Suffer the Little Children...

By Peter Frost
Morning Star
December 3, 2012

www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/126759

Large Establishment organisations like the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church and even the BBC have always been more concerned to protect their own reputations than to protect young people abused by their employees.

The recent Jimmy Savile scandal and countless examples from Catholic dioceses all over the globe have proved that.

Abuse by those in power appears to be everywhere - even it seems within the Church of England.

This month a canon at Carlisle Cathedral was jailed for four years for sexually abusing three teenage boys.

Complaints were made about Ronald Johns 20 years ago but his bishop covered it up, moving the abusing canon to a remote country parish.

To protect its reputation the church didn't tell his new congregation or the police about the complaints.

In 1993 a young boy came forward to complain about Johns. He had been groomed and abused by the canon.

Johns confessed to his bishop the Right Rev Ian Harland - now dead - who felt the best idea was to move him to a rural church in Caldbeck and not report the matter to the police.

That way the reputation of the church would be protected - but not the young boys in the new parish.

The matter only came to the attention of police this year when another victim complained he had also been abused by Johns.

Police checked records at the cathedral which had notes on the 1993 complaint. The abused boy reported that in 1993 he met the then bishop of Carlisle to tell his story. He described the meeting as "bizarre."

In 2000, the abused man set up a meeting with Johns himself with a view to forgiving him and moving on with his life.

He was disappointed in the reaction of the elderly cleric, who seemed to be concerned about how the allegations had affected his pension, causing him financial difficulties.

Johns has now received a three-year jail term for two counts of indecent assault and four counts of gross indecency in relation to one victim.

He received additional sentences of six months each for acts of gross indecency on the two other teenagers.

In court it was reported how Johns used classic techniques of grooming as he gained his victims' trust and confidence before he plied them with alcohol.

Sexual abuse would often take place while Johns was watching pornographic videos with his victims.

On one occasion he'd just taken a church service at Carlisle Cathedral when he removed his vicar's collar and robes to hire porn videos.

As with most abusers, he would tell the boys that they must keep the abuse secret and that no-one would believe them anyway if they spoke of it.

What chance would a young and vulnerable person have of being believed over a powerful and well respected man?

It's a sadly an all too familiar story.

Earlier this month a very similar Church of England case came to light with the arrest of Bishop Peter Ball on suspicion of sexual offences against boys and men.

The case has uncovered decades of what seem to be Church of England child protection failures in the diocese of Chichester.

Sussex police say that Ball is suspected of committing offences during the late 1980s and early '90s, when he was Bishop of Lewes with responsibility for most of the parishes of East Sussex.

Allegations of crimes and indecent behaviour by other priests involving young church members date back further than that.

Over the last four years church officials in Chichester and at Lambeth Palace, the office of the archbishop of Canterbury, are trying to get a grip on many abuse allegations.

Bishop Ball is the highest profile church figure yet to be arrested, but three separate child abuse cases against priests also in the diocese of Chichester will come to court in the next few months.

From the 1970s to the 1990s there were a number of other low-key investigations into allegations of sexual abuse against priests in and around Chichester but none came to court.

In 2008 Colin Pritchard, who had been a vicar in Bexhill, pleaded guilty at Northampton crown court to four counts of indecent assault on a child and three counts of gross indecency on a child.

The offences were committed between 1979 and 1983 and involved two victims aged between 12 and 15.

Prichard was jailed for five years.

Another further case involved Roy Cotton. He too was a priest in the diocese of Chichester.

He committed sexual offences against a child in 1953, indecently exposing himself in the organ loft of a village church.

Cotton died in 2006 and was never prosecuted, but two of his victims, Phil and Gary Johnson, have since spoken out about their abuse at the hands of the vicar.

In a BBC interview Phil said: "It was regular, systematic and became completely routine in the most horrible sort of way you could imagine." Cotton had put himself "in a position where nobody questioned his motives."

These cases and other convictions of priests on child sex abuse charges led the then archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, to instigate a nationwide review of child abuse in the Church of England.

In 2011, Baroness Butler-Sloss was appointed to investigate child abuse allegations in the Chichester diocese and how the church should deal with them in future.

Amazingly the now arrested Bishop Bell was a key witness. Not surpringly the report seemed to suggest all was well within the church.

Today the Church of England is trying to decide whether to allow the investigation - or perhaps cover-up - of such cases to be handled by local bishops or by an independent outside body.

No doubt just as in so many other cases in this and other powerful organisations, decisions will be taken in a way that makes it easier to protect the organisation rather than protecting young vulnerable people within it.

If you don't believe me just ask any of the hundreds of youngsters abused by Jimmy Savile and his disgusting mates in the hallowed halls of the BBC. They would say amen to that.

