As things currently stand, the Church of England has clergy subjected to multiple and properly organised and professional risk assessments, yet who appear to not be subject to them, and are then ‘rewarded’ with large sums of money to leave ministry early. The case of Canon Andrew Hindley was instructive [1]. Accused over several decades of acts of sexual abuse, with minors, and with multiple risk assessments conducted by reputable, authorised professional agencies, he nonetheless continued in ministry until 2022. He was paid a reputed £250,000 to withdraw from his post at Blackburn Cathedral. Hindley was able to leave with his pension intact, and without having been through a full Church of England disciplinary proceeding (CDM).[2]
One Church of England judge – Sir Mark Hedley, a colleague of the Archbishop of Canterbury who has also been honoured in 2022 by Lambeth Palace for his legal contribution to the church – declined to prosecute Hindley for engaging in “non-consensual sex” (i.e., statutory rape?) with a young man. This disconcerting decision was reached on the grounds that Hedley could not be sure if Hindley’s alleged victim was under-age at the time. According to one report from the BBC,
“In April 2020 Sir Mark Hedley, Deputy President of Tribunals, made what appears to be a startling ruling. He documented that while he thought that it could be proved the case involved non-consensual sex, he could not be sure if the alleged victim was 17 or 18 at the time, so the case could not go forward to a tribunal.”[3]
At the same time, other clergy have been subjected to multiple false accusations and falsified risk assessments, forced into early retirement or who take their own lives, yet with no compensation from the church and no consequences for their accusers and the forgers. Sir Mark Hedley again, in one case, declined to consider clear evidence of falsified risk assessments when conducting an inquiry, and declined to disclose his potential conflicts of interest policy or record a relevant register of interests that might impact the work of the inquiry. The inquiry did not go ahead. In the same proposed inquiry, Sir Roger Singleton (a former director of the National Safeguarding Team, and under whose watch the false risk assessments were manufactured) was also to play a leading part, as though this constituted no conflict of interest.
It should not be necessary to ask a British judge to abide by the laws and codes of practice that govern secular law. But this being the Church of England, it operates as a law unto itself. Hedley is a member of a private dining club – Nobody’s Friends – that often meets at Lambeth Palace. So is Sir Roger Singleton. Founded in 1800, Nobody’s Friends is one of the oldest dining clubs in London, with roots in the High Church tradition, Conservative Party, and Freemasonry, drawing its membership from senior clergy, senior ecclesiastical civil servants, church lawyers and other members of the ‘establishment’. Membership is 50-50 clergy-laity.[4] The motto of the dining club is Pro Ecclesia et Rege – ‘for the Church and King’. A private dining club that regularly meets at Lambeth Palace, is flush with ecclesiastical lawyers, and has leading figures from the establishment might well be above board.
Then again, the absence of a transparent, accountable and open conflicts of interest policy or proper register of interests for the Archbishops’ Council, senior ecclesiocracy and many bishops does invite speculation on why such a void exists in the 21st century. Indeed, in the absence of any explanation, joining the feint dots in this chasmic governance vacuum merely seems precautionary. Despite concerns over this potentially unlawful vacuity in the governance of a major charitable foundation, questions raised at General Synod about these issues are deflected and deferred by individuals answering for the Archbishops’ Council who are also members of the private club. The church lawyers also bat the questions away from the podium at General Synod. The main law firm (Winckworth Sherwood, founded 1777) serving the Archbishop of Canterbury’s work at Lambeth Palace and several other southern provincial dioceses had, until recently, offices located in Oxford adjacent to where the University of Oxford Freemason’s Lodge met.[5]
Of course, there is no way of knowing if Canon Hindley was ever a member of Nobody’s Friends, or had personal support from any of its members, though the latter seems highly likely on the basis of associations. Hindley, as a High Churchman, senior Canon and well-connected would certainly fit the profile. Certainly, the existence of the dining club and its previous record on protecting alleged and proven perpetrators of sexual abuse was noted by Alexis Jay at IICSA in 2018.[6] More recently, the conservative evangelical clergyman Jonathan Fletcher (colleague of John Smyth QC, and both involved in allegations of abuse against young boys attending Iwerne Camps over many decades) emerged as another member of Nobody’s Friends, as was his father Lord Fletcher.
