House of Survivors has issued this statement on 3 September:
House of Survivors Statement
The recent Kennedys data breach has thrown many questions into the air for survivors, not least how will the law firm lead the Redress Scheme whilst at the same time fend off dozens of civil claims from the same group of people. This incident affects women and men who have already endured profound injustice and lifelong impact at the hands of the Church, and is a painful violation of trust and safety we had a right to expect. It also puts trust in the Redress Scheme into question for all Church of England context survivors.
House of Survivors’ view is that Kennedys will need to grasp the nettle and take the initiative – and offer the data breach survivors a fair compensation veering on the side of quantum generosity. It will save much time and anxiety, save Kennedys much in legal fees, avoid additional stress for the men and women affected when trust is low and tension is high. It will also enable Kennedys to claw back vital reputational ground. They will need to work imaginatively, probably outside of their usual playbook, and ahead of the Redress Scheme starting. We hope Kennedys might be keen to seize the moment as the loss to their business is likely to grow the longer they leave it. There will be some survivors who will wish to make civil claims through various law firms and clearly everyone needs to have the freedom to do this if they wish. That is everyone’s right. But in our view a proactive move by Kennedys will be the smart thing for the law firm to do.
Our biggest fear is that this mess left unaddressed will cause the Redress Scheme to be delayed – especially if the Church has to reconvene the Redress Scheme board to negotiate with new law firms. This could see the Scheme delayed by another one to two years. We suspect some in the hierarchy, particularly those who control Archbishops Council, may be privately hoping the whole thing will collapse and they can blame Kennedys. House of Survivors reminds those people that the reputational fallout will impact the Church just as greatly. We urge the Church to work with Kennedys to reassure all survivors that the Scheme is going ahead, will be closely monitored by an oversight committee with survivor input, and that both Kennedys and the Church will seek quickly and proactively to put things back on track.
House of Survivors
3 Sept 2025
I can see many tricky aspects to this. On a scale of 1 – 10 with 1 being ‘within the tolerance of human error’ and 10 being ‘criminal negligence’ where does the Kennedy data breach sit and who will make that determination? Presumably someone would need to sue Kennedy’s to establish that – either the Church of England as the client, or an individual survivor, or some or all of the survivors via a class action. At what point on that scale would Kennedy’s be deemed no longer competent to manage the Redress Scheme? Anything over 5? Anything over 3?… Read more »
Thanks Thinking Anglicans! We hope Synod members, and clergy and CofE laity will share this with friends and colleagues. Please facebook it, tweet it, and let the Church know our concerns/fears at this time. Send it to your Diocesan team.
With your help we hope to see the situation rescued by Kennedys and the Church.
Message from local bishop who comes to my house regularly for general advice:
“Really helpful to receive such a considered statement of where many will see things stand. Again, v much appreciated.”
Gilo I really hope and pray that the C of E and Kennedys are working to sort things out. But I hope we get some comments from a legal perspective
( any Interested Observers out there?)
The C of E statement saying it is not the data controller in this case amazed me, and didn’t feel like a very promising start