Andrew Brown has written at Religion Media Centre: Church of England safeguarding inquiries go to the top.
The Church of England has admitted that there are about 30 separate safeguarding inquiries under way into senior clergy — bishops or cathedral deans…
…A C of E spokesman said: “We have approximately 30 national cases with the majority being where senior clergy or church officers have not reported allegations of abuse to the relevant safeguarding adviser, the local authority or the police, or made other inappropriate decisions.”
The highest-profile involve the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and a predecessor, Lord Carey, who are subject to inquiries for safeguarding lapses, Carey for the second time. ..
The article lists some of the other cases and discusses the apparent inconsistencies in the handling of them by “core groups”.
Surviving Church has published the text of a letter from seven clerical sexual abuse survivors to the Lead Bishops, Director of Safeguarding, and Chair of the National Safeguarding Panel (Bishop Jonathan Gibbs, Bishop Debbie Sellin, Melissa Caslake, Meg Munn): “Neither here nor there”.
This letter complains about the handling of survivor complaints, with specific reference to the Bishop at Lambeth and the National Safeguarding Steering Group. It asks for various actions to be taken to improve the processes for dealing with survivors. Receipt of the letter was (as shown in the article) acknowledged in a reply of 7 July.
Surely “Neither here nor there” could just as easily mean that the issues of concern transcend the status of the person raising them. If the recipient has had a difficulty communicating with the survivor (which the email implies), then the author could be saying “despite the difficulty you have had you should take the issues seriously.”