The Leopard has not changed its spots.
By Louise Greentree[1]
The particular leopard I have in mind is the Anglican Church in Sydney, though this might apply to other churches as well.
In The Australian newspaper on 18 March 2015 it is reported that as a result of the inquiries by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse 2013-2015 (so far) the first of what may be many prosecutions has been launched against a very senior member of the priesthood of the Catholic church in Australia. The charges relate to an allegation that the man charged knew of but failed to report to the Police the activities of fellow priest in the Newcastle-Maitland diocese involving serious child sexual abuse including homosexual rape of a child over a period of some years. This will be a test case for bringing similar prosecutions against men (and women) who are now in very senior positions in Christian churches of many denominations in Australia.
Churches around the world, in respect of their parishes and their affiliated schools and orphanages, were among the worst institutions for turning a blind eye to pedophiles who had infiltrated their ranks. Similarly churches were among the worst institutions for covering up the activities of pedophiles, sometimes even shielding them from the police, and using strong-arm lawyers to silence victims. This was done to protect the reputation of the church institution. I do hope those who did these things rot in hell. I expect they will since Jesus himself said there will be those who say to him on Judgement Day “Lord, Lord did we not … in your name?” and he will say to them: “I never knew you. Away from me you evildoers.” (Matt.7: 21-23)
That is a matter of public record. It is also a matter of public record that in Australia it was only some brave individuals, the secular media and the resultant anger in the general community that forced churches of all persuasions to face up to the evil that they had been hiding and tacitly enabling. The Australian public had to make the churches behave decently!
For the last decade or so the Anglican Church in Australia has been assuring the public that it has changed its spots: it is now acting to make churches safe for everyone. This may be true in some dioceses, but in Sydney Diocese the leopard has not really changed its spots – it has just given them a tacky coat of paint.
Sydney Anglican Diocese still puts protecting the institution first. (In other circumstances this would be funny since they of all Anglicans deny that the institution is “The Church”.) However there is nothing to laugh about here. To protect the institution they are demonstrating their zeal, not by removing people guilty of real abuse – at least not ones who manage to groom the hierarchy as did the pedophiles of the past – but prosecuting ludicrous charges against innocent people. Sometimes these innocents are apparently just victims of people with a grudge, or of people who covet their job, but at least some appear to be targeted in a deliberate perversion of justice to remove people who are on the wrong side of parish politics, and others have been victimised by the church organisation they served for many years as the consequences of massive incompetence on the part of the church organisation – clergy, staff, and officers.
In another recent article in The Weekend Australian newspaper 7-8 March 2015 titled ‘Pitfalls of the pendulum shift on abuse. Is moral outrage creating an atmosphere of moral vigilantism?’ Anne Barrowclough says this:
‘But are we judging yesterday’s actions by today’s enlightened moral code? Are we allowing the justified moral outrage engendered in us by the commission to create such an atmosphere of intellectual vigilantism that we’ll ignore justice in favour of an overwhelming desire to punish anyone who has been accused of abuse, regardless of the facts? Has our sense of fair play given way to one of retribution?’
She quotes Hetty Johnston, founder of the organisation Braveheart, whose endeavours to obtain justice for Beth Heinrich brought about the resignation of the then Governor-General and former Archbishop of the Anglican Church Peter Hollingworth:
‘There’s been a pendulum shift. We’ve swung from being oblivious about the issue (of child abuse) to hyper-vigilance. We’ve skipped the common sense in the middle’
That is the viewpoint that is also concerning other people in the secular world, the psychologists and counsellors, the lawyers and Judges and the Police, who have been dealing with the fallout from the failure of many institutions and organisations apparently dedicated to providing for the care of children: the failure to accept complaints of child sexual abuse and deal appropriately with them and to set up systems to protect children from pedophiles within the organisations.
Within the church we would expect that truth and justice, two aspects of the character of God, would receive greater respect. We would expect that Christian virtues would be brought into play: that gossip would not be encouraged and then allowed to form the basis, the only basis, of ‘evidence’ against an innocent person. We have the right to expect that the church would have proper procedures competently administered by Christians who are lawyers and others in official positions in the church organisation.
