A Novel App for Identifying Suspects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3uMgcRUYBs

...meanwhile number of the falsely accused and abandoned continue to increase while the church sits on its hands, relying on the lych-gate notice-board and service-sheet to identify and accuse potential sex abusers...

First off. Whilst all right-thinking people want sex abusers caught and dealt with, just consider for one moment those who are NOT sex abusers, but who are falsely accused of being so.

Yes, We All Want Sex Abusers to be Stopped.

But consider how this current panic in the Church of England can become a seed-bed for rumour, suspicion, a lack of trust, and an unhealthy campaign of spying on the people in the pews.

Consider also the frightening implications of handing-over such power to often untrained amateurs, usually selected by the local incumbent without too much objective research, to pry into and make judgements on the private lives of ordinary church-attenders. I'm simply asking, when there are so many instances of false allegations being made against probably innocent people - people who have not been through the court process and found guilty - every day, would you ever trust yourself to go to church again? Bear in mind also that in a Crown Court, no corroborating evidence is necessary for an innocent person to be found guilty and incarcerated on the word of a single accuser alone.

Consider this

Because abuse has become so prevalent in the church, an independent review has concluded that each parish in the Church of England should print a safeguarding hotline number on every service sheet, although what that will achieve apart from virtue-signalling that OUR church has an awareness, God only knows. Our own local Abbey does this. It also has a prominent notice in the lobby-entrance encouraging people to make reports of any suspicions, promising a strong and supportive response and offering anonymity to any reporter. All of this has been one of the recommendations from the review as details of the church's repeated failure to protect people from paedophile priests begin to emerge.

IICSA's Recommendations

This damning picture of failure to respond to reports of abuse is revealed by the largest ever survey of abuse by vicars and bishops. The national church has dealt appallingly with this wickedness, with only 11 of 60 respondents saying they had received a meaningful response within a year after they disclosed their ordeals to a church figure. Twenty of these victims said they had never had a response, and over half of those in the survey said the timelines and quality of the response they did eventually get were 'unsatisfactory'. Although, dealing as I do with at least three new cases of false accusations of abuse each week, none of this host of new victims that I know would use the term, 'Unsatisfactory' of their experience of abuse. 'Heartbreaking', yes, 'Making me want to kill myself', yes. But 'unsatisfactory'? Survey-language! No-one undergoing this kind of trauma would describe a failure of carers to act as 'unsatisfactory'.

Healing for Your Problem With Men

One vicar, abused by a senior cleric was actually attacked by his bishop for having the courage to report it. The bishop's response to the victim? He told him, "The scent of failure will follow you throughout your ministry." Another vicar, falsely accused of abuse against four female parishioners by a colleague who spread his lies around the diocese, reported it to his bishop. The bishop's response? "I do not intend to discipline him." So yet another malicious clerical liar gets away with it. Another example of a bishop, despite the review, continuing to behave in the same old way. Protecting the reputation of the institution; defending the guilty; saving money by failing to conduct a proper investigation; denying justice. This, in the context of collusion and unresponsive agreement of the rest of the diocese. Another victim was warned that the person who was abusing him was a high-profile individual, implying that he was above suspicion. "Perhaps" he was advised, he should "seek healing for [his] problem with men."

The Ultimate Irony

As an innocent falsely accused man deprived by the bishops of my profession, I am a therefore a victim of sexual abuse. The sexual abuse of being lied about by a fantasist whose sexual imaginings were brought before the Crown Court and presented as truths. Had it not been for a prescient legal team, I could have been sent down for 11 years to one of the UK prison estate's festering, cockroach-infested prisons, and treated by convicted murderers, drug-dealers, gangsters, violent psychopaths and mindless vandals as the lowest of the low.

Treated as everyone's moral inferior and the object of violence and derision, God and prison warders only know what physical deprivations I may have had to suffer at the hands of these criminals. Especially as a perverted Anglican Priest! But I was proven to be innocent. The best possible outcome anyone could have prayed for. Granted expenses by the judge and apologised to by the prosecution and police I should have been returned to my profession with rejoicing from my church and its bishops.

But no.

First I was told by my bishop that I should not throw a victory party. The reason given was that it might upset some of the local church attenders.

Second, instead of being greeted with congratulations and rejoicing by my priestly colleagues, I discovered that two of them were continuing to make false allegations against me. Gossiping among one another and passing-on false information to their friends and colleagues. To this day I do not know how deep these lying allegations have seeped into the local community. Coming from two priests, most people's default position is to believe their word. They are deluded. But who could believe that a priest would lie?

