Drew and Pippa:
Whatever happened to the young man that Drew mentored that he unleashed devastation on Drew and Pippa and their children by bringing a groundless complaint against Drew?
Is it a case of ‘Find Someone to Blame?’
By Louise Greentree[1]
Introduction
Taking a breather before completing and publishing Part 3 of the series ‘It’s a funny thing about … The Disciplinary Tribunal’ I want to talk about the continuing quest to find motivation behind the actions of complainant 1 (C1) in going to the Sydney Anglican PSU in 2012 to complain about Drew, and using social media, emails and messaging to inform former members of the youth groups under Drew’s care until 2010 that Drew was a child abuser, including sex abuse, and inviting them to make their complaints to the PSU also. As readers will know there was only one such person with a now discredited complaint. Instead there were many who supported Drew and stoutly denied that the same actions and activities C1 complained about constituted abuse, but rather much valued assistance to growth into Christian maturity.
When it came to the point the PSU could not sustain a case of child abuse or child sex abuse and have had to fall back on the ‘charge’: that the actions complained of were disgraceful if performed by a youth minister and caused or, if known at the time would have caused, a scandal. This charge was listed for hearing on 23 and 24 April 2015 but the date was vacated to allow settlement discussions to take place after the Archbishop of Sydney the Most Rev. Glenn Davies intervened. These settlement discussions have stalled.
For those who have come late into the conversation about C1 against his mentor Drew and Drew’s wife Pippa: Drew and Pippa are struggling to recognise the young man who was taken on as a part-time after-school assistant to Drew, learning how to organise youth ministry with a view to going on to study this for a career. C1 was about 15-and-a-half at the time and he continued in this role until after he completed his tertiary qualifications and left the parish to take up a position as a youth minister in another parish. This was in 2008, by which time he was aged about 22.
He was very pleased to obtain the position in 2008 and he took Drew to the parish to show him over. The following year he married a young woman he had met at Drew’s parish. They invited Drew and Pippa to the wedding. They asked Drew to lead the prayers for the happy couple.
And yet: here is a time line that indicates that all was not well in C1’s world for some time.
| 2002 | C1 is taken on as casual assistant in the youth ministry. |
| July 2002 | C1 turns 16. |
| July 2004 | C1 turns 18 |
| October 2004 | Sydney Synod adopts ‘Faithfulness in Service’ a code of conduct for all those in ministry |
| End of 2004 | C1 obtains HSC |
| 2005 | C1 commences tertiary training in youth ministry through YouthWorks. |
| 2005/6 | Training courses in the content of ‘Faithfulness in Service’ are held at various locations in the diocese of Sydney. Drew and C1 attend one of these. |
| 2005
|
After a training course C1 complains to Drew that some of his actions were inappropriate according to ‘Faithfulness in Service’ in that they crossed personal relationship boundaries. Drew apologises and does not repeat the activities complained about. C1 continues as Drew’s assistant in the youth ministry until 2008. |
| 2008 | Having completed his training C1 obtains a youth ministry position and leaves Drew’s youth ministry and parish.He is ordained deacon (often a first step towards ordination as a priest of the Anglican church). |
| 2009 | C1 marries and Drew leads the prayers at the ceremony at C1’s request. |
| 2010 | Drew and Pippa leave the parish and embark on a round-Australia trip. C1 is on Drew’s email list to receive regular newsletters from the family about their travels and adventures. His emails are not returned undelivered nor does he unsubscribe from the newsletters. |
| 2011/12 | Drew announces that their journey has come to an end and that he will be taking up a position at Tunnel Ridge Ranch, a Christian camp for young people in Queensland. Drew and Pippa move there. While still in Sydney they contact C1 to arrange to collect some item that they had left with him while they were travelling. When they go to collect it C1 is not home and he makes no effort to meet nor does he respond to Drew and Pippa’s invitations to meet in the period until they move to Queensland. |
| 2012 | Later in that year C1 contacts the Sydney Anglican PSU to make a complaint about Drew. He has not made any complaint direct to Drew since 2005 (see above). He makes a statutory declaration (which is NOT given to Drew in the meeting between Lachlan Bryant and Peter Barnett, both PSU directors, and Drew and Pippa in November 2012). He sends out emails, messages and even Facebook postings to former members of the youth groups under Drew’s care over the year accusing Drew of child abuse and child sex abuse and asking others to contact the Sydney PSU. He also asks the recipients to forward the messages to others they know. He sends messages to both Drew and Pippa making the same accusations and stating that he did not want to ever speak to them again. |
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Now read on:
When Drew and Pippa first spoke to me in 2013 about what had happened to them I took some advice from a Christian medical practitioner and an Anglican priest, both with extensive experience, about C1’s strange behaviour. I gave them a potted version of the complaints and Drew’s response and the history, including Drew’s revelation that his one-on-one counselling for C1, which C1 was in 2012 complaining about and designating child sex abuse, was actually mostly concerned with C1’s confessed addiction to online pornography.
Their immediate response was this: that in similar cases they had found that the complaint arose out of a continuing addiction to whatever was the unacceptable behaviour that they were addicted to, whether it was adultery that they had promised to bring to an end, petty thieving or accessing online pornography, for example. ‘He’s still watching it’ they chorused as soon as I finished speaking. Perhaps, they thought, he had been ‘sprung’ and needed to cast himself as a victim to avoid being chastised. If it was by his wife, then she would most likely be repelled and disgusted. If it was by the clergyman of the Anglican parish where he was employed as a youth minister, then this behaviour would be grounds to call for his resignation. If it was the Police and his addiction had led him into the murkier byways of online child pornography, then it would be a matter for investigation and the possibility of a charge which if proved would carry a jail term.
