IN THE past week, I have been told two unrelated stories of events in which legal officers argued for the suspension of a priest under investigation not because they thought them guilty, or in danger of causing further harm, but because the authorities might otherwise be blamed for not doing enough if there were a subsequent review. In one case, this advice was accepted, and it led to months of suffering and uncertainty for the man concerned, until his eventual exoneration. In the other, the advice was rejected, but the accused is off work anyway with stress.

Then there was the Charity Commission’s censure of two dioceses, Liverpool and Chelmsford, over the ways in which they reacted to allegations against the former Bishop of Liverpool Dr John Perumbalath (News, 23 January). The Commission believes that these should have been acted upon by the diocesan boards of finance (DBFs), since the DBF in law is the body ultimately responsible for what happens in the diocese. I doubt that’s how bishops think of things. There is the further complication that none of the women who have complained about Dr Perumbalath’s behaviour is a minor, and one is even a bishop. Supposing these allegations are true — which he denies — they are surely a matter for HR rather than safeguarding.

If “abuse” is so widely defined as to define any exercise of power over the unwilling, it becomes quite meaningless. When everything is safeguarding, no one is safe. Looking back over the years since the publication of the Makin review, it seems that the only people who can never be accused of abusing their power are the safeguarders. Their decisions are beyond question, and they can never be held responsible for getting their judgements wrong.

This is particularly obvious in some passages of the Makin report, such as his claim that John Smyth was not reported to the police in proper form, and that he could have been “brought to justice” if this had happened. This is simply and demonstrably untrue. Smyth was, at various times, reported to five different police forces, and nothing happened as a result (News, 29 November 2024). Similarly, Makin states as a fact that “a decision was made to not report a suspected crime to the police and this should have been done, whatever the views of parents.” But, though it’s a fact that the decision was made, it’s not at all clear on what basis he states as a fact that it was the wrong decision.

Had Smyth’s abuse come to trial in the climate of the early 1980s, it would have made a media sensation and probably wrecked the lives of any of the victims who testified. I watched both the Jeffrey Archer trial, in 1987, and that of Brandon Jackson. In both cases, the guilty and powerful got off, and the innocent and powerless were held up to public derision. One of Smyth’s victims complained to Makin that he had been asked by a priest why he had submitted to the beatings; but, if he had been made to stand in the witness box, he would have been asked the same question in cross-examination by a hostile counsel in a much less sympathetic way.

All that is very different now, when those who have, in fact, been victims of abuse are rightly sheltered by anonymity. In some instances, they have more power than those whom they now accuse. The survivor known as Graham Jones, for example, withdrew his co-operation from the Makin report, which delayed publication (News, 15 March 2024) — and, of course, every delay in publication went to strengthen the narrative of “cover-up”. He was also able to denounce the Rt Revd Stephen Conway, quite groundlessly, as responsible for Smyth’s continuing immunity in South Africa, when the Bishop had, in fact, acted as promptly and as thoroughly as he could to report the abuse to the Anglican authorities in Cape Town, and to have it reported to the police. But it made a front page-story for the Telegraph.

The Telegraph remains a mouthpiece for anyone with a sensational accusation to make. Earlier this month, it had a pop at the Archbishop of Canterbury-elect, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, and you had to read a very long way down the piece to find that it had been brought by a man against whom the police had brought a restraining order in relation to his contact with the priest concerned, and that the allegations had first been made, investigated, and found groundless 11 years ago.

When the Church was judged only in private, by insiders, the results were sometimes terrible. But to be judged only in public and by outsiders is not a guarantee of justice either.