Image: Lutterworth Press
I’ve just received “Sex. Power. Control – Responding to Abuse in the Institutional Church” by Fiona Gardner [Lutterworth 2021]. It has four pages – 95, 96,97 & 98 – relating to Bishop Bell and I was looking forward to reading a new, up-to-date, accurate insight into this injustice. How wrong I was! Here [below] are excerpts from the three pages of the book – the contents most of which seem an insightful analysis of abuses of Church power – but I was particularly incensed by this:
“Following the work with the independent safeguarding advisor, the Church reached a settlement in 2015 in a civil claim [with ‘Carol’ – Ed], an announcement which caused much indignation and outrage from many of the powerful and privileged supporters of Bishop Bell, who said that the Church had been too quick to condemn a highly revered man who, because he had died decades earlier, could not defend himself”
The Bell Society was not established in 2016 by, or for, the “powerful and privileged”.
Gardner selectively quotes Lord Carlile QC, but only to serve her arguments – not to serve justice in the Bishop Bell injustice. Garner also fails to acknowledge that Lord Carlile himself confirmed “that the Church had been too quick to condemn a highly revered man who…could not defend himself”
In an otherwise valuable book, Gardner lets herself down badly in her analysis of the Bishop Bell case – and thus also lets the reader down.
But I do not wish to be over-critical of Fiona Gardner’s book – my primary emphasis is on ‘rebuilding bridges’, healing and reconciliation.
Gardner’s book is, in fact, very good – well worth reading – but she seems to have ‘fallen into a trap’ like so many victims and survivors of abuse.
It has been regrettable that the narrative of survivors and victims – abused by the Church in more ways than sexual – often preclude clergy survivors and victims of false accusations of abuse.
Survivors/victims [and their advocates] – seem to have a ‘blind spot’ for the sufferings and injustice of those survivors/victims falsely accused [and their advocates] – such as Bishop Bell, George Carey, Martyn Percy et al.
This ‘blind spot’ is understandable in many ways, but it is important to make clear that survivors/victims of abuse are both those who have been abused and those who have been falsely accused of abuse. Both suffer and are in pain from the abuse by the Church – especially the abuse of power – and both voices need to be heard together [not one voice heard at the expense of the other]. Both need healing.
Gardner’s book is titled “Sex, Power, Control – Responding to Abuse in the Institutional Church”, and we need to focus on that and not be distracted and diverted by divisively arguing between ourselves.
Richard Scorer put it well in 2018 at the IICSA [March 5][Page 129 -Paras. 2-19 – Richard Scorer – Counsel for the complainants, victims and survivors represented by Slater & Gordon]: “…this is not simply an issue of attitude but of competence too. This is a point which has been made powerfully by Martin Sewell, who is both a lay member of the General Synod and a retired child protection lawyer. He points out that diocesan staff are typically trained in theology and Canon law, not in safeguarding or child protection law. As a result, he says, many of those making a decision about safeguarding in the Church of England have no credible claim to expertise in this increasingly complex situation. Interestingly, Mr Sewell makes that point both in relation to the treatment of complainants of abuse, but also in regard to the mishandling, in his view, of the George Bell case. He sees the failings on both of those aspects as two sides of the same coin, a fundamental problem, in his view, being a lack of competence and specialist knowledge, particularly legal knowledge and experience gained in a practical safeguarding context”
Richard W. Symonds – The Bell Society
“Sex. Power. Control – Responding to Abuse in the Institutional Church” by Fiona Gardner [Lutterworth 2021]
Chapter 6 – Dynamics of Power and Control in the Institutional Church
Excerpts from Pages 95, 96, 97 & 98
“The dining clubs and the powerful informal networks linked to them are clear examples of the way in which class permeates the hierarchy of the Church of England…Class barriers are consciously and unconsciously enforced by most people, who then conform to certain rules and stick to codes on how ‘people like them’ ought to behave, look or even think. In this way, class is one of the markers of power and control in the Church.
“This divide is illustrated by some of the exchanges quoted in the independent report by Lord Carlile into the way the Church of England dealt with a complaint of sexual abuse made by a woman known as ‘Carol’ against the late bishop George Bell.
The report was published in 2017 but the documentation includes the following comment from 1995 , after Carol had written to Bishop Eric Kemp, then the Bishop of Chichester, alleging sexual abuse by Bell when she was between eight and ten years old. The bishop’s response was to ask for further information: ‘Try to find out more about this lady.’ Carlile notes that written on the same copy was: ‘[…’s] parish. [He] does not know her. This is where the council houses problem people.’ Carlile rightly adds. ‘In my view this was an inappropriate comment to have written [Ref 30: Lord Carlile of Berriew CBE QC ‘Bishop George Bell: The Independent Review’, 16 December 2017, Page 19]…
“Carlile saw the response as inadequate, and one might add, patronising…
“Following the work with the independent safeguarding advisor, the Church reached a settlement in 2015 in a civil claim [with ‘Carol’ – Ed], an announcement which caused much indignation and outrage from many of the powerful and privileged supporters of Bishop Bell, who said that the Church had been too quick to condemn a highly revered man who, because he had died decades earlier, could not defend himself…
“The hierarchical and rather rigid power structure of the Church of England means that it is a very ‘congested system’; it lacks the fluidity needed for the culture significantly to change. The tone of the controversy over the George Bell compensation settlement [whatever its rights or wrongs] exemplifies the demonisation of those forces intruding from the margins, including the poor, in this case, female, those ‘sullied by sexual abuse’ and their ‘politically correct’ agitating supporters, as somehow an attack on the pure, the holy and the good, the traditional, powerful, white male core, who have so many resources to call upon, including a great deal of money”.
