Abuse scandal set to rock Church of England

[johnfás]

Child abuse has gone unchecked in the Church of England for decades amid a cover up by bishops, secret papers have revealed.

Information that could have prevented abuse has been "lost or damaged", concerns about individuals have been ignored and allegations have not been recorded. It means that the Church has no idea how many paedophiles are in its midst.

Lawyers warned last night that the Church faces a crisis as catastrophic as the one that engulfed the Roman Catholic Church and cost it millions of pounds in damages. Solicitors have warned that the conduct of the Church has resulted in shocking levels of negligence.

The Church will look at the records of thousands of clergy – including those who have retired – church employees, lay workers and volunteers dating back decades in an attempt to expose those who have previously escaped prosecution and identify those who pose "current risks".

Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury has stated:

"Every parish has got to have a child protection policy and it needs to work properly".

The Bishop Liason group on the issue have stated:

"It is clear that some incidents were dealt with in a way that meant that the ongoing risk posed by the individual was not fully assessed and contained."

While the Catholic Church has been hit by dozens of sex abuse cases, the Church of England had been relatively unaffected until spring this year. But in May, the Rev David Smith, 52, of Clevedon, Somerset, was jailed for 5½ years for sexually abusing six boys over a 30-year period.

Concerns had been raised about him in 1983, and again in 2001. The complainants were assured that the matter had been "dealt with".

In April, Peter Halliday, 61, a choirmaster from Farnborough, Hampshire, was jailed for 30 months after admitting abusing boys in his church choir in the 1980s.

It emerged that leading clerics had been told of his behaviour 17 years earlier, but he had been allowed to leave the Church quietly.

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Another unfortunate saga in the various denomination's links to the abuse of children over the last few decades. Thankfully most of today's Anglican Churches have strong and successful child protection policies. However, no excuse can be made for previous cover ups and lets hope that some healing might be felt by the abused following any investigation which might take place.

On an aside issue, what such crises demonstrate is what I have said for quite some time. That the celibacy of Catholic priests is nothing, or at least very little to do with the abuse of children, contrary to what many believe. Whilst this may make Catholic priests less effective at providing aspects of pastoral care what is really the issue at hand is the unsupervised and absolute access of adults to children without accountability. This has been demonstrated by reference both to the churches and also to swimming coaches in this country. Every body which deals with children should have a strongly implemented child protection policy, and there should be greater and swifter Garda vetting of those who have access to children in a professional of voluntary basis as a matter of statute rather than policy of individual bodies.

I unfortunately doubt this will be the last body such revelations will come out of. As I said, I believe that such activies were most likely prevalent in other bodies with absolute and unsupervised access to children.

[Defeated Romanticist]

Shocking,
But at least it's all out in the open now.

[Munion]

Imagine you thought that there was a rock 'n roll band called "Abuse Scandal" and you can see how I found this thread title funny.

[all lower case]

Child abuse has gone unchecked in the Church of England for decades amid a cover up by bishops, secret papers have revealed.

just goes to show how nonsensical was dr gurgle fitzgarbled's recent comment about the catholic bishops not understanding the issue because they are celibate.

what price now the married clergy of the church of england?. the church - as the old irish saying has it - 'that was founded on the testicles of henry viii' - 'an eaglais a bunaíodh ar mhagarlaí einrí viii'.

[odie1kanobe]

Can't be after all everybody knows married people never abuse children.

Funny thing is that social services see Child abuse more likely to happen in the home than anywhere else.

[beardyboy]

Where is the surprise in this - it was also scandalously hidden throughout the secular orphanages and homes as well. It is only coming out now due the social mores changing. This is a societal failing not a religious one

[johnfás]

Where is the surprise in this - it was also scandalously hidden throughout the secular orphanages and homes as well. It is only coming out now due the social mores changing. This is a societal failing not a religious one

As is reflected in my reading of the situation.

[St Disibod]

Where is the surprise in this - it was also scandalously hidden throughout the secular orphanages and homes as well. It is only coming out now due the social mores changing. This is a societal failing not a religious one

As is reflected in my reading of the situation.

There is an institutional component here however. On one level you have the actual abuse, and then on the next level you have the cover-up of that abuse by those who did not necessarily participate in the abuse. It is meaningless hair-splitting to try and divide these two components into "deadly" and "venial" sins of some sort: the second compounded the first and is rightly considered equally scandalous. But there is a distinction here. The first component is an individual abusing their position of trust. The second is an institutional reaction to that abuse- a deeply discouraging one at that.

Many within these institutions, both at the ordained (i.e. clergy) level and at the lay level, see the abusers as people who abused their institution (i.e. the relevant Church) to get access to children. This is an important distinction that is not made often enough, I feel, by people looking in from the outside. Many external observers see it as the Church abusing children, while those inside it see it as an abuser abusing the Church as well as the child. But that argument runs very dry once we get to the second component (i.e. the cover-up of the abuse). And here the Churches deserve the special criticism that is heaped upon them.*

Such institutional failures require institutional and/or systematic reform, and gladly such reform is well underway. Independently assessed policies are now the norm, and they are regularly reviewed (again independently). And historic cases must be pursued so that the maximum level of justice that can now be achieved is achieved. For instance, the Bishop of Manchester has ordered a review of all 850 clergy files held by his office by an independent lawyer. It's in the back of my mind that the Archbishop of Canterbury rolled out such reviews across England, but I cannot now find a source, so I could be wrong. But to give people an idea of how salient an issue this is still, one of the cases in the Church of England that recently received press attention involved a choir master whose abuse was raised with a Church Youth Worker as early as 1990 by one of the victims, but who was allowed to, in effect, continue to police himself until 2003, all the time having access to children.

It is hard to imagine abuse continuing for so long, unchecked, in a school. And that also begs the question why so few teachers are involved in such scandals given that many more teachers have access to children over clergy. Or at least that would be my reading. There do seem to be institutional matters that must be sorted before the Churches can rightly claim that the attention afforded to them on this topic is excessive.

*- I do wonder whether the Churches, as institutions, might suffer a bit more after reflection because they keep better records than other institutions such as swimming schools or orphanages. For instance, a clergyman would have a single, centralised file while a swimming coach might be on file separately several times with each club or school he has worked in. It might therefore be easier to gather evidence on an abusive priest (e.g. dodgy-looking Parish transfers, letters seeking reassurances, etc.) than it is on an abusive swimming instructor. That does nothing to reduce the damage rendered by the abuse, and I have no evidence to suggest there is substance to my query. I just register it for the record.

[beardyboy]

Derry O'Rourke - 18 years he was at it

[beardyboy]

Mark Trotter - he was another one - The Labour Party in Hackney was involved - I cannot recall it all but there was one hell of a stink. What you see happening is that every institution's instinct is to remedy the situation internally if it can - then of course if the perpetrator keeps at it the they keep doing it and a genuine attempt to stop the misdemeanour's activities turns into a cover up.

What ever happened to the Belgium scandal, the Latvian scandal and the Portuguese scandals - all secular institutions covered up until the proverbial hit the fan. There are plenty of instances - in all cases covered up because that was the zeitgeist. However it allowed these men and women to get away with it.

Of course the psychologists at the time told the institutions that these people could be cured.

Personally - I believe get it out in the open and these monsters should be locked up for their natural lives.

I do not care about what made them the way they were - they are a cancer which needs to be cut out of society.

Something else which is wide open for abuse is the giving out of the "morning after" pill in English schools without the parents knowledge. We must never ever let that happen here. It is a paedophiles dream, they can take advantage of the young girls naivety and it will get covered up