From time to time I look back over my life and thank God for people and institutions that I have been able to trust and rely on.  As a child I learnt that many friendships with those of my own age could be extremely fickle.  A friendly face one day could change into a scheming bully the next.  Life taught me that you had to be on the alert for the frequent changes of mood in the children around you so you could adjust your response accordingly. In contrast to these constantly changing moods of my contemporaries, the world of adults offered an opening to something much more stable.  It is among these adults, or a number of them, that there were some who were prepared to befriend a child and help in the task of interpreting a confusing world.  Parents, however good, could never answer all the questions one had about life.  I remember the proprietor of an antique shop who for years tolerated my browsing through his wares even though I was not in a position to buy anything.  Then there was an old man who sat day after day near our playground and welcomed conversation and the sharing of his wisdom.  The elderly of the 50s were all Victorians and they provided a glimpse of another world, one without cars or machines.  The existence of terrible disease and shorter life-expectancy seemed somehow to be partly compensated for by a strong moral order and decency in society. 

It is this cohort of adults who offered friendship to me when I was a child to whom I owe an enormous debt   Some were teachers, some clergy and some were random people I met elsewhere, even on the bus or train.  Yes, I was allowed on occasion to travel on a bus alone at the age of 5 with two old pennies in my clutched hand to pay the fare.  Adults, known or unknown, were a breed that my young self saw as a resource for help, friendship or information.  There were obviously places that were off-limits but fortunately my overall sense of trust in the stranger was never betrayed.  Others of my generation will no doubt look back to their childhood and also remember a sense of overall security with adults who had not been through anything resembling our safeguarding training.   There was an inbuilt wisdom in the child that knew that accepting sweets from someone who was a stranger was somehow risky.  We also knew that in a crowded place, the vast majority of the adults present were on one’s side and would react instantly if a child showed signs of fear or discomfort.

I could go on to describe particular people that helped me gain a perspective on life and provided the mentorship within an environment of trust that was so important when eventually making the choices I made about the future.  I am aware from the perspective of today that I may have sometimes been in risky situations.  There were, no doubt, dangerous adults who used more relaxed attitudes and access to children for their own nefarious purposes.   Fortunately for me, at any rate, the freer atmosphere between adults and children did provide the many benefits of knowing and interacting with a wide range of people.  Growing up in this pre-safeguarding era may have had some dangers, but for those whose trust was not betrayed by deviant adults, there was a sense of a society of people who were generally good, friendly and looking out for us.

I mentioned the existence of trust in the minds of most children that coexisted with a sense that grownups were a breed on your side for the most part.  There were also trustworthy institutions like the corner shop, the public library, the church, the school and the doctor’s surgery. Each represented to the child the wider society, one which had predictability and security.  It comes as something of an unpleasant shock to discover how far the general public have withdrawn from trusting these same institutions and those who work for them. The results of a recent survey which suggests that trust in society’s institutions has severely diminished over the decades. This contrasts with the positive way that many of us experienced them as we grew up actively trusting both people and the institutions of society.  One might have hoped that the Church had retained some of its traditional standing    It would appear that the Church of England elicits the same diminished amount of trust and confidence as our political parties.  The figures are well below 50%.  Other institutions like the police and schools have also seen their standing downgraded in the eyes of the public.  The decline of trust in the C/E is striking, even alarming.  The one institution still attracting our loyalty and confidence is the National Health Service, though it remains to be seen whether this trust will survive the Letby scandal and the results of midwife failures in parts of England. 

The Church of England, in losing a large amount of the goodwill that it used to enjoy a few decades ago, faces a crisis.  The trust that a clerical collar used to attract to itself can no longer be taken for granted.  Indeed, there are many places in society where the dog collar invites ridicule and/or hostility.  What are the reasons for this diminishment of trust?  There are probably a number of reasons we could bring forward.  Some of them are particular to the Church, while others relate to a distrust of institutions in general.  Safeguarding scandals that have reached the public domain have obviously poisoned attitudes among many people.  It is not a single scandal that creates a change of atmosphere.  It is in the way that people see a scandal-racked institution  which appears to do nothing obvious or effective to change the situation.  The Church of England employs quite a large number of people to manage its reputation both nationally and locally.  When these professionals merely repeat formulaic words about learning lessons and tightening up protocols and no one in the organisation ever resigns or accepts any responsibility, the public is not going to be impressed.  The horrors of abuse and the incredibly damaging cover-ups that follow have poisoned attitudes to the church institution.  Can we really be surprised that trust in the Church has fallen to levels that now threaten its very survival as a national institution?

In a blog post as short as this I cannot solve the problems of the C/E in a few words.  I can, however, point to a few principles that could help to rebuild trust above its miserable trust score of 38% before it is too late.  One of the most important aspects of the Church is that it finds much energy as a body when it successfully relates to local areas.  It tries hard to employ people who are recognised as honest and trusted within their local patch.  Forty years ago we used to hear the slogan: Small is beautiful.  We need a rediscovery of this principle and relearn that large complex but anonymous structures are not what most people hanker after.  The mega-church has little to offer an elderly person who remembers a parish church where all were valued and all had a place within the  whole.  The Church must be a place where the traditional values of trust and honesty are highly honoured.  People must find in their local church not only a sense of safety and trust but the opportunity to discover their giftedness for love and service.  The church should become a place where all ‘know even as they are known’ – to misquote St Paul.  Honesty, transparency and justice are all values that everyone wants for the Church, both those within and those looking in.  If we can rediscover these simple moral truths to replace power games, secrecy, greed and emotional gratification, then the Church might once again connect with the British people.

These thoughts are written with a sense of nostalgia for the possibility of living in a society and a Church where trust is taken for granted.  Perhaps it is an unrealistic dream to have, but we can still hold out the thought that it should be possible to find it in a group familiar with the teaching of Jesus.  The greatest frustration for any Christian is to see dishonesty and failure of trust becoming endemic among Church leaders.  In another area of society – politics, there is the constant cry of citizens is to find politicians who genuinely serve their constituents and not themselves.   Such figures do appear on the scene from time to time but all too easily they seem to be outnumbered by those on the make.  Can we not expect the ethical honesty we ask of politicians to be found among our church leaders?  It should be a simple matter to find Christ-like values in a Christian organisation but somehow even that assumption of goodness still seems often to be absent!

by Martin Sewell

It is around this stage of the football season that some teams performances go into free fall and they plunge inexorably towards relegation; the paying customers stay at home, morale sinks, some players “want away”: no discernible plan is evident on the field of play, and rumours of dressing room dissension emerge. Spectators watch with dismay as the ball is routinely kicked aimlessly forwards, more in hope than expectation only for the pressure to mount from the more clued-up opposition teams which purposefully continue to run rings around the hapless, week after week,

At such times a hymn tune is re-purposed on the terraces reminding the players that not only are they “sub-optimal” – but they know they are.

Clubs can respond in one of two ways.  Sometimes, like my own team Tottenham Hotspur,  they bring in a new coach with fresh ideas whose clarity of thought creates a “bounce” and the team finds a new lease of life; sometimes they appoint someone from the existing staff who continues the old culture with predictable dispiriting results.

Just before the Archbishops’ Council met to consider their response to the Wilkinson Report I wrote to the members in the vague hope of introducing a few ideas to develop a different approach to get us out of the Safeguarding morass which the current leadership and culture have created. The underlying thought was simple enough. “If things don’t change things will remain exactly the same.

In order to signal a fresh start, I offered them a list of “Do’s and Don’ts”, a few tips about how to get back onto the front foot.

Here were some of my suggestions; in the comments section below you might like to suggest a few of your own

DO

Commission and announce an immediate safeguarding investigation into the allegations contained in the Glasgow Report which are supported by expert evidence.

Consider where suspensions may be appropriate in the light of the above – be consistent in applying the same criteria which would be applied in other allegations of serious safeguarding failure.

Consider what governance and managerial failures have been highlighted in the Wilkinson Report and what steps must be taken immediately to address these.

It is understood that external auditors have been appointed to fully investigate the Gilo complaint regarding false evidence. Request confirmation of the Terms of Reference of the investigation and of the anticipated reporting timescale. Require that the report be made available to all members of the AC and the AC Audit Committee immediately it is received.

Establish an unimpeachable, independent process to investigate all of the above. Recognise that any suggestion of taint or partiality will bring huge discredit on our Church.

Prepare for significant independent oversight during the transition period between the delivery of the Jay recommendations and their implementation; business as usual will not carry credibility.

