian teacher suggests that Christianity is an inflexible body of truth.  Two words that are at the heart of the Christian message, compassion and forgiveness, reveal constant new insights as we ponder them and make them our own.  If these two words mean anything, they imply that God is reaching out to us where we are at that moment.  He never lays upon us impossible burdens that we cannot carry, but travels with us along life’s journey.

For the full text of the Report please click on the link

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/597b10f9ff7c509fce4c4729/t/5f9a7a535f044f0fdc82d3c8/1603959383931/Final+Report+-+The+Crowded+House+Learning+Review+-+October+2020.pdf

One of the permanent psychological legacies that many survivors of abuse have to carry is the possibility of being ‘triggered’ at any moment.  This is a kind of mental explosion which takes place when a past abusive event is reactivated by something seen or heard.  The mental shock involved in such a triggering can, in some cases, produce tears, shaking or other physical signs of distress and despair.  Most therapists who seek to help survivors are familiar with these symptoms. It does not make them easy to deal with.  They are never trivial or routine.  Triggering is a source of real pain and anguish for sufferers and it is possibly life-long for those who are afflicted by it

Recently on Youtube, a section of film, potentially triggering for survivors, appeared, which featured John Smyth, the notorious abuser.  He was speaking from South Africa about a notorious legal case there, the trial of the Paralympic athlete, Oscar Pistorius.  I watched it with a grim fascination so that I could get some feel for the man, his body language and the tone of his voice.   Hitherto I had only seen the muttered comments he had made in the fleeting Channel 4 interview with Cathy Newman in February 2017.  The date of this other interview, 2014, was at a time when Smyth was apparently able to make frequent trips to the UK from South Africa.  His evident confident carefree pose also could have contributed to a potential triggering effect for any of his victims.  The significance of the date when it was made will become apparent as we go further into reviewing some other episodes in the more recent story of Smyth.

The outline of Smyth’s story is well known to readers of this blog.  His crimes of religiously inspired acts of violence against a group of boys and young men go back to the late 70s and early 80s.  These were linked to his position as Chair of the Iwerne Trust, a charity now called Titus Trust.  The Trust changed its name in an apparent attempt to distance itself from any involvement with Smyth and his crimes.  Both charities were/are under the influence, if not the control, of the REFORM/Church Society network and their leaders.  They were set up to inculcate a cadre of privileged public-school boys with the culture and beliefs of the strand of conservative evangelicalism favoured by the network.  In general terms, what is now called the ReNew constituency upholds a style of evangelicalism which stands apart from the more widespread variant favoured in charismatic circles.  It has favoured a patriarchal style of leadership which avoids granting women positions of real responsibility.  Although the ReNew strand of teaching and practice in the Church of England is not widespread, it does have considerable influence and access to wealth and power. When the crimes of Smyth first became known to the leaders of this network in the early 80s, there were powerful individuals on hand with the necessary financial clout to ship Smyth out of the country to Africa and support him financially until his death in 2018.

The recent story of John Smyth begins in 2012.  In that year two things happened.  The first was a newspaper column written by Anne Atkins in the Mail on Sunday, when she described the bare outlines of the Smyth story without giving his name.  Anne referred to this column when she appeared on Cathy Newman’s ground-breaking Channel 4 report in February 2017.  First she admitted that the unnamed Christian leader who was guilty of beating boys was indeed John Smyth.  What was more interesting was the way that Anne recalled the consequences of revealing this information to the Mail on Sunday readers.  To quote her words in the 2017 interview, she told us that ‘the flak I received after the article was horrible actually ……(it came) from people who were senior to me.  Why are you stirring all this up?’  These few words are fairly revelatory.  It implies that Anne was got at by people who knew all about the Smyth story, but they were also senior to her. By implication, these were the leaders in the Titus/REFORM network at that time.  The words she used tell us that the attacks were plural.  Some emanated from leaders; others possibly from rank and file members of the network like herself.  All who attacked her seemed to know the full Smyth story and were upset that the dam of secrecy and concealment was being breached. 

The Mail on Sunday article in 2012 was the first crack in the great Smyth cover-up.  The second event was the beginning of a correspondence between a Smyth survivor and a senior member of the Iwerne/REFORM network.  The survivor, who calls himself Graham has kindly shared with me the chronology of his own personal attempt to bring the events in a Winchester garden shed to the attention of the Trustees of the Iwerne camps and also the wider church.  The correspondence that Graham initiated in March 2012 was seeking, in the first place, access to psychiatric help   It. continued over 2012 and the first half of 2013.  In July 2013 Graham is finally passed on to the safeguarding team of the Ely diocese.  In Graham’s words, he hoped some well-oiled process would swing into action and the end result would be an offer to find and  pay for psychiatric or counselling support. 

The details of the correspondence by Graham with Ely reveal his heightening of frustration and anger.  One issue that caused Graham considerable grief was finding that his name had been shared by the Ely DSA with the Titus Trustees, ignoring his desire not to be named.  Much of the correspondence is about finding suitable therapy and support.  The money that was found came from private sources via the Titus Trustees, but it ran out in April 2015, having lasted for barely a year.

The other preoccupation of Graham was his attempt to alert the Church authorities to the continuing threat of Smyth himself, even though he was no longer living in Britain.  The Bishop of Ely wrote to the Archbishop of Cape Town to tell him, in some detail, the issues around Smyth.  The letter I have seen made it easy to find him by enclosing his current South African address. The idea that Smyth was uncontactable was patently absurd since he was an active figure in South African legal circles, working for the Justice Alliance of South Africa.   The Bishop of Ely received no replies and in May 2015 the DSA wrote to Graham to say that he ‘had no power to compel agencies in South Africa to respond to my concerns.’  This somewhat feeble response was the best that Ely could come up with in spite of seven letters from Graham between May 2014 and August 2015 to get the Church to take the whole issue seriously. The Titus Trust, although they knew that Smyth was entering Britain regularly on visits, refused to accept that they had any moral or legal obligations over his behaviour.  From that point until the Channel 4 programme in Feb 2017, the story was like a ‘pass the parcel’ game.  Nobody wanted to accept responsibility for enquiring too deeply into the abusive legacy of this man or the danger that he potentially posed for the church in the future.  Smyth, as is well known, died in Africa in mid-2018.

The story ends with no satisfactory conclusion.  But we have to ask what might have been done to help Graham and the other victims and to bring Smyth to some form of justice.  The key person who seems missing in action is of course Justin Welby.  No one claims that Welby knew anything prior to 1982 and what he knew after that was merely that Smyth had been uncovered for unspecified misbehaviour and banished.  But he certainly did know him personally and many in the network of people that Anne Atkins refers to in the Channel 4 interview.  Welby definitely heard about the Smyth affair in the autumn of 2013, possibly a year earlier.  This was around the same time as a group of ‘senior’ church people in the REFORM network were giving Atkins ‘flak’.  If Welby knew nothing before autumn 2013, he certainly knew lots of the people who could have brought him quickly up to speed over the Smyth affair.  All the evidence (anecdotally supported by Atkins) points to the detailed story having been shared among many individuals in the REFORM network.  This had been the crucible and setting for Welby’s own Christian conversion while at Cambridge in the 70s.  Was Welby not even curious to find out the full story, when the name Smyth was first mentioned in 2013 in a safeguarding context?  If Welby had leapt to and written formally to the Archbishop of Capetown in consultation with the Bishop of Ely, that dreadful ‘triggering’ interview might never have been able to take place.  The civil authorities in both South Africa and Britain might have been alerted to do their work much earlier.  What-if scenarios are seldom profitable speculations, but there seems to have been a failure to act with energy and alacrity and allow a safeguarding catastrophe which is still reverberating within the Church.  The Makin report is unlikely to resolve all the issues over the Smyth affair.  Indeed, it will once again reveal ‘shoddy and shambolic’ practice at the heart of the Church of England.

