The Last Few Weeks
What can be done about safeguarding in the Church of England
Why Does the Church of England Struggle with Safeguarding?
The Church of England continues to face significant challenges in addressing safeguarding issues. Another historic case has recently undergone a learning review, and yet the same recurring problems emerge. The content of the Makin Review into the abusive activities of John Smyth—a particularly malevolent form of sado-Christianity—has escalated concerns, especially due to its links to the Archbishop of Canterbury. This raises critical questions: what did the Archbishop know, when did he know it, and what actions did he take? More disturbingly, did inaction allow Smyth to continue his abuse?
Baroness Berridge, a member of the House of Lords, posed a crucial question during a debate on social cohesion, where several peers tried to lever in questions about safeguarding in the Church: “Why is there no independent safeguarding board as there is for Parliament?” This question strikes at the heart of the matter—accountability.
There was a leak of a more recent letter from the archbishops which illustrates what I mean well. The letter seems to have put pressure on a more junior colleague to break the safeguarding rules so as to reinstate a former colleague to ministry. This individual, Lord Sentamu, had previously refused to accept a safeguarding judgement made against him. For most people in any public facing role the archbishops crossed a very well-marked boundary.
Few will believe that that the bishop in question, the Bishop of Newcastle, was not coerced into a course of action she was hesitant to pursue. Given that the letter was written when both archbishops would have had sight of the Makin Review.. It was foolish, reckless and damaging. And Grade 1 meddling, yet they answer to no one.
What has gone wrong here? In most organisations, safeguarding generally functions well. Effective processes are in place, issues are reported, investigated, and adjudication decisions are made, which the institution then follows. When issues are more serious, they are appropriately reported to the authorities, with whom there is usually a strong relationship; the authorities provide advice and are generally supportive in all cases. Organisational leaders emphasise creating a positive culture where staff are appropriately inquisitive, if not suspicious, and safeguarding processes are transparent and open within the legal rules of confidentiality. Survivors are respected and included, and when willing, they contribute to ensuring that processes function well, with the organisation always taking seriously the principle of primum non nocere, first do no harm, ensuring that survivors are not re-traumatised. Effective systems also treat those who have abused with clarity and respect. Most organisations manage this well, with occasional hiccups; but for most, it has become part of the organisational furniture. Operational managers understand that deviating from the process makes them a safeguarding risk, and so the system creates its own momentum for rule following.
If we compare the local parish churches with other organisation who work at the level of a local community, it would not really be fair to say that the Church of England is not safe. There are a good number of outstanding individuals dedicated to creating good quality safeguarding who perform remarkable work given what they started with. Notable progress has been achieved in the procedures that ensure the safety of vulnerable people, in the relationship with survivors at both local and diocesan levels, and in fostering a good safeguarding culture. Locally, processes are generally good; safeguarding is a regular issue for discussion at Church Council Meetings. Anyone with a leadership responsibility does an online safeguarding course, and most clergy have extensive regular safeguarding training.
The local church where I minister, for the moment, as a very part-time locum is as safe as it can be and careful about those who may be vulnerable in the congregation without being unduly intrusive. Those who look after safeguarding have good judgment and a clear understanding of what they are supposed to be doing. None of this is down to me; it's just part of how the diocese does its safeguarding.
Until recently, I sat on a national charity that dispensed funds to local projects, and Church of England parishes had good policies, were aware of the issues, and crucially were ready to report allegations if necessary. There is always more that can be done, but certainly at the local level, today local churches are safe relative to other local organisations.
The problem is not at the level of local parishes or, for the most part, diocese. It is rather the meddling that goes on as senior leaders intervene to fix things. Recent weeks have shown that the archbishops are not prepared to relinquish safeguarding sovereignty. They prefer to keep the final say over safeguarding matters rather than allow agreed-upon processes to unfold and accept their outcomes. In the leaked letter, the archbishops are clearly attempting to subvert those processes to reinstate John Sentamu, despite his failure to acknowledge that a safeguarding panel found he should have done more to report a complaint he received when he was Archbishop of York. I suspect part of their motivation was the optics of the senior black clergyperson in the church being prohibited from ministry but this this sort of interference for whatever reason is wrong.
Sovereignty is problematic for the Church; historically, it was frequently the only institution capable of creating order in the land, and it still possesses the authority to enact laws. It has been accustomed to wielding power and handling its own business since antiquity. Today, this is very unhelpful because it gives some the idea that the Church is a special case and has sovereignty over its affairs, and so not being subject to the same rules as everyone else. This gets mixed up with a theology that the Church is only accountable to God and the whole think becomes very muddy and unclear.
