By Pat Ashworth
Church Times
November 9, 2007
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=47099
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| Accused: the Rt Revd Charles Bennison |
THE BISHOP of Pennsylvania, the Rt Revd Charles Bennison, has been inhibited from all ordained ministry and faces trial for conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy. The charges relate to his alleged mishandling of his brother's sexual abuse of a minor while he was in the Bishop's employ, and for shielding him for years afterwards.
The offences began in 1973, when Bishop Bennison, then Rector of St Mark's, Upland, California, learned that his brother, John, a married lay minister at the church, was having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old member of the youth group. The girl has testified that Bishop Bennison twice witnessed them in sexual activity.
The presentment against Bishop Bennison says that, knowing of this relationship, he allowed his brother to remain in the church's employ and to work unsupervised with youth groups while he graduated, was ordained in 1975, and went as a curate to Santa Barbara, where he continued to have a relationship with the girl. Bishop Bennison "did nothing to hasten the end of the affair", the presentment says.
During the ordination process, he did not disclose what he knew of his brother's sexual misconduct. John Bennison renounced his vows and left the priesthood in 1977 after being placed under canonical discipline by the Bishop of Los Angeles, the Rt Revd Robert Rusack.
The following year, the girl, now a college student, told her parents about the relationship. Challenged by her angry parents over non-disclosure, Bishop Bennison is said to have responded: "I have to be not a pastor, but John's brother in this situation."
The girl's family protested again when they discovered that John Bennison had been reinstated to the priesthood in 1978, and that Bishop Bennison had attended the service. John Bennison subsequently served as Vicar and then Rector of St John's, Clayton, from 1980 until 2006.
Bishop Bennison declined to take part in an intervention process set up in 1992 at the girl's request, designed to help her and her family come to terms with what had happened. She had suffered from behavioural and psychiatric problems as a result of the sexual abuse. There was a series of meetings between the family and the Rt Revd William Swing, then Bishop Coajutor of California, but Bishop Bennison refused to attend, dismissing it as "John's responsibility".
Media coverage of the story in 2006 initiated a defence from Bishop Swing: "Bottom line: no file from Los Angeles arrived in our diocese giving us the background and putting us on alert that perhaps some of our teenagers and young women were at risk in [John's] presence." Bishop Swing, who described John Bennison in 2006 as having been an "exemplary priest" at St John's for 25 years, asked him to resign. He agreed voluntarily to be deposed.
Bishop Bennison is charged with reacting "passively and self-protectively", and of failing to prevent further abuse. He took no disciplinary action against his brother, and did not notify the girl's parents for approximately three years, fearing that "such a revelation would be embarrassing to him and would provoke scandal in the parish."
He is charged with not providing the girl with proper pastoral care, nor investigating whether she needed medical care or counselling. "His failure to minister to people whom he understood to have been injured by his brother's conduct continued without surcease until 2006, when he publicly disclosed for the first time what he knew about his brother's conduct."
Bishop Bennison has become increasingly isolated from his fellow bishops. He was the only one to vote against the House of Bishops response to the Primates in New Orleans. He was already in deep trouble in his diocese, which has been in conflict since 1998, and in deep financial crisis since 2005. It was described as "a rudderless ship" as far back as 2000.
He has consistently refused to resign, after not co-operating with a string of mediation processes, the last of which described him as "incapable of entering into any process without being in control of it" (News, 24 March; 12 May 2006).
The Standing Committee of the diocese voted unanimously last week to support the inhibition by the Presiding Bishop, Dr Katharine Jefferts Schori, describing the allegations as "profoundly serious".
The full text of the presentment is at www.episcopalchurch.org/elife/
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.