Where Abuse is Shielded by Love

You may remember me writing some time ago about my life in the Diocese of Chichester, where I was a worshipping child during the heady days of the 1980s and 90s in Eastbourne. You will also know that Eastbourne has been exposed as something of the epicentre of abuse by priests, a number of whom have been charged and prosecuted for the sexual abuse of the children in their pastoral care. Names like Roy Cotton, Robert Coles and Gordon Ridoubt are names in the public domain and are the names of people known to me throughout my own childhood. Other names will eventually become known and I know them too. 

I was reminded yesterday something of the dangers that exist in church life as this matter and the wider debate was discussed at a meeting I attended. It is the case, for all sorts of laudable reasons that for many Christians this is to be dealt with in a pastoral way. By that I mean that in receiving the testimony of an abuse victim, who may or may not wish to disclose that abuse to the statutory authorities, a priest has not passed on the knowledge of either recent or historic abuse allegations to anyone else. This is matched by a fervent desire to walk with the victim and not to add further pressure to them by making a disclosure. 

Sadly, such love is devastatingly dangerous. It is true to say that sex offenders act compulsively and often habitually and a statistic was cited by an expert yesterday that an offender, when caught, is likely to have offended in excess of a hundred times, and that unless stopped, is likely to re-offend in the future. The implication, therefore, of taking a pastoral view with a victim is that the abuser is spared legal process, kept away from therapy, and is allowed by lack of prevention and the secrecy engendered by the shame of sexual abuse to continue. It seems that this is symptomatic of the way such matters were dealt with in Eastbourne and wider afield. Greater love hath no (wo)man than to prevent abuse. 

Questions such as the seal of confession also play into this debate that is now acute. The abuser and victim of sexual abuse experience shame and for opposite reasons seek to hide the fact of their abuse (given or taken) from others. Indeed, it is also the case that the average time from abuse to disclosure is 23 years! 

Until recently, I will confess that I wondered why people left it so long to disclose abuse. Cases like Jimmy Savile have created a new culture of honesty and bravery among historical victims, and so it is that many clergy will start to receive disclosures from victims, often wrapped up in terms of not wanting their secret disclosed. As soon as the disclosure is silenced in love, the abuser walks free from justice or indeed from help. If you are a clergy person (or anyone else) who is approached by an abuse victim, please tell someone as soon as you can. Better to betray the wish of a victim couched in their sense of shame than to discover that in so doing, another victim was created. 

As a Child of Chichester

From my safe haven beneath the flight-paths leading to and from Heathrow airport, I have been watching with interest (if that is the right word) the developments in the Diocese of Chichester. The reason for my interest: I grew up in Eastbourne and half of my primary school mates went to Bishop Bell School (you know, the school with the maths teacher who offers one-on-one French Exchange trips for Year 10 students). Added to this, my nieces and nephews still attend that school and my own Much Revered Muvva is on its Board of Governors. (I didn't go there because in 1983 the place was perceived by many parents at the time as a dump and French Exchanges involved linguistic work)

You have Bishop Bell School, then you have the wider issues surrounding conduct towards children by priests who lived in or around Eastbourne while I was there and a Diocese now under the scrutiny of an Archepiscopal Visitation (a bit like being on Report at school, only with mitres and police involvement and fair bit worse for all concerned). They are, in greater part, prodding around in the undergrowth of the Sussexes in the wake of Frs Ridout and Coles, both of whom I knew (and neither of whom came within a mile of me, for the record). There are also ongoing investigations into the alleged behaviour of the former Bishop of Lewes, Peter Ball. I have known Peter Ball since I have was a child and am in no way a victim to what he is accused of - and indeed, he is why I am here as priest. I can, of course, speak only for myself and of my own experiences.

Yes, there is some nasty stuff happening out there and that has happened for years, and it seems in all walks of life. One only need reflect on the developing saga of Jim'll Fix It and one Sir Savile  It is now a daily occurrence that dozens of people are adding their testimonies to the panoply that have already surfaced, begging the question 'why only now'? The evidence and volume of witnesses paints the account in a way that would be hard to deny its truth, but why did so many people remain silent for so long in the wake of manifestly illegal and inappropriate treatment? The same can be said of those who were allegedly abused by priests. Fr Ridout is facing down allegations and charges that at their most recent are forty years old. 

Of course, it is quite wrong to blame victims for bottling it all up and we cannot level accusation at them for not coming forward sooner. The situations in Chichester and indeed within the BBC highlight something altogether more worrying (if anything can be more worrying than predatory sexual abusers in positions of trust) - that in our civilised society, connected by every means of communication possible, in an apparently enlightened age, why it is that so many genuine victims feel that they cannot speak of the attacks upon them. There is more of a lesson in this for the Church than simply how it is we can protect the vulnerable from the predator - but more in how can we enable victims to speak out and seek help, in a way that bypasses the invented and pernicious and protects those in harms way. It is no longer sufficient to say "why didn't you tell us sooner"?