Bring a clear commitment to Synod to accept the Jay recommendations without obstruction, even if these mean that control will be removed from Archbishops/ Bishops

Issue an immediate public apology to all the former ISB members for creating an under-resourced ill-conceived ISB project with disagreement ‘baked-in”.

Where appropriate tell Synod and the public where responsibility lies for the failings identified by the Review in matters including

             Initial conceptualisation
             Poor scrutiny
             Legal ambiguity over what “Independence” means Resourcing
             Data protection responsibilities
             Poor minuting and record keeping.
             The absence of and /or resistance to proper Audit
             The “confusion” over the Terms of Reference for the ISB.

Issue a clear summary to General Synod of your responses to the Wilkinson Review;

DO NOT

Issue evasive press statements like the ones hitherto

Speak of “prioritising victims” until you have put specific radical measures in place

Attempt to limit the capacity of Synod to exercise its duty to hold all responsible parties to account.

Speak of “scapegoating” or “witch hunting”;

Speak of a fresh culture before there is hard evidence for it –“by their fruits ye shall know them”.

Advisory

Do urgently re-open consideration of the Mr X case. NOTHING absolutely NOTHING will say “ we are sorry and are changing the culture” better than treating the most harmed of victims properly. Forget “this will set a precedent” (it will not): forget “we have been advised that” – this is what Baroness Mone and the leaders of the Post Office and Fujitsu said to excuse their appalling conduct.

Instruct the Church lawyers to stop pressing victim Sophie Y  for costs which she cannot afford,  for simply seeking justice; she is a victim, and you should not replicate Post Office behaviour by using lawyers ultimately funded by congregations (even if this is via lost grant opportunities) to bully victims. There is genuine fury across the British public over the behaviour of a trusted institution. Once they have torn down one edifice, they may be hungry for another. We must not let it be our Church. You are trustees of a charity. Accept any loss and help close this down. Consider how to give justice to Sophie. Invite her to stay the current proceedings pending a proper independent investigation.

Most readers will have seen that my “ Postecoglou” approach was rejected. Instead of a few key principles clearly understood and consistently applied becoming the model for the future, we are to apply the same culture under the watchful eye of Bishop Joanne Grenfell, who will be simultaneously overseeing all the affairs of the Diocese of London during the Bishop Sarah Mullaly’s sabbatical leave.

If there are any Terms of Reference or timescale for the new Working Party, nobody has seen them. A key criticism of the Wilkinson Report was the incoherence of the conceptualisation of the ISB project. This “plan” seems to have been designed by the same people who got us into the current mess, but it will will be overseen by a Chair who openly acknowledged when she was appointed that she had no experience or specific skills in the Safeguarding field.

She will however be supported and guided by the same management team that brought us the current “success” …. Oh Wait!

Amid all the reviews and reports that are appearing on the topic of Church of England safeguarding, there is one that currently stands out for our attention.  It is written by a highly qualified clinical and forensic psychologist, David Glasgow.  He was asked to describe the psychological impact on some of the twelve survivors who were directly affected by the sudden termination of the work of the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) by the Archbishops’ Council.  The report that has appeared in the past seven days is not one to argue the rights and wrongs of this closure.  The concern of the author, and this is what gives the document considerable authority and power, is to provide a professional and expert assessment on the degree of damage caused to individuals through of the closure of the ISB.  His purpose is not to take a position on the rights and wrongs of this closure or place blame anywhere.  He simply wants to use his professional experience to assess and describe the damage and trauma endured by a number of the twelve individuals who had looked to the ISB for help.  They had all endured the same sudden withdrawal of support through the dissolution of the ISB. Not all of the twelve chose to engage in the process set up by Glasgow.

Glasgow’s report is not lengthy and thus it lends itself to a summary suitable for Surviving Church.  He uses the expression ‘significant harm’ in describing the impact of the event at the heart of the report – the sudden closing of the ISB with virtually no notice.  I understand that the expression, when used in a professional/legal context, is normally the prelude to immediate and often radical intervention by concerned social agencies.  This may include such a drastic action as removing a vulnerable child from their home and placing them in care.  ‘Significant harm’ in the context of the ISB closure suggests a recognition by a well-qualified professional trauma expert that the closure of the ISB was a seriously damaging event to the well-being to several individuals caught up in the process. The results of this kind of damage are clearly familiar to Glasgow as he describes the phenomena of ‘trauma related symptomology’ he observed in the survivors he interviewed  .  These are described and include ‘intrusive experiences, dissociation, defensive avoidance, dysregulation of affect, self derogation and self harm. …’  He further comments, ‘most [symptoms] I would characterise as moderate to severe’.  In these few words, especially the use of the words ‘significant harm’ and ‘severe’, we are taken into a dimension of pain and suffering that few can imagine, let alone have experienced.  The tone of the report hints that Glasgow himself was moved by the plight of those he interviewed.  The pain endured by those in the ‘severe’ category was, he noted, made worse by the trust that some of the survivors still had in the Church authorities to resolve the problem.  Some simply could not believe that the Church they had always looked up to could so utterly fail them.  The ISB had built up a level of trust with this group and the abolishing of the ISB was a cause of real anger and bewilderment.

As a professional involved with other situations of individual and corporate trauma, Glasgow asks the Church some challenging questions.  From the norms of his professional practice, he would have assumed that  the decision of the Archbishops’ Council to terminate the contracts of the remaining members of the ISB would be a decision that would only have been made after an expert risk-assessment.  The way the termination in fact took place showed no sign that an ‘appropriately qualified expert’ had been anywhere in the decision.  No expert or properly qualified assessor, Glasgow notes, ‘would fail to highlight the very significant and entirely foreseeable risk of significant harm to victims.’      Another less professional way of expressing what Glasgow is trying to say at this point is simply this.  How can the Church be so crassly incompetent and careless for the wellbeing and safety of its members?  Did they really take a decision of this order  of magnitude without taking advice about the likely consequences?  We are, perhaps, in this episode seeing the Church at the highest-level exercising power when it is quite clearly out of its depth.

Glasgow’s report concludes with a discussion on the task of rebuilding trust between survivors and victims and the Church authorities.  He has no shortcuts to offer but recognises that such a restoration of trust will be a ‘challenge’ after all that has happened.  While such reconciliation work is not within the remit of his task or his expertise, he helpfully points to literature and the potential contribution of other academic researchers who understand the level of complexities and the degree of expertise needed for such an undertaking.

In drawing attention to this highly professional piece of work and commentary to the Church of England’s somewhat failing attempts to put things right in the safeguarding sphere, I have to mention two other expected documents that have (Jan 14^th) not yet appeared. The first one is Professor Jay’s report.  This was originally promised for the end of last year.  While the reasons for delay may be totally valid, a delay of several weeks would seem to merit some kind of formal announcement.  The second document that was expected by now is a formal response or reaction from the bishops about the Wilkinson report.  It would seem to be important to have a reasonable length of time for General Synod members to study such a response before the gathering of GS in February.  Currently I am detecting an increasing dissatisfaction among some members of Synod as they come to realise that important decisions affecting the Church are being made without an adequate level of skill and expertise.     Both Wilkinson and Glasgow have drawn attention to the acute level of pain inflicted on members of the Church which can be ascribed, not only to the wickedness of malefactors, but also to the incompetent and unfeeling treatment of survivors by senior members of the Church.  Glasgow wonders whether it is now too late to bind up the broken levels of trust between survivors and those who have power in the Church.  His own prognosis is gloomy in the extreme.  He states when speaking about the task of rebuilding of trust ‘I can think of no obvious remedial steps that might usefully be taken on this issue’. Those of us who want to feel optimistic that the future may improve things in the world of safeguarding, perhaps have a duty to make our voices heard.

January/February 2024 are months when a decisive shift may take place in the Church of England.  The shift that is looked for is linked to the promised publication of a report by Professor Alexis Jay on C/E safeguarding.  This report promises to take a hard look at this area of the Church’s life and make some recommendations for the future.  None of us know what those recommendations will consist of, but we hope that they will be marked by the same fearless independence that Jay has shown up till now.  After her lengthy exposure to the internal operations of the Church of England at the highest level during the IICSA hearings, Jay knows how the system works.  It is likely that she realises that allowing the Church to continue to manage its safeguarding responsibilities in the future, without external oversight, will prove to be potentially disastrous.  Her professional background and her understanding of church dynamics in the C/E at General Synod and Archbishops’ Council level, has prompted her to take a strongly independent line right from the beginning of her investigations.  Jay has publicly stated that she will not tolerate any attempted interference which seeks to undermine or compromise the integrity of her investigations.  This strongly independent line taken by Jay is backed up by her decision to see her interviewees only in locations that have no links with church institutions.  