Almost a week has now passed since the publication of the Whitsey Report. This was a very thorough independent examination of the events surrounding the revelation in 2016 that a serving Bishop had, some decades before, committed abuse crimes against children and young adults. As Bishop Whitsey, a former Bishop of Chester, had died in 1987, the focus of the Report was about the process, both nationally and locally, that had followed this disclosure. The Report, entitled A Betrayal of Trust, was chaired by David Pearl, a senior judge. Having read the whole Report, I have to say that it is extremely thorough with a great attention to detail.  In reading it, we learn quite a lot of the inner workings of the Church’s safeguarding profession, both when it works well and when there appears to be a measure of shoddy process.  At a time when the Church of England is reviewing once again its safeguarding structures, the Report is a useful and helpful document to have in setting out the way things should be done in this area.

In this blog post, at the cost of ignoring many of the strands in the Report, I want to focus on one individual who played a key role at the centre of this safeguarding drama. This is the Diocesan Safeguarding Advisor for the Chester diocese. The report does not give her name, but I see little purpose in finding it out when the absence of a name is likely to be a deliberate decision by the Report’s author. We shall, like the Report, refer to her as the DSA or the Chester DSA.  That gives the emphasis to her role and actions rather than to her personality. Overall, the Report is complimentary about her work.  She appears to have been efficient and conscientious but, as the Report shows, she was impeded by a number of factors outside her control.  These compromised her effectiveness and created a great deal of extra stress for her. What I shall be describing in this blog indicates that a detailed job description  for a Diocesan Safeguarding Advisor has yet to be given its final form.  What this particular advisor had to put up with was sometimes unreasonable and almost impossible to carry alone.

The recent part of this story begins in early January 2016 when the Chester DSA was contacted by a local clergyman.  He had received a disclosure from an individual claiming to have been sexually assaulted many years before by a deceased Bishop of Chester. A meeting was quickly arranged for the DSA to meet with the survivor, henceforth known as M2.  Further, as was required, a report was sent to the current Bishop, Peter Forster.  Because the safeguarding allegations concerned a diocesan bishop, emails were also sent to the National Safeguarding Team in London to request advice and support. By the end of January, the DSA had met Jane Dodds, the National Senior Case Work Manager.   Jane promised to convene a core group meeting to take the matter forward. The DSA waited patiently to hear further about the core group. The protocols, then as now, suggest that this should be done within a matter of days. When nothing seemed to be happening, the DSA then contacted Graham Tilby, the National Safeguarding Adviser and Jane’s boss to hurry things along.  In spite of numerous emails sent by the DSA, the core group process seems to have stalled and the Report does not get to the bottom of why this happened.  There is a suggestion that the NST was under enormous pressure of work and without adequate resources.  Meanwhile the DSA was coming under some pressure from the survivor M2.  He wanted to know what was going on and the DSA had to explain that she did not know.  Valuable time was being wasted without any proper explanation forthcoming. It was not until 25 July that the first Whitsey  Core Group meeting was finally held. In the meantime, another survivor had emerged.  The same Core Group that met to discuss the case under the chairmanship of Jane Dodds included the case of the other survivor, known as M1, as well.

One consequence of the long delay was that M2 had formed a strong bond with the DSA.  She, after all, represented the institution from which justice was being sought.  When the Core Group finally met, the members were happy to see this pastoral relationship continue, even though, as we shall see, it created complications for the DSA trying to manage the whole case with its many facets involving police, the safeguarding officials in London and the current Bishop of Chester.  The Whitsey Report did look into the long delay from the disclosure to the first Core Group meeting.  There seems to be no single explanation but plainly there were somewhere administrative failures and, as we noted above, excessive work loads.  There was also an inability by Jane Dodds (who had by then moved on to a new post) to recall any details, and this led to the Report having to admit defeat in its attempt to explain the delay.

The DSA in the early part of 2016 was thus in the unenviable situation of being caught between the needs of a survivor and a bureaucratic body in London that seemed unable to provide support or facilitate further progress in the affair.  The successor to Jane Dodds, Moira Murray, who came on the scene during 2016 also maintained a somewhat uneasy relationship with the DSA, having adopted a more centralised style of working.  To add to these stresses and strains, there was another still equally serious impediment to the DSA’s work in this case. The Bishop of Chester, Peter Forster, who was the DSA’s effective boss, took it upon himself to do his own research about his predecessor.  Without informing the DSA, he stared to ring around to find out what else might exist within the memories of the clergy who had been in the diocese during in Bishop Whitsey’s time. This ringing round produced at least one new survivor.  The Bishop then took it upon himself to interview the survivor without telling the DSA. This made for a difficult situation. According to the rules current at the time, the first task of anybody who hears a disclosure, or even a rumour of abuse, is to contact the DSA for advice. It was a difficult situation for the DSA to negotiate – to discover that your boss is, without any expertise, questioning a survivor.  Such situations can, not only create a pastoral minefield, but also add greatly to the stresses placed on a DSA.  One hope is that in future the DSAs’ authority in all safeguarding matters will be strengthened to overrule everyone, even bishops, so that nothing like this can happen again.   A further difficult situation with the Bishop arose in the November 2016 when the DSA accompanied a female survivor to see the Bishop. Because the Core Group had laid it upon the DSA the task of supporting survivors in addition to all the other work, the DSA sat in on that meeting at the Palace with two, possibly contradictory, roles. As an adviser she had a responsibility to advise the Bishop. As the pastorally competent person on the Core Group, she also had responsibilities to the survivor/victim. Which role was she supposed to play at that meeting? Whatever she decided to do it might well have compromised or contradicted the other role.  Things between the Bishop and his DSA did not improve and the Report gives details of the strained relationship into 2017.  The Bishop seemed unable to grasp that safeguarding management was best left to trained professionals. At one point a suggestion was even floated that the DSA might consider a CDM against her own bishop. 

As we have mentioned, the Chester DSA is not given a name and this has enabled us to examine the role and not a person. Out of the Report I take this confusion about exactly what are the responsibilities of a DSA as one of the main lessons to be learnt. If DSAs are to do an effective job in the future, there must be clear job descriptions and proper codes of practice to support them. It must also be possible for them to hand over at an early stage pastoral responsibility for survivors. Among the IICSA recommendations to the Church is one that commends the idea that DSA’s become officers and take a place among the senior staff in a diocese. In view of the confusions that were present in 2016 in Chester and in London, such a change cannot come too soon. It should also be impossible for any official in London to delay the setting up of a core group by six months. The consequent stresses on the local DSA as well as the survivor were considerable.  She was also having to carry other strains caused by a bishop straying into her area of responsibility, as well as a certain ambiguity in understanding exactly what her role was in the crisis that was developing. Everyone deserves to able to work with clear expectations and boundaries. When these are constantly in flux because of the whims of those with power, this is a cause of intolerable stress.