Third, when I complained to the bishop about this wicked behaviour by two of her priests,, the response was that she did not intend even to discipline them.

So even though I have been completely exonerated by the Crown Court, and had an apology from the Crown for a wrongful prosecution, yet still I am, as I say, a victim.

How can that be?

"Promoting a safer environment and culture"

"Caring pastorally for victims/survivors of abuse or other affected persons"

"Caring pastorally for those who are the subject of concerns/allegations of abuse and other affected persons"

"Responding to those that may pose a present risk"

A 'Safer Environment and Culture 'for and amongst whom?'

A safer environment for me would mean that I could rely on my colleagues not to go about spreading egregious lies about me in the local community.

A safer environment for me would be for me to be able to know that these lies were not going to inspire some vigilante crusader in the community deciding to come and kill me out of a mistaken desire for 'justice', or to burn my house down.

A safer culture would be for the bishops to crack down firmly on priests who lie and allege false rumours in the community, using their prestige among the people to back-up their wicked behaviour. A huge step in achieving a safer culture would be to reassure the community that this victim - this falsely accused and innocent priest - is in fact innocent, and that the Crown has firmly said so in the public court.

'Caring pastorally for victims/survivors of abuse.'

I am both a victim and a survivor of ongoing abuse by the church. My wife is also a victim and survivor of the same ongoing abuse. Neither of us have been visited by any official representative from the Church of England throughout our recent ordeal. It is an ordeal that has lasted, thus far, over six years. I have been deprived of my status and all rights that I had earned over a lifetime of service to the church.

Neither of us have been approached by any official from the church to inquire if we need pastoral support. On the contrary, we have been ignored. When we have sought help - especially in the case of the two lying priests, our desperate plea for help has been batted into the long grass. It is as though we are the 'wrong kind' of victim. The church seems to have no mechanism for dealing with people it has made into victims, and who, like Jesus, have been falsely accused, wrongly tried, crucified and who have, against all the odds, risen from the ashes.

'Caring pastorally for those who are the subject of concerns/allegations of abuse and other affected persons.'

During the time of police investigations into the false claims made against me, I was made a subject of a 'Covenant of Care' by the church. This was a church document produced by the Church of England's National Safeguarding Team The 'care' being offered was couched in particular terms.

These were that I was presumed to be the actual perpetrator of the crimes that I was being investigated for, and that my false accuser's allegations were in fact the truth. The document - which I had to sign if I wished to continue to attend church - names my accuser as the victim and myself as the perpetrator. It was clear to me that the 'Covenant of Care' was a cut-and-past document that had been prepared by the church in the case of a convicted and guilty sex abuser. They had not bothered to amend the wording to apply to a 'suspect' and an 'accuser'. This document was passed around a group of church-people; a group who had been charged to monitor my behaviour and actions when attending worship. Too late, my solicitor advised me that I should not have signed it. The point is, the church - whom I trusted at that time - failed to tell me I had a choice and could quite legally continue to attend church without signing the 'Covenant'. 'Other affected persons' in this case included my wife, daughter and son-in-law and my granddaughter. None of whom were offered 'pastoral care' by the church.

'Responding to those that may present a present risk.'.

My false accuser is now dead. However during the time that she was alive, after the trial, what steps were taken by the church to ensure that in her delusional state of mental illness she would not make similar false allegations against another innocent person? But the church continued to employ her as a cleaner in the vicarage, and to allow her to perform the same task in the homes of other church people. To my mind, it was clear that she might pose a present risk. So much so that I personally warned one family of the risk. "Be careful not to leave her in your home while your husband is there in his own" I said to one local wife. I knew from first-hand what devastation this woman could create.

And yet at her funeral oration over a year after my exoneration and the publication of her delusional state, it was reported to me by a trusted source, who was present at the service, that the local vicar boasted in her funeral oration that he had continued to employ her in his home as a cleaner after the outcome of the trial. Was this the appropriate 'pastoral response to a person that definitely posed a present risk' by the church? Again, it seems that there are the 'right' sorts of victims and the 'wrong' sorts of victims for the Church of England. My false accuser was the right kind; I am the wrong kind.

'Supporting all those with responsibility relating to vulnerable adults'.

DI am 74 years old. I have terminal cancer and have been receiving regular chemotherapy for over four years. I have been deprive of almost everything that gave my life meaning. I am defined by the government in the corona virus context as a particularly vulnerable adult. There is no question that this is the category into which I have been placed by the N.H.S. and by the politicians - both of whom support me in my daily life.