We still do not have the Jay report at the time of writing, but we do have hopes and expectations that it will be a thorough piece of work.  What do we know so far?  It became apparent early on in the process that Jay was not attempting to do a safeguarding survey of every diocese in the C/E.  She decided to focus on six sample dioceses. I played a tiny part in the overall process by encouraging two individuals known to me, and who lived in one of these six named dioceses, to approach her.  Both did so and reported back that they received what they felt to be highly professional and considerate attention.  The fact that Jay was there to record what was truly going on and not defend an institution involved in safeguarding, meant that each felt heard in a way quite different from that received from church authorities.  Good reports of other interviews have also been shared across social media and this gives everyone following this process good reason to believe that the eventual report will reveal truth and objectivity.

In this waiting period for Jay’s report and recommendations for the Church of England, it is natural for some of us to express our hopes and think out loud over what we would like to see.  The main finding that I would like to see as part of the Report is a conclusion that the Church should hand over completely its safeguarding responsibilities to an independent body.  Such a body would have to be financed by the Church of England, but it would be set up in a way that removed all control from bishops, Archbishops’ Council and the Secretariat at Church House.  Dismantling the existing structures that have appeared in the Church since 2015 with a confusing plethora of acronyms, would be a major piece of work.  If anyone were to propose and redesign from scratch a structure for delivering church safeguarding, it would be a very lengthy document.  I have neither the ability nor interest in even outlining such a reconstruction.  What I offer here are some thoughts on the broad areas that need to be covered by a comprehensive safeguarding body, able to do the work that needs to be done.

Long time readers of this blog will know my propensity for attempting to simplify complex problems or ideas by dividing them into three.  Safeguarding in the Church is one such immensely complicated activity, but it does, to my simple mind, allow itself to be divided up into three distinct strands.  The first manifestation of safeguarding is the point at which it touches almost every church member.  Awareness of safeguarding hazards and dangers has successfully been made part of every church activity down to the parish level.  If this process of teaching safeguarding awareness was the sole content of safeguarding activity, then the Church could be considered to have earned a ‘good’ or ‘satisfactory’ in an imaginary tick-box exercise.  But safeguarding is of course much more than this and the Church cannot in any way be said to achieve even ‘satisfactory’ in these other two strands.

If the first strand to be identified comes under the broad description of training, the second tranche of safeguarding activity may be described as legacy issues.  By these two words I am indicating the enormous amount of work that is still outstanding from the past to put right injustice and the appalling cases of neglect by the Church of vulnerable and damaged people over decades.  The skills required to put right legacy issues are, of course, quite different from those used to manage the massive training programme already undertaken by the Church.  We need a small army of legal experts, psychotherapists and financial experts alongside professional abuse-informed investigators to do the work.  It will not be cheap, and I am not going to suggest how many people it will need to do this aspect of safeguarding.  The main observation I make about this work is to say that just because safeguarding training and safeguarding legacy issues possess a word in common, it does not mean that the work and expertise required for these areas of urgent work should be done by the same people.  The compilers of training courses for the Church cannot be expected to have the necessary skills to pick up the wounded from the side of the road and minister to their emotional and physical needs.

The third area of urgently needed work is a requirement for a skilled cohort to attempt the task of rebuilding trust in the Church as a place of safety.  There has to be a huge effort in trying to wipe away the appalling reputationally destructive events of the past twenty+ years.  We might call this the public relations strand.  The Church has been employing reputation managers and experts in public communication for a long time, but it has been largely unsuccessful in convincing a sceptical public that it is doing a good job at maintaining high standards of transparency, justice and integrity.  Indeed, like a political party that has been in power too long, the Church gives the impression of repeatedly being involved in covering up its own version of sleaze.  This is linked to what looks like a complacent entitlement and an inflated sense of its own importance.  Recent comparisons with the Post Office in Britain, and the way the Church has refused to support victims or thoroughly investigate the guilt or innocence of the accused, have left a sour taste in the mouth of many onlookers.  Working for the Post Office proved to be a dangerous and costly choice for many of its employees.  Working for, or in some way supporting, the Church of England appears to be sometimes equally hazardous.  This public relations strand, which compels the Church to put considerable resources into the task of honest reputation repair, is a vital one.  If the Church demonstrates further examples of destroyed trust, then its survival as a public institution will be under serious threat.

So far, I have identified three distinct strands of safeguarding activity which the Church must engage with even if they are hugely costly in terms of finance and effort.  These strands, named as training, legacy issues and reputational repair, demand the skill and effort of highly qualified individuals and institutions.  If the Church tries to take short cuts as, for example, using the services of inexperienced unqualified people, the long-term damage to the Church will be potentially massive.  What I am hoping to see in Professor Jay’s recommendations is a move to greater professionalism as well as greater independence.  One thing I have not attempted to set out here is a new structure for safeguarding within our Church.  That is for others to do, and I would suggest that it needs to look quite different from the haphazardly evolved arrangements we have at present.  The major point I have wanted to make is that the strands of activity that together make up the enterprise we call safeguarding, require an immense variety of skills.  Lawyers are seldom trained in psychotherapy and managers are not known to be especially trauma-aware.  Setting out all the tasks that need to be done and then identifying the skill sets required, will take a great deal of work and time. I am hoping that Professor Jay also will want to say some of these things to the Church.  I am just an observer right on the edge of the safeguarding enterprise.  Those of us on the margins are sometimes entrusted with information and/or insights that may help the Church get things right in the future as it tries to repair and move on from all that has gone so wrong in the past.

The New Year is traditionally a time for a whole plethora of mixed emotions. Some of these emotions relate to the past and may include a sense of regret or disappointment.  There may also be positive feelings of achievement or success in the face of challenge.  The word ‘new’ evokes for us emotions about the future, both good and bad.  The future possesses an ambiguity.  Alongside hope and excitement there is also a sense of dread of the unknown.  We welcome the new but at the same time we cannot avoid, to a degree, fearing it.

As I was thinking about this idea of newness, especially in its positive aspects, I realised that some people cannot see to welcome the future and the newness that comes into their lives.  I am not here thinking of those who face life-limiting events like injury, poverty or illness. There is a further group of people who take limited pleasure in any thought about the newness of the future.  For this cohort, the idea of change or newness is received as potentially undermining their pattern of life. These individuals have adopted a type of rigid thinking in political or religious matters, and this makes anything new at best uncomfortable and at worst a threat.  A sterility of thought has been adopted which prevents this group from being open to any kind of newness entering their minds.  They are paid-up members of the ‘what I always say’ brigade.  They keep company with the millions of MAGA Americans who blindly follow an authoritarian leader into the desert of mindless and intellectually bankrupt mental inactivity.  The word conservative is applied to such people, though we might find this adjective rather weak as a description of individuals who refuse ever to be open to new ideas and ways of understanding.  The reward they receive for this static outlook is a sense of emotional and intellectual security.  The price that must be paid in adopting this stance is the absence of any joy in celebrating newness or the excitement of discovering fresh horizons of thought and insight.  Instead, such people live within the rigid embrace of the past and the value systems that have been handed down to them.  Newness is a contradiction of what they know and believe.  Among religious conservatives there are many who hold that truth is locked up within a single text. The permitted way of reading that text makes no provision or allowance for change. I mentioned, when discussing the defining beliefs of UCCF, how puzzled I was by the attachment to a compulsory statement of beliefs from the 19^th century.  This must be reaffirmed today by current members without deviation or change. I felt in myself a claustrophobia, a drowning sensation, by the idea that such a list could ever form the basis of my faith.  If I was compelled to affirm such a list, would I also have to turn my back on the wondrous complexity and creativity of Christian revelation that has taken place over 2000 years in every part of the globe?  The enforcers of such a document (among them many leaders of the influential con-evo constituency in the Church of England) seem to be insisting on such a stance.   They are saying in effect: ‘Here there is safety but no newness.  You are not permitted to think outside the box of defined statements.  Loyalty, obedience and correct thinking are demanded of you as the price of membership to our club.  Thinking in any other way is strictly forbidden.’