The anonymous DSA in Chester is in some ways the hero of the saga revealed by the Whitsey Report. She appears to have acted compassionately, promptly and professionally at every turn. Unfortunately, she was at different points failed by structures, human incompetence and a lack of proper support. Let us hope whether she is still in service or not, that she has fully recovered from the emotional and professional battering she received while working for the Chester diocese. Perhaps out of her stress and suffering, something good will come.  Perhaps there will be brand-new set of professional standards in the terms and conditions for all DSAs. This, after all, is possibly the main recommendation of the IICSA report. If anyone was in any doubt that this is necessary and urgent, they should read the Whitsey Report.  This is what I have done and I invite others to feel the same empathy for the hard work and stress experienced by the brave Chester DSA.

At one point in the IICSA hearings in 2019, the treatment by church leaders of a survivor of sexual abuse was described by a witness as ‘shabby and shambolic’.  This memorable choice of words was shared with both Archbishops, Canterbury and York.  They each admitted that this was a fair description of the way the survivor, Matt Ineson, had been dealt with.   The words summed up the coldness, indifference and failure of care that has contributed enormously to the suffering of Matt and many other abuse survivors.  It still continues today in spite of many declarations by leaders to the contrary.  Matt still awaits an apology for his abuse from the Church.  Another survivor is reported to have sent 17 letters to Lambeth Palace before receiving a single acknowledgement from a correspondence secretary. Matthew Ineson himself disclosed his abuse eight times to three bishops and one Archbishop.  Some of these disclosures were verbal and three were in writing.  When later challenged, some of the bishops concerned were still hazy about these meetings and one even claimed not to remember it at all. When we encounter failures of this magnitude, we realise that we are dealing with something beyond just incompetence and poor organisational skills. We are, in all likelihood, also encountering a human reluctance to face up to the suffering of another person. It is so much easier for our peace of mind if we allow ourselves simply to close our ears and eyes to what other people sometimes have to experience. We know that the pain of another person can so easily become our pain if we allow it to.  So we shut it off as though it does not exist. Is this what we are encountering in the failures of bishops and archbishops in the Church of England to meet up with and support survivors?

Any experience of suffering carried by an individual seldom makes them easy to live with. One of the untold stories of the Second World War is the arrival home of thousands of men from the fighting.  Many, possibly the majority, were suffering from what we now call post-traumatic stress. Nobody then in the therapeutic professions had really mastered the implications of what was involved in being exposed to so much violence, killing and all the other experiences of war.  Each individual soldier returning home had to deal with trauma as best he could.  The best that many could achieve was to shut down quite large areas of the personality. Children were then brought up by fathers who were not really in touch with areas of emotion or empathy. These children thus suffered as did their fathers from this experience of mass trauma brought about through war.

Today we speak about post-traumatic stress far more readily. Most people know about the symptoms which can come to anyone who is a survivor of abuse or who has witnessed a violent episode.  Much of the work of the psychotherapeutic profession is helping people to deal with events from the past which can cause them continuing trauma or stress. We seem to have a far wider recognition of the issues around stress and trauma with a greater sensitivity to the consequences to body and mind that linger after passing through such ordeals. Some people carry the memory of past trauma in their heads, but it is increasingly realised that severe stress, of whatever kind, can have effects on the body as well. Headaches, palpitations and panic attacks seem to oppress many people including survivors. On top of that we are all familiar with the way that stress and trauma can result in severe episodes of depression.

My impression of church abuse survivors is that, like WWII survivors, many have buried the memory of their individual traumas as a way of coping with their PTSD. Those who do speak openly about what they have suffered, are probably not typical. But when we have the testimony of survivors who are prepared, at considerable cost to themselves, to relive and speak of what they have been through, we should be extremely grateful to them. Our gratitude is partly in the fact that they are speaking on behalf of others for whom the Church also has a continuing responsibility – the silent ones still coping with trauma.  Everyone who has endured the pain of abuse, whether they are silent or vocal, is worthy of our compassion and attempts at practical help.  The vocal survivors, the ones who have come forward to speak openly of their abuse, have had to possess considerable stamina and courage.  They are not necessarily comfortable people to have around.  They force us to confront evil, shame and pain.  They also remind us how people we want to rely on, trusted church leaders, are sometimes prone to failure with devastating consequences. The recent IICSA report on the Church of England was greatly shocking.  Some of these leaders were actual abusers but many more have failed badly through their inertia and a failure to act when compassion and justice demanded it.   In the past few days, the House of Bishops, has now begun to show some proactive energy in putting right some of the poor decisions and failures of the past.  The protestations of ‘will do better’ seem now to have a certain weight behind them.  They will be still more effective if the insights of survivors are drawn into the process.  Their experiences make them a vital part of the much-needed process of redress and reconciliation.  The culture of niceness and deference will be the more quickly overcome if the realism of survivors and their past confrontations with both human evil and institutional inertia is brought within the process.

We need to reflect a little further on this narrative of bishops and other church leaders who appeared so inept and incompetent in their failure to listen or respond to the stories of suffering told them by survivors.  This seems to be, in the first place, about people unable to handle emotional discomfort. Other people’s suffering is a threat to their own sense of well-being.  It thus has to pushed away. It is extraordinary how common this account of shunning, ignoring or avoiding survivor accounts seems to be.  When we hear of promises by senior religious leaders to meet sufferers which are not followed up, we have to ask, what are they afraid of?  Every priest, as part of their day-to-day work, faces the unbelievable pain told to them by others. They cannot draw back from the officiating at a funeral of a two-year-old child on the grounds that it would be upsetting.  Pain, whether our pain or that of someone else, is the reality that many have to deal with, both as clergy and laypeople. Surely bishops cannot afford to be seen to fail in this basic pastoral task.

A second reason for the failures of church leaders recorded by Matt Ineson, Gilo, Jo KInd and others, may be accounted for by the way that bishops have become creatures of the institution. Because they are all public figures, they are apparently no longer allowed to think and behave as individual human beings. While there are notable exceptions to this pattern, it seems that episcopal reactions and encounters with the public are carefully staged managed and manipulated under the supervision of advisers and reputation managers. Almost the only positive thing to be said about Donald Trump is the way that he has allowed his personality to be exposed fully to the American public.  It is not mediated through a publicity machine. What we see is in fact ugly and toxic, but at least it represents the reality of his personality. In most institutions, every word, every decision and every appearance of a leader is carefully choreographed. It cannot be easy to be a bishop and sacrifice along the way much spontaneity and empathy. There must be among the bench of bishops, individuals who pine for the days when they could simply be themselves and respond to others primarily as a human being rather than as a creature managed by the system.