Predictably, bishops in the Church of England have doubled down on the problems posed by the failure of the disciplinary proceedings against the likes of Canon Hindley, and called for risk assessments registering concerns to be sufficient grounds for removing clergy. The Bishop of Blackburn, Philip North, made such a call in the Church Times,[7] although his plea is somewhat problematic on several grounds.
First, North was Bishop of Burnley in the Diocese of Blackburn for several years whilst Hindley’s alleged abuse was known of, yet little was done, seemingly. Second, if it is to be made easier to remove clergy for safeguarding abuses and failures in policy and practice, then bishops should be subject to those same rules – though North says nothing on this. Third, North himself is strongly supported by the same senior lawyers at Lambeth Palace who are members of Nobody’s Friends. This group represents a clandestine alliance of High Churchmen opposed to the ordination of women, and enjoy significant financial leverage through their organisations, including one simply known as The Society, of which Bishop North is a key member.
Fourth, the opacity of episcopal decision-making does not inspire trust and confidence.[8] Bishops in the Church of England, without exception, have consistently presided over catastrophic safeguarding procedures. Yet Bishop North argues for even more powers for the bishops, and is seemingly unaware of their lack of competence, insight, expertise and accountability. (Far less episcopal power, or better still none, would be preferable).
Fifth, just as fundamentalist communities are ruled not by the bible, but by the interpreter with the authority to prescribe the true meaning, so bishops would be left in charge with interpreting risk assessments and CDM judgments. There are already examples of Bishops making mercurial decisions as to what a CDM determination means. The judge may say “no case to answer”, and the bishop may say “but I don’t see it like that” and proceed to act contrary to the legal process. Clergy and victims would be at the mercy of fickle episcopal judgments (as they already are). Sixth, and to emphasise these point, there is plain evidence of clergy being subject to false accusations, subject to vexatious and manipulative processes and forged allegations,[9] and falsified risk assessments, which invariably bishops and senior legal figures in the church will try to conceal or even endorse.[10] Seventh, and finally, Bishops continue to use Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA’s) to eliminate dissent and conceal egregious safeguarding errors. These are charitable funds, used to silence victims or the falsely accused.[11]
Here the autocracy shifts to being a ‘vetocracy’ – some things can never be changed, and will be subject to perpetual veto by the leadership. In all of this, any of the vested interests between private dining clubs, secret societies, types of churchmanship, financial and legal powers are not subject to open scrutiny or any form of accountability. As though this were not bad enough, the presiding culture at Lambeth Palace will also resort to deploying public relations organisations and arrange for media briefings against individuals. There is evidence of PR agencies such as Luther Pendragon (who also number Winckworth Sherwood as a client) being retained to spread false stories about individuals that the leadership of the Church of England wants to see removed or punished. False allegations of ‘safeguarding risk’ and ‘alcoholic’ are known to have been weaponised by church media officers and public relations agents against individual clergy.
As I have argued before, the Church of England just looks askance at the civil law that binds all other citizens on equality, sexuality, gender, data protection, personnel, employment, safeguarding and the like.[12] As the blogger Stephen Parsons noted many years ago, calm elitist arrogance sits with suspected quiet tolerance of toxic evil and the failure to protect and defend victims of that cruelty. As a law unto itself, it can do so, since it sits outside English law by virtue of its position as “established by law”, and so enjoys many exemptions under normal law. In such a bubble, quasi-regal pretentions are easier to develop, and the monarchical culture of patronage that accompanies it.
Yet a weak autocracy is arguably the worst of all worlds. The key courtiers that surround the monarchical figure – the Archbishops in this case – have access to unrivalled financial powers, legal and public relations resources, and significant leverage. The culture of patronage presides over the culture of preferment, and whilst that is made to appear as though it is democratic, transparent, accountable and open, the reality is otherwise. Those favoured by the patronage are fine. Those who find themselves at odds with it can easily find they are subject to secret campaigns or vendettas. As there is no operational conflicts of interest policy or register of interests amongst the highest echelons of the leadership of the Church of England, concealment of malice is relatively straightforward.
