A Monument of Fame (Lambeth Palace Library blog) Back to the future: the Church Commissioners’ first computer
Martin Sewell Surviving Church Independent Safeguarding in the CofE. ‘When you give, let go’.
Simon Richiardi Surviving Church I kissed dating goodbye. Surviving a Church that practised ‘Biblical Marriage.’
K-Anonymous Surviving Church Innocent until proved guilty, except in the Church of England
Maggi Dawn Church Times God has many names: a solution to the inclusive-language dilemma
Andrew Nunn Looking back [at eighteen years on the General Synod]
Savitri Hensman ViaMedia.News Being Invisible While Anglicans Debate Marrying Same-Sex Couples
Savi’s is a much-needed perspective (and a majority one in worldwide terms) which as a white, privileged UK person I need to hear. And it is beautifully written and reasoned. The Church of England is dominated by white, native-speaking, mostly privileged people, and that of itself creates an inbuilt blind-spot and degrees of erasure… certainly erasure of proportionate voice and perspective.
There are about six billion non-white people in the world. They do not share a single perspective.
I was struck by the narrative in the article Innocent until proved guilty except in the Church of England. While I don’t comment on the specific case involved, there is something to learn from the picture painted. In the secular world, most safeguarding issues involve a crime. When such things occur, there are numerous functions that are brought into play: investigation of the event; support of the victim and witnesses; determination of the facts; punishing the offender; restitution to the victim; and so on. Each of these involves one or several agencies, usually state-funded and some of them granted specific… Read more »
While I don’t doubt the dysfunction of the CofE’s safeguarding “system”, I think you are perhaps idealising how safeguarding is dealt with in secular contexts. A safeguarding issue in education, for example, is pretty much anything that makes you think something might not be right. You certainly don’t need evidence of a crime. There is an ongoing problem in all contexts that in trying to safeguard children and vulnerable adults you have, to some extent, to take reports at face value. So, how do you tell when the recovering addict with a history of trauma who accuses the vicar of… Read more »
I don’t think I’m idealising anything. The IICSA reports show how poorly the complex state apparatus can perform even in serious cases. But in these serious cases all these functions are required, however they are performed. Yet the C of E pretends that it can perform all of these functions independently of the state, without the resources, structures, procedures or legal powers. All the questions you pose are cogent, and I do not pretend to have a definitive answer to them. I simply observe that the C of E needs those answers, claims that it does have them — and… Read more »
There _is_ a robust way of assessing who is telling the truth when allegations of abuse by a priest (or a teacher, etc.) are made and then denied. It requires specialist knowledge of the psychodynamics of occupational aggression. A properly qualified psychologist can tell within minutes whether a disclosure is true or not — and this can be confirmed when interviewing the alleged perpetrator. A process in which disclosures are treated like adversarial ‘he said, she said’ disputes and criminal evidentiary standards are applied in practice is guaranteed to fail in almost all cases. That’s what the Church normally does,… Read more »
Thanks, Josie. It’s very odd how the Church persistently avoids employing people who really know what they’re doing in this field.
Josephine, I’ve not heard that there are reliable methods for discerning whether people are telling the truth, and honestly I find it hard to believe, though I hope it’s true. Could you direct me to the scientific literature on this?
I think that what’s described here as “a robust way of assessing who is telling the truth” is something we so badly want that we need to be properly cautious. In particular, I would like to know how, in principle, one conducts a proper scientific evaluation of any method for determining cases when ground truth is so very hard to obtain. To put it (over-) simply, the “gold standard” would be randomised control trials, where the claimed techniques were tried on two sets of cases in which (blinded to the participants) one group were known — somehow — to be… Read more »
That is pretty much the sort of thing I was obliquely hinting at, yes. Psychology in general has a reproducibility problem and I’d be very surprised if purported proof of this detection method was able to be independently verified.
Thank you, Jo B. There is no objective way of establishing who is telling the truth in most cases of contested accusations without hard evidence — which rarely emerges in cases of abuse as this so often occurs in private. Intelligent abusers are adept at disguising their actions and refrain from leaving evidence behind. They are dishonest, and deadly. Most studies of occupational aggression concern violence towards healthcare providers, with the main causes identified as mental illness and intoxication. Abuse (e.g. sexual) is an entirely different kettle of fish. The causes are related to the personalities of the abusers and… Read more »
“There are simple and inexpensive ways of preventing abuse even before the first report of abuse takes place.”
How about no priest or other person in a position of authority is permitted to be alone with a potential abuse victim (child, woman, employee, etc.) regardless of prior accusations?
Just “I can’t meet with you unless someone else is present, for the protection of both of us” drummed into people during training.
That isn’t easy in practice. First, how do we identify a potential abuse victim? Second, many people want to talk to a priest confidentially. They don’t want a random person dragged in to be present at the meeting, whose qualifications, experience or discretion they may not trust. A large church may have offices and an administrator or secretary who can at least be present in the building. But the majority of British parishes have no such set-up. The vicar works from the vicarage, and there may be no one else around for much or all of the day. It’ isn’t… Read more »
A potential abuse victim is anyone who might be abused. Yes, that includes a lot of people, as it should. As for the second objection, then the visitor can be required to bring a “witness”….or the meeting can occur in a public space.
What public space…?
Some churches and some parishes may be amply provided with community premises or places where someone wanting to talk confidentially can be seen but not heard. Mine have not been. Do we heat the whole church for an hour’s chat with someone, or make them shiver throughout? And then if the church door is locked – as it may have to be in dangerous areas – how is that better than the vicarage? Do we go to a teashop – possibly several miles away – where we can be overheard by the surrounding tables? As for a ‘witness’, I can’t… Read more »
A cafe, coffee shop, or something similar.
You can’t have a confidential conversation in a cafe. The tables are too close. Tough inner city areas may not have a coffee/tea shop, anyway. One of mine didn’t, and the only public meeting space was the church. People inside the church weren’t visible from outside, so it was no better than the vicarage in that respect – and much more difficult to heat.
I regret to say this isn’t completely convincing as an argument for the merits of “specialist knowledge of the psychodynamics of occupational aggression”. Arguing that other methods are not completely accurate or effective — which I think we agree, and deplore — and that the consequences of getting things wrong are very serious — which we also agree — does not make any case for some particular method being accurate and robust. So let me ask again, what evidence base is there for the claimed “high degree of accuracy”? What figures can be put on the probabilities of Type I… Read more »
Is Simon Richiardi’s pastor responsible for the harm he caused Simon? No doubt he felt he was doing the Lord’s work, but is that likely to be accepted as a defence on Judgement Day? It is a question we should all ask of ourselves.