 The rebuilding of the church will need a great deal in the way of authentic leadership, one which is currently invisible. We need to see the human face of leadership, not the carefully crafted stance or statement of a communications expert. I am sure that the majority within the church would prefer to see such honesty and authenticity. They also want to identify with fresh, dynamic and effective compassion for those who have been so cruelly treated by abuse and the subsequent manipulations by the church system wanting to protect itself.

by Andrew Graystone Part 2

In October, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual abuse published a coruscating report on the Church of England’s treatment of victims and survivors of abuse. In November we expect a similarly damning report into the work of the Roman Catholic Church. The focus now turns to the provision of redress for survivors.

The Church of England’s General Synod has already committed itself to providing redress – but I wonder how much thought has been given to what that actually means. It’s important to get this right. In recently-published research to accompany the inquiry, IICSA discovered that 74% of respondents said that their overall experience of the process of seeking redress was negative. Survivors consistently said that organisations underestimate the significant emotional and practical cost of seeking redress…especially where it is long and drawn out. Presumably the church doesn’t want this – especially given that survivors have already said that the process of disclosure and investigation is in itself deeply abusive.

As an aid to getting this right, it might be helpful to start by setting out what redress does not mean. 

Redress is not compensation

Travel insurance policies often come with a gruesome table of compensation payable for physical harm that might occur to the policy holder: so much for the loss of a limb; so much for the loss of an eye, and so on. It’s brutal, but practical. When an individual has been physically or spiritually invaded, as happens in abuse, there is no way to undo what has been done. Like insurance policies, some forms of address might attempt to put a monetary value on the loss that has occurred. But of course, money can’t make up for the loss of a limb, and nor can it pay for the loss of childhood, physical integrity or mental wellbeing that is caused by abuse. To put a cash value on a rape, for instance, is abhorrent, and ignores the context in which it happened, and the betrayal of trust involved. Redress may include compensation, but it is certainly not limited to it.

Redress is not a fine

Break the speed limit and you may be punished with a fine, or even the deprivation of your driving license. The fine is both a punishment and a deterrent to re-offending. The deprivation of your license is intended to guarantee that you won’t do it again, at least for a while. Redress for victims is intended neither to punish nor to deter the church. If it was, then current church leaders might feel aggrieved that they were being asked to accept punishment for what others had done, maybe in a previous generation. Of course, costly redress may well encourage the current generation of church leaders to be even more vigilant to stop contemporary offenders. But redress is not primarily intended to be punitive.

Redress is not ‘one size fits all’  

Part of the nonsense of the travel insurance tariff is that it doesn’t take account of context. The loss of a leg is terrible for anyone, but for an athlete it is also career-ending. Redress needs to take account of context. And whilst for one victim, their abuse may have robbed them of job, housing and pension, another victim might have independent means, so that monetary compensation isn’t so important. Redress will require different things for different people. It won’t be possible to produce an off-the-peg package. Bespoke solutions are needed for every individual harmed by the church.

Redress is not all about money

Until now, the church has assumed that redress simply meant giving a victim an appropriate amount of money. What’s more the church has assumed that the right amount of money is the amount the insurance company is prepared to pay. (It never seems to have occurred to church leaders that they might be under-insured, or that insurance companies have an incentive to minimise payments, using means that might go wholly against the church’s values.) Redress comes in many forms, and looks different for every victim. Some need to hear an apology from an individual, or from an institution. (Here it becomes obvious that a meaningful apology cannot be issued by press release A majority of IICSA respondents said that an apology was the most important aspect of redress.  General or weasel apologies are easily recognised.)  Some need the church to  acknowledge failings in the management of their case. Some victims do need financial compensation for losses they have incurred. Others need money for support services, such as the provision of counselling or paid medical care. For some victims, non-monetary actions like the provision of explanation or information is important. They want to know who knew what, when, or how something was allowed to happen. Some victims might need opportunities for their creativity to be validated, whilst others might need funding for a holiday with their family to start to draw a line under what has happened. There are endless other components that might make up a redress package. Some require funds, but others don’t. Last but not least, some survivors need spiritual support – which may of course need to come from outside the offending church.

Redress is not an event

It will be obvious by now that redress cannot be a single event. The damage suffered by a victim might have occurred on a particular day, (though in the vast majority of cases it occurred over an extended period,) but the trauma suffered by a victim is chronic, and may well be lifelong. Redress cannot be delivered in a day, or fulfilled by the writing of a cheque, however large. The church has a duty of care to its victims that is lifelong. In practice, this means that redress needs to be approach on a stipendiary basis. It is clearer to see it as a form of pension rather than a redundancy payment. Need and trauma revisit a victim regularly, and the monetary, practical and spiritual support a victim receives will need to continue for as long as it is needed.

Does all of this seem overwhelming – like a debt that can never be paid? It is. This is not a ‘problem’ like a leaking church roof, that can be ‘fixed’ by a special offering or a single act of contrition. The cost of abuse to a victim is immeasurable, and the cost to the church will be equally huge, not only in money but in time, detailed care and…well, let’s say it, love.

Having identified what redress is not, let me outline briefly some of the factors that need to be considered in determining what it is.

There are two main dynamics of redress: compensatory and restorative.

Compensatory factors

The first dynamic to be considered in relation to redress is compensation. This is effectively the debt owed by the church to the victim. It comes in several forms.

Compensation in respect of the abuse itself 

Notwithstanding what I have said above about the impossibility of making monetary recompense for abuse, money is one of the ways we can provide some comfort to a victim. Natural justice suggests that if an individual’s life has been made unbearable by abuse, we should do what we can in other ways to make it more bearable. This type of compensation can never equate to the abuse itself. How could it? How much money would make up for a child having been forcibly raped by an adult?  A ludicrous question. We can’t put a figure on such an awful experience – and yet from sheer compassion we owe it to those who have been injured to make them as comfortable as possible.

Compensation for the loss of earnings, savings or status. 

Abuse has physical, mental and spiritual consequences. They may express themselves in mental breakdown, depression, addiction or loss of confidence. It is common for individuals to lose their job or their business, or to be unable to manage their finances well.  As a result, many victims have suffered tangible losses as a direct result of their abuse. Redress needs to take full account of actual losses. This will certainly mean that the church will need to pay off debts or medical bills, or whatever else has left the victim indebted. It may mean repaying the costs of therapy, which may have cost the victim many thousands of pounds over many years.

 But a proper redress scheme might go further, and include compensation for the loss of a potential future. Imagine that a child suffers appalling abuse, and is so damaged that they go “off the rails” and miss out on much of their education. Perhaps they could have gone to university, or had a significant career, but as a result of the abuse they ended up in much reduced circumstances. Should they be compensated for what might have been, as well as what they actually lost?  If so, how can that be measured?

Compensation in respect of the mishandling of the process. 

For many survivors, a great deal of the pain and suffering associated with their situation comes not only from the experience of abuse itself, but from the ways in which they have been dealt with by the church. We now know that many have been lied to or discredited; some have been made to wait for months or years for help.  Redress needs to include not just the repair of the original abuse, but compensation for this experience too.  In this case it is important that compensation in respect of the mishandling of the process should be sufficiently costly as to be punitive to the church. If compensation in this area doesn’t cost the church dearly, there will be little incentive to get processes in order for the future. Conversely, if failings on the part of the church make a real difference to those who are responsible today, there will be a strong incentive to handle the process of disclosure well and justly. 