Some in the field of ecclesiology may wonder why the polity of governance in the Church of England has developed like this? I think the answer partly lies in its protected elite status, its quasi-regal operatives, multiple forms of episcopal-monarchical simulacra, aloofness from normal civic law and professional codes of conduct, high-handed lofty entitlement, and also its faith-based hubris which is simultaneously anti-modern and yet also lays claim to be progressive and cutting edge. This paradoxical, some might say oxymoronic position will usually present itself as close as possible to being omniscient and omnicompetent, and will offset its rare displays of omnipotence with fetishised pastoral beneficence.
But for victims of abuse, and those abused by the (so-called) ‘systems’ of the church, this will all be reified as systemic and harrowing re-abuse. In turn, protests about that will be met with protestations of well-meaning innocence. Diagnosing this ecclesial polity – it is a kind of social-mental condition of the soul of the church – is complex. But the diagnoses would lie somewhere in the terrain of dissociative identity disorder (DID), with bishops and senior ecclesiocrats alternating between possession and non-possession. Whilst that is tormenting for the patient, it is terrifying for those made to live under such leaders, as the episcopal-corporate mentality is at least schizoid, if not in fact (analogically) suffering from a kind of multiple personality disorder. If subject to a safeguarding complaint, is your bishop your pastor, supporter, prosecutor, investigator, judge, jury or jailer? Frankly, it is a lottery.[13] Add in the hubris – some might say with a large slug of corporate narcissism concerned only with appearances – and the recipe for the leadership in perpetrating further abuse is fully set. A final heavy seasoning of certainty-orientated evangelicalism or “father-knows-best” High Churchmanship completes the fare on offer.
Strange though this may seem, there are instructive ecclesial parallels. The Christian Science Church was certain of its superiority to modern medicine. It refused modernity’s interventions, and in its own way, also enshrined being ‘a law unto itself’. Exactly parallel to the Church of England’s safeguarding history, however, Christian Science quickly appropriated the terms of modern medicine. There were Christian physicians, nurses, carers, diagnoses, prognoses and even nursing homes. Just as the Church of England’s safeguarding has its Core Groups, Lessons Learned Reviews, national panels, officers, advisors, investigations, audits, assessments and determinations.[14]
The similarity is striking here, because in both cases, none of the practitioners have any independence from the institution they represent. Nor are they subject to any external professional independent regulatory body, work under proper codes of practice, or have any need to demonstrate accountability, transparency, justice or competence. Safeguarding in the Church of England, exactly like the “medicine” of Christian Science, is not related to any external teaching, training or research-based body that confers recognisable qualifications or assesses expertise. The person who is subject to the Church of England’s safeguarding is ultimately in the same position as any ill “patient” under the care of Christian Science. Being seriously unwell and in great pain within a Christian Science context has been likened to “Jonestown in slow motion”. Being subject to the Church of England’s safeguarding processes is the equivalent of Guantanamo Bay in slow motion – continual captivity, with no prospect of freedom, truth, justice or eventual release.
Perhaps the only difference between these two polities to note at this juncture is that those who opt in to Christian Science teachings and beliefs probably do so consciously, and having some knowledge of the risks they undertake in doing so, and what security they forego. But the same can seldom be said for those who are served by the Church of England’s safeguarding. The unwitting will assume that their experiences of the Church of England, as the established church of the land, will have some secular-normative foundation, and correspond to normal professional standards drawn from public life. Yet the unwitting will be cheated by the church at this point. There is no correlation between secular safeguarding policies and practices deliver and what the church offers. Even those inside the Church of England’s governance just cannot see how detached their systems are from normal functional reality.
Meanwhile, the Church of England continues to adopt hollowed-out secular terminology in the name of keeping up appearances. This is an endemic trend in the leadership of the Church of England, with its appropriation of terminology including ‘mission statements’, ‘vision statements’, ‘strategy’, ‘healthy organisation’, ‘KPI’s’ and the like.[15] Lessons learned Reviews in the Church of England are, on average, delivered more than 750 days late (and rising), cost hundreds of thousands pounds, are heavily redacted by the Secretariat and legal staff at Lambeth Palace (even when they have set the terms of reference for the work), and result in absolutely no change in culture or practice, or any identifiable lessons being learned or implemented. The Makin Review which is meant to be focussing on the abuse perpetrated at Iwerne Camps is now over 1500 days late, and unlikely to appear before most of its subjects retire from episcopal ministry, which speaks for itself.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv2gj77pvwwo
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr5n2542q82o
[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr5n2542q82o
[4] See Rowan Strong (ed), The Oxford History of Anglicanism, Volume III: Partisan Anglicanism and its Global Expansion 1829-c. 1914, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 144; and The Freemasons Chronicle (518): 375. 13 December 1884.