But this is not what is happening. Later in this article I give some examples personally known to me where apparent zealotry of the church has overthrown truth and justice. And the consequences have been as disastrous and excoriating not only to the direct victims of this zealotry but also their spouses and children and wider family, friends and Christians in their former parishes, among others, to the same extent as the church’s wilful blindness and strong-arm tactics has been to those actual victims of sexual abuse in the church parishes and institutions. This bumbling or vicious vigilantism has also been excoriating to the people who have been told by incompetent or malicious church officials that they are victims when they are nothing of the sort.
The church is still not safe:
When the church is still rife with people who care more about the institution than God, when they are prepared to pervert justice, when they are prepared to convict the innocent to use as sacrifices to show the world how zealously they are acting against ‘wrongdoers’, the church is not safe. It is not safe from pedophiles because they know just how to groom hierarchies like that to protect themselves – that was the problem in the past and there is no real reason to suspect that things have changed!
It is not safe for ordinary people because they may fall victim to the zealots of the new ‘church police’. These church police include two of the several directors of the Professional Standards Unit (PSU) of the Sydney Anglican Church and the PSU director of another diocese as well as certain malicious or just incompetent persons bringing devastation[2] and disaster on other people for their own purposes.[3]
Here are some actual examples that I have come across:
Dedicated church volunteer is sacked for one comment in one email, just one, to the senior minister where she is a good friend of both the minister and his wife.
This woman parishioner was a good friend to the minister’s wife especially through problems and so “knew too much”. She is “sacked” from the voluntary work she has performed in the parish at great sacrifice of her time and expertise.[4]
A misleading announcement is made from the pulpit about her sacking which generates a flood of malicious gossip of staggering invective with not a shred of foundation in truth, so that she, her husband and their children are driven from the church. She sues: the diocese settles – and then the Assistant Bishop for the area publicly boasts that they settled for less than her legal costs – and this where she had done nothing wrong.
Her marriage is destroyed in the process, and her children’s lives have been affected by the separation and divorce of their parents, entirely caused by the church’s mishandling of the issue.
This devastating tide of gossip and malice started with the original conduct of a self-described Christian person with an axe to grind partly because of the friendship between the two Christian women. He refused to forgive when asked to do so when he objected to a rather robust comment in a private email. I thought forgiveness was compulsory for Christians – The Lord’s Prayer: ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.’ – but as this person was protected by the diocesan organisation, apparently this is not so for certain darlings of the church establishment. As at 11 April 2015 this minister is still at the same church.
A vulnerable woman parishioner is denounced and ostracism when seduced by her minister.
A vulnerable woman whose marriage is going through a rough patch is seduced by her minister. The church quietly moves him aside, but she is denounced as an adulteress from the pulpit, driven from the church, and her marriage, which was being repaired, comes close to being destroyed irrevocably.[5] She and her family are driven out of the church.
These two women and their husbands and children are so traumatised, even now some years later, that they can scarcely speak of it. Well done, PSU directors, Archdeacons, Assistant Bishops, Archbishops and the clergy and vicious laypersons of the congregations of the parishes in Sydney diocese where these travesties of truth and justice occurred.
Youth minister is accused of adultery which is denied not only by the ‘other woman’ but also by his wife!
A youth minister is accused of adultery by another minister who wants (and gets) his job. The accuser tells the diocese: “I have no evidence, but I really believe it is so.” Both the man’s wife and the alleged ‘lover’ deny that there is an affair or has been an affair or ever contemplated an affair.
One of the main ‘accusations’ is that the accusing minister went to the local McDonald’s family restaurant, in company with members of the youth group as usual on a Friday evening, and found these two people sitting there at one of the front tables in full view of other members of the congregation who were there also as usual after a Bible study at the church.
The wonder is that the director of the PSU even considers launching disciplinary proceedings on the basis of such accusations. But there is an even more complicated aspect to the case: the man belongs to a Christian evangelist training organisation and the captain of that organisation also has an axe to grind against the man despite the fact that the man had supported his application for the appointment. The captain brings pressure onto the director PSU, who is too weak to resist it, who effectively washes his hands of it and goes through the motions to allow it to run its’ course, unconcerned at the effect on the man, his wife and family and on the young woman who wishes to work in the church.
