Cover up of sexual abuse within the Church of England - documentary on tv last night

Social workers and police did the same thing

De-establish the C of E. No religion should have such power. It took decades to start sorting out the Catholics.

I did not see the documentary but agree with yggdrasil that the C of E should be disestablished, but for another reason. My objection is to the C of E Bishops who sit, by right, in the House of Lords. with the power to make, amend or block legislation. Surely it is time for this 'unholy' alliance between one Church and the State to come to an end.

I saw this. It was unbelievable.

Sorry if I didn’t make explicit other agencies have not fulfilled their responsibilities.. it should be obvious by my reference to safeguarding policies. Every l.a. And police area had established, printed safeguarding policies which we know weren’t followed in any of the child grooming cases.
My question stands - when and how do we ensure allegations of child sexual abuse are properly investigated

You only mentioned the church and Prince Charles

Sex abuse thrives wherever it gets a chance and in the past those in any institutional setting had little power against those in power.

Sex abuse was prevalent in Care homes, Social Services, boarding schools, Scouts, sports clubs the armed services and in religious establishments. Anywhere where one group had unfettered power over another.

Paedophiles seek out these institutions and choose the careers that will maximise their access to vulnerable children and young people, and I include training to become ministers of religion. Not every person who enters the priesthood has a vocation. They can have other motives.

In the past because the subject was not talked about, mainly I think because the vast majority of people where so repulsed by it that they could not bring themselves to believe that it could be other than a very rare event, this led also to a tendency to hush it up, it was felt that the perpetrator must have had some breakdown to do anything so vile, that it would not be repeated and once they had gone through some kind of treatment or recovery they would not do it again. WE now know this was wrong.

The effect on the victim was not considered because at that time the affect on the victim of anything, violence, death of a parent, murder of someone dear, sex abuse was not considered.

I quite agree that a true understanding of the damage sex abuse does to the victim and also the deviousness of its perpetrators has been slow to be accepted by society as a whole and one hopes that the conversion and understanding is now complete,

I think it is invidious the way particular institutions are picked on for shock horror exposures, in truth what happens in one is common to all. I note that the institutions chosen are always religious, and always Christian. I wait an exposee of abuse in other religions and secular institutions, many of whom have/had bodies within them that are identical to the bodies that bred abuse in churches and where it is already known that abuse happened within them.

I’m going to second Monica’s post, anywhere adults have power over children will attract paedophiles, childrens homes are one of the worst because the kids have got problems to begin with and are less likely to believed.
My own children were never entrusted to anyone that was not a close friend, my grandchildren are supervised in the same way at clubs and activities they do.
You never can tell, a local vicar is up in court for downloading child porn, simply unbelievable

Your children are lucky to have such a caring family Davidhs so many of the children targeted have no such support.

I can’t remember the name of the town which was named on
the news yesterday sorry.

That abusers were allowed to enter places for children in care and take the children out , police and social workers ignored this , unbelievable

It was Manchester, I think.

Any further comment from the government on this appalling state of affairs? Or are they taking the Johnson approach of not wishing to 'spaff' any more money up the wall investigating historic sexual abuse?

Thank you growstuff

Anniebach the cases you were talking about, the real problem was that the police put the fear of being labelled racist above the needs of the children.

was it lord acton who observed,
all power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.

Iam you missed my thread on this. Did you watch both programmes? This case is very different from the ‘grooming gangs’. The police did their best and there was also no mention of social work involvement. I thought the programmes made it quite clear that the downgrading of the charges and the decision to only caution PB in 1992 was not made by the police - in fact it couldn’t be. It was because of his rich, powerful and well connected friends and the appalling behaviour ( which continued) of Carey.

It’s not helpful for posters to conflate different types of child sexual abuse cases and therefore try to distract from the particular circumstances of the PB case. Carey has several letters from victims/ their parents which he deliberately and maliciously did not hand over to the police ( who did not know of their existence). As a result more young people were abused, a young man eventually committed suicide, lives were ruined and PB continued to be feted and spoilt by the Establishment notably PC who bought a house for him and wrote supportive letters.

Carey should have been charged with perverting the course of justice or similar and should not be in H of L

Manchester. Nazir Afzal, the chief prosecutor of the Rotherham grooming gang said the Manchester police had 2 choices: they chose to ignore the girls concentrating their resources on burglaries and car theft.

So who wants to talk about the Church and PC then? Why not a separate thread on Manchester - it deserves that imo

I agree suzie I did bring Manchester into this thread because even thought I believe cover ups of abuse in a church
should be exposed I was shocked that a thread on one man
who abused and his connections with Prince Charles was the
subject of the O/P when only yesterday we learned abusers were allowed to go into homes for children in care and take
them out, the suffering of these children were ignored by
social workers and police. Dear God, the police identified at
least 97 suspects . One 14 year old who was abused later took
her own life.

suziewoozie, sorry I didn't see your thread, and I've just looked down the active and last hour threads, still can't find it. Can you point me in the right direction please?

I deliberately didn't include any of the other abuse scandals in this OP. I'm very familiar with what happened in the Greater Manchester Police area. The issue of Bishop Peter Ball and the way in which powerful men within the Church and the establishment came together to protect and support him, to minimise or deny the allegations is truly shocking. As suziewoozie says, it's different in many ways from the grooming and sexual exploitation cases, which deserve discussion in their own right.

I agree that the Christian churches have faced much more exposure in respect of child sexual abuse than for example Jewish or Muslim religious establishments. It seems positive to me that adult survivors, like the men in last night's documentary, are brave enough to come forward. It's clear though, that they faced mountains to get the Church to hear them.
The behaviour of Archbishop Carey was particularly distressing to me.

Hello suziewoosie
I found your thread. I've asked GNHQ if its possible to combine the two threads.
If not shall I get this one closed?

Nazir Afzal was working in the Manchester area when the grooming scandal was well known to anyone working in criminal justice, social work, probation, police, journalism, education - the list is endless.
MerylStreep at 16.04 today quotes Afzal as saying Manchester Police chose to focus its resources on car crime and burglary. This is true. The explanation given was that the government (this is 1998) had told GMP it was to target car crime and burglary, or its funding the following year would be reduced.

Senior officers and directors of Children's Services should of course have approached the government with the reality of their work. That might have prompted the Blair government to change the targets. Maybe not.
Victims, as can be seen on any previous Gransnet thread on child sexual exploitation and abuse are often seen as responsible for their own abuse. That's one of the reasons I started a discussion on the cover up within the CofE, the boys involved there weren't running wild, taking drugs etc , they were active members of the Church, aged 8.

I thought this programe exposed the high up support which has covered up child abuse in the Cof E. The downgrading of the charges, Peter Bull being given a caution after the first arrest and the attempts to silence the women appointed to safeguarding posts in the Cof E was really shocking. I thought the man who had been abused and who now sits on the safe guarding committee was incredibly brave and I loved his statement about them wanting him to go away, but he wasn't going to. But I do wonder how much abuse might still be going on and how many children are still not speaking out. Carey should at least be booted out the H of L.