[5] Apollo University Lodge No. 357, founded in 1818. The Sherwood family appear to have prominent Oxfordshire and Berkshire Freemasonry connections dating from the 19th century. See Transactions of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076, The Masonic Year Book Historical Supplement, based on the 2′” edition of that work, published in 1969, with a Supplement in 1976, and Colin Dyer’s The Grand Stewards and their Lodge (Grand Stewards’ Lodge, 1985). The Archbishops’ Council decline to comment on whether they, the senior legal officers, law firms and senior staff serving Lambeth Palace are influenced by freemasonry. It would not be surprising given other high-profile safeguarding cases, but without a proper Register of Interests operating, the extent of Masonic influence cannot be known.
[6] See ‘IICSA Peter Ball investigation 23-27 July 2018’, Child Abuse Law, 6th November 2018; IICSA Inquiry Anglican Church Investigation Hearing, Day 5, IICSA p. 13., September 2018; ‘Religious power and privilege failed the victims in the Peter Ball affair’, National Secular Society, 11 August 2018; and Stephen Parsons, ‘Toxic Masculinity – A problem for the Church?’, Surviving Church, January 2019.
[7] https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2024/23-august/news/uk/risk-assessment-should-suffice-to-remove-a-cleric-from-office-bishop-of-blackburn-argues
[8] Even in the case of Bishop North’s own nomination to the See of Sheffield (withdrawn), and then Blackburn, normal processes were side-stepped or somehow subverted. See: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2024/19-april/news/uk/philip-north-s-nomination-to-blackburn-was-legitimate-reviewer-concludes
[9] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-57780729 and https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-58326903
[10] See the determination of Lyndsey de Mestre KC in Diocese of Oxford vs. Revd. Canon Richard Peers, para 9.4., p. 7, The Bishop of Llandaff and the Archbishop of Wales, alerted to the alleged falsification of risk assessments by Peers after he became Dean of Llandaff, also declined to act, stating that investigation a potential forgery of a church document by one of their clergy “was not in the interests of the Church in Wales”.
“four risk assessments were subsequently prepared on the basis of the conclusions in the Wood Report. These and other safeguarding processes put in place at the time have been criticised. For the avoidance of doubt, the Tribunal is not concerned with the details of how those operated or with evaluating their appropriateness.”
The respondent was not licensed, authorised or approved to write or commission risk assessments, and the church court presided over by Lyndsey de Mestre KC declined to consider the manufacture of bogus risk assessments, which the Bishop of Oxford, for the plaintiff, had previously endorsed. Later in her determination, de Mestre praises Canon Peers’ “professionalism” in safeguarding, having decided to ignore serious evidence to the contrary.
[11] Recent examples include a £40,000 payoff on behalf of the Bishop of Blackburn, and £100,000 payoff on behalf of a southern diocese, with both victims forced to agree to NDAs. The Bishop of Blackburn was given several opportunities to confirm, deny or comment on this, but did not respond.
[12] See Martyn Percy, Power and the Church: Ecclesiology in an Age of Transition, London: Cassell, 1997 and Salt of the Earth: Religious Resilience in a Secular Age, London: Continuum, 2002.
[13] For example, in one recent CDM case in 2022-23, the Bishop of Oxford was simultaneously writing a supportive written witness statement for the respondent (Canon Richard Peers) when at the same time the Bishop and Diocese of Oxford were meant to be prosecuting a case against Peers for weaponizing safeguarding against a third party. The case went ahead, but the Bishop and Diocese were able to secure the weakest possible prosecuting counsel, rendering the case pointless.
[14] See for example Caroline Fraser, The Guardian, August 6th 2024: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/06/christian-science-church-medicine-death-horror-of-my-fathers-last-days
[15] See Martyn Percy, The Exiled Church, London: SCM-Canterbury Press, 2025.