What is happening now in the case of the Sydney PSU v Drew & Pippa?

By Louise Greentree

It is timely to inform you, dear Readers, where things now stand in relation to the unjustified pursuit of Drew and Pippa by the Professional Standards Unit (PSU) of the Sydney Anglican Church based on the complaints of the two men we have called Complainant 1 and 2 in previous posts by me and by Drew and Pippa, and who I will refer to as C1 and C2.

But first, just to recap:

C1 expressed interest in a career as a youth worker when he was in his early teens. He went through Drew’s confirmation class and continued attending the parish’s youth activities and church services. By a fortuitous combination of events, Drew’s assistant youth worker left and was not replaced and C1 was available and interested in acting in this role as a part-time employee of the parish instead of taking up the usual after-school and weekend jobs his fellow school students had. C1 was given the unparalleled opportunity to be trained in youth ministry so that by the time he had finished his HSC and had been accepted into tertiary-level training, he was highly experienced in this area.

He had been given the benefit of two things by Drew:

• firstly, he had been shown the nuts and bolts of the weekly youth ministry job; and
• secondly he had been mentored in accordance with training that Drew had completed with a highly respected Christian training organisation.

This second benefit had two-fold consequences:

• firstly, he was able to overcome two serious, sexually related, problems with his life, one of which, accessing internet pornography, would have disqualified him for Christian service in any capacity. Also, it could have led him into actual illegal activity because, like all addictions, after a while the ‘softer’ porn no longer satisfies and ‘harder’ porn is needed to get the same level of arousal and excitement; and
• secondly, he had the example of the mentoring program that he himself could use when, in the position of youth minister, he would be required to confront these problems when mentoring the young men to whom he was ministering.

You would think that this would have given him a sense that he had great deal to be thankful for. You would be wrong. As set out in more detail in other articles and posts C1’s response in November 2012 was to defame Drew to as many former members of the youth groups under Drew’s ministry as he could, calling him a child sex offender, and then to refuse to have any contact with Drew or even speak to Drew about it.

We, Drew’s team, are still trying to work out why this would be so, because the complaints (which have been detailed in other articles and answered by Drew on this Blog) did not contain any accusations of any sexual activity or grooming to prepare for or hide child sexual abuse. When I suggested in one of my posts that, among other things, C1 had been misled into believing he was a victim of child sex abuse by bad advice from the PSU, he went to lawyers to threaten defamation proceedings against me and against Drew and Pippa! His lawyers said for him that he had come to this surprising conclusion under his own steam by being perfectly capable of reading the Discipline Ordinance 2006 (Sydney diocese).

C2 has not threatened to sue me or Drew and Pippa. His ‘evidence’ is very limited because he was only part of the parish youth group for a short time before being bundled off to be a boarder at a noted Anglican Boys’ Grammar School (that had a sexual abuse culture of its own which was the subject of criminal charges in 2005).

That is where things stood as far as blog posts directly concerned with C1 and C2 went.

Let me bring you up-to-date.

1. No defamation proceedings (yet): it was necessary to point out to C1’s lawyer a number of things, including:

• C1 had objected to publication of details likely to reveal his identity: I pointed out that it was his client who had ‘outed’ his identity to a large number of people via his electronic media and Facebook posts in November 2012 and by conflating the ensuing gossip in the parish;
• That it was his client who had defamed Drew in these electronic media and Facebook posts and that Drew had every right to commence proceedings against C1 if C1 was so foolish as to commence proceedings against him (or me);
• That as the issue turned on whether this was a case of child sex abuse or grooming, and as the Police had not taken up the complaint, this would have to be decided not in terms of criminal or civil law but in terms of ecclesiastical law. It would be difficult to persuade a Judge in the Supreme Court to make a decision upon this, being unequipped by legal training as well as suffering from a disinclination to deal with ecclesiastical law.
• I suggested that C1 should have read more widely in ecclesiastical law on the subject before forming his view.

Of course the whole threat was hard to take seriously: here was a lawyer complaining that his client was sensitive to anything that might lead to disclosure of his identity. At the same time the lawyer was threatening to place him in what must be one of the loneliest and most public places in the world, the witness box of the Supreme Court, in a case that would attract media scrutiny. This surely was acutely lacking in wisdom. And it reflected very poorly on C1 when we published the fact of his threats and they were discussed widely among people who had already been approached for help with meeting his allegations.

But it was and remains an interesting insight into the automatic response (go to a lawyer) of a man who now finds himself and his actions most properly subject to scrutiny; and the automatic response of the lawyer (let’s threaten court proceedings so the proper scrutiny will be stifled) even in defiance of the client’s perception of his best interests (anonymity).