The attempt to hold conservative Christians inside the ghetto of ‘orthodoxy’ is probably far less successful than the leaders of these groups would like to think.   Policing the thinking of all the members of a congregation is an impossible task.  The current polarisation in the Church of England over attitudes to same-sex relationships would appear to suggest that entire congregations are all in tune with their leaders as to what they think.   That is improbable.   The other factor is that everyone, Christians and non-believers alike who live in our world, are automatically caught up in the wide maelstrom of evolving ideas, fashions and new ways of thinking that are constantly appearing.   In other words, we are all good at adjusting to the new.  In science, industry or human thought, ideas and inventions appear with breath-taking speed. Scientific invention is not an area where I have any speciality, but there is one feature of great inventions and discoveries that I marvel at. This is the fact that in many cases, great ideas seem to occur in more than one place at the same time.  In the case of the telephone, the light bulb and other experimenters with electric power, there seems to have been, almost literally, a race to the patent office.  Something similar seems to have been going on in the 5^th century BC in the Ancient World or 15^th century Italy.  Dozens of artists emerged simultaneously enriching our world enormously.  Discovery feels like an unstoppable process which catches up everyone somewhere in its wake.  Newness and our participation in that newness is part of being human, though there are different expressions of change according to where in the world you live.  We can also see that certain ideas which are commonplace today simply could not have been articulated even ten years earlier. Specialists from every discipline seem to have some part in thinking about or maybe even participating in this process of working out the next new idea.  It may be a genuine discovery, a fashion idea or a new literary trend.  The world of the new is an exciting place to live in.  Among Christians, only members of the Amish community make a serious attempt to resist the new as a way of being faithful to their Christian convictions.  Most of the rest of us are content to play a full part in living in (and enjoying) the modern world which welcomes newness and change.

There is a group of active Christians who are largely ignored by much of the Church so that many people in the pew are not aware of their existence.  The group I am speaking about are the phalanx of researchers and theological professionals.  For a brief time in the past, I was involved in academic research while knowing that I was never aiming to become a lecturer or teacher.  But one thing that my research period gave me was a deep respect for the task of academics in theological faculties around the country, even though their work is ignored and even despised by many in the Church.  

Academic theologians and those who work at the leading-edge of research activity are not asking the rest of us always to agree with or even understand their discoveries and insights. They are simply asking us to accept that in their theological research, new concepts and new insights are always emerging.  This process of seeing newness in theology, as in every other area of knowledge, is a valid one. It is saying that creativity and fresh thinking is part of theology and faith as it is in every other area of human learning.  Attempts by leading evangelical Christians in Britain to draw congregations and individuals into a new conservative grouping which seems to deny newness and change, is an attempt to fly in the face of reality.  Any church or congregation which sets its face against change is likely to be seen as sterile by a new generation.  A reactionary approach to theology in the name of safety and orthodoxy cannot ultimately prevail.  The Church needs to draw on the creative and exciting energy that is found in the thinking of those who embrace the future as well as in the radical changes in society that are constantly being shown us day by day.  Engaging intelligently with the new and the future is part of the task of academic thinkers and ordinary folk alike.  Do Christians really want to be identified with those who try to push back the tide, or can they engage enthusiastically with the new and what lies in the future?

Newness is a category of experience that, however disturbing to those of a conservative temperament, is an inevitable part of the human condition.  At this moment in its history, the Church of England is faced by having to choose between an embrace of the new or the retreat into a stance of rejection.  In writing this I am reminded of a line from a Sidney Carter song ‘it is from the old I travel to the new.’  The so-called liberal Christians are suggesting that there is a theology of newness which presents us with a different approach to truth.  We may not get all the precise definitions that some require.  We find, rather, it must be approached in the way we encounter beauty.  The Christian faith is not, as I have indicated many times, reducible to a formula of words; it is found in a process which involves wonder, awe and a contemplation of a reality which cannot ever be fully expressed in words.  When we arrive at this point of knowing we will be, as the hymn puts it, ‘lost in wonder, love and praise’.

Almost exactly one year ago, Surviving Church carried my blog piece on trauma-informed practice in safeguarding matters. https://survivingchurch.org/2022/12/10/trauma-informed-therapy-some-lessons-for-the-church/   It was a continuation, among other things, of my long-held dissatisfaction over the way that abuse survivors frequently encountered something other than compassionate understanding when seeking to tell their story to authority in the Church. I had noted some time ago that the National Safeguarding Team did not employ a single psychotherapist on its staff.  The dominant NST skill set seemed to lean towards management   I was thus pleased to see that Sarah Wilkinson, in her recent review of church safeguarding protocols, was anxious to emphasise the importance of trauma awareness among those who manage safeguarding at every level.  This is the first sentence of her recommendation on this theme.  ‘Everyone involved in decision making about safeguarding issues at the NCIs, from the Archbishops to case workers and including all members of the Archbishops’ Council, should have mandatory training on trauma-informed handling of complainants, victims and survivors.’ Wilkinson is evidently concerned at the high levels of stress and trauma being carried by survivors.  This is exacerbated by the fact that many of those representing church bodies, who sit on powerful committees and deal with the survivors, has little or no prior understanding of the trauma and experience of being such a survivor. She rightly discerns that when highly vulnerable survivors are brought face to face with people with little empathy or understanding, the level of additional suffering endured will be considerable.

When we look at the Church as a whole, the question that might well be asked by an abuse survivor is whether this institution is ever a safe place to enter.  The answer to this question may depend on our being able to discern where the particular local manifestation of church stands along a spectrum of what we can call abuse sensitivity.  At one end of this spectrum, we find compassion and effective care. Here we encounter a readiness by a church to provide every conceivable form of help to survivors.  There will be included spiritual, emotional and practical support over as long a period as is necessary.  At the other end of our imaginary spectrum, we can envisage a harsh cold and bureaucratic indifference to the survivor.  There would be no understanding of the pain and trauma, and even the existence of damage and vulnerability would be a cause of annoyance to the one trying to deal with the situation.  The judgement about where the current levels of care in the Church are to be found has to be a matter for the discernment of the observer in each situation.  At present, based on my listening to what people are saying, the consensus of opinion seems to find that the typical experience of care by the church is closer to the negative end of the spectrum.  What is experienced is more likely to resemble what is routinely found as a bureaucratic or managerial response to this kind of issue.

Churches generally fall somewhere in-between the two extremes of the abuse response spectrum in the attitude they show to survivors.  An inept or hurtful response to a survivor seeking help may of course be as much to do with ignorance and lack of training as it is an act of deliberate cruelty.  The fact that amateur clumsy responses are retraumatising victims should, nevertheless, be a matter for concern.  To say that so-and-so did not mean to hurt or trigger a painful reaction in an individual, already vulnerable, is not a good look for people who are claiming to preach a message of good news, love and healing to a hurting world.  There is good news in all this, though one has to understand these words in a non-biblical sense.   The good news is that the secular discipline of psychological healing does understand how to respond to trauma and can teach this skill to Christians. At the very least, church leaders and representatives need to learn from these experts how to stop heaping additional hurt on the vulnerable victims of church-based power abuse.   This, in essence, is one important challenge that Wilkinson is presenting to our Church. We ignore it at our peril.

The contemporary discipline, practised by professional carers who are faced with clients afflicted by trauma, is one that offers hope to trauma victims and survivors of every kind.  Various approaches can be found in the therapeutic literature, and I make no claim to any expertise in this area. Wilkinson was clearly, in making her recommendation for trauma-informed training to be provided across the Church, familiar with this material.  What follows here is an overview of what one centre in the States, the Buffalo Centre for Social Research, describes as Trauma-Informed Care (TIC).  Their helpful initial summary definition goes as follows. ‘Trauma-Informed Care calls for a change in organisational culture, where an emphasis is placed on understanding, respecting and appropriately responding to the effects of trauma at all levels.’  The short summary that follows this broad description of TIC, brings to our attention a number of observations about the wide prevalence of trauma in individuals seeking any kind of help.   Because the presence of trauma is so widespread, the ability to respond appropriately has to be built into the culture and practice of all care providers.  Their task is to provide appropriate support from the outset, providing a caring response towards any possible trauma victim.  This support must be shared in such a way that it does not lead to the exacerbation of the existing trauma symptoms.  One helpful question to be asked routinely, and which well articulates the assumptions and culture of TIC, is not ‘what is wrong with this person?’ but ‘what has happened to this person?’  

