The Anglican Church of Australia Sydney Diocese
Is buying a lost child an ice-cream child abuse?
Part 1: Have we gone too far in labelling mere actions as child abuse?
Part 2: Did Professor Albus Dumbledore abuse Harry Potter?
Part 3: Did Elijah abuse the widow’s dead son? Did Jesus abuse the ‘little children’? Did ‘you’ abuse ‘Mark’?
POSTSCRIPT TO THE SERIES
By Louise Greentree[1]
Introduction
At the end of Part 3 of this series I wrote as follows:
If you look at the complaints that I deal with on my website concerning the Dobbs family, Drew and Pippa and John’s story you see within the operations of the Sydney diocese Professional Standards Unit (PSU) a pattern of something more sinister than mere incompetence and unprofessionalism: a culture of the arrogant sweeping aside of all the proper and appropriate safeguards that a democratic society jealously protects – safeguards such as the right to remain silent when accused of a crime (this is the protection against self-incrimination – the evidence against a person has to be proved before the accused person needs to answer it); that the accused person has a right to be cautioned and to have legal advice and representation before questioning; that no ‘admissions’ obtained under threats, lies, misrepresentations and bullying can be admitted into evidence.
And these are not the only cases. Others have contacted me from time to time with details of mistreatment and denial of justice at the hands of a PSU which I have not (yet) written about. When you look into these cases you see a culture of ignoring law and best practice. In one case a director PSU decides he can act outside his authority with no regard for jurisdiction (the threshold issue that always, outside the church, has to be considered in bringing court proceedings). The code of ethical behaviour that legal practitioners are bound to observe has been ignored and flouted by some legal practitioners who have been appointed to the position of director PSU. The competence that is required of a legal practitioner is nowhere to be seen in certain words and actions of some of those PSU directors in some cases, a problem exacerbated by the (church) legislated activities of the PSU I highlighted in my article: ‘The Anglican Church Criminal Law System: The Anglican Church in Australia now acts as Police, Prosecutor, Judge and Jury against its own congregants.’ (First published 2008) previously referred to. Behaviour like this in the world outside the church would bring censure. In the church it is validated, if anything, by those responsible for the actions of the PSU[2].
It is a sad day when the church condones behaviour that is less ethical than Australian society requires of its’ police, investigators, prosecutors, lawyers and judicial officers.
POSTSCRIPT
I went on to ask: “What is going on here?”
In simple terms, Satan has won a double victory against the Christian church. Firstly, God’s Name, His holiness and righteousness have been defamed by the abusive priests and church workers and also by the church hierarchy and officers who have sought to cover up real abuse. Secondly the church has been led into wild-goose chases against innocent people, in defiance of God’s reputation for truth and justice, and church officers have victimised these people while, again, the guilty have been protected and gone free. Some of the guilty have died, or, alerted to pending investigation, they have gone overseas to escape prosecution. But the innocent person who stands up to the bullying and affirmed his or her innocence is berated, threatened and defamed. While standing in the way of the proper prosecution of some of the most appalling abusers and the claims for compensation for ruined lives (and, even more importantly, for ruined faith), some of the church hierarchy of clergy and officers have themselves ruined the lives of the unjustly accused and improperly treated people and their families.
It is as if these clergy and church workers think that the sins in relation to the real abusers can be offset in some way by their zealotry against the innocent. Or perhaps, that is just how they treat the innocent, whether the victims of other clergy and church workers or of themselves. They need a timely reminder that only God can forgive sin and bestow eternal life, not Satan whom they appear to serve in these cases.
And then we have the other victims: the people who have been told that they have been abused when they have not. I have extensively documented the case of Emma Nicholls whose mental illness was so manipulated by her mother Lee Nicholls and Yvonne Gunning the children’s minister at Figtree Anglican church in support of their various agendas so that she was forced to become complicit in false claims (totally unsubstantiated) against a man and his wife and family who had offered her only kindness, forbearance and Christian love.
In another case, a woman suffering from mental illness including false memory syndrome was supported by the director PSU Philip Gerber right through 5 days of Tribunal hearings (which dismissed her claims) when an investigation which should have been ordered in accordance with the Discipline Ordinance 2006 would have uncovered this fact at the start, and saved her from the stress of a court appearance and subsequent rejection of her flawed perception. And in a case presently being mishandled by the PSU Sydney, a person claims merely ‘crossing of physical boundaries’ none of which involve any form of sexual contact or grooming for sexual purposes or to hide sexual abuse. This person faces unwelcome publicity which attempts to suppress are doomed to failure; the effect of this on the person and his family will be grave. These three people, among others, have themselves been denied wise counsel in the PSU pursuit of innocent people.
Now, in these cases, particularly the Figtree case, the defence has been raised that the claims had to be investigated. However, in the Figtree case the first form of ‘investigation’ was for the assistant to the children’s minister to hound the man’s daughters out of a church leadership-in-training session in front of all their friends, without explanation, and then for all of the accused man’s children to be banned from coming to church at all.
Another great victory for Satan at the hands of clergy and church workers.
