Jonothan says ‘The church is improving but it is still waking up to the key issue of responsibility’
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Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Jonothan was groomed and sexually abused by a clergyman in his Anglican church.
As an adult, he is an active member of the Church of England, but he has serious concerns about safeguarding within the institution.
Jonothan chooses not to relate details of the abuse he suffered, which took place over a period of about 18 months. The perpetrator was a man called Alfred, who had a position of authority in the local church.
He does say that when it ended he had no support, and he struggled alone to understand what had happened and recognise it was wrong. ‘That’s not obvious when you’re a child’ he says.
As Jonothan got older, he questioned whether he should report the abuse.
For many years he was worried that if he did, it would unleash a lot of unpleasantness for him and others. ‘I was aware that if you disclose and there is an investigation, the damage and pain that would cause to a lot of people would be immense’ he says.
Jonothan did not think the abuser was a risk to any other children but he made discreet enquiries from time to time to check what he was doing. When he found out that Alfred had got a teaching job, he felt he had no choice but to speak out. ‘That was a red line … I had to go to the police’ he says.
Jonothan says he was very impressed by the police, who conducted an extremely thorough investigation. They discovered that Alfred had sexually abused several more children.
Some of the other victims and survivors went to court, along with Jonothan, to give evidence. He says ‘It was very traumatic for some of them … I had had time to process it’.
Alfred denied the allegations, but at the last minute he pleaded guilty and was sent to prison.
Jonothan says he was very satisfied with the court process. His only criticism is that during a break in proceedings, he found himself alongside Alfred’s family. ‘They still believed he was an innocent man and were very angry’ he relates. They accused Jonothan of destroying Alfred’s life, and even threatened him.
He finds it difficult to determine how he may have been affected by the abuse he was subjected to as a child. He says ‘It’s impossible to say ... if you’re damaged when you're young, you grow up with the damage. It’s part of who I am, but you never know what you would have been had it not occurred’.
Jonothan feels the church needs to do more to meet its safeguarding responsibilities. ‘It has come a long way but it still staggers me that there wasn’t a real soul-searching about what went wrong when someone got such a long prison sentence’ he says.
Based on his experiences of working in the church and with young people in other settings, Jonothan thinks that the church’s safeguarding training is still inadequate. He says ‘It is similar, but not as thorough, and it often feels years behind the other training I get’.
His main concern about church procedures is the seal of the confessional. This means that under Canon law, priests may hear information in a confession that suggests children could be at risk of harm, but they are not obliged to report it to the church safeguarding officer.
He says ‘This is problematic, but at least it is now being acknowledged as a tension and a weakness. It’s a deep embarrassment to a lot of clergy’.
As well as being a major barrier to safeguarding, Jonothan considers that ‘the existence of the seal of confession undermines every apology and every statement of regret that my church has ever made’.
He feels that the church is a particularly vulnerable institution to abusers, because its mission is to openly welcome everyone and focus on forgiveness.
Jonothan is still firmly committed to his faith, but he emphasises that it is vital for everybody in church to remember their responsibility to protect others.