The Buffalo approach makes a number of other helpful suggestions about the possibility of re-traumatisation.  When an abused person has to experience a trauma over and over again through repeating the details to different agencies, this can be so painful that the survivor may be unwilling to cooperate with otherwise well-intended offers of help.  Sensitivity over such things as the location of an interview with a senior official need to be carefully looked into.  A TIC approach will ‘respond by changing policies, procedures and practices to minimise potential barriers.’  The staff dealing with abused individuals will always be alert to signs of trauma and thus lessen the danger of any re-traumatisation. 

In some ways this blog piece follows the pattern of the previous one looking at the Nolan principles.  TIC, it is clear, is also about values and culture rather than institutional competence.  Instead of the seven Nolan principles we have the Five Guiding Principles of TIC.  These are safety, choice, collaboration, trustworthiness and empowerment.  In some ways each of the words is self-explanatory.  Most of the values they describe focus on the importance of helping the survivor to feel safe and protected from any further exploitation of their vulnerability. Alongside this provision of safety and protection, there is also a recognition of the need to help the survivor to regain his/her own power and find the resilience to begin the process of healing.  The Church often refers to the ideal of putting the survivor at the centre of the process of safeguarding.  What we often find is an organisation in a state of panic, believing that its primary task is to protect its reputation (and assets) from the legitimate claims of the wounded and damaged.  TIC presents us with another model, one that respects the need and the longing of survivors to heal so that they can continue their lives with new hope for their eventual complete wholeness.

Although I cannot claim to have mastered all the other detail of Sarah Wilkinson’s thorough and detailed review, it was helpful that she chose to shed some light on this major issue concerning trauma in the safeguarding process.  Survivors are never a problem to be managed; rather they are a group of human beings who have emotional and practical needs as the result of abuse/trauma they may have suffered.  Their practical needs may include the recovery of lost income and livelihoods and the availability of professional support from experienced therapists.  Hopefully all these professionals will understand the meaning of trauma-informed help.  If some of this sensitivity were to be a required part of the wider culture of the CofE, as Wilkinson recommends, the Church everywhere would become a more wholesome organisation, built on the gospel principles of compassion and love.

Selflessness, Integrity, Objectivity, Accountability, Openness, Honesty and Leadership.

The list of words above summarise a report published under the chairmanship of Lord Nolan In 1995.  This document was a statement of the ethical principles and standards which should undergird the conduct of public life in Britain.  The institutions that might adopt these cardinal values include educational establishments, hospitals or departments of government.  Another similar statement of governing principles is published by the Charity Commission to state what should guide the conduct of every organisation regarding itself as a charity.  At a moment, post-Wilkinson, when the Church of England and its structures are being scrutinised in order to discover whether they follow a set of values that are recognisably ethical, it is helpful to revisit these Nolan principles to see whether the Church reaches or even aspires to the standard of ethics that they express.

Institutions of every kind express the aspirations and aims of the organisation in a so-called mission statement; they set out what they think the organisation is for.  They do not routinely give us any insight into the deeper ethical values that are observed (or not) by the respective bodies. A potential conflict between organisational aims and ethical principles is often observable in the world of politics.  It is hard not to be cynical about many of the high-sounding statements of politicians when, often, what one discerns at a deeper level is the pursuit of financial gain and political power.  Far too often in my lifetime a British government has been forced to give way to the opposition party because the sleaze and dishonesty have become just too obvious for the voters to ignore.  It hurts every time a trusted politician is shown to be unable to do what he/she is paid to do – to serve the people of Britain by putting the public interest at the front of their concerns. 

What is wrong with many of our public institutions, of which the Church is one?  In attempting to respond to a common feeling of malaise around institutions, I am going to risk making a generalisation about human nature.  This may seem unfair, but it is rooted in the observations of Lord Acton about power over a century ago.  My claim is that most individuals are honest and upright when working and living in small units, like the family or a small business.  An inherent honesty practised by the individual is, unfortunately, harder to maintain when the same person comes to work for and place his/her loyalty with a larger group.  The focus of loyalty may shift away from the ethics of individuals working in a small unit and change to become a slavish devotion to the large corporate entity they now work for.  This ‘worship’ of the large institution, especially coming from the ones who take responsibility for running it, can have a severely detrimental effect on personal integrity and conscience.  Powerful leaders of many organisations/corporations rarely seem to come through retaining all the old values of individual integrity.  Few people, if any, manage the responsibilities of wielding institutional power without becoming somewhere morally compromised by the process.

Returning to the seven words that summarise Nolan’s desired standards for public life, we might note that many of our institutions, including those which claim the category of religious, seem to work in a Nolan denying manner.  Without naming any particular individuals or occasions, I was shocked to discover, some time ago, that in the world of safeguarding the church institution has recourse, on occasion, to blatant dishonesty.  Whether this is being noted in the current Wilkinson review I make no claim, since the document was not available to me when writing this piece.   What I can say is that in the past, senior church people have been prepared to lie in a public interview or in the context of a legal enquiry.  Sometimes the corruption of truth could possibly be the result of a genuine mistake.  If that were to be the case, we would hope that the false statement would be admitted and corrected as quickly as possible.  When there is no attempt to correct wrong or false information, it remains on the public record.  Its capacity to cause damage to the church institution is there for ever.  A real act of remorse and an open acknowledgement of truth failure might persuade a watching public to feel some sympathy for the one making an error or mistake in falsely representing facts.  But the platitudinous expressions of regret uttered by senior bishops, but probably written by publicity professionals, do not rebuild trust.  It so often seems that the individual speaking the words of regret is using a book full of sanitised words and expressions where all real meaning has been removed.  The church lawyers seem to do one part of the cleaning while the other part is undertaken by communication experts who work closely with them.

The moment that a large organisation allows a single lie to be told by one of its representatives or top leaders and that lie is not later owned up to, any pretence of holding on firmly to the Nolan principles has been abandoned.  Honesty is apparently no longer thought to be worth fighting for and so the integrity of all leaders is automatically called into question. Ordinary members of the church desperately want to believe that behaving honourably on the part of leaders is an important part of their witness to other church members and to the wider public.  It is extremely disheartening to discover that the church establishment has become so careless of upholding the highest standards of honesty and integrity.

Why do people lie or bury the truth on behalf of organisations that they represent or lead?  I asked myself why it could ever be worth lying about something in a church context.  Two immediate reasons for telling such a lie occur to me. One is that the individual has been caught out in some serious failure to act or, worse still, some malfeasance. The lie is a desperate attempt to fend off the guilt.  A second reason for lying is the attempt to defend, not oneself, but the institution to which one belongs, and in which the person repeating a falsehood may hold a position of high responsibility.  If one does hold a status or position of power in any organisation, then one is going to do everything possible to defend it.  One’s own self-esteem and professional identity is at stake and the integrity of the organisation as a whole is needed to retain one’s own personal reputation and standing.

In recent months and years, especially since the IICSA hearings, all the shenanigans at Christ Church, General Synod and the collapse of the ISB, we have devastatingly become inured to the variety of ways in which the church and its officers have not always observed the highest levels of honesty. Because this has been the case, I am hoping the imminent report of Sarah Wilkinson and that of Alexis Jay will insist on proper independence and ethical professionalism for the safeguarding activities of the Church.  It may be that these two investigators will suggest to the church that the Nolan principles would be a good ethical foundation for the Church of England to follow. Surely these two ethical principles, honesty and integrity, can be expected of an organisation that gives a high priority to such values.

Returning to the other five Nolan principles, the one that leaps out for me is openness.  It brings to mind a shameful episode in the sorry tale in the history of CofE safeguarding in 2017.  In that year the Daily Telegraph revealed the existence of a secret document containing legal advice.  This warned bishops not to give any apology to survivors in case that might increase liability for the church.  This information was completely wrong both morally and from a legal perspective.  The Compensation Act of 2006 reiterates older guidance which specifically excluded this legal understanding about apologies.  Extra liability is not triggered by making apologies or offering pastoral support. The unnecessary suffering caused to survivors (and to the bishops themselves) over the years caused by this poor legal advice does not bear thinking about.  This advice over apologies had been marked ‘strictly confidential’ so there had been little opportunity for anyone to know about it, let alone challenge it.  Once again, a Nolan principle, here openness, was denied because of institutional fear and defensiveness. This lack of institutional openness has also been noted in the final Hillsborough report.