________________________________________________________________________________________
“The professional approach is to neither believe nor disbelieve the complainant and their allegation. There is no right or entitlement for a complainant to be believed, but there is a right and entitlement for a complainant to be treated with respect, to take their allegation seriously, to listen with compassion, and to record the facts clearly. It would appear the Church regarded ‘Carol’ as a victim to be believed at all costs. There seems to have been a panicked rush to judgement in which an astonishing lack of judgement was made manifest. Bishop Bell was an easy target, disposable and dispensable…’thrown under the bus’ for reasons unknown”
~ Richard W. Symonds – 2016
March 5 2018 – IICSA Transcript – Monday March 5
Chair Alexis Jay (leaning forward) – Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse – IICSA
Page 129 -Paras. 2-19 – Richard Scorer [Counsel for the complainants, victims and survivors represented by Slater & Gordon]:
“…this is not simply an issue of attitude but of competence too. This is a point which has been made powerfully by Martin Sewell, who is both a lay member of the General Synod and a retired child protection lawyer. He points out that diocesan staff are typically trained in theology and Canon law, not in safeguarding or child protection law. As a result, he says, many of those making a decision about safeguarding in the Church of England have no credible claim to expertise in this increasingly complex situation. Interestingly, Mr Sewell makes that point both in relation to the treatment of complainants of abuse, but also in regard to the mishandling, in his view, of the George Bell case. He sees the failings on both of those aspects as two sides of the same coin, a fundamental problem, in his view, being a lack of competence and specialist knowledge, particularly legal knowledge and experience gained in a practical safeguarding context”
Sex, Power and Control. New book by Fiona Gardner
One of my complaints about the Church safeguarding world is the ease with which people in authority in the Church forget things. Some forgetting may be to do with deliberate supressing of inconvenient truth. The burden of remembering shocking information is too uncomfortable. So, it has to be buried. The other part of not remembering unpleasant material from the past is the fact that information overload can take over. I certainly find the task of preserving and sometimes printing out hard copies of numerous safeguarding reports fairly tedious. There are just too many of them. But the effect on our memories is the same. Cases, reports and personalities get forgotten. A new generation of safeguarding officials appear who know little or nothing of what has gone before. This is, of course, a serious matter for a Church that is trying to turn over a new page in safeguarding. It wants to deal professionally with a complex relationship with its record over safeguarding back in the past..
The new book, Sex, Power and Control by Fiona Gardner, goes some way to removing at a stroke any temptation to allow the past record of church safeguarding to disappear from the corporate memory. It has never, of course, gone away for the actual victims. The institution of the Church of England, on the other hand, seems often to do a good job at forgetting. Old mistakes are repeated and ‘lessons learned’ seem not to change things. The present book is a careful analysis and a record of all the main incidents of abuse over the past ten or twenty years. In every case recorded we find not only the wickedness of an evil act against a vulnerable person, but also the often clumsy responses by those in authority in the Church. If we have to summarise these responses, we can say simply that they routinely make a priority of the needs of the institution rather than the welfare of survivors. One vignette, recorded by Fiona, concerns the aftermath of a scandal in her home diocese where she was working as a Safeguarding Adviser. Although she had a senior position, with many responsibilities in safeguarding, no one in the senior staff had thought to tell her of the past abusive activities of a particular priest in the diocese. He was now facing imprisonment. The Bishop and the senior staff were having a meeting to discuss the ‘washing up’. By this they meant the attempts to mitigate the reputational and financial damage to the diocese. The victim in this case was never mentioned. Somehow the embarrassment that the Bishop was experiencing was projected on to Fiona. She was made to feel that the whole incident was in some way her fault. It is small wonder that Fiona only managed to complete six years in the post before moving on.
Of the rest of the stories and cases recorded in Fiona’s book, many are well known. But, as I have already suggested, many of these stories are becoming obscured by the passage of time. An endless succession of new stories seem to crowd in to take their place, grabbing the attention of a watching public. I wondered aloud with Fiona when she asked me to write the foreword. ‘Can you really write about cases of Church abuse when this safeguarding scene is constantly in flux? Will the book not be out of date the moment it is printed?’ I have come to see that the writing of a book recording things as they were at the very end of 2020 is an important thing to do. Sex, Power, Control provides a kind of benchmark against which to evaluate the journey from the past into what we hope will be a better future.
