Why was Korris Published?

I’ve been looking back at the actions of Bishop Tim Dakin, and trying to make sense of why he took particular actions. Motivation is, of course, difficult to establish, and even one’s own motivation is not always clear. What follows is therefore a rational reconstruction of events which he almost certainly had to react to, and possible motivations for his reactions.

The Korris report was commissioned in 2011 regarding the complaints by a young woman, HG, about the actions of a churchwarden, and the way the Dean had dealt with them, leading to the effective deportation of HG to the UK. That left her dumped in the UK and destitute.

The commissioning of the report seems to have been just after Tim Dakin took office as Bishop of Winchester. I suspect he inherited paperwork which included complaints from HG. The question was then what should he do about it.

Obviously, as a newly installed Bishop, he would have been very aware of accusations of cover ups of abuse within the church, as a review had just been released by Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss about the Diocese of Chichester, which borders Winchester.

The Bishop of Chichester had just admitted that there had been a cover-up, over a whole range of clergy and sexual abuse of children. The impression being given by the press, as a result, was that the Church of England was just as prone to keep its dirty washing hidden in an ecclesiastical laundry basket as the Roman Catholic Church.

So what Tim Dakin decided to do was something similar to the report for Chichester, and commission his own report. Hence the appointment of Jan Korris to investigate what had happened. A question that has never been adequately explained is why he decided to appoint a psychotherapist, rather than a judge who would be more used to handling evidence. That is a question which remains unanswered.

But Tim Dakin would have had to do something, or face criticism of cover ups. To some extent, he was driven by events.

Looking at the Chichester report, it has a similar structure to Korris. The main difference is that the Chichester report was about priests abusing a number of different boys, over a number of years, not a singular occurrence. Also Butler-Sloss is very clear about deficiencies in the material and evidence she had to work with.

Jan Korris was commissioned to write the report, but was limited in what she could find out. What is more, unlike Chichester, where the police had finally taken action prompting a review, the police had taken no action against the churchwarden. Those involved, such as Jane Fisher, would be giving their version of events – a good historian is aware of bias in how reports are made, but Korris does not seem to have considered that anyone like Jane Fisher would be putting themselves in the best possible light, and omitting anything that might not be so creditable in their interventions.

In historical research, and this is essentially a historical review, a good historian looks for inconsistencies in evidence, and differences between different people’s accounts, as well as multiple attestation where independent sources agree. Taking material or reports at face value is only an option when there are no other sources, or any other way of looking at the material.

This is a weakness of the Korris report – mainly in that she didn’t check what she had been told with HG, who was surely a primary witness, to get a different perspective. A further weakness is that she faced resistance in getting the Dean to participate in the review – which is noted in the report.

And, of course, she only glances at the fact that the Churchwarden evidently had problems (spoken to about being too tactile, chaperoned as a policy by the church, known to the Dean) without investigating further. Of course on that score, the members of the congregation at the Church may well have closed ranks against participating. But what she should have done was include anything like that in her report – that complaints had been made against the churchwarden, but that she had been unable to speak to the people concerned.

Once the report was complete, then Tim Dakin had to decide what action to take. Again events in Chichester put pressure on him to make this public in some fashion. Not to do so would have looked bad – he had commissioned a report about a complaint and then buried it. How would that look? Not at all good, if it leaked out that had happened. So he evidently decided to have it redacted (poorly) and published.

These decisions, while safeguarding is evidently part of them, appear to me to be primarily taken with reputational considerations more than pastoral ones. That can be seen in deciding to publish without consultation with HG, and the effect on HG that publication would have.

From a pastoral point of view, I think that HG should have seen the report before publication, and she should have decided how the diocese might make amends for their treatment of her. Those decisions could have been properly minuted but done privately.

Likewise, any safeguarding deficiencies could have been addressed without the need to go public and intrude on HG’s private life. The release of personal, sensitive data about HG should at the very least been subject to review on Data Protection matters. There is no evidence that this was done – no statement has been released about what the Data Protection officer for the Diocese would have said if consulted.

Instead, with Chichester hanging over him, Tim Dakin appears to have decided to protect his reputation by going public. That’s not to say that there were not pastoral considerations, but they seem to have taken second place to concerns about cover ups.

