Suspicions of abuse
Doublethink
Admin, 8th Day Host
in Epiphanies
You may have seen this news story.
We can’t speculate on the culpability of the man against whom the allegations were made. But for the future - what do we expect an institution to do in this situation ?
We can’t speculate on the culpability of the man against whom the allegations were made. But for the future - what do we expect an institution to do in this situation ?
Comments
How do you continue working alongside someone when you know they are grooming and abusing in this way?
In this case the victims were told to move on and 30 years of abuse (alleged) were ignored by those in a position to take action to ensure due process.
I note the church seriously considered shutting the cathedral to get rid of him, probably if they had done that they could have been sued for constructive dismissal anyway.
It’s alleged in the article that the problem was they were afraid of litigation - but in this situation litigation they lost would represent a situation of the court finding they broke the law. (Such a finding would amount to saying they didn’t follow due process.)
So in such a situation in the future - what do we think they should do, what would handling a situation like this well actually look like ?
But then that still needs investigating. If an organisation is disorganised perhaps even uninterested and incompetent, I can imagine that they could fairly easily get into this kind of mess.
There is a suggestion that this was not adequately done - although that is not clear. It is also clear that he was prepared to argue (and does indeed say) that he was being persecuted on account of his sexuality, and this threat probably affected how closely people felt able to monitor him.
What exactly does "due process" mean in this context? As the linked article states, the clergyman in question "has never been charged with any criminal offences". The state is not trying to deprive Canon Hindley of his liberty or property, which are the usual cases where due process and reasonable doubt come into play. This is strictly a question of employment. I don't know what the standards for dismissal are in the UK generally or the Church of England specifically, but where I come from most jobs are "at will" employment, meaning that an employee can be sacked for almost any reason, or no reason at all. No process of any sort is due. One of the more popular reasons for getting fired is bad quarterly returns by your employer, for which there is no kind of due process. My guess is that the specifics of this particular situation made that kind of severance impossible, but I'm still not sure what process @Caissa thinks an employer owes an employee.
An authoritative source on dismissal under UK employment law: https://www.acas.org.uk/dismissals/dismissals-with-and-without-notice
The UK is I think fairly to the right as liberal democracies go and an employer has to go through several hoops to demonstrate that they have a good reason to fire an employee for any reason other than that they don't need the job done anymore.
There is no power to transfer him, or to effectively demote him. But equally, for the time being at least, being an office holder and not an employee means that he couldn’t go to an Employment Tribunal as it has no jurisdiction.
BBC News - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0021w8q
File on 4 - The priest and the pay-off - BBC Sounds
If you Google Blackburn Cathedral and Andrew Hindley one of the top links is a Mystery Worshipper report from 2008.
But when it comes to something like clergy placement, that’s generally going to be considered a church matter into which federal or state law is rarely going to come into play. It’s church law/rules that will govern.
I have had one such case come forward while on the Synod Council. It was never proven the minister was a pedophile, but the bishop worked with him to find a job both were mutually satisfied with--it was outside of church ministry.
I think the issue in the OP would be how the alleged victims would want to proceed. Would they end up suing the diocese, for instance. The church would have to limit its liability, that is for sure.
There are people against whom there is sufficient evidence of criminal activity to warrant a prosecution, and those people should be prosecuted. But there are other people against whom there is not sufficient evidence to obtain a successful prosecution, but there is reasonable evidence to suggest that they might pose a risk to vulnerable people.
In practice, most employers involved with young and/or vulnerable people will have strict safeguarding policies and codes of conduct, and breach of such a policy would be a disciplinary offence subject to punishment up to and including termination of employment. It seems likely that most people that "might pose a risk" will be in breach of safeguarding policies.
It is perhaps more interesting in the specific case of priests, who aren't employees, but surely there's an analogous process to remove a priest for flagrant breach of policy?
* to be sure, during the iffy time before they had enough on him to call the cops, they'd still have to do the hard work of safeguarding; but it doesn't look like this man would have taken the hint and quit, so maybe not for so very long.