After my letter in reply and that from Drew and Pippa, the lawyer withdrew the threat (for now) and agreed that the ecclesiastical tribunal proceedings which were being prepared should be the forum for the decision as to whether their client had been the victim of child sex abuse.

As my dear Readers, you will have discerned from my three-part series ‘Is Buying a Lost Child an Ice-cream Child Abuse?’ there are definitions of ‘child abuse’, ‘child sex abuse’ and ‘grooming’ in various places of the ecclesiastical law (Ordinances and other documents) of the Sydney Anglican Church. Notwithstanding PSU Director Mr. Lachlan Bryant’s characterisation of Drew’s actions as ‘grooming’ in the announcement he caused to be made in the former parish, nothing that was alleged by C1 fell within those definitions.  And nor did anything else he alleged result in sexual activity of even the mildest nature. Nor did he at that stage allege any harm flowing from these actions[1].

2. What Happened Next?

              As a reminder: when Drew and Pippa contacted, me they wanted a ‘voice’ which they had been denied by the incompetent handling of the matter in the office of the Sydney PSU. They needed a platform to assert the actual facts of the allegations which clearly showed that there was nothing falling within the definitions of child sex abuse or grooming to hide or initiate child sex abuse. They needed to try to rescue the widespread defamation of Drew by C1 in his social media attacks. They needed to expose Director PSU Lachlan Bryant as incompetent to the point of malice in his handling of the first meeting, his orchestration of the false announcement to the parish and his false reports to Police (who were not interested) and to the Commission for Children and Young People.

So how did Mr. Bryant and the Archbishop and others, including the new Registrar of the diocese, Mr. Douglas Marr, respond to all of this?

a). Mr. Marr immediately wrote a letter to Drew and Pippa refusing to answer some outstanding questions on the basis that he, Mr. Marr had decided that enough questions had been answered. The tenor of this letter was, intentionally or otherwise, bullying and intimidatory. As we pointed out in reply, Mr. Marr’s personal opinion was of no relevance and what was needed was a professional response and an answer to the outstanding questions. Naturally enough this has not been forthcoming from him.

b) Mr. Bryant without consultation with Drew and Pippa referred the matter to the Professional Standards Committee (PSC) the members of which appear to have just rubber-stamped his application that the case be referred to the Disciplinary Tribunal for a decision. The PSC made a recommendation to the Archbishop to this effect, which the Archbishop is required by the Discipline Ordinance 2006 to implement by the appointment of a person to bring charges in that Tribunal.

c) Mr Marr informed Drew and Pippa that, effectively, their complaint to the Safe Ministry Board was on hold until after the Tribunal proceedings were decided on the basis, he said, that things might appear differently after the Tribunal made its’ decision. It is hard to imagine a more blatant statement that (if or when) the tribunal handed down its’ decision, then the fact that Mr. Bryant had behaved improperly and incompetently as we alleged would no longer be relevant.  He ignored our submission that the fact of whether Mr. Bryant was guilty of misconduct in his decision not to apply the provisions and protections of the Discipline Ordinance 2006 to Drew was not relevant to the question of whether Drew was guilty of child sex abuse, which is what Mr. Bryant had accused him of privately and in public communications[2].

Since then:

The Archbishop appointed the PSU Director Mr. Bryant bring ‘charges’ [3]:

Finally the Archbishop bestirred himself to act on the recommendation of the PSC as he is required to do by the Discipline Ordinance 2006 – no ifs and no buts – to appoint someone to bring charges against Drew in the Disciplinary Tribunal. He appointed Mr. Lachlan Bryant despite our strenuous objections that Mr. Bryant was a major part of the problem and that he would end up being a major witness of substance in the case.[4]

Finally, after an unconscionable period of time, Mr. Bryant produced the Charges, and the statutory declarations supporting them, one from C1 and one from C2.

He and the Tribunal members then tried to force the process along to a speedy conclusion, a desire that we worked hard to thwart where it would have disadvantaged Drew in carrying out the investigations that the PSU should have carried out, and preparing his Defence.

A suppression order:

Mr. Bryant also obtained without notice to Drew, an ‘order’ of the Tribunal suppressing disclosure of the details of the complainants and details of the charges.

Problems with a suppression ‘order’ by the Disciplinary Tribunal

A suppression ‘order’ is, I am afraid, a false comfort to complainants in an ecclesiastical forum where the respondent is not ordained, because the Tribunal members have only a limited arena of effectiveness (unlike the Diocesan Tribunal for ordained clergy), if any effectiveness at all.