Now as the report criticised the Dean for not fully co-operating, that meant he might have to take action against the Dean. Again, the question which may have arisen could be termed a reputational one – not to take action smacked of an “old clergy boys” network, and favouritism. Hence the ill-judged suspension of the Dean, and the whole can of worms that opened.

Now this is a rational reconstruction of events and suggested motivations, and may not be correct. But the fact that – unlike any previous Bishop of Winchester – he has a professional PR firm – Luther Pendragon – to address anything to do with press releases suggests that here is a Bishop who is very concerned with how he is seen to act, and very controlling of his public image. Can you imagine Pope Francis communicating by a PR firm?

Protecting the reputation of the church is not wholly wrong. Where abuses have taken place, arguments can be made for transparency to retain the trust of the general public. Decades of cover ups have eroded trust in the Roman Catholic Church, for example. Reputation is partly trust, partly image, and partly pastoral in these cases.

However, there seems to have been little consideration applied in this case in particular about where pastoral considerations conflict with reputational considerations. To release information into the public domain when that release would actually hurt the victim is something which was not been addressed with HG, and such considerations seem alien to the mindset that we see here.

We can see that mindset in a press release from November 2013, where Tim Dakin states: “In all of this, the victim at the heart of the original complaint should not be forgotten. As a Church, we are called to reach out to the least, the last and the lost, even though at times they may reject the help we offer.”

The continual attempts to impose “help” on HG, even when rejected, even when she has made it clear that what she wants is to be left alone by the Diocese, seems to be purveying a message very much like “Nanny knows best”. It is well-meaning, but patronising. There seems to be a need to be seen to be doing something, which seems to me to be at odds with the pastoral consideration which should reflect that HG will probably find some help elsewhere, and perhaps it is time to back off and let her rebuilt her life without interference.

That requires a degree of humility because there is certainly a danger in thinking you know best, especially it seems when the clergy are involved. Doing nothing and letting HG live her life as best she can may seem like a bad choice. But so might be continually raising the spectre of trying to interfere in her life, a kind of well-meaning stalking, and a kind of harassment. Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones. But you still have to choose.

And in these choices, I think to let alone - to leave be - would be the better one for Tim Dakin and the Winchester staff under his direction. Continually trying to do something reminds me especially in this context of a saying by C.S. Lewis:

“She's the sort of woman who lives for others—you can always tell the others by their hunted expression.”

Does Tim Dakin really want HG to feel hunted? That is the pastoral consideration which should be addressed now. Time for the Diocese to back off.

Canons to the left of them

ALL Anglicans in Jersey have been invited to a meeting next week to discuss a dispute that threatens the Island's centuries-old link with the Diocese of Winchester. The meeting, on Tuesday, has been organised by Senator Sir Philip Bailhache, who a member of the congregation at Grouville Parish Church.
 
The former Bailiff has been critical of the Bishop of Winchester, the Right Rev Tim Dakin, since the Bishop removed the powers of the Dean of Jersey in March following a complaint of sexual misconduct made by a vulnerable young adult against a churchwarden in 2008.
 
The Dean, the Very Rev Bob Key, has since been reinstated but his seven-week 'suspension' has sparked a chain of events that includes a 'Visitation' by a former Bishop looking at the whole relationship between the Island and the Diocese. (1)
 
The terms of reference for the Visitation are interesting, as apart from safeguarding issues, they also include the following:
 
"clarifying and describing the legal, ecclesiastical and practical nature of the relationship between the Deanery of Jersey, the Diocese of Winchester and the wider Church of England, including the roles of the Bishop of Winchester, the Suffragan Bishops, the Archdeacons, Diocesan staff, the Dean and Vice-Deans of Jersey and the ecclesiastical courts of Jersey in relation to the appointments process, the safeguarding of children and vulnerable people, disciplinary provisions and the general oversight of the Deanery of Jersey" (2)
 
That's quite a bit wider than just safeguarding, and also includes "disciplinary provisions and the general oversight of the Deanery of Jersey", which suggests that there may be pressure to reform Jersey Canon Law to make it easier for the Bishop to exercise control over what happens in Jersey.
 