Smashing the stained glass ceiling

The gloves are off in the Church of England after the vote that rejected women bishops.

Thousands of women - and a good few men - in the Church of England are so disgusted by the recent Synod vote against women bishops that they're voting with their feet and leaving jobs, volunteer posts and even congregations.

Nearly a third of Church of England clergy are women. Indeed last year almost half of new ordinations were women. Out in the parishes women make up much more than half of the active church community.

Women vicars are particularly unhappy with the solid stained glass ceiling that has stopped all hope of career progress for them.

Not all angry Christians are taking the Synod vote lying down. More militant sections are saying they will take the matter to another vote at the next Synod.

The new vote will not have the concessions of the last proposals to allow dissident anti-women bishop Christians to opt out and have a male bishop in their diocese.

The proposals insist that all dioceses will have the potential to appoint female bishops.

It will be framed in a way that will demand only a straight majority, not the two-thirds that caused the reformers to lose the vote by a sliver.

Putting the matter this way will also get around the three or five-year delay rules that cover votes on identical proposals.

However if the next Synod passes the new proposals and allows women bishops then experts believe the church will go into complete meltdown - even disestablishment is being predicted.

Meanwhile people like former Labour minister Frank Field and many others are asking why the church should be exempted from equality legislation that applies to all other employers and organisations.

Many MPs are threatening to bring in new legislation making gender discrimination illegal in the church as it is everywhere else.

Some female ministers in the church are planning to go further. They say they will take their employer to the EU courts in Brussels.

If the do there's little doubt they will win their case. But will Cameron or his new archbishop of Canterbury accept the Brussels ruling?

Bishop Welby - oiling your way to the top

David Cameron and Nick Clegg have managed to find an Eton-educated posh-boy millionaire with a background in oil for the top job in the Church of England.

If you blinked you might have missed the Right Reverend Justin Welby's meteoric rise to become archbishop of Canterbury. It was a quick ride to the top.

The 56-year-old Welby has only been a bishop since June last year.

Less than 18 months later he has been parachuted into the highest position in his church, sometimes known as the Tory Party at prayer.

Cameron and Clegg stage-managed the appointment despite the views of more progressive sections of the church itself.

Appointing the archbishop of Canterbury is in the gift of the Prime Minister and Cameron knows exactly the kind of person who gets a place in his Tory team.

So it's no surprise that God's new man in Canterbury has a similar background to most of Cameron's Cabinet.

Welby was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied history and law.

He worked in the international oil industry - a great place to learn Christian ethics - and became a millionaire, thus ticking another box on Cameron's list.

Welby's father had a colourful history, both as a Conservative parliamentary candidate twice and as a booze-runner with the mafia in the prohibition-era States. The new archbishop doesn't talk much about dad.

His mother's family included several clergymen.

When Cameron wanted a tame clergyman for his parliamentary commission on banking standards Welby was chosen as the man for the job.

Cameron and Clegg had a bigger problem with the top church job and some of the other candidates for the position, ones that many Anglicans would have liked to see on the chair of Saint Augustine.

The favourite was Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York.

But Cameron didn't think his Tory backwoodsmen would be keen on a black archbishop, particularly one who has been so outspoken.

Sentamu, for instance, had acted as an adviser to the Macpherson Inquiry into the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence. Black mark there.

Another leading candidate was Bishop of London Dr Richard Chartres. Chartres got into hot water over Occupy London, when he initially told the protesters to bugger off but later backed down. He is also too much of an environmentalist for Cameron and Clegg.

The Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Rev Tim Stevens - leader of Church of England bishops in the House of Lords - recently criticised the government over the proposed benefits cap.

He said he feared it would discriminate against children from poorer families and wants to see child benefit removed from the calculation.

Whoops - another candidate out of the running.

Bishop of Liverpool James Jones ruled himself out when he came down firmly in favour of keeping our forests in public ownership after chairing an independent commission for Defra minister Caroline Spelman. She lost her job and Jones lost his chance of promotion.

It was clear to Cameron and Clegg that the church couldn't be trusted to find a nice Tory boy to do the job, so they parachuted Welby in.

The new archbishop has inherited the job in exciting times. The church has made a complete fool of itself voting against women's right to become bishops (which Welby supports).

It is also in schism about same-sex marriages and gay bishops both of which don't get the new man's vote.

Meanwhile most Anglican vicars are preaching to tiny, shrinking congregations.

It sometimes seems the most important ways the church is serving local communities is by providing locations for pretty weddings - or giving local villains a source of income nicking the lead from the church roof.

When the new archbishop of Canterbury takes up his new job early next year I doubt that that will change much.