He was reported to the police five times, they tried to take him to disciplinary tribunals on multiple occasions but independent judges assessing the evidence found there weren’t grounds to proceed, they tried to pay him to leave, then they tried to give him ill health retirement and he appears to have challenged that and then they reached a financial settlement - and the diocese in the interim sought the support of the archbishops to close down the cathederal in case that did not work. (They also commissioned multiple independent professional assessments of risk, with varying conclusions.)
Meanwhile they placed limits on his work to keep him away for from children.
In these circumstances - what else do we think they should have done if anything ?
The Church of England is/was a weird anomaly in English employment law, with priests being essentially by state appointment but not employed by the church or state authorities. No other religious body in the UK has a similar status.
Also I think one has to mix in the fact that there was inertia within the structure of the heirarchy, a tendency to avoid publicity and public scandal and incompetence.
All of these things mixed together means that the result was almost inevitable. A payoff was likely the only possible way out.
(*By contrast someone employed as a chaplain by, e.g., a university, hospital, or prison will have a contract of employment, and be subject to the usual operation of employment legislation. Although even employees can be hard to dismiss if they appear to be doing their job and no wrongdoing is proved.)
It's possible he hasn't done anything illegal, but multiple independent allegations over several years would suggest he's been behaving inappropriately for a priest.
Doublethink, Temporary Epiphanies Hosting
The number of individual unrelated complaints over a thirty year period, suggest that something was clearly not going right.
This. I haven't read into the details of this case yet but on the face of it, the CofE has done the only thing it could.
Step wise:
1. There were concerns about the behaviour of a priest
2. Five (5!) separate police investigations did not result in charges therefore he is legally innocent
3. We know that abusers can evade conviction for a lot of reasons therefore there must be a risk of harm
4. The CofE tried lots of things to deal with this but we're prevented from acting by legalities
5. So to protect children from potential risk, they paid him off.
That strikes me as a sacrificial and Christian thing to do.
There may be details that change that assessment, but it seems to me the CofE did the only thing it could do.
AFZ
The individual accused claims what was not going right was a homophobic attempt to drive him out. There is at least a little independent corroboration of that in the judge's critique of the NSPCC report.
I think a key point for an institution in this situation is that they have no way of knowing which narrative mostly closely resembles the truth. So in that uncertainty they have to act to balance justice and safety - so what should they do ?
It sounds like things have changed since 2007. There needs to be some way of dealing with allegations of unacceptable behaviour at the disciplinary level that doesn’t depend on the results of any criminal process. But at first blush they seem to have done what they could in the situation they were in.
A risk assessment is exactly that, an assessment of risk. It's not saying that x or y definitely happened, it's not saying the legal standard of guilt has been met, it's simply saying what the risks might be.
If I'm an institution where over a period of 20 years several independent and credible witnesses have come to me with remarkably similar reports, then clearly there's a risk there that needs managing.
There's clearly at least a potential risk to children. As other have said it is not really high because nothing has been comprehensively proven, but if something was to happen in the future and it was shown that the institution didn't act on the risk assessment, then there's also a major financial and legal risk to the institution. That sounds unfair if there is truly a conspiracy against them, but what else can the institution do?
There's also a risk to the complainee even if it is all lies, in the sense that over the last 20 years numerous and apparently unconnected people have conspired against them. In that situation, digging heels in and refusing to leave is an unacceptable risk to them.
I don't think this would ever have got this far in any other job or religious position. It dragged on for as long as it did because the complaints kept coming and the individual concerned refused to resign.
Because nobody would ever make a malicious accusation, or misconstrue a perfectly innocent interaction out of homophobic prejudice.
As long as the first stage of that process is to honestly and open-minded establish the validity of the allegations, sure. Otherwise we’re just bringing back witch hunts with a 21st Century twist.
This is a case of multiple claims of abuse over three decades. Those on the other side of the interaction clearly didn't regard it as being innocent. There is no evidence that this is purely a case of a clerical elite victimising an unpopular colleague.
Those who are on the margins have little to gain from making accusations against those in power.
I see. One year doesn’t seem like a very long time in the circumstances. But honestly the whole thing seems extremely mysterious. When actual bishops are alleging that strings are being pulled inappropriately and there’s nothing they can do about it something has gone seriously wrong somewhere.
Drunkenness it is not normally a defence in law - so I am surprised it would be given as a reason not to proceed to tribunal.