After two years the PSU admits there is nothing to suggest the man ever did anything wrong – but he has been driven out of Christian ministry, forever.[6]
The church pillories a man and his family over a false accusation in the man’s place of work which then generates a false accusation from the mother of a woman, neither of whom are parishioners.
A man who attends an Anglican church with his family also makes coffee after church. He uncovers corruption in the institution where he and the minister’s wife work (no suggestion that she is personally involved in the corruption – just friends with people who may be). He is falsely accused of sexual impropriety with another woman: the problem is that he is not even accused of having sex with her nor is there any credible allegation that he ever wanted to! There is absolutely nothing to suggest he did anything wrong.
In fact, so shonky was the claim that he was never told about it and allowed to defend himself as the institution’s rules required, but a document was signed and placed in his file the day before his application for a permanent job was dealt with by the committee, which was the whole purpose of the creation of the lie. His application was refused on dubious grounds.
The ministers’ wife spread gossip about this to an employee of the parish, the Children’s Minister who within days, whether out of incompetence or malice it is hard to decide, encouraged another false claim from the mother of a 20-year-old woman, neither of whom were parishioners.
Again, the problem is that he is not even accused of having sex with her or even suggesting that they do so! In any event she was aged 20 at the time, so she could consent if she had been asked. An attempt to create shonky allegations of 1 hug when the girl was aged 14 and another when she was aged 16 ended up being rejected. The young woman did not know that her mother had made a complaint, purportedly on her behalf, until a long time later. When she knew a complaint had been made (but not by whom) she did not want to make a complaint.
Again, there is absolutely nothing to suggest he did anything wrong.
But he and his entire family are denounced from the pulpit, thrown out of the church, and the congregation ordered to “shun” the entire family! Other Christian churches of other denominations in the area are warned about the whole family and told not to offer Christian pastoral care to any of them. Even the young daughters find they are cut off from all their friends as well as shunned by teachers in the local Anglican school, all of whom have been ordered by the church not to speak to them!
After several years of wrangling in the church disciplinary system, a tribunal has to recommend to the then Archbishop that the charges against him be withdrawn and dismissed.
Even after that, the current senior minister of the parish refused the request of the then Archbishop of Sydney, the Right Reverend Dr Peter Jensen, to announce to his congregation that the man is innocent of the allegations and he continues to refuse to do this. He maintains the “shun” order against the entire family by himself and his congregation: he denies the truth that others, including the Archbishop have accepted; he refuses to allow his congregation to know the truth; and churches of other denominations in the area are still not informed of the truth so that they continue to shun the family as well.[7]
At the same time the director Sydney PSU was failing his duties as PSU director of another diocese.
In this particular case, at the very same time as the PSU Sydney director was bringing charges against this man and destroying the lives of the man’s wife and children, he, a solicitor with a current practicing certificate, was failing to protect the victims of a notorious pedophile in a church institution in a northern NSW diocese from aggressive diocesan tactics by its’ lawyers, including the Registrar of that diocese who was a lawyer and former MP. The Sydney PSU director was also director PSU of that diocese. The registrar and the diocesan lawyers, with the tacit ‘blessing’ of the director PSU, were hell-bent on denying the main victim justice and using every dirty trick in the lawyers’ armory to discourage him from seeking and obtaining proper compensation for years of harrowing abuse.
Of course this was partly to discourage other victims of similar harrowing abuse at the hands of this monster from following in the first claimant’s footsteps to make wholly justified complaints and seek wholly justified compensation for the hell that was inflicted on them as children[8].
This behaviour by the PSU director is inexplicable, and inexcusable, in terms of the ethics of a legal practitioner let alone of a professed Christian employed by a Christian church for the precise purpose of protecting the innocent from the guilty and providing support and assistance to the abused while reporting their alleged abusers to the Police for investigation and criminal proceedings.
The youth minister is falsely accused of child sex abuse when there is no evidence of this.