But who has been appointed to be responsible for this vulnerable sage of the Anglican Church? I know of no-one. To whom is the Church of England offering support as a designated person 'responsible in relation to' this vulnerable adult? To anyone? In fact, I doubt it. The policy in its published material looks good. But its execution in the local church, in my experience, is failing miserably. I'm afraid all I can conclude is that it is 'spin'.

The 'Purple Circle' of Bishops

Despite all of this, and despite the fact that Social Care Institute for Excellence, the independent charity that carried out the review and survey on behalf of the Church of England recommends that the church no longer allow its 42 local dioceses to carry out safeguarding, and instead centralise the services to a more experienced and senior national team, the church rejects IICSA's recommendation. Local bishops, it insists must remain in charge of the process - in other words, the church must continue to mark its own homework. Strange behaviour, especially since the decision followed only weeks after the longest-serving member of the Purple-Circle, the Bishop of Chester, Peter Forster, stepped back from all safeguarding duties because it turned out in court that he had failed to do anything about a paedophile priest he had known about in his diocese 10 years previously.

Difficult Reading

The Review, the Church of England admitted, "Made very difficult reading" and the Archbishop, Justin Welby "apologised" for the "hurt and pain" his church has caused the LGBT+ community. “The church acknowledges that victims and survivors of church-related abuse have not received a consistently good response from the church, and this can lead to being re-traumatised,” he said.

Ignoring the spin, "...a consistently good response.." which leaves me speechless...

No mention at all has ever been made of the hurt and pain of people like me, who having been falsely accused of sexual crime and completely exonerated by the courts, nevertheless continue to suffer the approbation and excoriating agonies of exclusion from our churches and our profession and are forced to face the demand for yet another - this time ecclesiastical - trial at the hands of these proven incompetents.

This is continuing abuse, but it is abuse that is not acknowledged by the church. It is a special kind of abuse. Exercised openly by people claiming to follow the gentle Christ, this is that special torture which excludes the falsely accused, and which continues to hold us under suspicion and to punish us accordingly. Is it surprising that some of us make parallel comparisons with the Salem Witch trials, and others - like Pope Francis has said of cardinal Pells's experience - with crucifixion itself?

People Must Have Confidence

The bishop of Bath and Wells, Peter Hancock, who leads the church’s safeguarding work, said: "It is essential that victims must have confidence that anyone coming forward to disclose abuse to the church is treated with compassion, offered support, and their concerns and allegations taken seriously."

Everyone, it seems, excepting anyone who is a victim of a liar or fantasist or compensation-seeker. We are a special kind of victim. A victim who is denied victim status because the church refuses to acknowledge it.

Peter Hancock continues...

"The church recognises that significant changes will be required before survivors will have this level of confidence in the church. However, this undertaking is one that I and my fellow bishops are absolutely committed to."

Well, at this moment, this particular survivor, having been deprived by the bishops, even though entirely innocent, has no confidence whatsoever in this stated commitment. Not now, nor in my lifetime, and I suspect not ever. I write as one of those proven innocents whom the bishops both by their language and policies are excluding. Am I consulted? No. Am I even spoken to? Absolutely not. What can any of this possibly have to do with me?

Ironically...

Interestingly, and for me somewhat ironically, among the reforms already agreed to is the creation, jointly with the catholic Church, which has long struggled with its own abuse scandal, of an independent hotline and online counselling hub for victims of clerical sexual abuse. Yeah. A 'Hub'. I wonder, ought I perhaps to give them a ring? Trouble is, having been consistently ignored for years, would I find any listening ear? And If I did find such an ear, whose would it be? Some amateur volunteer with good intentions and no proper training? On past and current form, I would probably not find even that. I am given to understand that the church is also in the process of setting-up an independent ombudsman who survivors can contact if they feel their case has been mishandled by the internal church authorities. Yeah. 'Process'. Good word that, Like 'We will learn the lessons.' However, speaking to the C of E's Elizabeth Pollard on the phone 14/8/2019, she was able to confirm that the recommendations of IICSA were being implemented and that the independent ombudsman was in the plan. But no date for completion however had been set. It would, she assured me, take time to set up. So, while I and others in my situation continue to suffer, un-heard and shunted into a siding, the church appears to be taking its time.

All We Need is Simples

Actually, all we need is to be listened to. But then, that is what so many of us - some of whom have died of old age and others have killed themselves and yet others have descended into PTSD whilst waiting to be listened to. So what does it matter if it's going to take yet more time to get justice for the falsely accused and rejected by the church? We may be dead by the time it happens.