*** DEBUG START ***
*** DEBUG END ***

Bishop of Liverpool complainant: ‘I was deterred from pursuing a CDM’

29 January 2025

Madeleine Davies speaks to one of the two women who have made allegations against the Bishop of Liverpool, and explores wider concerns about the Church’s processes for responding to such reports

Creative Commons

Dr John Perumbalath at his installation as the Bishop of Bradwell in Chelmsford diocese in 2018

RESPONDING to the Channel 4 News report on allegations against the Bishop of Liverpool, Dr John Perumbalath, which he denies, the Bishop of Dover, the Rt Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin, emphasised the importance of process: “We live in a world where we have proper processes, and we don’t just sack someone when there is an allegation.”

A common thread in recent Church of England safeguarding stories is concern about the adequacy of these processes.

If the Clergy Conduct Measure (CCM) receives final approval from the General Synod next month (News, 12 July 2024), it will replace legislation with which there is widespread dissatisfaction, and that has been criticised by, among others, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) (News, 19 July 2019). The diocese of Blackburn has said that the failure to remove Canon Andrew Hindley by means of the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM) caused “devastation” in the diocese (News, 16 August 2024).

Among the statistics quoted in the working-party report that informed the drafting of the CCM was the fact that, under the CDM, approximately 45 per cent of all cases either were dismissed at an early stage or resulted in no further action. This has since increased to 60 per cent.

“This will often leave the complainant unsatisfied at the outcome, and the respondent unhappy at having been subject to a legal process,” the report observed. A statistic that cannot be measured, however, is the number of people afraid to bring a complaint under the CDM in the first place — including people with allegations against the Church’s senior leaders.

In the case of Dr Perumbalath, allegations from the woman in Chelmsford reached the attention of the National Safeguarding Team (NST) in February 2023, after a referral from a priest in whom she had confided.

When the woman discussed with the NST the possibility of bringing a complaint under the CDM, she felt deterred by the team’s response.

“I was talking to my [NST] caseworker . . . and she said that they had talked to the church lawyers, and were not going to put in a CDM on my behalf, because the evidence was on a knife edge as to whether it would succeed,” she told the Church Times.

On another occasion, she says, an NST member told her: “We don’t even like our own processes; it’s a horrible process, going through a CDM.”

The NST disputes this account, stating that there was no attempt to dissuade her, but that efforts were made to explain the process — which is “not survivor-focused” — in order to be both honest and trauma-informed. Its position is that, while the information received did not meet the threshold for the NST to take out a CDM, it would have supported her through the process.

 

THE NST has raised concerns about the CDM for several years. A 2019 report produced for the House of Bishops, and quoted by the Ecclesiastical Law Society in its report on CDM reform, observed that “victims are often vulnerable and require significant support: this may impact on their ability to submit a CDM complaint.”

The then national safeguarding officer, Graham Tilby, suggested during the IICSA inquiry that there should be “a separate process that’s more tailored towards safeguarding”. The late Dr Alan Wilson, a former Bishop of Buckingham, told the inquiry that the system was “self-protective, inconsistent, and opaque”, and that witnesses were “quite often intimidated and don’t want to make statements because they’re afraid that this will be thrown back at them by the person about whom they’re complaining”.

Jane Chevous, a co-founder of Survivors Voices, says that concerns include the lack of communication with complainants, who may be asked to appear as a witness during a CDM tribunal, but, equally, may not even learn that a tribunal is under way. She lists “lack of agency, lack of support, lack of advice”. When she saw the response made to her own complaint by the respondent, she realised that “if I had been given better advice, I could have put together a much better case to start with.” Her position is that it shouldn’t be up to a survivor to decide to lodge a complaint under the CDM, but the responsibility of the Church.

Ms Chevous had a request to bring a complaint out of time turned down. The latest report of the Clergy Discipline Commission — of which Dr Perumbalath is a member — states that, in 2023, 19 such applications were made, three of them unsuccessful.

 

THERE are expectations that the process will improve under the CCM. Complaints will now be categorised as either a grievance, misconduct, or serious misconduct. An investigation and tribunal team will be established to oversee cases of serious misconduct, which, the NST says, will ensure a “trauma-informed approach” to the collection of evidence. Other changes include the permission for children or people with a disability (including mental-health illness caused by the trauma of abuse) to have a “litigation friend” appointed to assist them through the process.

The 12-month limit for all complaints of serious misconduct will be abolished (currently, exemptions from the limit are open only for misconduct of a sexual nature towards a child, or towards a vulnerable adult). The draft legislation states that bishops “must consider what support might benefit” both parties, and must offer to arrange the provision of such support, once a complaint has been received. Ms Chevous remains concerned, however, that “serious misconduct” remains undefined.

In the case of the woman in Chelmsford, the 12-month limit expired while she was still reflecting on the NST’s warnings.

Among her concerns is whether the NST’s decision not to bring a complaint itself reflected inadequate assessment of the evidence.

The safeguarding codes of practice (Managing Safeguarding Concerns and Allegations and Reporting Safeguarding Concerns and Allegations) emphasise that responding to, assessing, and managing safeguarding concerns about church officers is about the “identification and management of risk”. They emphasise that these processes are not about accountability, responsibility, or establishing guilt — the domain of criminal investigation and the CDM. But they also refer to the gathering of evidence to determine whether, “on the balance of probabilities there is evidence of a safeguarding risk.”

The Vicar-General of the Province of York, the Rt Worshipful Peter Collier QC, is among those who have raised concerns about the coherence of the approach, (News, 7 January 2022). Ms Chevous raises concerns about the codes’ “tightening” of safeguarding, with a focus on risk-management. It is accountability that survivors want, she says.

The case in Liverpool has also raised questions about what is, and isn’t defined as safeguarding. Although the woman in Chelmsford had her case taken up by the NST, a statement from Church House states that the complaint from the woman bishop alleging sexual harassment was “deemed not to be a safeguarding matter but a matter of alleged misconduct”.

The report on the future of safeguarding by Professor Alexis Jay raised concerns that safeguarding in the Church was “defined far more widely and loosely” than statutory definitions focused on “the protection and support of children and vulnerable adults who have been abused or who are at risk of abuse” and “frequently includes circumstances which are not safeguarding matters”.

Responding to a survey on the Jay recommendation to moving to a statutory definition, many people, including safeguarding professionals, expressed concern that this was “too narrow for a church setting where everyone might at some time be considered to be vulnerable, given the pastoral situations presented in most congregations”.

An option open to complainants who believe that they have been a victim of a crime is to make a report to the police, which Chelmsford complainant did. No charges were brought.

The revision committee for the CCM has accepted an amendment, proposed by the NST, to add a cleric’s being interviewed under caution as grounds for suspension or imposition of a restriction order.

Browse Church and Charity jobs on the Church Times jobsite

Forthcoming Events

Women Mystics: Female Theologians through Christian History

13 January - 19 May 2025

An online evening lecture series, run jointly by Sarum College and The Church Times

tickets available

 

Festival of Faith and Literature

28 February - 2 March 2025

tickets available

 

Visit our Events page for upcoming and past events 

Welcome to the Church Times

 

To explore the Church Times website fully, please sign in or subscribe.

Non-subscribers can read four articles for free each month. (You will need to register.)