To our friends: why have we resorted to a letter and the website www.churchdispute.com to seek your help?
Some of our friends wonder why we have written and placed articles on the website www.churchdispute.com and then written to them asking them to read these articles. There are many reasons, and we, Pippa and Drew, hope to explain them to you, our friends who we contacted, after much prayer, to ask for whatever help you felt moved to offer us in this time of desperate trial.
The first reason is that Drew has been defamed in a deplorable way by both the PSU and Complainant 1 by being labelled guilty of child sex abuse even before there was any investigation and before Drew could present his defence. Then he was denied the opportunity to present his defence:
The PSU denied Drew the right to submit a defence for an entire year even though we tried every possible avenue to gain this right. Even a murderer in a secular system would be given more justice than the PSU have given Drew.
As you can read in the article ‘Honi Soit Qui Mal y Pense’ Drew has now set out his defence to complainant 1 and 2’s allegations and the PSU labelling his behaviour as serious sexual misconduct including sexual grooming and sexual abuse. Apart from the absence of actions that fall within a rational understanding of what constitutes grooming and sex abuse there are the church law definitions that state that there must be intention – the desire for personal sexual gratification evident in each action and conversation. Innocent acts are not in themselves abusive: they must be tainted by sexualisation.
The two PSU Directors judged Drew in defiance of these definitions and without ever asking for Drew’s considered defence and even though, in the documents they gave us, there is no allegation of harm or actual abuse by the complainants.
This defamation has reached not only the parish church but also the Commission for Children and Young People (CCYP) and the NSW Police. This has caused untold agony for our whole family. It has also rendered Drew only able to work as a casual restaurant waiter (due to stress and restrictions on employment) and unable to even coach his son’s soccer team or reapply to work for a catering agency, because they do high school kitchens. We naturally wish to rectify this situation.
Secondly: we needed to press the PSU and/or the Archbishop to act promptly on our claims, both for a chance to present Drew’s defence and for a ‘fair trial’. Both of these are ‘guaranteed’ by the Discipline Ordinance 2006, on paper if not in practice, as our experience has shown.
Initially we tried approaching the PSU ourselves, many times, then with the assistance of our sister in Christ, Louise, many times. We have approached the diocesan hierarchy, all to no avail.
Then, out of the blue, the referral in October 2013 to the Disciplinary Tribunal, which came about only because we kept pushing for justice. The PSU had told Bishop Forsythe in early 2013 that the case was “done and dusted”. They were satisfied with the result. We were not!
Currently, the PSU Director is still to promote the charge against Drew at the Tribunal. Could that possibly be because he (or someone) realises that this is not a case that should ever have been dealt with in this way; not even accepted by the PSU because the details of the complaint failed to disclose actual grooming and sex abuse. Or are they concerned that at this Tribunal, the unjust acts and omissions of the Director will have to be brought to light?
Now it is mid-March 2014 and there has been no further communication from the Archbishop’s office or the director PSU as to when the charges are to proceed: the director PSU (or someone appointed in his stead) needs to formulate the charges and serve a copy of them on Drew; an appointment with a member of the tribunal needs to set a timetable for the exchange of statutory declarations of the evidence that the PSU and Drew will rely on in the Tribunal hearing; then another appointment to make sure all is ready for hearing and to set a date. The Discipline Ordinance 2006 requires the PSU to deal speedily with cases, but in this case the director or his substitute is certainly dragging his feet.
It is said ‘Justice delayed is justice denied’ and this is just as applicable to a respondent as to an applicant.
The third is to have our complaint against the acts and omissions of the director PSU promptly and properly dealt with by the Archbishop of Sydney and the Safe Ministry Board.
In early September 2013, we asked to whom we should submit our complaint against the PSU Director, and the then Diocesan Registrar recommended the chair of the Safe Ministry Board. Before we submitted the complaint, we received notice from the Professional Standards Committee (PSC) that the Archbishop was to appoint someone to promote a charge against Drew before the Disciplinary Tribunal. We pressed on and discovered that the Director PSU is not accountable to the Safe Ministry Board at all, but only to the Archbishop.