Restorative factors

The second aspect of redress is the restorative dynamic.

If the compensatory dynamic is characterised as debt-based, the restorative dynamic is characterised as needs-based. The key question is, what does this individual need to restore them to a good place, a healthy place, where they can flourish in the years left to them? Again, this aspect of redress might take many forms, and will be different for each survivor. For some, their overwhelming need is for security. If the trauma of abuse has left you feeling insecure about everything, the restorative process needs to address whatever it is that will make you feel secure. In this instance, a redress process that is conditional, or that continues to drip-feed resources to the victim at the whim of the church will only add to the abuse. A victim struggling with insecurity needs a sufficient guarantee from the start that they will not be left wanting in the future.  A victim who is left with overwhelming shame might need some form of public validation. A victim who feels that they lost their vocation because of their abuse might need help to rediscover and realise it. All of this is complex, deeply pastoral, and a million miles from the approach that simply looks to sign a cheque and send the victim away.  Time and again in the gospels, we see Jesus not only healing people’s physical wounds and disabilities, but more importantly, restoring them to society in ways that allow them to flourish.

In conclusion I need to add three small but highly significant points. 

The first is that for every primary victim of abuse, there are any number of secondary victims, whose needs also need to be taken into account. Partners, children and friends may also have suffered hugely as a direct result of the original abuse and the church’s subsequent mismanagement. The family and congregation of the offender may also be counted as secondary victims. Any worthwhile system of redress must be relational, taking into account the needs of the victims in the context of their family and community

The second point is that in the case of church-related abuse (or other kinds of abuse for that matter) we need to take account of the spiritual damage the victim has suffered. We can hardly expect IICSA to comment on this in detail, but the lack of care from the church for the souls of victims is perhaps the most incomprehensible and reprehensible aspect of the church’s failings in safeguarding. Church leaders seem to find it very difficult to look this challenge in the eye, but it is starkly obvious to the general public, and it is amongst the primary factors in the decline in church adherence in the UK. Spiritual repair, at an individual and corporate level, will be the truest sign of a sea change in the church’s attitude to safeguarding.

Finally, a practical suggestion for those who find the whole business of redress overwhelming. I commend the notion of “snapshot” restoration as a starting point for the church’s approach. This model defines a fixed point in the victim’s story, and attempts as a start to restore them to where they were financially, spiritually and socially to where they were at that fixed point. It’s a bit like those computer programmes that will restore your data to a fixed point in the past, before it went wrong. One obvious snapshot to choose is the moment at which the individual disclosed their abuse to the church. The church’s duty to restore a victim as best as possible to that point seems unarguable, since surely we can’t justify a survivor being worse off for having disclosed their abuse.  That doesn’t define the totality of redress. It doesn’t begin to address the debt owed for the original abuse, or the deepest needs of the victim. But it is measurable and manageable, and it answers the oft-heard cry of the victim that “I wish I could go back to where I was the day before I disclosed.”

by Andrew Graystone

In February 2019 the General Synod voted unanimously to urge its National Safeguarding Steering Group to “bring forward arrangements for redress for survivors.” An emotional debate was notable for the new Lead Bishop of Safeguarding saying that redress would require “serious money” from the church, and for Canon John Spence of the Archbishops’ Council responding that “This is not about affordability, it is about justice. . . The funds for redress will be found.”

For all the commitment implied by a unanimous vote, I’m not sure that most Synod members have fully understood what redress looks like, or indeed what the theological rationale for it might look like. There is further work to be done in understanding redress, and a great deal to be learned from other institutions have led the way.  In this blog I want to offer some early theological principles that might guide the church in deciding how to manage this very practical work over the next few years.  I will do so by looking at three stories from Luke’s gospel where some form of redress seems to be in play: Jesus’ parable of the Bad Priests and the Good Samaritan, his encounter with Zacchaeus the tax collector, and his brief meeting with the servant of the High Priest in the garden of Gethsemane.

The Bad Priests and the Good Samaritan  (Luke 10:25-37)

This is a parable that ought to make very painful reading for every church member, and especially for religious professionals. The priest and the Levite in Jesus’ story not only walked past the injured man; they actually crossed the road so as not to come too close to him. If this story were to be read in the context of church-based abuse, another layer of shame would apply. Imagine if the priest and Levite walked by, knowing that the victim’s injuries had been caused not by some random highwaymen, but by members of their own profession.

But I want to focus on the response of the Samaritan. First, he notices, and takes pity, and goes to the man to engage directly with him. Meeting victims at close hand is always a painful, challenging business, but this Samaritan is prepared to enter into the mess and get the victim’s blood on his own hands. This can’t have been pleasant, and it certainly wasn’t convenient. The Samaritan interrupted his own plans to look after the victim. Every human, including but not limited to Christians and their leaders, is mandated to interrupt their own plans to tend to the wounded person they meet in the street. Often we have seen church leaders resisting meeting with victims, or at best, meeting them on their own terms in their own places.

The Samaritan goes much further. He stops, goes to the victim, and takes the man with him to a place of safety. Then he takes personal care of him until it is clear that he is secure.  Then he entrusts the future care of the victim to an inn-keeper, providing generous funding. Then he arranges to revisit the man, and promises to pay the bill for his future care. “‘Look after him, and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.”

Jesus invites his listeners to commend the Samaritan for his approach; stopping, getting personally involved, staying with the victim, and paying for his long-term needs. He does all this for a stranger – indeed for a natural enemy. This is not simply justice, but something far bigger. The Samaritan is being commended for a deep and costly compassion that is centred solely on the needs of the victim. We can be sure that the victim, violently attacked and robbed by strangers, was not expecting such care. Probably the attack had robbed him of far more than his money. It had destroyed his sense of safety and self-worth, and his faith in human community. The actions of the Samaritan stranger went far beyond stopping the bleeding and patching up the man’s wounds. We can imagine that in the security provided by the Samaritan’s attentive care, the man began to take the first faltering steps to rebuild his faith in the possibility of goodness, or even just in his ability to walk down the street in safety.

A redress scheme in the name of the church will be intimate, detailed, and committed over the long term, like the Samaritan’s care of his new friend. It is not for contemporary leaders to distance themselves from the debts of those who went down the road before them. Instead, they need to discover the grace in the opportunity to serve the wounded they have met by chance at the side of the road.

Zacchaeus  (Luke 19:1-10)

The story of Zacchaeus the tax collector is well-known from Sunday School. The emphasis is often placed on Jesus’ willingness to restore even a cheating tax official to his band. Less is made of Zacchaeus’ personal redress scheme. In the story, Jesus doesn’t demand that Zacchaeus should make amends for his previous extortions. The initiative comes from Zacchaeus himself, as a response to Jesus’ unconditional welcome of him. “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

There are two elements to Zacchaeus’ plan. The first is to divest himself of 50% of his income. Why does he do this? Presumably because he feels that the possession of so much wealth, and the power that went with it, was in itself part of the problem that had corrupted him. It doesn’t seem to matter where all this wealth goes, as long as it goes. He simply needs to be poorer in order to re-enter society as a follower of Christ.

