The Anglican Church of Australia Sydney Diocese
Sydney PSU v Drew
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?’ Part 2
By Louise Greentree[1]
Introduction
In Part 1 I pointed out several truths about complainant 1 (C1). Firstly, that in 2007, unknown to Drew at the time, he had refused Drew’s apology written in accordance with the Peace Wise training both had received. He had also impliedly rejected Drew’s amended behaviour to exclude the things he had only complained about at the beginning of 2005 after the Code of Conduct Faithfulness in Service was accepted by Synod in October 2004, after C1 had turned 18.
Secondly, that he had otherwise behaved without communicating any discomfort both before and after making the 2005 complaint to Drew that he felt uncomfortable about some things. He continued to work with Drew in the parish while he completed his tertiary training as a youth minister. Thereafter he took Drew to see the parish where he had obtained a youth ministry position and also invited Drew to lead the prayers at his wedding to another former member of Drew’s youth groups.
Thirdly, that by the time Drew and Pippa had returned from a year off touring Australia, he had obviously become embittered for some reason, refusing to meet Drew and Pippa before they left to take up residence at Tunnel Ridge Ranch, a Christian young people’s camp where Drew was going to work. He refused to be at home when they called in to collect an appliance they had left with him while they were touring. He refused to talk to them (and told them so in a text message) when, in November 2012, he informed them and a wide range of former youth group members that Drew was a child abuser.
I considered what could possibly be the motivation behind his totally (and later admitted) unfounded accusations of child sex abuse.[2] One possibility was that he had been sprung still watching internet pornography – the addiction he turned to Drew to try to help him overcome when he was in his mid-teens.
Another possible motivation was inspired by an article by social commentator Bernard Salt in The Weekend Australian newspaper about two ‘life forms’ he had identified: the Skilled Offence Taker’ and ‘the Responsibility Assumer’. As Salt said, the accusations of the Skilled Offence Taker are all about power and control: to establish their own egos at the expense of another person, who is too ready to take responsibility for that person’s discomfort or whatever they have taken offence to.
Now read on:
What do we know about Complainant 1, apart from the obvious details of his age, his recent employment, his address and his marriage and family? We know quite a lot from the things he has done and said, and not done and not said in this whole shambles of a claim. These things I as well as Drew and Pippa have been highlighting in a number of articles published on the church dispute website. For example:
As said previously: there has been absolutely no foundation to C1’s complaint and his defamatory messages to other former members of Drew’s youth groups accusing him of child abuse. There has been no foundation to his accusation of child sex abuse. There has been no foundation to an accusation of grooming that Lachlan Bryant made against Drew in the announcement to Drew’s former parish. Complainant 1 has confessed that he never thought there was any sexual element to Drew’s behaviour. The whole business has been based on lies and misinformation.
As said previously: when I suggested[3] that C1’s complaints were baseless, he ran to a solicitor to try to threaten me with defamation proceedings[4]. When I pointed out that Drew’s actions had not breached any criminal or civil laws, and it only depended on the interpretation of ecclesiastical ’law’ as to whether complainant 1’s claims had any foundation, the solicitor responded that he and his client would await the finding of the disciplinary tribunal.
That is why complainant 1 is so desperate to get some kind of finding – anything really – in the case, to buttress his position in the Christian community as well as in the civil law (although a ‘finding’ in a church tribunal concerning actions that are not against the civil law is not binding on a Supreme Court judge). He needs a ‘win’ to provide protection against being reviled among other Christians for his ruthless behaviour to Drew and his wife and family; to stop him losing face with influential people of the diocesan organisation – such as the Registrar, the director PSU and the deputy chancellor – for wasting their time and, more importantly, diocesan money on running a case (although, not even the case that complainant 1 and the director PSU Lachlan Bryant originally said could be run); and of course, to save him from a civil law claim for defamation while launching one of his own against me and against Drew and Pippa, who had also been threatened by his solicitor[5].
If there is no finding in his favour, no matter how remote from his original claims, then he is at risk of all these things. However he has flatly refused to be involved in mediation of the real issues where he could also negotiate immunity.
