Updated Friday
Protocols and practice guidance for the Church of England’s Past Cases Review 2, (PCR2) have been published today. Individuals who wish to make representations to the PCR2 process or who need to come forward with information or make any disclosures regarding church related abuse are encouraged to make direct contact with their diocesan safeguarding adviser. However, recognising that this may not feel safe for those with a lived experience of abuse from within the church, a dedicated telephone helpline – 0800 80 20 20 – operated independently from the church, by the NSPCC, has been set up.
Anyone can use the helpline to provide information or to raise concerns regarding abuse within the Church of England context; whether they are reporting issues relating to children, adults or seeking to whistle blow about poor safeguarding practice. Survivors were not invited to contribute to the 2007-2009 PCR and the Church has wanted to ensure a different, trauma informed approach is taken by PCR2. Listening to survivor voices has helped to shape how this review will be conducted.
The issuing of this guidance is just part of the ongoing scrutiny work around past cases across the Church, and follows a report in 2018 into the original PCR (2007-2009) which revealed shortcomings both in the process and final result.
Seven dioceses were asked to repeat a full Past Cases Review with work already underway based on draft guidance. The final guidance directs all dioceses on steps that must be taken to independently review all outstanding files. PCR2 must be completed by the end of 2020.
The telephone helpline number and details of how to make contact directly with the diocesan safeguarding team will be promoted locally by each diocese
Bishop Mark Sowerby, chair of the PCR2 Management Board said: “It is the aspiration of the Archbishops’ Council that by the end of the PCR2 process, independent review work will have been carried out in every diocese and church institution within both the letter and the spirit of the protocol and practice guidance.
PCR2 is a central part of the church’s proactive approach to identifying where abuse allegations have not been managed appropriately or safely
We are committed to responding well to all survivors of abuse and I pray that the PCR2 is another step to making the Church a safer place for all.”
There are links to several documents:
PCR2 Protocol and Practice Guidance
PCR2 Full Appendices for Practice Guidance
Update
Church Times Review and survivors’ helpline seek to close era of shortcomings in Church’s safeguarding
So the Church of England reviews itself yet again.
I suppose it could be regarded as self-abuse.
I suppose I’d better ask you not to publish my comment about self abuse. Funny perhaps, but this is not a topic for flippancy.
Sorry to interrupt, Stanley, but I just stumbled across that interview with you that was published in the Church Times back in 2017: wonderful and full of Cumbrian candour. Just wanted to thank you.
Bless you, Susannah. I find so much in the church so wrong-headed and – esp this Matt Ineson stuff – evil. that I cope by indulging in infantile humour and reductio-ad-absurdam. A bit like Jonathan Swift (do you know “A modest proposal”?) Although I don’t think I know any, I imagine satanists would be more human than the Lambeth politburo.
Swift is wonderful, and resonates still. When I read his invective in poems like The Legion Club it makes me long for voices like that today. Sometimes I see it in Shelley too.
On the other hand…
As a man of Cumbria, you may possibly agree that at times, one feels the need and longing to get out on Blencathra or Great Gable, and let the quiet and the vastness re-inhabit the frazzled soul.
For a sibling across the water, who is NSPCC? Are they viewed as independent?
See here https://www.nspcc.org.uk/what-we-do/about-us/
This organisation is totally independent of the Church of England.
Am I being completely unfair in saying this? Mark Sowerby was a suffragan bishop in the Chichester Diocese from 2009 to 2019. Although there is not one shred of evidence to suggest that he was in any way complicit or incompetent in relation to the safeguarding issues that have been the subject of the IICSA, or that anyone was put at risk by him, and that his term of office as Bishop of Horsham began towards the end of the John Hind era, I am wondering if a former area (then suffragan) bishop in a Diocese that has demonstrated reckless… Read more »
I think you are right. You can see why survivors and their supporters – along with many clergy – feel so cynical about Church processes.