The second element of Zacchaeus’ plan is specifically related to those he has abused. He’s not only going to pay them back; he’s going to pay them four times what he owes them. It is an act of reckless generosity. It is more than enough to restore what he stole from his victims. It goes further, restoring the relational damage between them, and then further, restoring the self-esteem of the victim, and further still– giving in excess, for the joy of giving and of receiving.

Any redress scheme in a church context that seeks to minimise reparations due, or to preserve the wealth of the offender, will be missing this vital element of excessive, joyful generosity. The church should approach the business of redress with joy and open-handed generosity. And if there are margins of error, they must fall to the benefit of the victim. 

The High Priest’s Servant  (Luke 22:47-51)

This tiny moment occurs at one of the high points of tension in the gospel narrative. It is so small that the other three evangelists miss it altogether. But it is a momentous act of real significance to those seeking to enact redress. Jesus is with his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane. The exhausted disciples are woken from sleep by the sudden arrival of soldiers to arrest Jesus. In the panic, Peter draws his sword and lashes out, catching the servant of the High Priest and cutting off his ear. It is a petty, ineffectual and desperate act – meaningless in defence of Jesus, but life-changing for the poor man who loses his ear. 

In the midst of the melee,  with his own life in imminent danger, Jesus stops everyone in their tracks. “Enough of this!” he says.  He goes to the young servant, touches his ear, and miraculously heals it. Jesus didn’t cause the problem, and Peter couldn’t fix it. There were a great many other things for Jesus and the disciples to be concerned with. Yet in the heat of the moment, Jesus stops everything, and takes time to heal a man that one of his disciples has wounded.

Church leaders have many things to worry about. They are concerned with declining influence, waning finances, poor reputation and all of the problems of an increasingly secular society. Providing adequate redress for victims of abuse from previous generations must seem sometimes like an irritant; a drain on time and resources with little positive benefit to the church.  And yet the ministry of healing, of which the delivery of redress is a core part, is not peripheral to the church’s mission, but the very heart of it. The church does not need to deliver redress in order that it can get on with its work of mission and ministry. Following the model of Jesus, it needs to see the delivery of redress to victims of abuse as an essential part of its ongoing mission.  

If there is one common factor in all three stories it is this: in each case the actors stop what they are doing to attend to the victims. In this, the church has so far fallen short. It has tried to manage the business of safeguarding failure whilst carrying on with business as usual. There has been no national act of contrition; no moment of drawing a line. Perhaps the first step for the church in considering how to make redress to victims of abuse in its midst is to stop everything; to look into the eyes of victims, and look into the mirror. The publication of the IICSA report seems the ideal opportunity to do this. Without stopping, it is hard to see how the church as a whole will be able to tend appropriately to those it has hurt, and in doing so, receive the grace of God.

I recently read somewhere online the statement that Bishop X is a narcissist. The identity of this bishop is not of importance for this reflection and, indeed, this claim does not need to be true to be pointing us towards something important. If such an accusation ever were to be true, if a person in charge of any organisation were indeed to be a narcissist, then we need to think about the way that this would impact on the institution.  In the case of a diocese it could create dysfunction, unhappiness and possibly even chaos in its wake.

I need, first of all, to define in approximate terms what I mean by narcissism. It is one of those slippery words which has become ubiquitous in this present century. I am aware of a Freudian use of the word, but it never reached the discourse of ordinary people until quite recently. I first became aware of the relevance of the word to my interests around 15 years ago. An Australian study of charismatic leadership by Len Oakes, drew my attention to the way that narcissistic categories were a useful way of understanding the motivation and style of some religious leaders.  There are certain words that undergird my understanding of narcissism.  Words like messianic grandiosity, insatiable need for approval and applause, as well as a sense of entitlement, seem to form some of the building blocks of the disorder of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).  In short, the definition of narcissism which I take from the standard Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is one that emphasises an overwhelming need, even addiction, for attention and applause of others.  Combined with this self-centred approach to life, there is a pathological absence of empathy or care for others.

The description of narcissistic personality disorder in the textbooks is, of course, a disability which touches almost everyone to a greater or lesser extent. Most people care about their self-esteem, but it is most often sub-clinical.  It is, in other words, seldom destructive of their ability to understand what other people are feeling or thinking. In recent years we have had the living example of narcissistic grandiosity coupled with complete disdain for other people in the person of President Trump. There have been frequent attempts to show how he fulfils every single one of the nine text-book criteria for NPD. I want to work with a focus with just two of these nine categories. The first is an insatiable hunger for approval and the second is a pathological inability to practise or feel empathy.

I have frequently come back to this phenomenon of narcissism in my interest in the issues around safeguarding and power abuse.  In the first place, a perpetrator of abuse is quite likely to be a NPD sufferer with a deadened conscience.  This enables him/her to harm a vulnerable individual without any apparent awareness of the damage that is being caused.  In the disordered pattern of thinking that may be present in the perpetrator, the only thing that comes to matter is a need to find gratification. Abuse of the weak is somehow feeding that narcissistic addiction for sensation and power.

 A major problem for many survivors is that the narcissism found in their abuser is also found in a different form in the institution they look to for protection.  If a bishop or responsible leader is afflicted by a degree of narcissism, they may well re-abuse the victim.  I am not suggesting that the bishop will want to treat the abused person as a target for further sexual exploitation.  Sadly though, this scenario did play out in one case study recorded by IICSA.  No, a more common danger is for the narcissistically inclined bishop to treat the victim/survivor as merely a problem to be managed.  Narcissism may well have blunted the needed empathy for the victim as well as imagination.  The response on the part of the leader will thus fail the survivor in various ways.  Because of a failure of empathy. the abuse is seen as a threat to reputation of the institution and not as a human tragedy involving acute betrayal and suffering.  In short, a bishop with strong narcissistic tendencies will behave like a committee man, managing, deflecting and avoiding the pain and the deepest needs of the survivor for the sake of the institution that he/she represents. 

In a paper I gave to the International Cultic Studies Association in 2019, I explored the idea that institutions themselves were a contributory factor in creating narcissism within individuals. The textbooks have put forward the idea that narcissistic individuals are those who are the victims of deficient forms of upbringing. I suggested that hierarchical structures, which offer status and power to leaders, create mental attitudes inside certain susceptible individuals. These can push them towards narcissism.  In other words, institutions themselves, with the tools of aggrandisement at their disposal, are able to create an institutional type of narcissism. Many of us are susceptible to the charms of such power and status.   But this narcissistic grandiosity seems to come at the cost of a depletion of our capacity for true empathy and care for the afflicted. These qualities are sometimes severely compromised in us, if not completely destroyed.

