Should Justin Welby resign?

Me too.

The Church employs both Safeguarding and Children's Welfare Officers - were they in place in 2013 and were they informed?

As regards Welby and handing information onto police, this followup article

"Abuse scandal report: six serving and former C of E bishops mentioned in review"

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/13/abuse-scandal-report-six-serving-and-former-c-of-e-bishops-mentioned-in-review

Shows how information failed to be passed on, for example

"She said she would alert Welby and noted that the archbishop might know Smyth personally. Bailey Wells told Welby the allegations against Smyth should be left to the Ely diocese to pursue and to take no further action until the police provided further advice. This further advice never came and Bailey Wells did not follow it up. "

" It also suggested Bailey Wells misled Welby by assuring him that a police referral had been made about Smyth’s abuse and the relevant local authority had been informed, when neither proved to be the case.
She also falsely told Welby that the South African church had been alerted to the fact that he had fled there, the report found"

this is not to suggest that Welby was not responsible in anyway, but does paint a picture of the whole web of half-communications and serial cover-ups or failures to investigate further by many significant people.

And you, what are you doing to make things better?
Much the same as you evidently.

Writing about the truth.
Comforting abuse victims, the lonely and potential suicides. So Working behind the scenes to make things better.

This must not happen again. When will legislation catch up with the gap between reporting abuse and actioning it? Churches are not in charge of due process, the government is.

I am not 100% sure you are technically right there.

There are some very weird and archaic laws in place for churches in the Uk. Not just the Church of England.

For instance - the paid clergy[not sure if all denomination sin the Uk] are not deemed to work for anyone but God.
Hence anomolies.
Pretty sure there are others.

foxie48

For the record, The 2023/24 Criminal Justice Bill, which contained the proposals for a mandatory reporting duty in England, did not complete its passage through Parliament and so will not become an Act because the then PM (Sunak) called an election. This means that there is currently no legal requirement for those working with children to report suspected abuse to the police. The link below provides everything that is contained in the bill and what it was in response to.
learning.nspcc.org.uk/news/2024/may/mandatory-reporting-child-sexual-abuse

I am not at all surprised.

There are some weird laws in place in the Uk.

^The CofE had safeguarding policies. Its representatives were involved in various training courses, along with staff from police/voluntary agencies.
^

The trouble can be, it is often not the people at the bottom of all of this were the problems lie.

Problems can, and do, come when referring higher up.

And from what little I know, can be exaccerbated too. by if a lower down person is complaining about someone higher up. And is supposed to refer to either, the actual person who is involved, or maybe a "friend" or colleague of theirs, above that.

Those clergy who were the most closely associated with Smyth and who were Trustees of the organisation which ran the camps where he groomed his victims were the very ones who facilitated his exit to Africa. A cover up. Smyth openly sought financial support for his mission in Africa, returning to England to drum up more support each year for a while. So at that time he was trusted and supported by many.
Most of those senior to him will be dead by now, so those senior church officials who failed to handle the situation when it emerged in 2013 and on TV in 2017 were merely trying to shut the stable door after the horse had bolted. That is not to exonerate them, but to put it in context. If they are still in office I hope they will speak up now, but possibly some are dead or too elderly. Justin Welby did the right thing. I hope others will do so too.
The safeguarding system is thankfully more robust now.

I can’t be the only member here who asks the question why didn’t they pursue these allegations
I know what I believe.

Cabbie21
Welby didn’t resign through a sense of justice and sorrow.
It was that or he would have been sacked.

I think it was just the day before he had said that he wouldn't be resigning.
That's a fast turnaround!

Wyllow, thank you for the Guardian link. I’ve had a busy week and missed that excellent article. I’m shocked by what seems cover up rather than c~~~k up if I can be forgiven for using that phrase here.

I’m particularly cross about the lack of action by Jo Bailey Wells. She told the Makin review that safeguarding referrals were made every couple of weeks to Lambeth Palace and the allegations against Smyth were “not particularly remarkable’. What was she told that had her reach that conclusion? Or was she badly trained and not that interested on what is remarkable. It’s accepted victims usually start with ‘least worst’. They need time to be able to fully disclose.

fancythat

^This must not happen again. When will legislation catch up with the gap between reporting abuse and actioning it? Churches are not in charge of due process, the government is.^

I am not 100% sure you are technically right there.

