If the Church of England was not in crisis before, it certainly is now. The resignation of the Bishop of Liverpool on 30 January was a new low in the national church’s seemingly never-ending safeguarding scandal.
John Perumbalath quit two days after Channel 4 News revealed two women had accused him of sexual assault and harassment. The first alleged victim claimed he had kissed and groped her at work events and meetings in his previous job as a more junior bishop in Essex. The second victim, it emerged shortly afterwards, was his colleague, the Bishop of Warrington, Bev Mason.
Perumbalath denies both claims, but the saga has revealed once again the Church of England’s (CofE) general dysfunction and its inability to effectively manage safeguarding accusations. The first victim’s report emerged before Perumbalath was officially enthroned in his job as Bishop of Liverpool in July 2023, but Church bureaucracy meant his promotion could not be stopped. The Church’s national safeguarding team investigated the case but failed to resolve it satisfactorily for either party. Perumbalath was not deemed a current safeguarding risk, but in the vague, managerial jargon often used in the CofE today, “a learning outcome was identified with which the bishop fully engaged”, to address what another senior cleric described as his “unboundaried behaviour”.
When Mason tried to file her own formal complaint of sexual harassment against her boss, it was not allowed on a technicality: it was more than 12 months after the event in question. The Bishop of Warrington subsequently went on leave for more than a year, while Perumbalath continued in post with none in his diocese any the wiser.
Even after Channel 4 broke the news, the CofE’s bureaucracy made it impossible for hierarchy to suspend Perumbalath. Instead, his fellow bishops and colleagues in the Diocese of Liverpool could only publicly criticise his attempts to brazen it out, hoping they could pressure him into resigning voluntarily – which he did the following day. A secondary row blew up when some lay members of the committee that appointed Perumbalath in 2022 accused multiple bishops also around the table of bullying them into selecting him, despite their misgivings over his safeguarding performance.
The Church remains leaderless after Justin Welby was forced to quit over his involvement in a separate safeguarding scandal late last year. His interim successor, the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, is also resisting calls to stand down after it emerged he had praised a vicar in his former diocese whom he knew had convictions for underage sex as a “Rolls Royce priest” and appointed him to a minor diocesan role.
Understandably, morale among ordinary clergy in the Church is at a historic low. The situation was already fractious after years of internal trench warfare over whether the CofE should offer blessings to gay couples. Also ever-present is the threat of extinction as church attendance continues its decades of unerring decline.
Now, rolling safeguarding crises have plunged the Church into institutional depression. Some are even calling for parliament to undo a century of arms-length devolution and intervene in what is still the established state Church. Among the wider public – or at least those who are paying any attention – there is mounting incredulity that a body supposedly offering moral and spiritual leadership to the nation is home to such morally bankrupt behaviour.
The irony is that the CofE does have a story to tell about how it is getting its house in order – if only it could find a credible spokesperson among the bishops to tell it. Next week its governing assembly, the General Synod, will vote on sweeping reforms to safeguarding procedures. It will also give final assent to a major overhaul of its disciplinary tribunals, fixing some of the obvious problems such as the fixed 12-month time limit that prevented Bishop Mason from making a complaint. Bishops, no longer trusted by many in the church and beyond, will have very little role in investigating or reprimanding their own vicars under the new regime.
Under the plans, which were set in motion long before Welby, Cottrell or Perumbalath were engulfed in scandal, most if not all the safeguarding operations of the Church will be outsourced to two new, independent charities. Funded in perpetuity by an endowment, these organisations will carry out all investigations, enforce guidance and impose penalties on offenders. Bishops will be obliged to implement whatever they are told to.
The need for such measures is in itself damning, but it is also the Church making a bold attempt to reform itself. No longer will it mark its own homework, but instead open itself up to permanent external scrutiny by bodies it cannot control or ignore.
Independent safeguarding was once unthinkable, but today few observers think the Synod can afford to vote down the proposals. Given the revelations of the past few months, it would be approaching institutional suicide for the Church to reject the opportunity to rebuild trust and demonstrate its determination to stop abusers and keep vulnerable people safe.
But in the desperate rush to be seen to be doing something to stop the relentlessly critical headlines, few have considered what independence will not fix. The same people who investigated Perumbalath and concluded there was no evidence he was a safeguarding risk will still constitute the safeguarding team; they will just work for a different employer. Safeguarding cases will still be based on the often-conflicting accounts of the only two people in the room at the time of the alleged incident. There will still be cases that cannot be resolved in the way survivors and their increasingly vocal advocates would like. Who will listen to and support dissatisfied and wounded survivors, if not the Church? And what happens when the independent safeguarding authority clears someone the CofE hierarchy believes to be guilty?
Safeguarding independence will not be an end the Church’s state of permacrisis. In fact, the Synod vote will probably create as many new problems as it solves old ones. The weary vicars wondering when they can stop bracing for the next scandal cannot relax yet.
[See more: The confessions of Pope Francis]
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