Three things give the book its distinctiveness. One I have already alluded to is that we have here a guide, sympathetically told, of the main church abuse cases and the response to them the mid-90s up till 2020. Thus we read of the cases of the Nine O’clock service, Matt Ineson, ‘Joe’ and Julie McFarlane among many others. The accounts are in accordance with the facts as gleaned from the individuals concerned or from one of the documented accounts that has appeared in the net. Secondly the stories are told within the context of a well-informed perspective. Fiona is an acute observer. She brings to bear her training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. This approach is a refreshing change from the official management methods that are typically on offer in the Church bodies that deal with abuse cases. The Church leaders that have tried to offer empathy or understanding to the survivors have often revealed a curious detachment from their sufferings. The choice of language emerging from Church leaders often reveals the priorities merely of reputation management. The current prevailing atmosphere in the Church of England is one that prioritises better systems of management. Growth and the smooth functioning of the institution is what matters. This is perhaps not the message of healing that survivors need to hear.
The third perspective, which I welcome unreservedly, is that Fiona’s indispensable book is written with a strong bias for the perspective and needs of survivors. She ‘gets’ their pain, their patience, their frustration and their waiting for justice. Her witness for the perspective of survivors is made stronger by her having worked for the ‘other side’ of safeguarding as a diocesan adviser. Her testimony about that six-year experience is telling. She found herself to be an embarrassment in the Diocesan Office, as though the stuff she was dealing with was somehow contaminating the real work of the Church. No one there wanted to admit that shameful things were going on. The issues which one brave person was facing were, in fact, everyone’s business. I wonder how much this experience is today shared by other Advisers/Officers up and down the country. To work where there is any kind of resistance to the work you do is bound to cause stress for the officer concerned. Is it any wonder that many DSOs/DSAs have remarkably short tenures of office?
What I have written here about Sex, Power, Control is not meant to be a review. I am disqualified, in any event, from writing a review by the fact my name appears on the cover as having written a short foreword. But even with this admission of bias, I still want to speak positively about the book and urge all my readers to buy it. If like me, you are interested in the phenomenon of abuse and power and want to understand things better, this book is for you. If you are a safeguarding professional who needs to know what has gone on the Church of England over the last 20+ years, this book is an essential resource. It is never going to be helpful, if a new generation of professionals come into this safeguarding world and do not know at the outset the stories of Peter Ball, Garth Moore, Trevor Devamanikkan, John Smyth and the Titus Trust. All these stories are told complete with references from the internet and elsewhere. In short, everyone who makes a living in the safeguarding should be required to buy this book or have it bought for them.
The final group who should read the book are the survivors. They will know much of the factual material, but they will receive encouragement from the fact that this is written by someone who really understands their plight. As I have often said, the ordeal of the survivor is often made far worse in the encounter that he/she has with church officials who may be emotionally or pastorally illiterate. While I have not met Fiona Gardner, her book reveals her to be someone who seems to resonate expertly with the needs of abuse survivors, both at the time of their abuse and also with those who may have been further wounded by later toxic interventions of the institution. The Church as a whole needs her expertise and wisdom.
Although I am disqualified from writing a review, I can still hope that many of my readers will acquire it as it seems an excellent path to understanding the joint issues of abuse and power in the Church. It will, I hope, be one more tool in the task of educating a Church that needs to understand both these issues far better. I recommend it and hope it will be greeted with success.
Sex Power, Control Responding to Abuse in the Institutional Church by Fiona Gardner, Lutterworth Press 2021. The book publication date is next Thursday February 25th.
About Stephen Parsons
Stephen is a retired Anglican priest living at present in Cumbria. He has taken a special interest in the issues around health and healing in the Church but also when the Church is a place of harm and abuse. He has published books on both these issues and is at present particularly interested in understanding how power works at every level in the Church. He is always interested in making contact with others who are concerned with these issues.
COMMENTS
Steve Lewis I ordered a copy when I first heard of the book. It’s a welcome idea to catalogue a record in print of the terrible history of abuse at the hands of the churches. I can envisage an expanding library as this volume gains acceptance and look forward to reading this edition when it rolls off the printing press.
Fiona Gardner Stephen, thanks for your foreword and now endorsement – it has to be said that survivingchurch.org is in itself an extraordinary testament to what has gone on and an invaluable research source – (as the many refs in Sex Power Control will testify) also your own earlier publication Ungodly Fear led the way…
“CHRIST CHURCH TO COMMISSION INDEPENDENT REVIEW” – ‘THINKING ANGLICANS’ – COMMENT
Comment – Mike Dobson
One of the pithy insights that comes up, again and again, every time I take part in safeguarding training is that abusers will spare no energy in their attempts to insist that they are the virtuous ones, or even the victims; while being completely oblivious to the damage they inflict on their victims as their tactics become more aggressive and diversionary.
The College’s Governing Body is obviously doing its best to conform to this model.
“OXFORD JABS – SECOND DOSE” – ‘PRIVATE EYE’
Christ Church Oxford –
Photo: Wiki Commons
The Bell Society 