And, apart from safeguarding matters, what might the Bishop like to do with regard to Jersey's churches? The Church of England Newspaper, describing the Jersey Canon Law in 2011 - later approved and adopted on 14 March 2012 - said that it was 15 years being prepared by current and former Deans of Jersey, consulting with Synod and approved by the former Bishop of Winchester, the Rt. Rev. Michael Scott-Joynt. But here is the crucial point:
 
"The revised canons would block potential moves by the cash-strapped Diocese of Winchester to amalgamate the island's 12 historic parishes, or assign a single clergyman to multiple parishes."(3)
 
And the finally approved Canon Law states clearly:
 
"None, either Dean or Minister, shall hold two Rectorial Benefices together."(4)
 
It's just one small sentence, but Church of England Newspaper points out, it blocks what Bishop Tim Dakin may well want to do, to drastically cut the numbers of clergy, and combine Parishes together. In 2009, the Dean wrote to me, and noted that:
 
"The Constables insist, rightly in my view, that a separate Rector for each parish is Jersey's heritage and tradition. It is also built into the law of the land through the Canons of the Church of England in Jersey. "
 
The new Canons of 2012 confirm that ancient tradition, and while they remain in force, they limit the power of the Bishop to make changes. And the situation in Jersey is different from England in many respects - the Rector is involved with Parish matters on the Roads Committee, and the Parishes support the maintenance of the fabric of the ancient Parish Churches. An English Parish, though it bears the same name, is a much less defined district, and the two are not homologous. This is not something that England finds easy to understand, in much the same way that English people find Jersey politics, and the tradition of independent politicians rather than party machines, quite difficult to comprehend.
 
Whether this aspect of the Visitation will be considered in the meeting on Tuesday is another matter. It looks as if it might be looking in part at ecclesiastical law. But the most prudent action, in my opinion, would be to let the Visitation take place without fuss. After all, any change to the Canons would need approval by the States anyway; changes cannot be made by the Bishop alone.
 
But Sir Philip Bailhache has more of a reputation for being somewhat pugnacious, and in Jersey, he is a large fish in a small pond. He has been singularly unsuccessful so far either in changing the Bishop's mind or, for that matter, getting much response from the Archbishop of Canterbury to his letter. There may well be issues of Data Protection if it turns out that he has been in possession of confidential documents, and was displaying them opening, as alleged by an anonymous member of the public on a flight.
 
Meanwhile, while the Diocese have published the terms of reference for the Visitation, they have not published any terms of reference for Dame Steel's linked investigation, apart from saying that it "will now make further inquiries, find facts and make recommendations about whether or not disciplinary complaints should be brought against any member of the clergy as a result of the matters raised in the Korris Review."
 
As Peter Ould notes: "I also find it curious that the Diocese of Winchester cannot release Dame Steel's Terms of Reference given that the whole investigation is based on safeguarding and the need for full transparency and accountability in these areas." There is clearly a degree of mistrust and suspicion on both sides. As an onlooker from outside, it seems like a wilful and defensive silence from Winchester, and angry posturing from some Church members in Jersey.
 
In these circumstances, the meeting at Grouville may well fan the flames rather than put them out. What is really needed is a peacemaker, seeking reconciliation and goodwill, and above all someone who can listen well. I'm not at all sure that Sir Philip, who has already been very critical of Bishop Tim Dakin, is the most appropriate person for that role. The meeting is "not intended to be confrontational", according to Sir Philip, but he hardly has a good track record for being non-confrontational.
 
Links
(1) http://www.thisisjersey.com/news/2013/05/30/anglicans-invited-to-meeting-to-discuss-crisis-in-the-diocese/
(2) http://www.winchester.anglican.org/news/story/921/
(3) http://geoconger.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/jersey-bid-to-protect-parish-system-the-church-of-england-newspaper-jan-21-2011-p-4/
(4) http://www.jerseylaw.je/law/lawsinforce/htm/LawFiles/2012/L-08-2012.pdf

Investigating the Deportation

The Independent Review of a Safeguarding Complaint for the Diocese of Winchester doesn't just deal with the Dean and Church matters; there's also a brief mention of the Magistrate's Court, but I think an important one.

How this came about was that the young woman in question seems to have been both distressed and threatening to lash out against the Bishop of Winchester when he was in Jersey:

"Safeguarding Advisor J.F. reported several texts and answerphone messages from her threatening violence against him and intimating plans to disrupt the service he was due to attend. The Bishop of Winchester was staying with Dean R.K. and the Dean, on hearing of these messages, felt them to be of a sufficiently serious nature that they should be reported to the police. A statement was made at the deanery by the Bishop of Winchester on the 26th September 2010. On interview he said that his expectation was that this would enable the police to keep H.G. from disrupting the service that day."

