Safeguarding in the Church of England: when is a victim of child-abuse not a victim?
from Archbishop Cranmer:
This is a guest post by Martin Sewell, a retired Child Protection Lawyer and a member of General Synod.
Yesterday I advanced a more sympathetic perspective on why Lord Carey might have acted so imprudently in the case of Peter Ball. I did so because my experience in dealing with such tragic cases is that everybody involved is damaged in some way, even the ‘neutrals’ and the ‘winners’. By the time you finish reading this piece, you will, at the very least, be convinced of that proposition.
When Safeguarding goes wrong everybody gets hurt.
So today I grasp a much more uncomfortable nettle and explore whether things have changed sufficiently to enable us to be confident that similar errors are not being replicated in the Church of England today. If we have continued to make the same mistakes, then we truly have to rethink our whole Safeguarding regime and to introduce a significant outside professional element.
I do so having read and discussed personally the account of abuse experienced by Matt Ineson, and the response of the church. That account is contemporary, though rooted in historic abuse.
I shall be as fair as I can be for the benefit of all parties: the legally correct way to handle all such allegations, established from the days of the Cleveland Report of 1987, is to “listen to what the complainant says and take what they say seriously”. This differs from current church policy, and it makes a difference, as we shall see.
In a nutshell, Matt Ineson describes historic abuse perpetrated by a priest, Trevor Devamanikkam, which was reported many years later to the police, and verbally and in writing on various occasions to a succession of church figures of increasing seniority. He explains that the police had asked him to delay initiating a Clergy Discipline complaint lest it alert the perpetrator.
The victim was sufficiently credible for the police and CPS to finally bring a prosecution many years after the events. This is unusual and a high bar to clear for any victim in pursuit of justice. There were six counts of serious sexual offences; three of rape and three of indecent assault on a child.
After the police had confirmed that he may do so, the CDM was lodged, alleging that there had been an insufficient response by the Church of England after initial disclosure to its clergy representatives. On behalf of its clergy, a defence was raised based upon the one-year time limit for such cases to be lodged. This submission was upheld for most of the clergy and the discretion to extend the time limit was not exercised.
There is no reason to believe that the rules have been other than correctly invoked and upheld, but how does that look to victims and the public?
Should we even have a time bar on an allegation that clergy allegedly failed to actively respond to ‘victims’?
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