UNITED KINGDOM
Church Times
by Madeleine Davies
Posted: 24 Oct 2014
IN JULY 2008, a 26-year-old woman complained to the Dean of Jersey, the Very Revd Robert Key, that she had been subject to abusive behaviour by a churchwarden. Five years later, an investigation into his handling of her complaint resulted in his suspension by the Bishop of Winchester, the Rt Revd Tim Dakin. This led to claims of “constitutional crisis” in Jersey, and, eventually, transfer of episcopal oversight for the island to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The facts of the case have been subject to extensive scrutiny and dispute. Both the Dean, reinstated in April last year, and the woman have criticised that first investigation, carried out by a psychotherapist, Jan Korris. In 2013, Bishop Dakin commissioned two more reviews of the situation. The results of neither have been published after concerns about confidentiality and legality.
What is agreed is that, three months after the 26-year-old arrived at a church in Jersey, a churchwarden and his wife invited her to stay in their home.
“We took risks in our relationship with [the woman] but thought we were doing so under God’s calling,” he later told the Dean.
According to the Korris report, within a few months, the woman had moved out and reported “unwelcome and potentially abusive behaviour” to the Dean. Over the course of the next three years, she also made complaints against the Dean, the safeguarding officer, and others, and was eventually arrested for breaking a harassment order and deported from the island for three years. She has since written a number of blog posts expressing her rage and hurt about what she says was violation at the hands of the Church.
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