We have given space so far to noting how the CofE fails in three of the seven Nolan principles.  A longer post could no doubt find examples of failure in all seven categories.  Here we will pause briefly to consider the important principle of adequate leadership.  All observers of the safeguarding scene have noticed repeatedly how the church safeguarding institutions seem to lack firm guidance and direction.  Bishops seem terrified of being confronted by safeguarding queries.  It appears that what direction there exists in the Church of England on safeguarding is decided, not by bishops, but by lawyers and senior lay bureaucrats.  A close reading of the comments that are made following the Wilkinson Review will probably indicate that compassionate episcopal leadership has been almost completely absent as the church has tried to find ways to help us all move forward to repair and heal the sorry confusion that the CofE currently finds itself in the realm of safeguarding.

Revisiting the Nolan principles in relation to the church has not been a salutary experience for those of us who are members and still want to support the CofE.  It is hard to feel optimistic when we have suggested that in four out seven categories, the church is definitely in the ‘unsatisfactory’ section.  It seems unlikely that the remaining three categories would achieve anything much better.  All the Nolan principles are linked, and failure in one area is likely to result in failure in the others.       

This article was written jointly by some Members of General Synod with legal and regulatory expertise, Victims and Survivors of abuse, and those who have been further abused by the work of the National Safeguarding Team (NST) and the Archbishops’ Council, and its Secretariat.

A review commissioned by the Church, conducted by someone chosen by the Church, with a remit solely defined by the Church, and excluding events critical of the Church, won’t tell anything like the true story.

• Steve Reeves, former ISB member.

For me the most devastating consequence of the brutal abolition of the ISB without warning was yet another breach of trust by the Church of England: but this time it was not re-triggering existing trauma but instead a new and equally if not greater devastating trauma and betrayal.

• Testimony from Victim

We still have to live with the consequences of what happened but we shall never give up trying to expose the Archbishops and their friends reminding all people in the Church of England of the cruelty of their leaders. These people are so quick to pick on the weak and the vulnerable but they can never look at themselves let alone allow others to give an honest appraisal. It’s all to do with power: the Archbishops and their collaborators are so corrupt that they don’t realise the evil they are doing.

• Testimony from Victim

By any standards, the Review conducted by Sarah Wilkinson KC into the ISB scandal should send shockwaves through General Synod. There should be resignations from Archbishops’ Council. There should be calls in Parliament for intervention, and for the Archbishops’ Council to be placed in ‘special measures’, just as one would for a failing Health Authority. The Charity Commission should investigate this scandal – it represents a huge waste of charitable funds.

You have to read Wilkinson’s Review very carefully to understand how much of a shambles the Archbishops’ Council are. But before you do read it, can we remind you that the Archbishops’ Council set the Terms of Reference for the Wilkinson Review. In so doing, the Secretariat made sure that she could not consider any of the following issues:

• The immediate closure of the ISB, with just one hour’s notice, was a grossly irresponsible action in view of the Victims and Survivors who were working with the ISB.
• William Nye refusing to involve and countenance the involvement of an independent mediator between himself and the ISB, or to act on the Dispute Resolution Notice. Mr. Nye was urged to urged to bring in outside mediation, but he refused to do so
• Non-existent arrangements in professional care made for any of the Victims and Survivors under the ISB.
• The Archbishops’ Council and its failure to properly consult.
• Explicit public denials of all the above, also repeatedly made by the Archbishops’ Council.

Ms. Wilkinson was not allowed to look into these matters. Even so, resignations are now needed. The trademark of the Archbishops’ Council and its Secretariat is to manage their affairs with deliberate ambiguity and ambivalence, in order to avoid any accountability. Put bluntly, if there are no minutes of meetings, no notes or records of discussions, no record of votes at Archbishops’ Council, and the Audit Committee is repeatedly told to mind its own business, there can be no trust and confidence in the leadership of the trustees.

Having the Chair of the Audit Committee being part of the decision-making process is a grotesque distortion of what should be an entirely independent process. Yet even the Chair of the Audit Committee does not seem to grasp the way this weakens corporate governance   We need resignations and some restructuring.

We already know that the Communications Department at Lambeth Palace will be briefing the media that “lessons will be learned”, “it was all very difficult”, “we were trying to manage a difficult breakdown in relationships”, and “we did our best, but unfortunately it unravelled, and nobody could see that coming”.

None of this is true. The ISB is a symptom of a colossal failure in governance at the very top of the Church of England, by the Archbishops’ Council and Secretariat. That is why we must now have resignations and a total re-set for the sake of fully proper, authentic transparency and accountability.

Before plunging into the Wilkinson Review, please allow us to guide what careful and savvy readers might be able to spot as they navigate their way through the paragraphs.

Omissions:

1. There was no Risk Assessment undertaken in the setting up of the ISB, and in its work going forward. There was no Risk Assessment undertaken when the Archbishops’ Council decided, at a couple of hours’ notice, to close the ISB.

• It seems that victim-survivors don’t matter to the trustees and Secretariat. They only care about creating the impression of responsibility and professionalism. They demonstrated no care, thought or clue as to the consequences of their actions.

• If this was a Health Authority, the executive would be fired, and the Board resign. If our government had done no risk assessment for migrants, there could be criminal proceedings. But this being the Archbishops’ Council, their only risk is reputational. The vulnerable do not matter.

• Ms. Wilkinson could and should draw our attention to the lack of Conflicts of Interest policies in all Archbishops’ Council and NST work, and the lack of any Register of Interests for trustees and the Secretariat.

• Repeated failures by the Secretariat and Archbishops’ Council to follow GDPR legal requirements, make “reasonable adjustments” for Victims and Survivors under the 2010 Equality Act, or basic employment law.

• The total absence of Nolan Committee principles for public bodies (1995) which set out standards for public life: The principles are Selflessness, Integrity, Objectivity, Accountability, Openness, Honesty and Leadership. 

• Gross professional incompetence on the part of the NST and Lead Safeguarding Bishops, who cannot follow their own policies, and repeatedly obfuscate scandals and abuse they do not wish to address or be held accountable for.

Wilkinson’s work was not allowed to address these matters. The Archbishops’ Council set her homework, predetermined the method of marking, and the grading of it. You only have to see what Wilkinson was not allowed to assess to appreciate how deeply corrupt the Archbishops’ Council was, and still is.  We must now have some resignations.

Perhaps the elected Members of the Archbishops’ Council from the General Synod could do the decent thing and resign so that they can offer themselves for re-election and be judged by their peers. This would be honourable, but is alas, highly unlikely.

Next Steps:

We undoubtedly need the Archbishops’ Council to be subject to comprehensive external regulation and audit. The amount of charitable funds wasted on this ill-conceived and badly-managed project was predictable, as there is no competent person on the Archbishops’ Council or the Secretariat to set such things up.

The recent hiring of Kevin Crompton (“Commissioner”) and Sir David Behan CBE (“provide independent strategic advice on safeguarding to the Archbishops’ Council”:) have both been undertaken without any consultation with Synod, advertisements for the posts, or any sign of accountability and transparency. No Victim or Survivor can or should trust such appointments. (See https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2023/1-december/news/uk/lambeth-palace-sets-out-safeguarding-action-plan).

With no Conflicts of Interest policies in place, it would be impossible to know what vested interests might lie at the heart of these appointments. Virtually every Review conducted by the Church of England into safeguarding malpractice lacks any basic standards of transparency, probity, integrity, independence and proper accountability.

No one is ever called to account. We are simply fobbed off with the bland assurance that ‘lessons will be learned’.

Ms. Wilkinson was made well aware of this. But as her Terms of Reference were set by the very body that is so patently culpable of such colossal failures in its governance, it is hardly surprising that her Review is relatively opaque about such details. It would have been helpful if Ms. Wilkinson could have been clearer on a number of ongoing matters:

1. Repeated requests to the Archbishops for an account of why Mr. William Nye may have lied to – or misled – IICSA, and also to General Synod and other bodies on serious safeguarding scandals, are met with silence. Eventually, the Archbishops agree to an “external audit” of why there has been no reply. Nobody asked for this audit.

• What was required was an answer to the clear evidence of lying. But the Archbishops decided to answer a question they were not asked, in order to avoid answering the actual question that does need answering. This might be standard practice for squirming politicians during media interviews, (or latterly the Covid Inquiry) but is this really the standard of integrity and probity we want from our clergy?