In any event ‘compliance’ with the ‘order’ is limited to:

• a party to the proceedings – there is no power to bind a third party, like me or even Pippa; and
• there is no penalty for non-compliance other than pressure from the Archbishop on a person who wishes to continue being employed in some capacity in the diocese. In Drew’s case there is no such wish.

Also, the terms of the suppression order had to be limited to this: to try to stop the publication of details of the names and other identifying details of the complainants and the terms of the charges and the contents of their statutory declarations beyond what was necessary to prepare a defence to the charges. That means that every person contacted about providing evidence to support Drew’s case or to investigate the allegations can be given every detail – names, contact details, present working situations, the details of the charges and what each has said in their statutory declarations! And these people cannot be stopped from discussing this knowledge as far and as wide as they wish.

For it to be otherwise would create a gross miscarriage of justice by preventing Drew from carrying out the investigation with past members of the parish youth ministry, confirmation classes and other people who have the ability to shine a light on the allegations by C1 and C2. These are investigations that the PSU should have carried out rather than with lies bullying Drew into writing an apology for things that he had never committed which the details produced by these two young men never alleged let alone supported.

This means that the suppression order cannot apply to proper investigation and preparation of statutory declarations and researching other documentation, and calling on other people and organisations for assistance and information in order to meet the charges. Therefore it is virtually ineffective to stop the names and identifying details and details of the charges made known to a wide range of people: it is a Claytons suppression order – the suppression order you have when you’re not having a suppression order[5].

However the suppression order seeks to prevent your knowledge, dear Readers, of the actual details of the charges being brought. Why? What has Mr. Bryant or C1 or C2 to hide?

After the publication of details and discussion on this website this is surely a case of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. But apart from that, such insistence on secrecy in relation to the actual charges is unacceptable in society at large let alone in an organisation that should be committed to transparency in all its dealings, in which there should be honesty and a commitment to justice and truth. If in their view the complainants have a case, then they should be happy to shout it from the rooftops, as indeed, metaphorically speaking, C1 did with his social media posts and SMS. But once his ‘view’ was challenged by the blog posts revealing what it was he had actually complained to the PSU about; and it was challenged by the publication of communications between Drew and Pippa and the diocesan organisation; and it was challenged by publication of details of a complaint to the Safe Ministry Board and to the Archbishop about the PSU mishandling of the case; and it was challenged in my blogs analysing and dismissing the claims as wrongly conceived: since then C1 and, presumably, C2 have become very shy and retiring.

The first question that a discerning Reader would require to be answered is this: has C1 and C2 complained of the same things that were disclosed in Mr. Bryant’s letter to Drew and which he has answered in his blog posts, and which I have analysed and concluded do not make out a valid case? Or have they claimed more, or less, than those original allegations?

I could answer these questions for you in full for the reasons I have explained, but for the time being I will say only this: nothing has altered my analysis that there is neither a claim nor evidence of child sex abuse or child abuse or grooming to initiate or hide child sex abuse. The charges are not drafted in these terms at all. They are drafted in terms of clause 6(e) of the Discipline Ordinance 2006[6]. Thus the PSU director will have to prove (1) that the conduct complained of would be disgraceful if committed by, in this case, a youth minister; and that it is or would be if known productive of a public scandal (at the time the charges were preferred – that is mid-2014)[7].

This is also confirmation that Mr. Bryant’s bullying and intimidatory behaviour, his lies and misleading information, his allegations and all his statements alleging child sex abuse and a criminal offence (which you can read about in other blog posts) in the first meeting with Pippa and Drew was wrong, wrong, wrong. He as well as the complainants have caused great harm, including bringing Drew close to suicide, while suffering no harm himself.

Is this Christian? Is it behaviour that honours our God of justice and truth? I do not think so. What do you think, Archbishop?

Is it the behaviour of the director PSU that is disgraceful, behaviour that is, or would be if known, productive of a public scandal? That proposition was almost tested in a Coroner’s Court that would have been inquiring into the suicide death of a man bullied and lied to by a church worker, the director PSU of Sydney diocese of the Anglican Church of Australia.

So now what has happened?

There have been two Directions Hearings since the charges and the statutory declarations were served on Drew, and another one is scheduled for mid-September. These are only dealing with preliminary issues. The September one is not the final hearing at which the two complainants will have to appear in public and answer questions about their complaints in the light of the information and evidence being gathered in the investigations now being carried out on behalf of Drew and Pippa. That day is drawing ever closer for C1 and C2. The veil of anonymity, such as it is, will certainly be pulled aside, if there is anyone else who has been concerned with the flimsy allegations of these two men who still do not know who they are.

I will write about these directions hearings and the progress in investigation in coming blog posts.

 

Post filed under Anglican Church, Drew & Pippa.