The Bishop had simply the idea that they would monitor the young woman, and make sure she could not disrupt the service. Instead, the situation was dealt with in a very heavy handed way, seen by the Safeguarding Advisor and the writer of the report as "extreme measures".

"Following this H.G. was arrested for breaking a harassment order, brought before the magistrate and as she had no money, was at that time of no fixed abode and appeared mentally distressed, she was remanded in custody. Safeguarding Advisor J.F. records her concern at these extreme measures and worked at setting up care for her with the prison chaplain."

Unfortunately, the situation escalated. The destitute, penniless woman who was mentally distressed, was just shipped out of the Island, apparently being treated without a shred of compassion.

"She is shocked when on 11th October H.G. was bound over and summarily deported from the Island for three years and put on a plane with no-one to meet her, no planned accommodation and no money. J.F. wrote to Bishop Michael, 'Whilst I don't think this is our responsibility in that the court decision and action was not of our making, I do feel we have a basic responsibility, as we would have for anyone, to do all we can to ensure her wellbeing'."

There are two forms of ordering a person to leave the Island - as a condition of a binding over order, and a deportation order - a binding over order is usually recommended by the Magistrate's Court and is an alternative to a prison sentence for someone who may have recently arrived in the Island and has no ties such as a home, family or job.

In this case, the case came up under the Acting Magistrate, Richard Falle. As the public record mentions - "Bound Over: XXX of XXX, was bound over to leave the Island for three years after she admitted harassing a person between 1 June and 25 September".

The writer of the report has this to say on the deportation:

"The decision and manner of H.G.'s deportation requires further investigation. It is clearly a matter of concern that a vulnerable adult in such a distressed state could be removed from Jersey with no thought to her imminent care needs."

"It seems surprising that the complainant against H.G., in this case the Dean of Jersey on behalf of the Church, was not consulted or informed about the decisions taken, or action planned, concerning H.G.'s future. There are no records of communication from R.K. with the Diocese at this time and Bishop Michael later expressed shock and distress that the deportation had occurred."

The former Bishop of Chelmsford, John Gladwin, will lead the forthcoming safeguarding inquiries in Jersey. Let us hope this paragraph is not overlooked, and some consideration is given as to the actions of the Magistrate. We know from the report that the consequences of being shipped off to England meant that the young woman's life increasingly spiraled out of control. In Jersey, at least there were people whom she knew and could trust, like Philip Le Claire of Autism Jersey.

It's not primarily a church matter, but as a matter of social justice, it should not be left out of any investigations. Do we really want a society in which this can happen? Do we just deport people who are a nuisance regardless of how vulnerable they are? It may have been legal to treat her this way, but it does that make it right. It does Jersey no credit at all.

A Cloud of Witnesses or a Fog?

How accurate can witnesses be, and how can we be sure they are telling the truth? Are reports to be taken at face value, or do they present any bias, implicit or explicit? This is the problem we face with the recent "Independent Review of a Safeguarding Complaint for the Diocese of Winchester".

For the most part, we have accusations made against the Dean by a distressed woman, whose mental state is, however, very volatile, and whose perspective of the church seems to verge towards a state of mind in which the church was conspiring against her. But her state of mind could not be verified, only surmised, because no one knows her present whereabouts. This is problematic.

The writer of the review acknowledges an escalating problem, in which the young woman hit out at various people, including at Autism Support worker, declined to be helped by Social Workers, and whose complaints escalated against many island clergy, diocesan staff, and the former Bishop of Winchester himself, whom she took to ringing up at all hours, and stalking his home even after he had retired.

This is almost certainly the reason for delays in addressing complaints; the complaint against the Dean was buried like a needle in a haystack against other complaints. As presented in the report, it does stand out, because it is made the focus of the report, but as complaints had been made, some withdrawn, some against the former Bishop himself, it certainly cannot have been easy to determine which had merit, and which did not. I note that no review is being made of her complaints against the former Bishop, for example.