There are some very weird and archaic laws in place for churches in the Uk. Not just the Church of England.

For instance - the paid clergy[not sure if all denomination sin the Uk] are not deemed to work for anyone but God.
Hence anomolies.
Pretty sure there are others.

https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/ChurchLawintheUnitedKingdom#section6

There are lawyers who specialise in Ecclesiastical Law.

www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/ChurchLawintheUnitedKingdom#section6

From A.I.

Legislation
The Church of England was dependent on the UK Parliament for legislation until 1919. The General Synod now governs the Church of England.
Church law
The Church of England has its own law, which includes canons and constitutions. However, the Church of England cannot pass canon law that goes against the common law, statute law, or other customs of the land.

Iam64

Wyllow, thank you for the Guardian link. I’ve had a busy week and missed that excellent article. I’m shocked by what seems cover up rather than c~~~k up if I can be forgiven for using that phrase here.

I’m particularly cross about the lack of action by Jo Bailey Wells. She told the Makin review that safeguarding referrals were made every couple of weeks to Lambeth Palace and the allegations against Smyth were “not particularly remarkable’. What was she told that had her reach that conclusion? Or was she badly trained and not that interested on what is remarkable. It’s accepted victims usually start with ‘least worst’. They need time to be able to fully disclose.

Yes, the 6 senior people involved imo are as responsible in their own ways as Welby, tho of course he could have demanded much more information.

re post who these 6 are who should possibly resign
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/13/abuse-scandal-report-six-serving-and-former-c-of-e-bishops-mentioned-in-review

And what about the Colmans.

Anyone who uses the phrase not particularly remarkable should not be allowed within a hundred miles of safeguarding.

The reporting to the police of accusations of sexual or physical abuse and their proper investigation should be mandatory in any circumstances.

It doesn't matter whether the person accused is active in a religious context, like John Smyth, or commercial context like Mohamed al Fayed (and his brother as it now seems).

petra

Cabbie21
Welby didn’t resign through a sense of justice and sorrow.
It was that or he would have been sacked.

I believe that every single person who covered for Smyth and any other abusers who have been covered for should confess, repent and leave their office. I think Welby leaving does NOT atone for others, but opens a door for them to do the right thing before they are outed.

If they do not, the Church of England will lose any shreds of credibility they may have left.

00opsidia. Some of the bishops implicated are now dead. I think Welby thought he had passed on information and in those circumstances, it is difficult to atone for an action which was appropriate at the time.

Galaxy

Anyone who uses the phrase not particularly remarkable should not be allowed within a hundred miles of safeguarding.

This expresses my views strongly, thankyou Galaxy.

I think Welby thought he had passed on information.
With something as serious as the allegations being made thinking you’ve passed them on just isn’t good enough. To compound that by saying he wouldn’t resign ‘over this’ is shocking.

If they do not, the Church of England will lose any shreds of credibility they may have left.
So that will be both the main religions without any credibility.

Mollygo - we haven’t yet had a similar scandal involving Mosques but anyone working with children and families will have many examples. I may be wrong but my impression is the power of the Mosque currently is similar to the power the Catholic Church had.
Then there are the more closed religious communities, Jehovah’s, Mormon, Amish and ultra religious Jewish groups.
What we have learned is that organisations, institutions are places where a damaging culture can develop.
Sadly, it seems we have to keep re-learning it.

I remember not too long ago on gransnet being informed that those of us who’d worked in safeguarding ‘saw abuse everywhere’. Thankfully that mindset is reducing

Iam64 I wonder what the work load is like for the Archbishop of Canterbury? Quite encompassing I imagine with an amount of State occasions plus a lot of work involving the rest of the Anglican Church in the world.
So it seems that abuse cases were not infrequent and in the Smyth case were forwarded to the police by the Archbishop’s assistant. It’s called delegation. So the error in process seems to be that there was not an assigned person to follow up and liaise with the relevant police force. Hopefully this will be remedied and followed through in future?