So we presented copies to both parties in early November 2013 but still have no confirmation that it is being processed. The last correspondence with the Archbishop’s Executive Officer in December 2013 declared it would be processed “in due course” and not before the Tribunal hearing.
We want the Chair of the Board to set up a committee of some the members of the Safe Ministry Board to work through the details of our complaint of perversion of the process laid down by the Discipline Ordinance 2006 which was what he proposed to do when first acquainted with our complaint. But he and the Archbishop have ‘gone quiet’ on this.
So Louise’s article ‘For the lawyers … ‘ was posted by her on the website, to give any of our friends who were interested in the details, the information they required.
What were our options?
1. Approach the Supreme Court of NSW in a defamation case against both complainant 1 and the director PSU: or
2. We could pursue a Working with Children Check ourselves and clear Drew’s name this way.
But in both cases, we would not be honouring our Lord by settling disputes amongst believers before the situation becomes contended amongst unbelievers.
Louise has faced this issue before and the only way she has been able to get some form of justice is by getting the truth out.
Or
3. We could do what we have done, seeking help and support from our friends as we publish for ourselves our response to the complaints and the actions of the PSU so that you know that there is another side to the story. Others have supported us in this by publishing opinion pieces and carefully prepared information to enable you to assess the objective situation as well as the effect on us and our family.
Over a period of four months we considered six very different drafts of our letter. We concluded that it was not possible to send a 20 page document to everyone and it is not possible to ring everyone. So using the churchdispute.com website was the best answer.
After 15 long and, painful months of trying to secure justice, this is now the only way to bring pressure to bear on –
1. the PSU and the Archbishop (a) to push along the Tribunal proceedings by requiring the director PSU or his substitute to send us the charges and start the preparation for the Tribunal hearing; and (b) to help us to fund it (we are barely surviving with no chance of building up financial resources because of the defamation of Drew), and
2. the Safe Ministry Board and the Archbishop to process our complaint.
We needed others to come alongside us to say “This is not right!” and for the Archbishop to know that Anglicans would not stand for defamation, denial of natural justice and abuse of process by the PSU.
With reference to revealing details of the complaints:
When the director PSU said that Drew’s counselling of complainant 1 about masturbation issues was in itself abusive, regardless of intention, we looked at the examples given in the 1998 Code of Practice for clergy and found this: ‘unnecessary invasion into personal matters eg questions of a sexual nature.’
Three significant issues arose: first, how did it come about that Drew and Complainant 1 were having these conversations? Answer: he asked Drew for help. Second: were the conversations of a sexual nature? No, they were not in terms of detail: Drew did not need to know “how” details, nor, as he says elsewhere, did he find out details of the pornography sites and certainly did not watch them with Complainant 1 (or at all). Was it unnecessary? No, it was very necessary: addiction to watching pornography would disqualify Complainant 1 from entering Christian ministry, which he recognised by seeking Drew’s assistance.
In order to counteract the defamatory statements that he had committed sexual abuse, it was necessary for Drew to be able to explain what the nature of the counselling was and why it did not fall into this category.
There is no entitlement to ‘privacy’ once one has complained. The whole issue will be aired in the public hearings before the Tribunal and the decision could have ramifications for older clergy and members of lay ministry because it may be that their training was defective.
For all these reasons Drew overcame his natural reluctance to add to Complainant 1’s disclosure, with the details necessary to justify his talking with an adolescent about such matters.
Final thoughts:
The issue of accountability is a major one. The Director is accountable only to the Archbishop, who is accountable to …? Our experience has led us to strongly believe that the raison d’etre of the PSU is not to protect anyone but the Archbishop and the organisational church.
This is not the first time that the PSU has acted in this way and it will keep happening to clergy and parishioners (see “The Figtree Affair”) alike unless the culture of the PSU changes. However, our case probably has more documentation and is more obviously abusive than others. The embarrassment to the PSU should this complaint be known widely would be significant. Surely, this must be the reason that they either avoid answering our arguments or take many weeks to respond.
Your friends in Christ
Pippa and Drew