The statement that Bishop X is a narcissist suggests that there may be a serious threat to his/her proper functioning in the domain in which his/her oversight prevails. One part of narcissism, the appetite for glory and thrones, is possibly able to be restrained by the checks that most institutions possess. What is less manageable is a deficit in a capacity for empathy on the part of a bishop/leader. In short, if an abuse victim approaches the institution and finds there in its leader an implacable failure of empathy and care, he/she will be driven back into the hellhole that the original abuse had cast them into. This failure of empathy is not just something that affects the bishop’s one-to-one relationships within the diocese. It is likely to impinge on the whole gamut of relationships that exist across the board. A bishop who does not practise empathy may be extremely good at management.  The boards over which he/she has power may function well, but, at the same time, they may be soulless and cold organisations. Love and the warmth of the spirit have fled from the structures. Who would want to work in such a chill dark place where efficiency has usurped human love?

The opposite of narcissism within an institution will be a place demonstrating all the qualities of Christian love, empathy, openness and reconciliation. When there is secrecy, protectionism and institutional coldness, there is simply nothing to attract anyone from the outside. Somehow in these post –IICSA days, the church has to recover these non-narcissistic values to be able to show to those looking in that our church is a place of integrity, warmth and conducive to human and spiritual wholeness. I would hope that most clergy would want precisely these things and that they are doing all in their power to help to bring them about. This task will be made far harder when the institution for which they work and which they represent, is suddenly shown to be less than compassionate and caring for those outside its walls, and indeed some of those within.

– Anonymous

We are sorry

It is very hard

I do understand

It is all very difficult and we must do better

I was shocked by what I read

It was awful and I was saddened by it

We are ashamed of what has happened

We cannot go on like this

But some things have already improved

We are on a journey (please be patient)

We are full of regret

*

We are heading in the right direction

This will take time

We are listening and always have been

Bear with me I am on a steep learning curve

Obviously, I am concerned for you

We are taking steps (please be patient)

And we setting up proper processes

We are putting aside some money

I can’t say how much, or when, but hopefully soon

We need increased resources

I cannot answer that question now

I can’t say any more at this stage

*

We really are extremely sorry

I only have words

Yes, We know that words are not enough

That they do not compensate

But words are all we have at the moment -sorry

I understand your pain – I really do

So we will be putting new structures in place

It is hard to say exactly where responsibility lies

We know that this must be frustrating for you

Believe me – no-one is more frustrated than I am

Of course we care, which why I am talking now

I am committed to real change (please be patient)

We are sorry.  Believe me.

“The culture of the Church of England facilitated it becoming a place where abusers could hide.”  This sentence from the IICSA report was quoted many times in the past week and it raises the question in my mind about what precisely this word ‘culture’ means in this context.  My wanting to think about this is also prompted by the use of a phrase by Archbishop Justin when, in 2018, he spoke about the culture of deference in relation to the abuse crisis.  These two uses of the word ‘culture’ have stimulated me into thinking what might be the things about the Church that allow abuse of various kinds to happen.  Other church leaders have spoken of the need for a change of culture to help the Church move forward in the future.  Nobody, as far as I know, has spelt out what exactly these culture changes might involve.  To take a popular definition of culture as being ‘the way we do things round here’, we need to ask these two questions.  What is it about the way we do things in church that makes abuse possible?  I will not be able to exhaustively mention every aspect of the Church’s distinctive culture, but at least provoke some discussion about this important question.  Then we have to ask, how can we try to change the culture of the Church that will help its members protect the vulnerable from abuse?

I want to begin with the use by Archbishop Justin of the term, ‘culture of deference’.  But, rather than exploring what he might have meant by using that term, I want to put forward my own understanding of the expression.  For me, the best way of understanding this word deference is to notice, first of all, how most traditional churches have a well-defined traditional hierarchy within their structures. These hierarchies are marked by titles, special robes and an air of deferential respect for those individuals who have been chosen to be exalted above others. From the outside, a church hierarchy, and the deference that it attracts, appears to be slightly surreal.  It has a touch of the theatrical about it. For those inside the church bubble, it seems all perfectly normal and everyone adapts themselves to living with it.  The negative aspect of hierarchy, as we have discovered this past week, is that institutions with hierarchies will utilise the power possessed by them to protect themselves from attack of any kind.  An individual who harbours nefarious designs on the vulnerable, will have often been able to escape punishment or detection if he/she was sufficiently embedded in and valued by the church structure. 

Different church cultures have differing expressions of hierarchy.  For example, in high church circles bishops and clergy will be looked upon with a certain awe.  They are sometimes venerated with a slight bow by laypeople. When these exalted individuals come into conversation with those ‘below’ them, there can be a consequent social awkwardness which makes communication difficult. Such embarrassment and reticence on the part of many towards their ecclesiastical betters is something that will irritate many bishops and clergy.  Others, on the other hand, may enjoy this access to institutional/hierarchical power and the feeding of narcissistic hungers.  If this sense of superiority results in a lack of real concern for the flock, this will not help when it comes to doing the right thing for abuse survivors.

Within the conservative evangelical/charismatic world, we find similar deference towards leaders, albeit within a different cultural form. In some settings, this looking up to leaders is fostered by keeping the leaders at some distance from the ordinary people in the congregation. This helps to give them a certain mystique.  The public persona is only seen in a controlled and artificial context, such as preaching at a main service.  This may be laid on with the trappings of theatre, using special dramatic lighting effects and accompanied by professional singers. The leader of a mega-church will seldom speak one-to-one with the individuals under his nominal care. It will be one of the numerous staff members that actually deal with the individual when a problem arises. The sheer inaccessibility of many of the important leaders in the evangelical/charismatic world gives them a kind of mythical status. They become objects for projective fantasy. The very fact that they are not known personally to the majority gives them added power with congregation members. Cult leaders have always known the importance of not getting too close to the followers, since by doing so, they might expose their fallible humanity, and in the process destroy the mystique that has been created around them.

Having identified this problem of deference in the church, which is so ubiquitous, and which makes it difficult for many churches to operate as communities of care, we move on to another perennial problem, the culture of niceness. Christian people are routinely expected to be kind and considerate folk, especially to the fellow members of their congregation. The problem for many congregations is a failure to recognise that toxic behaviour can often coexist with a nice pleasant exterior. My interest in the church as a retired clergyman, has for a long time been in exploring the power dynamics which swirl just below the surface in so many congregations. Sometimes it is the clergyman who is exploiting his position of influence to gain personal power; on other occasions it may be a prominent layperson who is creating factions and cliques to gain advantage, materially or socially. Whatever the particular power scenario that may exist within a congregation, it is extraordinarily difficult to sort it out. There are two problems. One is that no one has the authority to come into a congregation and, as we say, knock heads together. The second problem is the way that Christian people are very bad at identifying and naming the toxicity of the power games that may occur within a congregation. They know how to be nice but not how to challenge a difficult individual who is on a personal power trip  This grasping for power may also sometimes involve grooming or sexual abuse. I expect that every reader of this short piece will be able to tell a story of an event where somebody exploited this culture of niceness to obtain for themselves the gratifications of power.