• In the Percy ISB Review, Maggie Atkinson’s original Terms of Reference came from the Diocese of Oxford and Lambeth Palace, both of whom use Winckworth Sherwood as their lawyers. These are the same lawyers heavily implicated in “perpetrating the deliberate weaponizing of safeguarding against Dr. Percy”.  Atkinson’s Terms of Reference precluded the lawyers and clergy involved in the weaponisation from any criticism. As does the current proposed Review led by Sir Mark Hedley. Both Archbishops claim such work would be “independent”. Jasvinder Sangheera and Steve Reeves were expressly prohibited from engaging in the Percy ISB Review.

• Bogus Risk Assessments concocted against Dr. Percy, signed off by Diocesan lawyers, senior clergy, the Diocesan Safeguarding Advisor and others, were re-narrated as ‘assessments of risk, which is different from Risk Assessments’. That is despite “Church of England Risk Assessment” heading each of the 19 pages. The Bishop of Oxford defended these documents. If his lawyers and senior clergy are allowed to fabricate Risk Assessments with the clear intention of causing harm to an individual and in order to generate false alarmism, is anyone in the Church of England safe? We think not.

• Jasvinder and Steve worked very, very hard to build trust with victims and survivors.  Due to the vested conflicts of interest, ambiguities and ambivalence that the ISB had been saddled with from the outset, their work took considerable time. However, their fierce independence and obvious integrity won through, and slowly but surely, the antagonism of many victims and survivors was overcome by their professionalism, and by their obvious compassion and care. We have no hesitation in commending them for their resilience, when they faced initial scepticism and hostility from victims and survivors, who could not in conscience place any trust or confidence in the ISB structures established by Archbishops’ Council, and former Chair, Maggie Atkinson.

• For the avoidance of doubt, survivors and victims’ do not blame Steve and Jasvinder for the ISB debacle. The catastrophic failure was entirely the making and responsibility of the Archbishops’ Council, who hoped that by dubbing a body “independent”, members of General Synod and the wider Church of England would be duped into believing that the ISB was genuinely independent. It never was, nor would it ever have allowed to be so. So when Steve and Jasvinder started to show signs of  acting with genuine independence, the Secretariat pulled the plug on the operation with undue haste. The Archbishops’ Council betted on ambiguity and ambivalence being able to conceal all this.

• The governance of the Church of England is in deep crisis. Yet it is in denial about that. All the major National Church Institutions, the Archbishops’ Council and many Dioceses are a nest of conflicted and vested interests, but with no policies or oversight to manage them. The Secretariat at Lambeth Palace acts more like a medieval monarchical court than a function for serving trustees. Nationally, the Church of England is clueless about legal process in safeguarding, HR and financial control. They make it up as they go along. The Church of England desperately needs external regulation, and all safeguarding matters – policy, practice, regulation and appeal – must now be handed over to an entirely independent body that can call the Church of England and its powers to account.

One   Victim/Survivor sums it up:

The Archbishops and their allies having given us this new body, supposedly independent and supposedly a vehicle of truth and reconciliation, we first had to deal with the serial mishandling of our data by the first Chair of the ISB, Maggie Atkinson. Despite this, the two remaining functioning members (Jasvinder Sanghera and Steve Reeves) worked hard to establish trust with us all and owing to their professionalism and probity they succeeded in their mission.

Then, without any warning whatsoever, we learnt from the media that they had been dismissed. At this time there were twelve people who had complaints being investigated by the ISB: some of that number were so distraught at the news of what the Archbishops and their Council had done that waves of suicidal ideation enveloped us. All of us however were devastated by the callous, contemptuous cruelty of these people.

The recent appointment of Ineqe to review Lambeth Palace and diocesan safeguarding, apparently by the Archbishops’ Council is another example of the Archbishops arranging to have their safe and compliant practices audited by a body that can be relied upon to tell the rest of the world that all is well. The previous reviewers were far too critical and independent. Ineqe work closely with Winkworth Sherwood, and have a poor record on data and disability compliance, currently subject to complaints laid before the Charity Commission and Information Commissioner’s Office.

We already know that the Redress Scheme will keep being delayed and delayed, whittled down, and then blame and costs shifted onto parishes and dioceses. This will be the strategy of the Archbishops’ Council. Their number one priority is to avoid reputational damage.  All the Archbishops and Secretariat want to do is avoid liability, responsibility and accountability.

The Archbishops’ Council and its Secretariat are deeply corrupt. For Victims and Survivors, justice delayed is justice denied. As long as the Archbishops’ Council and its Secretariat continue to operate like this, above and beyond any external scrutiny, their delays and corruption will continue in perpetuity. There will be no justice for victims whilst these people continue to hold power and responsibility in safeguarding.

For these reasons, and many others, we now need some resignations. We are well past another “lessons learned review” whitewash. The Archbishops’ Council has shown itself to be utterly incompetent, unprofessional, and incapable of sorting out conflicts of interest.  Its only response to its total incapacity is endless cover-ups and comms-led spin.  We do not use ‘corrupt’ lightly of Archbishops’ Council.  But it is entirely proper to do so.

Safeguarding is unsafe in the hands of the Archbishops’ Council and NST.  They perpetrate abuse. The setting up of the ISB was done deploying duplicity and deceit, with General Synod, its Audit Committee and Victim-Survivors deliberately misled as to its nature and remit by the Archbishops’ Council. Yet again, Archbishops’ Council have perpetrated further abuses.

The Church  now needs to be relieved of all responsibility for safeguarding, and of policy and practice. We need fully independent regulation, outside the control of the Archbishops’ Council, bishops or National Church Institutions. Only then can trust and confidence be eventually rebuilt. Until then, nothing that the Archbishops’ Council says or does is worthy of trust.

by Martin Sewell

Following the peremptory sacking of the independent members of the Independent Safeguarding Board of the Church of England, in June of this year, and the furore that followed, both amongst the Survivor community and members of the General Synod, an independent investigation was set up, with a senior barrister, Sarah Wilkinson working on an intensive basis to deliver an overview of the situation.

In contrast with other reviews commissioned by the Church of England Ms. Wilkinson has worked hard to deliver the required report on time, and duly delivered it on Friday last. It is not only in this regard that we see what can be achieved: survivors who have engaged with her have uniformly testified to her professionalism, empathy, and kindness, which they report contrast unfavourably with members of the church when interacting with them.

We do not know precisely what the review will be saying, but we hope that Professor Jay and her team are equally impressed with what can be achieved when  highly  competent outsiders get to grips with the problems of church safeguarding.

There will doubtless be debate and perhaps controversy about what conclusions are reached but this has more to do with matters outside of Ms. Wilkinson’s control than complaints about her methodology.

The Church is giving itself 11 days to digest and prepare a response to what may well be a Report with significant consequences. This in itself tells us something about how the church approaches these matters.

IICSA heard and upheld historic complaints that the church prioritised its own reputation over justice, mercy and the needs of those whom it has wronged. We are still in that same situation. It is partly for this reason that I write in advance of the publication because we need to put certain observations into the public domain so that significant commentary can begin, sooner rather than later, on matters that already arise from the way in which the church has structured the review. This is no criticism of the reviewer.

The government recently legislated to outlaw and criminalise abuse within domestic relationships. There is ample testimony to the emotional damage that can be occasioned to vulnerable spouses and partners at the hands of those of a controlling personality. People invest in a relationship and the more they do so, the more vulnerable they become to abuse when the other party prioritises their needs within the relationship.

When complaints are brought to the church, those making such representations are often those same people who most trusted the institution. They may be parishioners, children in church schools or associated organisations; sometimes they are members of staff or priests, and even those in senior positions and significant relationships with the institution can find themselves harmed and abused within the complaint process.

The initial grievance is compounded and exacerbated by the toxic church culture of control. One sees this even in the case of the Wilkinson review.

All the former members of the ISB had and have legitimate important interests. In having their conduct considered within such a review, it is not simply about knowing what happened in the past. It may have a significant ongoing impact on their future professional reputations. As far as I can ascertain, all those to whom we entrusted the ISB project have been anxious to be judged on a level playing field. I have heard nothing to suggest that each and everyone of them is concerned that the review shall report on” the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth”.

I suspect none of them ( and few of us ) will claim never to make mistakes; the ISB members may have been subject to unreasonable expectation, ambiguity in the definition of their roles, and the intense pressure that goes with working in such a difficult field. These were, and are, people of substance and stature; the least that the church ought properly to have afforded them is a scrupulously fair process. Yes, even in advance of the report we know that this did not happen. I will elaborate and re-emphasise that the reviewer can and will only work within the parameters permitted her under the terms of the review. In the old expression of computer programmers” Rubbish in – Rubbish out”.