The rub here is that the legal framework surrounding safeguarding practice also asserts a claim to sovereignty through the 'Paramountcy Principle[1]': that the welfare of a child (or vulnerable adult) comes first and so it follows there is never an acceptable reason for failing to report an allegation or even a suspicion and never a justification for meddling with agreed processes. These are now non-negotiable features of the public landscape and woe betide anyone who tries to subvert them, in my view, rightly so.
This is now generally accepted in the Church of England, except, it seems, the archbishops, who by their actions have undermined the credibility of others and called into question the efforts that have been made to get things right. Those responsible for safeguarding must be crying into their beer. The Archbishop of Canterbury has resigned, and no doubt there will be some sort of inquiry in due course. The Archbishop of York should now accept that he was wrong, and at the very least apologise, and undergo some retraining, and if not, he too should resign. These actions were not intended to improve the quality of safeguarding in the Church; they were intended to subvert it. This must stop.
Their justification will be something along the lines that the church's historic abuse cases are often judged by today's standards but rely on processes from the 90s and 00s. Many feel aggrieved about how the rules are sometimes applied retrospectively. There is some truth in this; I’m not sure there would have been many Constabularies who would have investigated caning at a school in the 80’s or 90’s or, for that matter, would have taken the word of a young lad over against a respected figure in the community. Such Church rules as there were then discouraged disclosure because it was almost impossible to remove a Vicar or Rector from their post[2]. Thankfully things have changed.
This is the essence of John Sentamu's complaint regarding his treatment in the review of the Trevor Devamanikkam case, another case with a Learning Review. As the Archbishop of York, he claimed he had no jurisdiction over this matter, as the abuse occurred in the Diocese of Bradford and was reported in the Diocese of Sheffield. His episcopal responsibilities regarding clergy were limited to the Diocese of York. This is strictly true in terms of Church structures.
The way this is typically dealt with, to address this retrofitting of the rules, is that the case is acknowledged to have been mishandled, an apology is issued, and a period of retraining follows; survivors rightly want to know that a lesson has been learned and that this will not happen again. John Sentamu perceived this as an injustice since he has not, in his eyes done anything wrong, and refused to apologise.
This however brought him into direct conflict with the Paramountcy Principle, that allegations of abuse should always be reported no matter what. When all the safeguarding practices and processes of the Church of England are based on this principle, it is not difficult to see why this might be a problem.
Those who advocate for him should recognise what his reinstatement without an apology will now mean for those looking in from outside. It looks like a detail of Church law is being used to subvert what is now universally agreed principle about the safety of the vulnerable.
Why, though, were the Archbishops so unwise in their handling of this matter? Well, in my view at least, it's all to do with how power is used in the Church by those at the top and how it has become more personal and less accountable. This has been a problem for safeguarding practice, but it has also been a more general problem and has been highly dysfunctional for the institution.
The answer is not simply a different sort of archbishop. The Archbishop of York is correct when he says the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury has to change but this change needs to be much more than a job description. There are some more fundamental survival issues which need to be addressed which impact on the Church of England as a whole and on the role of the archbishops. Two in particular need significant work.
First there is now an existential question about the right levels of subsidiarity and the need to shift back to a more nuanced and effective use of power across the institution; addressing this is now a categorical imperative. Recent strategy, changes to structures and the persistent culture of insiders and outsiders mean that there are no balancing forces to the power of archbishops this is highly dysfunctional. It is not until this question of subsidiarity is addressed that trust will be able to be rebuilt and those lower down the structure will believe that they have any sort of agency to change things; safeguarding will never come right until this is addressed
Then, second and directly connected is the question of mutual accountability. There are many ways of managing the ambiguity the Church of England finds itself in at this present time. Uncertain times are a difficult place to be, but they have to be worked with. What is unknown is not necessarily unknowable, it is the quality of solidarity which provides direction of travel in this sort of situation, how people relate to each other and the degree of connectedness they are prepared to share. Again, this requires trust and urgent work is needed to rebuild it.
The answer to Baroness Berridge is that ultimately the archbishops are accountable. The convention is that Parliament does not legislate for the internal affairs of the Church of England without its consent maybe that needs to change.
[1] The 'paramountcy principle' comes out of the 1989 Children’s Act. Its origins are in redressing the balance between fathers and mothers in custody cases, the act saw a shift away from children being seen as the ‘property’ of their fathers to something which focussed on their welfare being paramount and so addressed the connection to their mothers. It makes a clear claim to the welfare of children or vulnerable persons being the paramount consideration and so is a claim to a form of absolute sovereignty.
[2] The Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure 1963 was a clunky tool for Clergy discipline. It was virtually impossible to remove clergy from their tenure without considerable cost and the courts were invariably swayed towards individual clergy and a high burden of proof. This encouraged informal ways of addressing issues rather than formal processes this was the legal structure during the 90’s and for most of the 00’s.
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