A youth minister gave many of the older teenage boys in his group a leg or back massage before or after a foot race such as a City2Surf or skiing. Everyone knew about this – his wife, the boys’ parents, the senior minister as well as the adult members and leaders of youth ministry. No-one made any fuss, or objected to it, and there was certainly no scandal. There was absolutely no sexual aspect to this. Many years later one of them, now an Anglican youth minister complains to the diocese that despite the fact that he welcomed these at the time (when he was between 16 and 18 years of age), now (in his late 20’s) that he had felt “uncomfortable” and he is unwilling to allow his wife to massage his legs. (Fortunately this alleged barrier in their relationship has not prevented his wife from conceiving and bearing his child.)
He also complains about, variously, being counselled about addiction to internet porn and other teenage male concerns about sexuality (counselling that was in accordance with the training given by and programs recommended by John Mark Ministries) and, on one occasion, being given a pair of Speedo swimmers which were on sale at the local surf shop.
The youth minister is hauled before diocesan officials and disgracefully lied to and browbeaten into apologizing. Not only is this apology rejected, it is then treated as a confession, and he is ordered to stand trial before a disciplinary Tribunal.
In the meantime it becomes apparent that there was nothing in the church rules to say that giving a leg or back massage to older teenage boys with their permission was wrong, nor was the training and programs nor a one-off gift of swimmers. So at the next Synod a new law is passed, and the youth minister then faces the prospect of having to argue his case against breaking the new law retrospectively.[9]
It is only after a great many fine Christian young men from the youth group testify to the same treatment which was welcomed as an example of the youth minister’s care and concern for them, with not a whiff of impropriety about it, that the PSU is being forced to back off[10].
Among the ordained clergy, here is an example of scandalous mistreatment of a clergyman and his wife and family:
What was at best an insubstantial and on the face of it inconsistent complaint against a clergyman concerning a time before his ordination, is brought many years later by a woman proved to suffer from false-memory syndrome and goes to a 5-day hearing before a diocesan tribunal before being dismissed:
In this case the woman’s original complaint cites a number of people who would back up her allegations. The then PSU director does not order an investigation, which, had it been conducted would easily have located most if not all of these people (as the defence investigation did) and would have obtained their shocked repudiation of the woman’s story. One even had kept all the school magazines from that time, one of which contained an article by the woman as a school girl rhapsodizing about how good things were for her at the school and how happy she was, contrary to what she later alleged was the case.
Despite all of this evidence, the PSU director required the case to go to a week-long hearing at the end of which the Chairman and members of the Diocesan Tribunal not only dismissed the case but ordered the diocese to pay the clergyman’s actual legal costs, not just those calculated at the miserable and unrealistic rates provided for by the diocese. The diocese had to pay $70,000, although the clergyman was still out-of-pocket a further $30,000 plus for incidental costs incurred by the incompetent way the PSU director ran the case.
A case is pursued against a parishioner (neither ordained nor a church worker) by the PSU at the behest of a former Archdeacon of that area of the diocese and the (replacement) senior minister of the Anglican church attended by this man, his wife and family, including the issue of a MOU[11]. This on the same facts that had already been the subject of two criminal court proceedings and dismissed by the jury in each case as based on what is what the Judge criticizes as evidence concocted by the complainants.
In this case it is only very recently that this person has been vindicated in the eyes of the Anglican Church Sydney diocese. Arising out of a purely commercial falling out between a man and his former employer, two now adult sons of the former employer make complaints of child sexual abuse to the Police. The two criminal cases are tried individually, before a different judge and different jurors. In each one some of the charges are ‘no-billed’[12]; the few that go through to hearing are dismissed by the jury in each case. In the second trial the Judge makes pertinent comments about concoction of the evidence and collusion between the two complainants.
One would have thought this would be the end. But no, the local archdeacon, the new senior minister and the director Sydney PSU get their heads together to inflict further totally unwarranted persecution on this man, his wife and daughter. Fortunately, the wardens and certain parishioners stand up for the man and his family. It is only after the retirement of the archdeacon and his replacement is involved that the case starts to unwind and certain overtures may be made to try to repair the monumental harm.
These cases are real.
These cases are all examples of the perversion of justice in the Sydney Anglican diocesan discipline system. I have been writing about such examples over a period of 8 years. Every time I point out injustice in the system they do not attempt to repeal that part and to replace it with a just system; they just try to patch it up to give themselves more abusive power and to increase injustice[13]. These men and women, along with their wives and husbands and their children are among those innocent people that Garth Blake SC thought should be sacrificed in the cause of appearing to crack down on pedophiles.[14]
Where there is no respect for justice and truth, there is no safety for anyone.
