Archbishop of Canterbury

[Tessa K]

Terrible excuses of our time:

'I thought the police were handling it ' is botth implausible and irresponsible.

Thou shalt not bear false witness, mate.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq6lzeel2e8o

[Trinucleus]

If he did nothing to stop offending, isn't that perverting the course of justice?

[headshot]

Criminal conspiracy?

[Martin_B]

I'm always slightly surprised (I know, I probably shouldn't be at this stage!) when people who are supposed to provide moral leadership instead show little grasp of either.

[Brightonian]

Interesting paragraph from Wikipedia page:

In July 2013, following the report of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, Welby explained that senior bank executives avoided being given information about difficult issues to allow them to "plead ignorance".[27] He also said he would possibly have behaved in the same way, and warned against punishing by naming and shaming individual bankers which he compared to the behaviour of a lynch mob.[27]

[sTeamTraen]

I'm always slightly surprised (I know, I probably shouldn't be at this stage!) when people who are supposed to provide moral leadership instead show little grasp of either.

He is/was quite close to the Blessed Saint Paula of Vennells, apparently.

[jimbob]

If one wanted someone to represent the British establishment, he seems to epitomise its values

[Boustrophedon]

As some of you may recall I watched the abuse in the C of E from an increasingly safe distance. I witnessed the abuse of friends within the Nine O'Clock service in Sheffield and then moved to Watford to teach, just as Soul Survivor was really getting going. I must have taught some of those kids.

I watched the rise of the Alpha course under Nicky Gumbel and Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) and the increasing influence of the evangelical charismatic movement from 'mega churches' like St Thomas's Crookes in Sheffield, St Andrews Chorleywood and St Michael le Belfry York. The more I saw the more my hackles rose. I drifted 'up the candle' into Anglo Catholicism and eventually slid right off the top and out. Good music though.

It was not til I watched the submissions to the IICSA that I realised just how deep the abuse in the C of E went, I assumed it was to be mostly found in the Catholic church.

And framing all this was the IWERNE camps and the IWERNE trust which were designed to target and guide 'the best boys' from good public schools into the evangelical charismatic movement. In this they were successful. The main cause of Welby's resignation was the abuse by John Smyth at Iwerne. Both Welby and the homophobic Nicky Gumbel are products of the Iwerne camp system. So if you are looking for conspiracies it needs only to be noted that Welby and Smyth were exchanging Christmas cards til shortly before Smyth's death.

[Allo V Psycho]

If one wanted someone to represent the British establishment, he seems to epitomise its values

Reading about this horrifying scandal, I discovered that the disgusting sadist John Smyth was the QC in Mary Whitehouse's successful (!) blasphemy case against Gay News, and he would have played the same role in the prosecution of Romans in Britain, but as his crimes became clear (and were covered up by the C of E) he pretended to have a viral illness.
I've tried really hard to resist the trope that those protesting about varied approaches to sexuality are secretly attracted by them, but...

I have to suggest a trigger warning - his crimes were so vile that I feel seriously disturbed by them, and I have lived a life which has fortunately been free of sexual abuse. if this is not the case for you, love and best wishes, and take great care.

As for Welby... and the racism of Smyth being exported to Africa... I for once do not have the words.

[Woodchopper]

If he did nothing to stop offending, isn't that perverting the course of justice?

It isn't. Perverting the course of justice requires that someone performs an action intended to interfere with an investigation or prosecution. Simply doing nothing doesn't reach that threshold.

[Grumble]

Moral leadership in action.

[Tessa K]

It's a sin of omission not a sin of commission.

[dyqik]

It's a sin of omission not a sin of commission.

Although within the realm of safeguarding, some sins of omission can be criminal offences.

[jimbob]

As some of you may recall I watched the abuse in the C of E from an increasingly safe distance. I witnessed the abuse of friends within the Nine O'Clock service in Sheffield and then moved to Watford to teach, just as Soul Survivor was really getting going. I must have taught some of those kids.

I watched the rise of the Alpha course under Nicky Gumbel and Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) and the increasing influence of the evangelical charismatic movement from 'mega churches' like St Thomas's Crookes in Sheffield, St Andrews Chorleywood and St Michael le Belfry York. The more I saw the more my hackles rose. I drifted 'up the candle' into Anglo Catholicism and eventually slid right off the top and out. Good music though.

It was not til I watched the submissions to the IICSA that I realised just how deep the abuse in the C of E went, I assumed it was to be mostly found in the Catholic church.

And framing all this was the IWERNE camps and the IWERNE trust which were designed to target and guide 'the best boys' from good public schools into the evangelical charismatic movement. In this they were successful. The main cause of Welby's resignation was the abuse by John Smyth at Iwerne. Both Welby and the homophobic Nicky Gumbel are products of the Iwerne camp system. So if you are looking for conspiracies it needs only to be noted that Welby and Smyth were exchanging Christmas cards til shortly before Smyth's death.

I guess that evangelical churches often rely on charisma and they also (always?) push biblical literalism so you have to trust authority figures explaining why a talking snake isn't silly and why, not it was good to torment Job, but also that it was made fine by getting him "replacement" wives and children.

Obviously the explanation is that at in the culture of the time, those women and children weren't really proper people, unlike a patriarch.

[IvanV]

Now that this affair has taken the scalp of the sitting archbishop, the danger is that people will think, that's done then. The important thing is to actually go after the complacency, structures and attitudes that allow these things to continue and to fester. And doubtless there's a bunch of less prominent people who are guilty of that complacency, and who might think they have got away with it now the top guy has taken the fall for it, who are not keen for this to go any further.

Guardian article details several bishops who are, or should be, ashamed of themselves.

But the key observation is that everyone thought it was someone else's problem, and was insufficiently bothered to actually find out if that was actually true, and whether anything was being done about it. That happened both with the original 1982 report on it, and the later 2013 disclosure.

Stephen Conway, then Bishop of Ely, received disclosure in 2013. He passed it on to Welby, cc'ing Welby's then personal chaplain, Bailey Wells, now a Bishop herself. Conway thought that was all he had to do. He says he was under the impression that police had been informed, but does not tell us how he came to that incorrect conclusion. Bailey Wells told Welby he didn't need to do anything because Ely was dealing with it, and it had been reported to the police. But she had no basis for saying that. Also, Bailey Wells didn't think it was a big deal in the scale of these things. She saw disclosures at the rate of about 25 a year. Maybe she, and others, didn't think it was a big deal because it didn't, as far as anyone has alleged, involve sexual congress. So everyone thought someone else was doing something about it, and no one ever checked if there was any progress, and didn't think it was a big deal.

There was a report on it back in 1982, not published at the time. Former Archbishop George Carey temporarily lost his permission to officiate over his denial that he had ever seen that report, despite considerable evidence to the contrary. Three other former bishops, all now deceased, also evidently had knowledge of this, though they all seemed to have conveniently forgotten when probed on it. None of them seemed interested in finding out if anything was done about it. Some of them may indeed have considered, at the time, that sending the guy to Zimbabwe was a solution, but would not have wished to admit that later.