As said previously: he hides behind other people such as his solicitor and the director PSU Lachlan Bryant and behind a veil of anonymity – the so-called ‘suppression order’ made by the disciplinary tribunal, which is a farce as I have pointed out[6]. It is unenforceable because the tribunal has no power or authority.
He cannot claim that he is a victim of any abuse. Indeed he does not claim harm other than feeling uncomfortable at some times (although not speaking up even when a mere few days short of his 18th birthday), and that that the giving and receiving of massages is not a part of his marriage(!). He would not be granted a suppression order in those circumstances in a civil court. The interests of justice in an open court without suppression of the complainant’s name would override any such ‘delicacy’ of feeling which is far, far short of the feelings of shame and humiliation that a real victim of abuse has and so needs protection from public exposure.
And C1 has been given anonymity in my articles out of deference to the need for the church and Drew and Pippa to be better able to find a resolution of the case. Just as a matter of courtesy, which will end soon. We wanted to give C1 the chance to ‘grow up’ and in a mediated conference to face the man he has accused so wrongly so as to allow Christian reconciliation to be reached. However he has flatly refused to be involved in mediation of the real issues where he could also negotiate continuing anonymity.
As said previously: C1 has rejected the opportunity to reach a Christian reconciliation. Why? He is not a victim because he has not been abused. At best he has misread the provisions of the Discipline Ordinance 2006 and Faithfulness in Service 2004 and the amended versions following. He instructed his solicitor to tell me that he objected to my suggestion that he had been misled by the PSU because the implication was that he was unable to read the Discipline Ordinance 2006 for himself. He would have been wise to reserve this way out, because as the case has unfolded and unraveled, and he has placed himself in an untenable position, he has nowhere to go to deny responsibility for causing such devastation and real loss to Drew and Pippa and their children.
As said previously: although he has been ordained a deacon of the Anglican Church in Sydney diocese, and made a vow before God to obey his Archbishop he has refused to do so. Again, he is trotting out the spurious ‘I am a victim’ line, but this time, as we will see in Part 3 of this series, he is now defining his ‘victimhood’ in terms of the process he (and his family, he says) have been put through over the past 18 months or so, since Drew and Pippa started to make headway against the diocesan refusal to consider the injustice that had been wreaked on them by Lachlan Bryant and the rev. Peter Barnett.
What else do we know?
He is totally self-focused. He is impervious to reason because of clinging to his non-existent victimhood. He is ruthless in pursuing this victimhood rather than looking for other sources of his discomfort about things that even he does not imbue with sexual intent. Because of this fixation on blaming Drew for something that no-one else has felt he has withdrawn himself from living the truly Christian way of seeking resolution and reconciliation.
Is this because, at heart, he knows he has done something frightful – he has brought baseless accusations against a person who was never anything but a good and wise friend and mentor?
However, he is unable to look at ways of bringing his alleged discomfort to an end, not only psychological discomfort but also the discomfort of being out of Christian relationship with a large number of mature Christians. These include those who know him and are appalled at him bringing this complaint. He is certainly out of relationship with Drew and Pippa, who he has hurt in so many ways to the extent that Drew described C1 as having become his enemy[7]
Surely he cannot expect support from the Archbishop of Sydney, not least because of his disobedience but also because his complaints did not warrant anything like the response it was given by Lachlan Bryant and certainly did not amount to conduct requiring a notification to the OCG. Nor was it something that should have been referred to the disciplinary tribunal.
He is also out of Christian relationship with senior members of the diocesan organisation who have been left carrying the can for him after finding out that his complaint has no element of sexual or abusive misconduct to it at all and it has all been blown out of proportion.
C1 proposes disproportional punishment
C1’s complaint is also all about disproportional punishment.
In international affairs, where there is undeclared warfare between, for example the USA and a Middle East country which bombs the US embassy causing death and injury not only to US born staff but also to local staff members: the USA does not then drop a nuclear device on each of various suitable targets. Instead, it may decide to destroy a few selected targets with conventional weapons. This is called ‘a proportional response’. You bomb the embassy; we take out your airfield and some training sites.