"Because of the lack of Jersey recording available this Review relies solely on documentation held by the Diocese. In the course of her complaint H.G. copied to the Diocese a substantial volume of communications made and received by her and this material forms a valuable part of the records available for consideration."

There is clearly a failure on the part of Jersey, including the Dean, to document what was going on, but on the other hand, to rely on one side alone as representing the truth of the matter without independent verification is also problematic.

That is not to say that there were not issues in need of resolution regarding the churchwarden, but in the absence of documentation, it is difficult to know how much of the way in which the Dean's action was perceived was coloured by her mental state. We do not have multiple attestation, and that makes matters difficult, as does the lack of documentation. But it is not clear how much other documentation was kept when for instance, the Bishop's wife talked to the young woman on the telephone.

The report also states that there was considerable resistance on the part of the Dean to take part in the review. This comes up both in an early review which says "the Chief Executive, who was by this point back in post and chair of the Panel, wrote to all involved to invite them to take part in a review the terms of which are stated above."

But in fact there are no precise terms of review in this report; it is simply described as an investigation into events. Until we have the document in front of us, with detailed terms of reference, we don't know exactly how it was presented to the Dean, and the tone in which it was made.

Later, part of the letter of communication by the writer of the report is given as a quotation, but the whole request is not. We do not know how it was phrased. The author of the report gives an indication that it was a simple request, but we don't know. All we have is a quote from the "letter of invitation to interviewees". It seems innocuous, and the Dean's refusal to co-operate seems perverse, but we don't have either the communication sent to the Dean or his reply.

We are told that the Dean was not co-operative, and then it is stated that "I must assume therefore that references made to the 'distress of the alleged abuser', and the 'danger of defamation', were true." This again is problematic; we are relying on one witnesses account. We don't know the precise words in which the accusations were framed. The report takes this as a sharp rebuke by the Dean to the young woman; it could equally be a mild caution against making statements which could be defamatory.

I'm not exonerating the actions of the Dean; I'm certainly not condoning the conduct of the churchwarden which seems wholly reprehensible. All I am doing is pointing out that any report is drawing upon sources, and we can't see all the sources ourselves, nor can we judge how reliable all the accounts by the young woman are, although I have no doubt that there is substance to her initial complaint about the churchwarden.

What is not so clear is how much substance there is against her complaint against the Dean. It seems that he may have wanted the complaint against the churchwarden formalised, and subject to the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical court. At times, the report takes this as a serious option; at other times it dismisses it as a spurious excuse. An independent witness to events would help, perhaps the Vice-Dean in this case, who may have been privy to discussions.

There's also an interesting mention in the review that "There seems to be no spirit of willingness or inquiry in this matter. I found that some of the Island clergy had been actively discouraged by the Dean of Jersey from fully engaging with me and therefore complying with the Bishop's request."

That is interesting because I have been told on good authority that following his meeting with the clergy, they have effectively been "gagged", prohibited from making any comment on matters while a new investigation takes place. The Bishop, however, has the freedom to make such statements as he will. That, of course, has not leaked out in any report.

Whatever is going on at a surface level about a churchwarden, and a complaint made by the Dean over safeguarding suggests that there may be a strong undercurrent below the surface about the measure of the Bishop of Winchester's jurisdiction over the Dean of Jersey. That is not to say that the Dean can act as he likes, but part of his authority derives from the Queen (and her representative the Lieutenant-Governor), and part from the Bishop of Winchester.

In other words, regardless of any mistakes made by the Dean in his actions, it may be that they are a suitable pretext for asserting the primacy of authority from Winchester over that of the Queen. For a full explanation of the complex lines of authority, see the excellent analysis at:

http://www.peter-ould.net/2013/03/18/jersey-lines-of-authority/

in which he states:

So we come back to the fundamental question - who is the Dean of Jersey's boss? The two positions being argued can broadly be summarised as follows.
- The position of the Diocese of Winchester is that the Bishop, by virtue of the Commission that he gives the Dean after being informed of the Letters Patent from the Crown is the Dean's boss in all matters ecclesiastical. This means that the Bishop has the right to suspend the Dean in matters like safeguarding issues.
- The position of many in Jersey is that whilst the Bishop issues a Commission to the Dean to act on his behalf in Jersey, ultimately the line of authority is through the Letters Patent to the Crown. In practice this would be to the Lieutenant Governor who is the Queen's representative on the island.