For absolute clarity, my decades in the diocese of Chichester, and specifically in Eastbourne, were happy and affirming. I grew up among some wonderful priests and people and was the beneficiary of some experiences that informed nurtured and confirmed by sense of calling to the priesthood. I have never been a victim to any sort of behaviour mentioned in the press while I acknowledge others very possibly were. I have much to be grateful to Chichester for and I pray earnestly that all those who have been damaged by those in positions of trust will find their peace and healing in God. 

Disclosure II

My last 'late-night-so-nobody-reads-it' disclosure was that I am chief among the cloud-adoring nerds of our world.

Tonight it is the turn of real-time strategy games. For years I have loved empire-building games that require some sense of the strategic. I am marginally addicted I think. 

My fix-of-choice at the moment is Tribal Wars, where I am enjoying a considerable success - it is a game where, in essence, the player manipulates time (acquire resources that increase at a constant rate) in the context of a group of like-minded folk (players form tribes, and I 'run' one of the largest). For me it helps me think about real life, but others take it very seriously. My wife and mother worry about me and my mother and sister-in-law worry about my brother, a similar addict. It is free on the Interweb (and slightly enhanced for a small subscription). 

Former games that I have fought and conquered include Settlers (all three), Populous, Age of Empires (and all the other Microsoft Age ofs...), Civilisation and another whose name escapes me. They have featured large over the last ten years or so for me - forget Sonic the Hedgehog, mate!

Why, I hear you ask. Well, each game is dependant on the management of really very complex economic processes, all held in balance with one another. In other words, I get to play God! There, I said it. Last week, on Tribal Wars, I won an award that was awarded for 'killing' the highest number of enemy troops - I think the number was 3.6million of them.

Yes, I am 38 - my wife has said the same thing over and over .... blah blah blah! It's a bloke thing.

What Can I Say?

A

As a blogist, and one who reads the output of other blogists, I have wondered about the appropriateness of some material. 

No - you have a mind like a sewer; I wasn't thinking about material like that!

I was contemplating the propriety of some levels of disclosure in a bloggy. This is bound up in the fact that what is written on this 'ere screen could protentially be viewed by anyone daft enough to log on and read it. 

I think I am approaching this from both perspectives that I bring to this: as reader and as writer.

 - Other people's stories: reportage is OK up to a point, but only, I believe, in more general terms. The disclosing of private narrative or events of someone other than the blogger is unacceptable to me, and as a reader I sometimes find myself feeling like I have my 'eye' at a 'keyhole'. There is a danger too that the subject of the blog may recognise themselves and their story, and I can only guess the scale of the hurt that they would experience. As a priest, this is all the more important; partly to protect those in our past, but also to assure those in our present that their accute pastoral need today isn't going to be the blog fodder of tomorrow. We only have a right over our own stories.

 - Our own stories: This speaks to why we choose to maintain a blog that is read by others. Do we have a perspective on the world and want to share it? Are we seeking to self-counsel using the comments of others as our 'shrink'? Speaking entirely for myself, it seems that there is a brand of blog writer who like to expose past pains, to a fault. They are met by a brand of blog reader who feast on that stuff, doing the cottage psychology thing, or simply relishing the chance to do the 'there there' thing. I read blogs and I study not just them but those who comment on them, and there are those readers who only ever emerge to comment when a difficult skelington has just been outed. It makes me a feel a little like a voyeur, so I stop reading. For myself, I think that you are less interested in me than my thoughts. I am in no hurry to tell my story because frankly that is what it is - my story. My wife and my children, my mum and siblings - they are those who are the right audience, not the anonymous reader, no disrespect meant. My past contains great bits, and crappy bits, mistakes and successes - but only by getting to know me in person will you get to that stuff - then you can be utter underwhelmed by it.

- Biting the hands that feed us: there are blogs that seem to have one aim: to offend and wound the organisation that the blogger works in/for. Case in point are those who poke fun at the church as a sole M.O. all the while doing so anonymously. I won't now read a blog if I don't know who writes it, simple as that. It seems that Mother Church is oft concerned about scurrilous blogs - and in truth, I tend to share their concern.

These are, of course, only my views. I'd be interested to know what you all think. Is this a Counsellor's Couch, a stool at the bar with mates, a spittoon, or a canvas for doodling? I am not sure that I know what this thing we called 'blog' is, but I feel strongly that some serve undisclosed purposes and have the potential to leak too readily.