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Posted on 10/21/2007 1:21:12 AM PDT by managusta
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.
Richard Scorer, a solicitor who has specialised in child abuse cases, said that the Church of England's mistakes amounted to "an appalling, shocking level of negligence" that is likely to leave it open to claims from victims who have been too afraid to speak out in the past. The Church is to launch an urgent investigation on an unprecedented scale.
It 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". advertisement
Dioceses will appoint independent reviewers with access to all of their personnel files. These are due to be examined over an 18-month period.
However, the internal Church documents – leaked to The Sunday Telegraph – show that even if churchwardens, who are lay officials, are found to have previous allegations against them, the Church has no power to suspend them.
Bishops have called for the review following two high-profile cases last spring. One of the documents, compiled by the Church's Central Safeguarding Liaison Group, concedes that "most serious concerns will have been known by the senior staff at the time".
The Church has been guilty of systemic failures on a large scale, according to the document. "Some records may have been lost or damaged," it says, adding that warnings from psychologists might also have been ignored.
The liaison group was asked to draw up a review policy by the House of Bishops, which discussed the plans at its meeting earlier this month.
Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was at the meeting, has backed the need for a comprehensive review following the two child abuse cases.
"Every parish has got to have a child protection policy and it needs to work properly," he said.
The liaison group is chaired by the Rt Rev Anthony Priddis, the Bishop of Hereford, and includes the Rev Pearl Luxon, the Church's child protection adviser, as well as other clergy with experience in legal, social and probation work.
The bishops agree that "there may well be gaps in the Church's collective memory" that have allowed sex offenders to go unpunished. A confidential letter to be sent out as part of the review, says: "What has emerged is that had proper risk assessments been carried out in the light of concerns that may first have come to light about particular individuals many years ago, subsequent instances of child abuse might possibly have been prevented…
"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."
The review has been welcomed by one victim. He said he had confided in a bishop – now retired – that he had been abused by a serving vicar, but that no action had been taken against the vicar.
"The Church has persuaded people in the past that they don't have to take it further," he said. "There has been a long-standing tendency to just sweep things under the carpet and cover things up and just move priests on."
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.
A spokesman for the Church said: "We would hope that in the majority of cases things have been dealt with, but we are realistic enough to admit that mistakes have been made and there may still be some risk attached to those cases."
“The reality is that child abuse/pedophilia is a sickness in one’s soul - married or not.”
absolutely. religious doctrine has nothing to do with it.
“Your problem is that you missed most of the conversation. Anyone who was there knew what the statement meant. It didn’t ignore anything.”
True, I’m commenting on this thread. I would have a similar reaction to anyone blaming Catholic doctrine for the problem. Still, why say it, except to get some sick pleasure out of a horrible situation.
Nobody in their right mind blamed rank-and-file Catholics, or Catholic doctrine for the molesters.
Pedaphiles lurk amongst the married as well as the single. Now what? No simple generalizations will do here. Allowing priests to wed does not eliminate the problem.
How dismissive! See! It's a Catholic problem! Protestants marry! And Pride goeth before the Fall.
The Pointing finger needs to come in our direction. Ours, and anyone's who turned a blind eye, or looked away or pretended not to notice. People KNEW. The kids knew. And nothing happened.
So, society has done an about-face. Let the shrieking begin! But tell me: What have we learned?
“Your problem is that you missed most of the conversation. Anyone who was there knew what the statement meant. It didn’t ignore anything.”
Oh, and I hope the bureaucracy of the CoE pays the same price for enabling this to continue as the Catholic church bureaucracy did.
In the US, I’m sure they will.
The solution is to exclude gays from the priesthood and any other position of power or leadership in the church. The Catholic church may actually succeed in this. The ECUSA has glorified and institutionalized gays in the organization, but really, they’re barely Christian (being charitable here) as it is.
That’s why the Catholic church will survive and the ECUSA will not.
“The Pointing finger needs to come in our direction. Ours, and anyone’s who turned a blind eye, or looked away or pretended not to notice. People KNEW. The kids knew. And nothing happened. “
Absolutely.
That's beside the point.
My post was intended as sarcasm directed towards those who invariable attribute the homosexual predations of Catholic priests to the practice of celibacy in the Latin Rite. They pop up whenever there is a news article about some priest getting caught.
No offense at all was intended towards Anglicans, just towards ignorant liberal Catholics and other misinformed posters. Other informed Catholics would have spotted the sarcasm right off the bat and understood the post, so I confess to the sin of posting somewhat of an inside joke. And to being a sick puppy, LOL!
bump for publicity
bump for publicity
Sorry if you are so blinded that you can’t see the truth. One of the DBM’s memes is that the Catholic sex scandal wss a result of celibacy driving solid men away. It’s clear that the root of (both) scandals is a lack of discipline and the freeing of normal constraints in the 1960s.
Are you blaming the victims by saying that their parents should have been more mindful of where they were spending their time?
No, I am saying alarm bells went off for me and I told them no. I described it as “vatic” insight. I count myself blessed to have avoided that particular experience for my sons. Your assumptions are incorrect. Some dear friends of mine were not so lucky, I would NEVER judge them.
“Sorry if you are so blinded that you can’t see the truth. One of the DBM’s memes is that the Catholic sex scandal wss a result of celibacy driving solid men away.”
DBM? not sure what that means.
I never said that about priests, nor is it even a reasonable argument, regardless of who or how many made it. Why did you even give that comment the time of day?
I just thought it a very odd comment on this thread.
The point is institutional changes have been made in the Catholic church. There will be no more “easy pickings” for gays there.
The CoE embraces gays, like the ECUSA, so, I suppose, there is no presumption that little boys won’t be molested by their clergy, so I guess mothers will protect their little boys from their clergy and it won’t be easy there either.
Drive-by Media. The assault on celibacy is far from over in the larger culture.
“The assault on celibacy is far from over in the larger culture.”
If it was easy it would be meaningless
Without knowing the poster who made that comment, I think it was directed at those who blame doctrine for the sinners who break the doctrine. No one in their right mind would take any pleasure in this.
It isn’t the creed, but the homosexuals seeking positions of power (in any guise) who have created this problem.
“Let us praise God. Oh Lord, oooh you are so big. So absolutely huge. Gosh, we’re all really impressed down here I can tell you. Forgive us, O Lord, for this dreadful toadying and barefaced flattery. But you are so strong and, well, just so super. Fantastic. Amen.” (Michael Palin as the chaplain in The Meaning of Life)
This one?
I think the one I saw was on an early program. They probably liked it and adopted it later for the movie. I seem to remember some line like, "Thou slayest me with Thy bigness"...
I could be wrong, though..it has been decades.
Ping
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