Colin Coward Unadulterated Love Accurate reporting versus fake news – how do we tell the difference between truth and lies?
Gavin Drake Church Abuse Too little, too late: Charity Commission reminds General Synod of charity trustee’s safeguarding duties
As if on cue to illustrate Gavin Drake’s point the Bishop of Liverpool made it onto Channel 4 last night for reasons he would have preferred not to. Maybe this is part of what Martine Oborne of WATCH had in mind last year when she wrote about abuse of women within the Church being an impending crisis. So- the bishop didn’t do anything wrong.( They don’t, especially if male) The police didn’t take one case any further. CDM was ruled out of time by a retired judge …. And a serving female bishop is being offered support for seeing herself… Read more »
One fix that is desperately needed – is that Bishops should have the power to fire clergy. Because everyone “outside” of the inner-circles assumes they do already. So they are held accountable for that. ++Stephen should have fired this Bishop before (or even after) he got to Liverpool – but instead the process involves reaching for a lawyer. Now – – maybe +Stephen would still not have done it – but at least he could. It feels to me that even if there were saints as this man’s Bishops they wouldn’t have had the power to do anything more than… Read more »
You’ve made a crucial point – ‘they wouldn’t have had the power to do anything more than launch a media fight to get rid of him.’ And instead of taking this option, they covered it all up. The cover-up always makes it so much worse.
A much more useful innovation than giving Bishops the power to fire clergy would be to give clergy the power to fire Bishops.
Approx 90% of the problems related to historic abuse in the C of E stem from 106 Bishops & Archbishops, bar one, (& also with the AC to be fair), their actions and, mainly, inactions.
Indicatively 10% of the problems lie with 15,000 other clergy, most of whom are utterly fed up with their Bishops’ failings that undermine the typical priest’s very good local work day in, day out.
Where do you get your figures from? I agree that there have been many failings by senior clergy as regards handling safeguarding issues but if you are talking about direct abuse rather than the handling of complaints and disciplinary procedures I don’t think we have the figures publicly available. Please note that I am not here seeking to suggest that the bad handling of disclosures etc. is unimportant. It usually serves to revictimise the victim / survivor. Of course, someone who responded poorly to an abuse survivor and made their original abuse worse might even, sadly, go on to be… Read more »
I like Gavin Drake’s analysis of ‘independence’.
This did make me wonder — so is it more “good” to reject all these proposals as they are not good enough. Thus keeping the status quo? – – or better to accept something than nothing?
Or will there/should there be lots of amendments from the floor?
It’s not clear to me what action General Synod members could be expected to take at the moment.
Saying no to any change that isn’t good enough feels a bit similar to the Redress-scheme being postponed because it wasn’t quite ‘good enough’.
Re Gavin’s post and independent bodies – isnt the problem that the CofE is not a statutory body (unlike teachers, nurses and medics)? Voluntary bodies cant do safeguarding in the same way – who would fund the independent body?
Funding isn’t an issue. The Archbishops’ Council currently wastes millions of pounds each and every year to sustain a complex structure which isn’t working.
Gavin, Firstly thanks so much for your blog (donated some coffee to the cause). We have a really similar situation in Australia and you Janet Fife Gilo Graham and other survivor advocates are really inspirational. Also Thinking Anglican admins for keeping the light shining with posts. If somehow Parliament could legislate a complete Firewall between the Independent service and the Church could that solve the problem? We are truly lucky that in Australia given our Colonial History we never allowed Bishops into our Parliament. I think its a bridge too far to legislate for their removal and not being a… Read more »
It is possible that the bishops may not be long for the UK parliament, if one or more of the recent Hailsham/Harman/Scriven amendments are approved: https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/58133/documents/5763 Why a Tory like Viscount Hailsham has been promoting the exclusion of the bishops is something of a mystery, although his father – a devout if circumspect Anglican – used to enjoy whispering or hissing the word “b*****ks” to the bishops’ bench from the woolsack following speeches by bishops in order to savour their shocked reaction, so I suppose that this might be part of an inherited contempt for parliamentary prelacy. Given the confluence… Read more »
Hi Froghole,
I would imagine you have an encyclopaedic knowledge of both church history and canon Law and a contemporary understanding of the legislative requirements of making change. Your posts are always incredibly detailed.
It’s a pleasure to read your posts. Thanks for helping me gain an understanding of the complexities of CofE canon law and legislative change
That is most kind, but I am confident – indeed, I *know* – that there are others writing here who are far better informed than I am about such subjects, not least because they are professionals and I am a mere amateur. However, what I think is important about Harriet Harman’s amendments is that they will have considerable influence upon the government, given that Harman is a former deputy leader and acting leader of the Labour party – and the bill is, after all, government business. The leadership void at the top of the Church, as well as its present… Read more »
No, I don’t think it is. Many professions that aren’t statutory or even subject to statutory regulation have regulatory bodies that, among other things, run professional conduct tribunals. In every case, the body running the tribunals is not also the employer of the person under investigation.
Who then funds these tribunals? I find it hard to understand how an independent body can be funded. And the question of employee status raises a whole load of complexity!