There is no safety for anyone, because virtually anyone who attends an Anglican Church can be investigated and charged with an offense by the diocesan ‘police’. Once the diocese could only use disciplinary procedures against ordained clergy. With the growth in lay ministers that was broadened to ‘church workers’. However, the PSU and others in the church ‘police’ have ignored the definition of church worker in church law to broaden it from those non-ordained persons who have positions of leadership, some specified and others not, to anyone who does something that runs them foul of these church police.
Now anyone who does anything – even just make coffee after church – is at risk of being said to be a ‘church worker’ and their private lives are being investigated and used as basis for charges in the church disciplinary system.
If you are a part of the Sydney Anglican church, employed or volunteer, even if simply handing out hymn books or a cup of coffee or playing the guitar in one of the church bands, you could be next to have your life destroyed by gossip and falsehoods that are accepted as true despite being ludicrous on the face of them, and to be brought before a disciplinary tribunal at great financial and emotional cost to you and the members of your family.
The leopard has not really changed its spots. It is still not safe to go to church, while the Anglican Church has lost its’ commitment to justice and ‘fair play’ and replaced it with ugly vigilantism and retribution, whether allegations of sexual abuse are involved or not.
End Notes
[1] I am indebted to my brother the Rev. David Greentree for the original draft of this article to which I added other material from recent newspaper articles and stories from my church dispute consultancy.
[2] Just read the ‘Devastation’ series of articles by Pippa on the website www.churchdispute.com
[3] Frequently I have to be reminded of Hanlon’s law: ‘Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.’
[5] In this there are shades of the story of the woman ‘taken in adultery’ where she was the one dragged out of bed, thrown down in the dirt at Jesus’ feet and threatened with death by stoning. Where was the man who had been sleeping with her? Not there. See John 7:53 – 8:11
[6] See the John’s Story articles on the website www.churchdispute.com
[7] See The Figtree Affair articles on the website www.churchdispute.com
[8] This information is taken from the evidence given by that director PSU to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in November 2013.
[9] See the Drew & Pippa articles on the website www.churchdispute.com
[10] Readers can keep up with developments in this regard from postings on the Drew & Pippa category on the website www.churchdispute.com
[11] Memorandum of Understanding, containing restrictions, usually draconian, concerning a person’s ability to attend a church, because of alleged pedophile activities.
[12] This is where the prosecution is unable to make a case to be tried. So, the evidence is so deficient that the defendant does not have to make a defence to it.
[13]In a case where a person was being badgered into cooperating with an improperly conceived investigation I pointed out that the Ordinance did not require people to cooperate with a PSU investigation. Instead of accepting that this was appropriate, that a person is allowed in our legal system to refuse to answer questions and to protect themselves from self-incrimination, Sydney diocese amended the Ordinance and made it an offence for a member of the clergy to refuse to cooperate with the investigation, even if the investigation has been improperly commissioned. Now, one can have the ludicrous situation that a member of the clergy is cleared of all charges, except the one of refusing to cooperate with the investigation that had been improperly instituted. This is unjust. Why should the church system offer less justice than the State and Federal legal systems?
[14] In November 2007, the Synod of the National Anglican Church in Australia approved the creation of a National Register of clergy and church workers merely accused (not convicted) of child abuse or sexual misconduct. The Age newspaper (distributed in the Australian State of Victoria) published an editorial on 23 October 2007: ‘Protect the innocent, ignore the unfaithful’ which commented on the dangers of unproven accusations to the civil liberties and reputation of anyone whose name was placed on the register. In response, the Chair of the Professional Standards Commission, Garth Blake SC wrote in a letter published in The Age on 26 October 2007 ‘…while some may argue that civil rights of accused people may be breached, many hundreds of thousands of others would put first the safety of the truly vulnerable in our society.’ Whatever happened to the saying that underpins our understanding of what justice means: ‘It is better that 10 guilty men go free than that one innocent person is convicted.’? Mr. Blake’s misplaced reaction to the sexual abuse scandals is a scandal in itself in a senior lawyer.