UNTIL we hear from the
inquiry set up by Dr Sentamu, we shall not know the full story of
the abuse perpetrated by Robert Waddington, a former Dean of
Manchester, and the Church's handling of it. Two of the boys he
groomed and then abused have come forward; others might emerge.
From what we know, however, the tale is familiar. When Dean
Waddington was brought to book in 2003, he was a sick man. His
encounter with Lord Hope might well have involved an element of
confession; certainly it would have been a pastoral as well as a
disciplinary process. There was likely, too, to have been pastoral
concern for the victims, expressed in a desire not to put them
through the further trauma of reliving their experience in a
criminal trial.
By that point, Dean
Waddington was deemed not to be in a position to cause further
harm. This has been the chief blunder by those in authority who
deal with such cases. The damage to the victims of abuse is hard to
calculate, but a first step in their healing is to exonerate them
from blame for their treatment. Abuse is a hidden crime, and the
voice of the abuser denying it to be such continues to sound in the
victim's ear. A louder voice, then, must confirm that a crime has
been committed, and this involves, necessarily, informing the
police. Only then can victims begin to reclaim their lives.
Institutional silence,
then, perpetuates the harm, even if the threat of reoffending has
gone (and it is a bold bishop who takes it upon himself to judge
this). Eli Ward, one of Dean Waddington's victims, has described
the way in which his abuser shaped his tastes and opinions during
his formative adolescence, purportedly friendly and nurturing, but
in reality seeking to isolate him from his family and his peers, in
order to make him more malleable. Mr Ward tells of how, aged 40,
his life fell apart, leading to questions of who he really is, and
to what degree he is still Waddington's creation.
It is hard, also, to
calculate the damage to the Church from this episode, and from the
threat that others like it are still to be exposed. The visitation
imposed on the Chichester diocese by Lord Williams to review its
safeguarding procedures is a welcome sign of a new approach, as
were the reports Protecting All God's Children and
Responding Well. But in a week when yet another gang has
been convicted of grooming and abusing vulnerable teenagers, it is
appalling that the Church is unable to model best practice in the
supervision of its priests and the care of its young people. There
is no clever PR play it can make here. A swift investigation, and
an open admission of any wrong-doing, is the only course of action
that might, at last, contribute something healing for the
victims.