The third cultural factor which afflicts churches of all traditions is a culture of lay passivity. The traditional layout of the church which places the pulpit some 6 feet above the level of the pews is a kind of metaphor for the dynamic of much church life, both the Sunday services and beyond. One individual is set over the majority and the culture of the church has required that sermons be delivered with no response on the part of the people. This tradition is not without its value and I know that it would be extremely hard to change it. It does, however, seem extraordinary that every week an authoritative discourse is delivered without any opportunity for folk to comment or reply. At a time when, in a congregation, there are likely many better educated than their clergy, this tradition seems an anomaly.  Should it still be tolerated in this century?  I do not claim to have ever been in a church which has challenged this tradition.  From the outside it must look very strange. It seems to speak of an unequal access to power, church governance, knowledge and spiritual wisdom. Is this really what we want to convey to the outsider looking in? Come to our church.  You are welcome as long as you cooperate, obey and leave your questioning brain at the door.  Allow yourselves to receive the wisdom that the ordained minister alone can offer you.

Deference, niceness and passivity are cultural features of organisations like the Church that sometimes allow toxic behaviour, including child abuse, to flourish in its dark places. If people are afraid to question, challenge and pursue justice when things go wrong, then there will often be this possibility for dysfunction and power abuse to exist within the whole. If bishops are calling for a culture change to help prevent the abuse of vulnerable, they should help us by spelling out what it is they want us to change. Here I am suggesting three common cultural aspects of our church life which seem to enable toxically disordered behaviour sometimes to emerge.  From the outside they all appear anomalous in the present century.  Perhaps we should all become much more aware of how the Church is increasingly beginning to fail to resonate with the longings, needs and aspirations of ordinary people.  They look for community and find toxic power games.  They seek answers to deeply held questions.   All that they seem to receive is answers to questions they have not asked and no understanding of the meaning of their own questions.  The final failure of the Church is in the stark reality of what has been laid out by IICSA.  We have revealed before us a Church that for decades has failed to protect its most weak and vulnerable.  The last failure comes in the contexts of the others we have named.  There has been a massive failing of communication and connection between the deepest values of the Gospel culture and the people of Britain.  We have a long uphill battle to fight.   We desperately need leadership and prophetic vision to help us see the Christian faith beyond the narrow cultural expression of our Churches.

In many ways the report that came out today contained few surprises. Indeed, it was less radical in its criticisms, even to the point of appearing to provide the Church a much easier ride than they might have expected.   Much of the material was a description of the church structures that have come into being over the decades and even centuries.  The Church of England is extremely difficult to fathom so it was probably necessary to describe its workings in some detail for the reader.   It is impossible, for example, to liken the Church to the army or a large public company. Lines of responsibility do not work in a way that would be understood elsewhere. It is all too easy in such complicated and sometimes unaccountable structures for offenders to be hidden away and, at the same time, for abuse victims to be ignored and disempowered. The reader of the report learned, if he/she did not know already, how much power and influence a bishop possesses within his or her diocese. This has made the task of oversight for safeguarding officials sometimes almost impossible.   One of the main recommendations of the Report is that the role of Safeguarding Officer in each diocese should have independence from the Bishop.  This would enable them to make decisions and choose to pursue cases of abuse in a professional way. 

One issue which is close to my heart as a supporter of survivors, is the pursuit of justice for this group. Many things are destroyed by the experience of abuse, as we have seen in earlier blogs.  Among the things that are often destroyed is a healthy relationship with the Church and a confidence in its officers.  The report refers to several stories by survivors of conversations with Church senior people which were then ‘forgotten’.  The rule that disclosures of abuse must be recorded in writing by the one hearing such allegations has been a requirement for the Church since 1999.  When there has been this kind of neglect and a history of incompetent care for survivors, it becomes difficult to trust these same individuals as well as the institution they represent. They feel totally abandoned in many cases. The report sums up this dilemma when it inserts a passage from a third-party report. ‘The Church of England is yet to regain fully the trust of those who have been abused. It has been slow to find ways to engage effectively with victims and survivors or to learn from their experiences.’ For me, this failure to engage with and care for survivors is one of the most painful aspects of the whole safeguarding failure that has been witnessed over two or three decades. Whatever may be promised in the recent church initiatives for safeguarding, there is still a terrible legacy of a sense of betrayal alongside a feeling that the Church cannot be trusted.

This word mistrust is perhaps a good one to summarise this bitter legacy from the past.  It has done so much damage to the Church itself and to the continued well-being of the survivor population. Even if the IICSA report helps to create a new realism about safeguarding matters right across the board, this legacy issue of mistrust is one to be confronted and dealt with. It is not just the survivors who are looking out for a successful conclusion to the injustices of the past, the wider public has also felt betrayed by the Church’s failures to be a safe home for children and the vulnerable.   All realise how important it is to rebuild communication between the Church, those who have become its victims and those who look on.

This task of rebuilding trust with survivors and the watching public will be a very difficult one.  The situation that exists at present can be described fairly simply.  Institutional power wielded by bishops and others, aided by the services of expensive lawyers, communications experts and reputation managers has, for a long time, managed to keep victims and survivors largely invisible.  The emergence of some of this reality through the IICSA hearings has revealed all the ‘dirty tricks’ that have been played against this group of survivor/victims.  It has caused bitterness, frustration and a sense of continuing victimhood among many. Their situation was hidden from sight so that the Church was able to preserve intact its façade of decency and honesty.  Now that the IICSA report has cracked that façade, we have to set out how the building could be shored up and made a suitable structure for the future, where all may be welcomed and all may perhaps find healing.

The task of mediation has become a professional discipline, with its own principles and philosophy.  Individuals can be trained to be professional mediators.  In years gone by I attended several courses run by the Bridge Builders organisation and I know they still do important work in this whole area of reconciliation.  From the days I spent on the course some twenty years ago, I remember one particular principle.  The task of the mediator is, first of all, to enable proper communication between two parties.  In other words, each must listen to the other as a prerequisite of a possible reconciliation and restoration of trust.  If Bridge Builders were to be given a role in rebuilding the broken sense of trust between survivors and the hierarchy of the church, they would set up a meeting which banned lawyers and advisors on both sides, and allow the victims/survivors to speak and be heard by the senior representatives of the organisation that is felt to have betrayed them. In return the survivors would listen in silence to the words which reveal what bishops and other leaders had been feeling over the years.  Perhaps abuse issues were a triggering point in their own story.   Even bishops may have had to face up to power/abuse episodes in their lives.  Perhaps the institutional neglect of survivors had been exacerbated by personal experiences of the past.  None of that would resolve things on its own but at least the meeting would be between human beings in encounter.  This would be far from survivors and sufferers falling under an implacable institutional juggernaut.

Listening to and honouring survivors by the hierarchy would be the first step along a road towards the rebuilding of trust in the Church.  To repeat, it is not just the breakdown of trust between survivors and bishops that has taken place in this abuse crisis, it is a break-down of trust between the general public and the church in general that has occurred.  If the public witnesses something new taking place in the interaction between the leaders and the abused, then the same public will begin to understand the meaning of reconciliation. Surely this is a concept that is both Christian and relevant to society at large? If all Christians, especially leaders, can live out this reconciliation in the days, months and years ahead so that people can see it, surely this is a fantastic witness to the power of the good news to transform and make whole people’s lives and relationships.  Out of the darkness of abuse and brokenness, something good can come if we allow it to.