But, and I emphasise this, we do not know this for a fact. And therefore I mention it only as one of a range of possible motivations for this man to behave as he has. It is not just that he made a complaint without actual grounds to support it, and broadcast the false information far and wide, but that he went about it with such callousness, causing anguish to the whole family as well as real financial loss.
So when I read an article by noted social commentator Bernard Salt in The Weekend Australian July 18-19 2015 titled ‘Find Someone to Blame’ I recognised some of the elements in human behaviour that Salt writes about in the actions and personalities of the two proponents C1 and Drew. Writing with his usual wit and perception Salt identifies two ‘life forms’ that he says are ‘gaining momentum in Australia’.
The first is the Skilled Offence Taker. The second is the Responsibility Assumer. There is a symbiotic relationship between the two, he writes: one cannot survive without the other.
Here is his list of the characteristics of Skilled Offence Takers:
- They lie in wait and pounce, ‘ensnaring victims in a tangle of tears and accusations of ‘isms’ and ‘ists’ and ‘obias’. Add to that accusations of abuse of one sort or another.
- If truly skilled ‘they can scan an otherwise innocuous conversation and within a minute find something to be offended about’. By extension, they can take an otherwise innocuous action or activity and find something to be offended about. He can take the offer of the purchase of a pair of swimming trunks for them as evidence of the most heinous of crimes, child sex abuse. He can complain, many years after the event, that when he and their victim had been swimming at the beach and went into the public men’s showers and changing room, when his victim stripped off and had a shower and dressed in front of him, he was inflicting child sex abuse on the skilled offence taker[2].
- ‘Apart from thinking they are doing the bidding of a higher authority … the main motive of the Skilled Offence Taker … is all about power and control. Feeling a tad marginalised or put upon? Feeling that others don’t appreciate your awesomeness? Then find offence (any offence will do) and watch the accused offender scramble to make amends. That feels good, doesn’t it?
Doesn’t this sound like C1 in his first round of complaint after attending the Faithfulness in Service training? And doesn’t it particularly sound like him when in 2012, seven years later after receiving an apology for these perceived ‘crossing personal relationship boundaries offences’ (and, apparently throwing the written apology in the waste basket) C1 made major accusations based on exactly the same actions and activities preceding 2005 for which the first apology had been made and rejected? Wasn’t the first apology abject enough, C1? Did Drew not actually crawl on the floor and lick your boots, C1?
The second ‘life form’ identified by Bernard Salt, one that ‘inhabits the same space’ as the Skilled Offence Taker in a ‘symbiotic relationship’, is the Responsibility Assumer. Here is what Salt says about this one:
‘If there’s any sort of a problem, what does the slow-witted Responsibility Assumer do? Why, they apologise, of course. No need to check the facts; no need for a fairness test; someone’s sad and you’re not sad so it must be all your fault.’
Apart from the description ‘slow-witted’ – a better one would be honest and transparent – who does this sound like but Drew? Does this not resonate when seeking an explanation for Drew stepping up to take responsibility for C1’s ‘uncomfortable-ness’ and ‘hurt’, at first for the accusation of his perceived crossing of boundaries (no accusations of sex abuse or any abuse at this time) and, again, for the accusations of child sex abuse on the very same facts seven years later?
Is it not a reasonable explanation for Drew accepting his training with Peace Wise that he should apologise, in writing, unconditionally, in order to repair and maintain relationship with a fellow-Christian? And doesn’t the Peace Wise recommendation sound like: ‘no need to check the facts; no need for a fairness test’? Since when did this properly reflect God’s character as a God of justice and truth? And as the answer to that is: never, is not this recommendation of Peace Wise dangerous and un-Christian?
This is exactly what Drew was coerced into doing by Lachlan Bryant and Peter Barnett after a litany of lies and misrepresentations that they made about the nature of the complaint, characterised by them as child sex abuse, and their wholesale and wrongful rejection of his defence that he had no intention of implying any sexual ‘colour’ to his otherwise unimpeachable actions.
In an act of bastardry Lachlan Bryant took the unconditional apology, rebadged it as an admission and he has used it unscrupulously ever since.
Postscript:
C1 left his youth ministry position at the end of last year. He announced to the congregation words to the effect that ‘someone hurt me years ago.’ Doesn’t this sound like the Skilled Offence Taker?
I give the final word to Bernard Salt:
‘Who would soothe Offence Taker’s feelings if Responsibility Assumers weren’t there to take the blame? Offence Takers would start taking offence with each other and then the very fabric of modern society would unravel. …
Without people to blame for “stuff”, I fear modern Australia would simply collapse amid a heap of tears and accusations of meanness.’
Endnotes
[1] Louise Greentree BA LLB LLM(Hons) ProfCertArb Admitted to the Supreme Court of NSW and to the High Court as a solicitor(now retired). Former partner of Sydney city firm of solicitors. Lately law academic with special interest in Legal Professional Conduct, Alternative Dispute Resolution and restorative processes. Professional training includes Real Justice Restorative Conferencing and Collaborative Law.
[2] In my day as a teenager using public changing rooms at the beach (those good ol’ days) it was customary to studiously avoid looking at your fellow-shower-ers and changers, keeping ‘custody of the eyes’ that would have done a nun proud. Not that that stopped the quick sideways glance to see whether the female next to you was thinner than you or had better (read bigger) breasts. Perhaps there was a similar teenage angst-ridden culture in the Men’s changing rooms in the early 2000’s – although I think not, nor in the women’s change rooms, because the culture of those days was much more sexually unconcerned. In the raunchier culture of today’s films, media and fashion C1’s complaints are just farcical.