This is the measured and responsible approach.
How does this approach apply to allegations of child abuse? Well, for abuse of a pre-puberty child with penetrative sex perhaps the proportional response is appropriately like detonating some nuclear devices. Likewise severe physical violence and deprivation.
But at the far, far other end of the spectrum, (off the end really), looking at the sort of behaviour that C1 complains of but no-one else who received the same treatment does, behaving in the way C1 has (along with Lachlan Bryant and the rev. Peter Barnett), even if these normal, lawful, moral, and Biblical actions are by some perverse interpretation characterised as inappropriate, then proposing that Drew never be allowed to exercise youth ministry nor ANY Christian ministry at all is the equivalent of detonating a nuclear device for a tuppence-halfpenny ‘crime’.
This man has no balance, no maturity.
We all wonder what he is going to do about it.
Does he have the courage of his Christian convictions to act in a godly way to seek reconciliation, or will he still go on in the path he is walking at present?
On this path besides him are the director PSU Lachlan Bryant for all his incompetence; the rev. Peter Barnett for the lies and misinformation that he spouted and the bullying based on these that brought Drew to the brink of suicide; the members of the Professional Standards Committee who thought it was a good idea to refer the matter to the disciplinary tribunal against the earnest pleas of the Archbishop; and, of course, the Hon. Acting Judge Peter Young AO QC who has been active on behalf of these incompetent and/or malicious people of the diocese to try to force Drew to walk away and submit to whatever ‘charge’ can be dredged up, even if they have to make it up as they go along[8].
If he continues to choose this way, C1 can be sure that he will not find Jesus on this pathway with him. He needs to turn aside, step off and go back onto the righteous path.
End Notes
[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] When the PSU brought a charge against Drew in the Disciplinary Tribunal of the Sydney Anglican church, it was not for child abuse or child sex abuse but for ‘disgraceful behaviour’ in a youth minister which caused, or if known at the time would have caused a scandal. The PSU is now stalled in prosecuting this case because, (a) at least 19 former youth group members have given statutory declarations in support of Drew and (b) the evidence is that Drew’s activities were well known at the time and did not cause a scandal.
[3] In the article ‘“Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent the Lord detests them both.” Proverbs 17:15. Please help us: Drew is indeed ‘the innocent’. Sydney diocese are doing what ‘the Lord detests’ because they need easy scapegoats.’
[4] See ‘Shooting the Messenger’ on www.churchdispute.com
[5] See ‘Our lives are shattered and now we are to be sued!’ by Pippa on www.churchdispute.com
[6] In the series of article under the title ‘Drew’s Adventures in Wonderland’ on www.churchdispute.com where I discuss the complete shambles that is the operations of the disciplinary tribunal not just in this case, but in relation to its’ complete lack of authority.
[7] See the article ‘Drew’s Account of Bullying and Denial of Rights by the PSU ‘on www.churchdispute.com
[8] For an example of how the lawyers of the diocese have been making it up as they go along see my series of articles ‘Inappropriate Pastoral Conduct Involving a Child Parts 1-5’ on www.churchdispute.com concerning the unseemly scramble to get this new ‘offence’ through Synod in October 2014 with the minimum of notice and debate. I think that when I decide to lift my courtesy embargo on naming C1 we will thereafter refer to this shambolic amendment to the Discipline Ordinance 2006 by his name. It only came into being to try to get Drew after it became all too clear that there was nothing done that offended the provisions of the Discipline Ordinance 2006 (which was operative at the time C1 made his complaint some ten years later), nor anything that offended against the Clergy Code of Conduct and the Discipline Ordinance 2002 (which were operative at the time of the activities in C1’s complaint.) The decision to make the new offence retrospective in application and the reported statement by the deputy Chancellor for the diocese, barrister Mr. Michael Easton that he saw no reason not to apply these retrospectively – meaning that you could be charged now with an ‘offence’ for doing something that was lawful at the time – represents a very low point in the history of Christian lawyers in diocesan church law.