Against Makin

Safeguarding considered as voodoo

You can raise against Makin the same charge of sacrificing individuals for the good name of an institution as he raises against the Church of England. Just as with the Church, the institution he is defending does not exist as an organisation. It is a bundle of practices and aspirations; but like the Church is it is indefectible. It is safeguarding.

There is an expectation throughout the report that anyone aware of abuse has not merely the duty but the capacity as well to stop it. If bad things happen, this can only be because safeguarding was done wrong.

At the heart of this argument is a slippery two step which only makes sense if we consider safeguarding as a magical practice. Sometimes people are blamed because they don’t get the spell right, and follow all the procedures. But if they did perform all the prescribed rituals, it must be their fault if the magic doesn’t happen.

This is why Justin Welby is held to have “Personal and moral responsibility” after it’s discovered that he had filled out all the right boxes. This is why the Church is somehow responsible when the police fail to act. The argument is very clear in this passage from Makin:

The conclusion that must be reached is that John Smyth could and should have been reported to the police in 2013. This could (and probably would) have led to a full investigation, the uncovering of the truth of the serial nature of the abuses in the UK, involving multiple victims and the possibility of a conviction being brought against him. In effect, three and a half years was lost, a time within which John Smyth could have been brought to justice and any abuse he was committing in South Africa discovered and stopped.

The first thing to say is that Smyth was reported to the police in 2013. They didn’t want to know. Makin says the spell was wrongly cast and Smyth wasn’t formally reported. A Detective Sergeant was told at length about the allegations, but no crime was reported on the police system. This is because the evidence the diocese then had did not amount to an allegation of criminal behaviour, as the police explained and Makin also records.

None the less, all the ghastliest and undoubtedly criminal aspects of the abuse were reported the next year to the police, when James Stileman of the Titus Trust handed over the Ruston report to the Hampshire police and the Met as well.

The spell had been cast again, this time with exactly the right words. You’d never learn from Makin that it didn’t work. Makin says a police referral “Could (and probably would) have led to a full investigation, the uncovering of the truth of the serial nature of the abuses in the UK, involving multiple victims and the possibility of a conviction being brought against him.” — except that we know it didn’t.

So when Makin finishes with a final rhetorical flourish — “Three and a half years was lost, a time within which John Smyth could have been brought to justice and any abuse he was committing in South Africa discovered and stopped,” The word “could” is strained here to breaking point. Yes, it could have happened. But what’s relevant is that it didn’t, and this was through no fault of anyone in the church.

Let’s look at another wonderfully quotable sentence

“John Smyth was able to abuse boys and young men in Zimbabwe (and possibly South Africa) because of inaction of Clergy within the Church of England,” Makin writes. It’s a great quote, but it gets the Zimbabwe story quite the wrong way round. It was the deliberate action of the Colmans and others in funding Smyth and providing moral support which enabled Smyth’s abuse in Zimbabwe.

What were these inactive clergy supposed to be able to do? Where were the civil authorities who are assumed to act on their behalf? They couldn’t report to the police in the UK unless the victims were willing to testify, which they were not. Out in Zimbabwe Smyth was sheltered by powerful political protectors, up to and including Robert Mugabe, which was all he needed for protection. Andrew Graystone’s book makes clear that there were brave and determined (non-Anglican) clergy in Zimbabwe who did their very best to stop Smyth. They failed.

If Makin’s terms of reference had extended outside England, he would surely have found a way to blame those brave Zimbabwean pastors. Failure is never the fault of safeguarding.

Take his treatment of Yvonne Quirk, the Ely Diocesan Safeguarding adviser who worked herself into the edge of a breakdown when the first victims talked to her. They did not tell her the whole truth. She was told only about the beatings of adults, and that no blood was drawn. Since that was — she believed — the case, the police told her there was nothing they could do. She is blamed for not making a formal report of a crime, but she did tell the police what she then knew and they did not want to act on it. No one in South Africa was prepared to help.

For instance, paragraph 14.3.15:

Regarding contact with South African counterparts, Yvonne Quirk has explained to reviewers that she made attempts to establish contact with the Bishops safeguarding adviser in South Africa; “I think there were 3 emails, none of them acknowledged”, that the Diocesan Bishop told her he had attempted several times to make direct bishop-to bishop contact and had no response either. She also explains that “at some point I resorted to online searching to track [John Smyth’s] progress from the UK to Zimbabwe and then on to South Africa, trying to identify paths to disclosure. I could not find any safeguarding adviser in Zimbabwe” and that she had “tried to make contact with the journalist who had reported on the case, or may have been the author of the book”. Yvonne has also advised she’d tried “unsuccessfully to find a contact in the South African Government to ensure someone knew JS’s background. During this time I made so many futile attempts to contact so many people that in the end, I think I gave up even noting them, still less trying them all again and again."

14.3.16

On 23rd May 2014, Yvonne Quirk wrote to the victim advising that she had "no power to compel agencies in South Africa to respond to my concerns": Yvonne explains that her email of 23 May 2014 followed a meeting with the Bishop of Ely where “we had agreed there was nothing more we could do unless a new lead came up from others working on the case”.

And then Makin forces her to perform self-criticism:

Yvonne explains her perspective on that time and reflects; “I was angry and exhausted and had indeed lost my grip. I do not offer any excuse for that decision. I have explained the background only because I want to assure the victims of JS that I did not, at any stage, see their plight as some sort of ticky-box exercise that I could casually sign off once I had ticked enough boxes. I recognise now that what I should have done was step back, take a proper break from the case and then return fresh to my part of the fight. But I did not. I fully accept the criticism levelled at me in that regard. To the victims of JS, I apologise directly and unreservedly for that. I am so very sorry. You deserved better.

But she had in fact done all she could. There’s no reason at this distance to suppose that she could have done any better had she resumed the struggle (and at what cost to other cases?).

I did ask Graham, on twitter, what she or Stephen Conway were meant to have done differently and he said the question made him so angry he would go offline for the evening.