Now, there will not be much rubbish sifted by Ms Wilkinson; there is a very significant written audit trail to be followed, but any review can only be as good as its terms of reference. Both at the outset and following receipt of the review, Church House and its Secretariat have unquestionably formulated the scope of the document, furthermore it will craft the initial presentation.

I have previously referenced in blog posts that the church has been very keen on those most affected having a fair degree of import into secular Inquiries. Those into the Hillsborough disaster and the Countess of Chester Hospital (Lucy Letby) both saw senior bishops asserting the importance of listening to those most affected within the commissioning process.

What is sauce for the secular goose is surely sauce for the ecclesiastical gander.

Let us not forget that Jasvinder Sanghera and Steve Reeves have both been honoured by the Crown for their outstanding contributions to safeguarding. It was accordingly by no means unreasonable that before they put their professional reputations and future work prospects into a process that could, potentially, be ruinous, these two servants of survivors should have confidence in the review process. There is a shocking contrast here.

It would be very easy to see these, and indeed the reputations of Meg Munn and Maggie Atkinson adversely affected by the review outcome. In contrast the one thing that we know from every other review case is that the church is institutionally obstructive towards holding its own leadership to account. I include within that cohort senior bishops, members of Archbishops’ Council, and the Secretariat. The latter is of course, significantly involved in the scoping of the review and it’s presentation.

Thus it has been that, unable to secure assurances that Ms Wilkinson would be permitted, under her terms of reference, to go and report upon whatsoever she felt appropriate within this sorry history, the two sacked members of the ISB decided that they could not engage with the review as Ms Wilkinson and many others would have wished them to do.

There is much of the case which can be carefully reconstructed by Ms Wilkinson because so much  is already in the public domain, not least in the Synod statements which I and many Synod colleagues insisted they should be entitled to give. That was a creditable revolt against the management of the Synod processes by the powers that be, which initially denied them that voice. Let us hope this does not escape Ms Wilkinson’s careful eye; I do not discount that possibility.

The Church should not have  constrained the Review in this way. Everything that might have been relevant should have been placed within her purview. It is not what the people in the wider Church and indeed beyond wanted.  I do not suggest that the Review will be without importance significance or consequences but any good outcome will be in spite of its management not because of it and that is tragic.

Will we have got to the bottom of how we got into this unholy mess? Will anyone resign? These are matters we will need to consider as we read what is likely to be a very detailed and lengthy document published just as the Christmas season arrives with all its distractions. The Church insiders are already working on their responses. The people in the pews ( who actually paid for it) will have to wait a few more days.

Some twenty-five years ago I was asked by a contact to offer spiritual support to a woman who was dying of cancer.  She was, at the beginning, able to travel the ten miles from her home to see me and we probably had around five sessions together before her illness made this impossible.  I recall these meetings as I recently asked myself the question, why I chose the Gospel of St John as a text we could read together, and which would provide ‘homework’ between our meetings.  Just recently, I have begun to recognise better that, although the fourth gospel author is probably not attempting to provide anything like an exact biographical record of his Jesus’ ministry, he does allow the reader to feel that he/she is being brought into intimate contact with the Master.  The other gospels give us some insight into the personality and teaching of Jesus, but John’s aim seems to be to create a spiritual immediacy, a meeting place, between the Lord and those followers who immerse themselves in his words. This immediacy is found especially in and through the ‘I am’ sayings which the evangelist gives us.  These are unique to the fourth gospel.

To remind my readers, much of the text of the fourth gospel outside the Passion Narrative is a series of thematic meditations linked to a series of ‘I am’ sayings.  The events and encounters recorded around each ‘I am’ saying are linked to it as a kind of commentary.  Together they are each designed to reveal a distinct aspect of Jesus’ work and the way he becomes united to his followers in what might be described as a mystical fusion.  All the sequences of teaching and discourse that we find in the first section of the fourth gospel seem to be tied in to one or other of these key ‘I am’ sayings.  The ‘I am’ sayings introduce us to the well-known fourth gospel themes of Jesus as Good Shepherd, Bread of Life, Living Water and True Vine etc.  Thus, when Jesus declares himself to be the Light of the World, the teaching that given in this part of the gospel is completely focussed on exploring this image.  This section contains a discourse about the contrast between darkness and light and also tells at some length the linked story of the healing of a blind man.  Adding into the drama of the story, we hear the formerly blind man making a spirited response when the religious leaders try to make him deny his healing and condemn Jesus as a sinner.  To paraphrase the healed man’s words, ‘I don’t know who is responsible for what has happened, whether God or the one you claim is a sinner. One thing I do know, once I was blind; now I can see’.

 When we become aware of the literary and thematic structure of the fourth gospel, we are forced to note that it is highly improbable, even implausible, that Jesus taught his disciples in such a structured way. Is it really likely that Jesus’ teaching was as tidy and ordered as John’s gospel sets it out for us?  The idea that Jesus, rather than the author of the fourth gospel, divided up his teaching into these tidy and ordered sections is, we would suggest, a nonsense claim.  The gospel author whom we call John, had, as we have suggested, a much more ambitious aim, to introduce his readers to a close relationship with the Risen Lord.  Jesus’ task both as a teacher on earth and as the ever-present divine being who lives within us through the Spirit, will be for the believer the one who leads us to all truth and offers to humankind and the gift of ‘eternal life’.

I imagine that many of my readers have used John’s gospel in the way I am suggesting – as a source of profound material for meditation about the meaning of Jesus as well as a focus for understanding how to enter into an ever-deeper relationship with him.  The fact that the Jesus who is presented to us in the fourth gospel has a different feel about it from the other gospel accounts, does not force us to declare that one or other version of Jesus’ life is somehow more authentic and true.  It is enough that Christians, through the centuries have, successfully felt able to draw out of John’s words a sense of divine encounter.  That is what we today are invited to do and it forms the main intention of the original author.  The variety of proclamations made by Jesus, the ‘I am’ sayings make this process possible.  Inspiration in Scripture seems to work just as well even when no detailed historical claims are made for a particular passage in the gospel text.

In my title for this blog post, I used the heading ‘Advent a season of symbols’.  It seems to be true that the fourth gospel version of Jesus’ life, the one that is least likely to be factually true as history in the account of his ministry, should also be the one able to bring his followers the closest to him.  The ahistorical symbols in the gospel, water, light and darkness, bread etc., are probably not historical memories; they are the means through which we are brought into a place of intimacy with the Risen Master.  In Advent we are also presented with certain powerful visual symbols that, like the fourth gospel, bring Christ close to us.  On one Sunday in Advent we do focus on the ministry of John the Baptist but most of the time, we are immersing ourselves in ahistorical symbols provided by our liturgy in a not dissimilar way to readers of the fourth gospel.  Particularly powerful is the Advent symbol of light breaking into the darkness.  This image or symbol evokes our own experiences of disorientation in a place of darkness before we were rescued by a light-switch or a torch.  The lived experience of being highly vulnerable or frightened of the dark is one that is real to us and it feeds into our ability to imagine and thus encounter the one who, in a spiritual sense, drives away the darkness.

The other powerful symbol explored liturgically and devotionally in Advent is that of longing, waiting and expectation.  We all know what it means to wait for something with passionate intensity.  One place to observe such longing and expectation is the sight of children fingering presents under the Christmas tree.  Another place is the arrival section of a large international airport.  Here people are waiting to be reunited with loved ones after maybe months, even years, of separation.  Is not our Advent observance being fed by some of this passionate intensity, which our imagination can evoke for us in this season of symbols?  To repeat, symbols, such as we find in John’s gospel and the commemoration of Advent are not events or facts. But their status as symbols still allows them play a crucial role in allowing us to experience and connect with the reality of God in Christ reaching out to us . The season of symbols, as I call it, draws our attention, not to historical events in Jesus’ life, but to powerful aspects of what we believe about him.  It also helps us, as Christians claim, to form a personal relationship with him, one that reaches beyond the grave to all eternity.

Writing this Advent reflection has helped me to understand better how this gospel in the New Testament that strays (apart from the Passion narrative) the furthest away from the detailed historical record, is also the one that I turned towards to help someone facing death.  My attachment to the fourth gospel is shared by many of my readers as we seem to be entering the realm of eternity, timelessness and the experience and promise of what we call, however we interpret it, eternal life.