Anglican sex scandals are made worse by power abuse and a lack of accountability

You might be tempted to think the scandal that has caused the resignation of the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool is about sex. But in fact, it’s about power.

The allegations against the Right Rev. Dr John Perumbalath are as yet, unproven. But that is not where the scandal lies. The offence to the Church of England, and to the victims lies in the abuse of process, through which those who made the allegations were unable to get justice, and to hear their claims of sexual predation, judged in the proper place.

The details may seem a bit tedious to the casual observer but they are the heart of the matter.

The bishop was charged under an aspect of Anglican canon law which dealt with conduct. Why is this significant? Because under conduct there is a statute of limitations, which times out any complaint after 12 months. 

Anyone who has dealt with canon lawyers of any hue will know that 12 months is a remarkably short time to get anything done. Indeed, one of the women who complained against the Bishop of Liverpool lamented in a report in the Church Times that she only just started to give consideration to the formal advice she had received from the canon lawyers before they told her that the 12 months from the point at which she initiated her inquiries was up. The matter was timed out.

There was another route to complain about the bishop, and this would have been under safeguarding.

There is no statute of limitations on the safeguarding. But for whatever reason provided to her, that was not the route she was directed to take.

Anglicans have a piece of legislation called the clergy disciplinary measure, or CDM. It is almost impossible to make a complaint brought under that rule against a bishop.

I was personally very much involved in trying to hold a diocesan bishop to account for a variety of misdemeanors 10 years ago. He was finally cornered and trapped by the evidence, but it took 12 years to emerge sufficiently. In the meantime every effort to hold him accountable under the proper processes that the CDM provided were frustrated; firstly by the canon lawyers; secondly, by the PR company the diocesan finance officer had hired to defend him and thirdly by Lambeth Palace. The Archbishop of Canterbury himself defended the bishop in question, claiming he had complete confidence in him. The wagons had formed a circle. But having backed his rogue colleague personally, to help him repudiate the charges under the CDM, the Archbishop of Canterbury found to his profound embarrassment that he subsequently had to make a public apology for his mistake in judgement when once the evidence of the bishop’s misdemeanours was finally exposed and his resignation was forced on him.

What application does this have here?

The Archbishop of York has come under serious criticism for covering up for the Bishop of Liverpool. In particular for allowing his consecration to continue despite the fact that he knew that more than one allegation of sexual misconduct had been made against him.

Once again, it has the unfortunate appearance of the little people being held in contempt by an ecclesial management culture that refuses to offer proper accountability.

In fact the momentum of criticism has turned once again towards this archbishop, the Most Rev. Stephen Cottrell.

Is it just a coincidence that for the second time in only a matter of weeks, Cottrell has been accused of turning a blind eye to colleagues who had a history of sexual misdemeanours, or alleged misdemeanours? In his former diocese he promoted an accused paedophile twice while claiming that canon law tied his hands at a disciplinary level. And effectively a similar complaint is being made about him overseeing the consecration of a bishop he knew to be under a cloud of unresolved suspicion.

There is a particular sensitivity to his appearing to cover up for an episcopal colleague.

There is an understandable degree of sensitivity to what is seen as an abuse of power produces a frustration felt in particular among diocesan clergy in the Church of England.  During the fiasco that has followed the publication of the difficulties, faced by the Bishop of Liverpool, clergy across the country have raised voices in protest, complaining that if they had been subject to those kind of accusations, they would’ve received very different treatment from their bishops. Another example of “one rule for us and another rule for them”.

The perception of a two-tiered safeguarding approach practised in the C of E where any bishop is untouchable but clergy are treated differently and held to a very different standard is fuelling the sense of resentment among both laity and clergy towards their bishops.

Stephen Cottrell seems once again oblivious to the criticisms made of him, as happened in the wake of Justin Welby’s resignation, and his refusal to consider his position is being seen as a scandal in its own right.

Perhaps there is a fear in senior church circles, to follow the well-worn aphorism of Oscar Wilde, that while losing one archbishop may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness. Or perhaps in these days of heightened concern over cover ups for sexual offenders, more crisis than mere carelessness.

But it’s a crisis that casting an ever darker shadow over the episcopal management of a battered and weary C of E. Anxious voices in social media as asking “where or when will it stop”?

(Photo of Liverpool’s Anglican cathedral by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

The post Anglican sex scandals are made worse by power abuse and a lack of accountability first appeared on Catholic Herald.

The post Anglican sex scandals are made worse by power abuse and a lack of accountability appeared first on Catholic Herald.