In the case of the woman with false memory syndrome there was no investigation by the PSU and therefore the defence had to bear the expense of doing what the PSU had failed to do. In their judgment the Diocesan Tribunal members ordered the church to repay the respondent all his real costs, although even there the Standing Committee of Sydney diocese weaseled out of this by only paying $70,000 of the actual costs of $100,000-plus to the innocent man. In a current case, the PSU encouraged the complainant to contact fellow youth group members to try to find someone to support his claims, incidentally engaging in serious defamation, rather than order a proper investigation. Only a couple of people did so, the rest telling him that he had not been abused. Of those who responded positively, one (actually a pair of brothers) were rejected by the PSU; the other has not made any accusation of child abuse, sexual or otherwise, but instead made lurid criticisms of the way in which the respondent carried out his duties.
This sort of behaviour is reprehensible. And yet it is not repented of. It continues from one to another of the various clergy and office-holders in the Anglican Church.
What can responsible and God-fearing members of the Anglican Church do when faced with this abuse and abuse of power by people whose job it is to protect the innocent and pursue the guilty in God’s name?
This is the billion-dollar question. That those who have abused their positions clearly are not acting in God’s name nor in accordance with His will does not provide any comfort to those who wish that His Name is revered as holy and righteous so that others can know His loving kindness and His salvation. Which is the proper job of these clergy and officers of the church.
We Christians read with emotions running the gamut from dismay to disgust the revelations to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The abuse would seem to have been rampant in church controlled organisations, schools and institutions where paedophiles have had unfettered access to children and enjoyed the protection of their superiors when anyone dared to report or even question their activities. And now those superiors or their successors are appearing in dreary parade before the Commission and the indignant public to confess the sins committed in the institution for which they and their predecessors have been responsible and to apologise. But this is only a forced apology. There have been precious few who have responded appropriately without the spur of exposure to public opinion.
So how much disgust does there have to be when the PSU goes off the rails (as in these cases that I have examined) and the church hierarchy takes no proper steps to rein in the conduct that exceeds authority and is an abuse of power until this other, more hidden abuse by the church clergy and their officers is exposed and rooted out? Judging by the iniquitous neglect of justice and truth in dealing with victims of actual abuse it will take more than what has accumulated so far.
What we have seen is the failure, impotence even, of the past Archbishop of Sydney Peter Jensen to curb the excesses of the PSU in his time. We have seen, in particular, the way Figtree church personnel openly, scornfully even, flouted his authority by refusing to apologise to the Dobbs family as recommended by the Tribunal. We have seen the Archbishop forced to apologise in private to the respondent to the false memory claims, but no adequate apology from the PSU for its’ failures. We are seeing again and again the improper use of the power of the PSU to ruin people’s lives before they can even defend themselves – the denial of natural justice and the promulgation of lies and misinformation.
In any event, any published apology is grudging at best, as when Bishop Forsyth justified the payout to a disgracefully defamed respondent (an internationally respected pediatrician) as having been insufficient to pay all her expenses to bring an action in the civil court. Yet the defamation was baseless and malicious lies, surely contrary to Gods’ nature.
All this can only mean that the role of the Archbishop of Sydney is meaningless, that proper authority has been surrendered to others who behave as if they are not personally responsible before God for their gross and flagrant breaches of church law and God’s mission, let alone civil law. And not only the Archbishop of Sydney. Disturbing examples of impotence in cases of lies and injustice are coming out of other dioceses as well.
The attitude in these internal cases runs in parallel to the response of some to their obligations under State criminal law: the attitude that they are somehow immune from the obligation to obey the law. Instead they have flouted criminal law in their failures to report child abuse (known or suspected) to the Police, even tipping off known abusers where investigation is threatened so they can escape. But when it comes to false claims (including ones that have been rejected by the Police) they pride themselves on their ’response’: here (at last) they can be seen to be doing something. The fact that what they are doing is morally, ethically and legally wrong does not seem to cause any concern.
To come back to my question: what can we, earnest Christians do? We are looking at the deserved destruction of the trust and confidence that was placed in the church organisation by believers and even, however reluctantly, by non-believers. At least there was a tolerance and even a slightly abashed recognition that it was trying to do good. Now it has been made clear that in too many cases it has been an active agent of harm, of lies and cover-ups, deceit and injustice. This has come out concerning actions carried out and decisions put into effect just over the second half of the 20th century. What went on in the first half of the 20th century? More of the same? Probably.
We Christians need to prepare, through repentance and prayer for a complete reformation through the power of the Holy Spirit, to stand up for the Gospel. We need to be speaking up against the victimisation, bullying, lies and intimidation of believers by the church hierarchy. We need to pray for God to remove those who have brought the church into disrepute – all those leaders and persons in positions of influence who have brought disgrace in so many ways to the Name of God – and to install those who, in the pattern of King David, will put God first, and be a true shepherd leader to His people who will be agents of the Holy Spirit to renew the church and strengthen it to meet the grave challenges that are looming already in this turbulent world.
Endnotes
[1] Louise Greentree B.A. LL.B. LL.M. (Hons) ProfCertArb. Admitted as a legal practitioner to the Supreme Court of NSW and the High Court of Australia and former law academic (retired),now church disputes consultant. Main areas of interest and expertise include Legal Professional Ethics and Alternate Dispute Resolution (with an emphasis on transformative and restorative processes). Professional training includes restorative conferencing and collaborative law. Contact Louise through www.churchdispute.com
[2] With the exception of the Archbishop of Sydney the Most Reverend Glenn Davies, who is aware of the problems and has apologised to Drew and Pippa, but who has been ‘gagged’ by the dominant commercial lawyers who appear to have an unreasonable and undesirable control over Sydney diocese of the Anglican Church.