The full #4 piece is on Youtube & the CofE comes out it even worse than from the printed accounts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4q0efal-Ig
Towards the end of the piece comes an interview with the Bishop of Dover, which is embarrassing. She is clearly very uncomfortable & irritated with the line of questioning, & can do little more than repeat the party line that ‘due process’ must be followed.
Interesting that the Bishop of Dover was wheeled out when her equivalent in the York diocese is the Bishop of Selby. I wonder why the Archbishop of York didn’t ask Bishop Winfield to present the CofE’s position?
There is no structural equivalence between the Bishop of Dover and the Bishop of Selby. The role of senior suffragan in York is not tied to a particular see, and there is no permanent delegation of diocesan responsibilities as there is with Dover.
That’s not how the Archbishop has presented the situation of Bishop Winfield to the York diocese.
I think the Answer to that is simple whereas in Canterbury the Bishop of Dover is the sole Diocesan Suffragan (in the past they also used to have Maidstone and Croydon) and discounting the Bishop of Richborough, in York they have three Suffragans and the Bishop of Hull is the Senior one by the fact she was apppointed before the newly consecrated Bishops of Selby and Whitby, so by the seniority of her appointment in the York Diocese the Bishop of Hull would be the nearest equiverlent to the Bishop of Dover in the Canterbury Diocese. Jonathan
Although Bishop Sanderson has been in post longer than the newly consecrated Bishop of Selby; the Archbishop has made it clear that Bishop Winfield is in fact the senior suffragan in the diocese.
Colin just reminded me, in his comments about Trump, of the late, much unlamented Josef Goebbels who once said that if you’re going to tell lies, make sure you tell big ones; the bigger the lie, the more certain you are to be believed. I’ve reached similar conclusions about various anti-Trump channels on youtube – indeed, yesterday challenged one of them about a story which was contradicted by the BBC. And, sadly, I’ve done the same about a lot of US evangelical books which I’ve read over the years – and some UK evangelical media sources as well. There was… Read more »
The Charity Commission letter raises the issue that trustees of bodies like PCCs and Diocesan Boards of Finance cannot delegate their safeguarding responsibilities wholly to an “independent” body. What happens if a trustee body takes the view that the independent body is not providing an adequate service?
As a second point “independence” is a relational world. There is a phenomenon known in other regulated sectors of “regulatory capture”, where the functional relationship between regulator and regulated becomes distorted and regulation ceases to have the intended impact. Functional independence will not be secured wholly by what is written in law, or said in papers or debates, or desired by the well-meaning: it also has to be enacted. Questions like who pays, and who sets the budget (and how) are not fully answered in the papers And this is just one example of how the relationships have to be… Read more »
Finally, the accountability of office-holders, including bishops, is a long-time theme of mine. Many of the issues at local level have been dealt with, and we have industrial levels of training and paperwork to cope with. However, most of the lessons (un)learned reports involve at least some poor decisions/ bad actions at senior levels, and it is unclear how these have been addressed. Accountability does not, for example, necessarily involve bishops becoming employees (and a change of that kind should start at the top). But the absence of any functional action to deal with poor behaviour which falls short of… Read more »
I very much agree.
I think this is the case with sin in general – – most “evil” or “bad” people do not wake up and suddenly commit a massive sin.
They commit some small misdemeanour – then they get away with it – then they do a bit more – and a bit more … and etc..
The Lord’s prayer has “lead us not into temptation” – for a reason.
It can take a long time for a victim to process abuse. Consequently the one year time limit for making a CDM complaint is unjust. The Injustice is very well illustrated by the case of the Bishop of Liverpool. A female bishop wanted to launch a CDM against the Bishop of Liverpool but the arbitrary one year time limit had expired. A so called “independent” judge refused permission for the CDM to proceed. Why ? Wasn’t the female bishop believed? This smells to me of an establishment cover up, insensitivity to victims at the very least. How was the judge… Read more »
I always assume co*k-up over conspiracy until evidence teaches me otherwise. And the evidence points to me of a co*k-up more than anything else. Firstly though: “Shouldn’t the judge be named and held accountable?” Careful – This reminds me of the newspaper spread “enemies of the people” Enemies of the People (headline) – Wikipedia It may be (/I think it is) the case that the judge was given the wrong rules to work with -but if the rules the judge was given rules that say “it has to be within 1 year otherwise refuse”, it feels dangerous to blame a… Read more »
A reply to David Hawkins and TimP jointly, if I may. I won’t comment on the case of the Bishop of Liverpool, but on the vexed subject of the one year limitation period for bringing a complaint of misconduct under the CDM (2003 etc) it is noteworthy that the problem has been addressed and section 19 (1) of the Clergy Conduct Measure 2025 (shortly to be enacted as I understand) states this: “19 Limitation periods (1) ”A complaint of serious misconduct may be made at any time, regardless of when the conduct alleged in the complaint occurred.” Additionally under the… Read more »
I agree that without knowing a lot more it’s dangerous to just blame the judge. What was memorably described on the PM programme this evening as “lecherous behaviour” might well fall well short of the criminal threshold but still be unacceptable conduct. But from my (not in the Church) management experience I’d think that someone who went round bestowing kisses and fondling too generously would at least have to have had a proper, formal, written, warning before more serious action could be taken against him (or indeed her) should that behaviour continue. ” We don’t do that stuff here, and… Read more »