Man accuses the Anglican Church
A 52-year-old says the church wouldn’t investigate but, with the help of the dean of St George’s Cathedral, he faced his abuser
On a wintry Sunday afternoon last year, in Cape Town’s St George’s Cathedral, Gavin Hendricks* sat across from the priest who, he says, had sexually abused him for years as a child. Although the years of abuse ended more than three decades ago, the prospect of sitting face to face with his abuser filled Hendricks with dread.
“I was very anxious, but I had gotten to a place a few months ago where I just thought: ‘I need to approach this guy.’ You see, what happened then played a critical role in my life. I see the devastation that the abuse brought to my life, to my former marriage and also to relationships after that. At 52, I still struggle to form relationships with people,” says Hendricks today.
His anxiety was somewhat quelled by the presence of two people he refers to as his “safety net”: his brother and the dean of St George’s Cathedral, Michael Weeder.
Weeder, who had been providing Hendricks with counselling to better deal with the years of trauma, facilitated the meeting between Hendricks and the former priest whom he accuses of sexual abuse while heading the Cape Flats-based parish.
Weeder says that his role “was not so much counselling [Hendricks] as it was guiding him to the point of meeting [his abuser]”.
Following a recent open letter by South African author Ishtiyaq Shukri, detailing the sexual abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of priests in Kimberley, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town Thabo Makgoba issued a statement expressing the church’s “shock” and “distress” about the allegations.
Shukri’s letter was in response to Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu announcing his resignation as an ambassador for Oxfam, following a sexual abuse scandal at the international aid agency.
In his letter, Shukri wrote: “As far as I am aware, [Tutu] has never fully addressed [the] systematic and institutionalised sexual abuse happening in his own organisation [the Anglican Church].
“When Archbishop Tutu made his statement about Oxfam, saying that he is ‘deeply disappointed’ about the sex scandal, I was reminded of all the times I had been sexually abused by Anglican priests. Not that one ever needs much reminding; my own memories of the abuse I experienced are with me every day, and continue to impact my life on a daily basis. My memories dwell just beneath the surface of the veneer I have so carefully crafted to conceal them, covered in the shroud of silence I have draped over them since the first touch in 1978, when I was 10 years old.
By the time of Father Desmond’s inauguration as archbishop of Cape Town in 1986, I was 18 and still being abused. I was not the only one; there were others, too, many much younger. Today, I am speaking only for me, but my heart goes out to all of them.”
In response, Tutu’s office said he was “mortified to learn the suffering Shukri has described at the hands of priests”.
“Archbishop Emeritus Tutu has retired from public life, [but] he has the utmost faith in Archbishop Makgoba’s commitment to hold those clergy accused of wrongdoing to account, and support those whose trust in the clergy has been betrayed.”
Makgoba issued a similar statement. “The Synod of Bishops of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa was shocked and distressed to hear a report on Mr Shukri’s situation,” it read.
“In recent years, arising out of allegations of past abuse at church schools and institutions, I have established teams — including a lawyer, a psychologist, a priest and the head of the entity concerned — to investigate and advise me on these matters.”
Hendricks, however, finds the statement disingenuous. When he tried to report his abuse to the church, he was told to go to the police.
His former partner, Michelle Peters*, adds that she was “shocked” to read the church’s response to Shukri’s allegations, “because they knew about [Hendricks’s] case as far back as 2016”.
“[Reading that statement] brought tears to my eyes,” says Hendricks. “The nonchalant response of the church is disturbing to me. It seems that my pleas to highlight this to the church have gone unnoticed.”
In April 2016, Hendricks and Peters emailed Makgoba’s office, bringing to his attention Hendricks’s case and requesting a meeting with the archbishop.
The email written by Peters, which the Mail & Guardian has seen, reads: “[My partner and I] would like to meet you in an attempt to have his experience recorded in the annals of church history.
It is important to him — and for many others, we believe — to have someone hear what happened and to take necessary steps in order to contemplate justice and repair.
“He and I are under no illusions that he was the only child to be abused in this manner, nor do I believe it fair that the perpetrator continues to craft a life in the manner that he has, whilst men are reeling in the wake of his unconscionable assaults.”
Speaking to the M&G, Peters says: ‘“What we wanted was to have a conversation with the church about this, to draw attention to Gavin’s sexual abuse, for the church to have some sort of record of it and for there to be some kind of inquiry.”
They were never given a meeting. They were advised that Hendricks should lay a charge against his abuser and the church would then “take it from there”.
In responding to Shukri’s letter, Makgoba stated: “We usually urge victims of abuse to lay charges with the police and with church authorities. The police are often better equipped to investigate cases than we are, especially in cases which go back many decades and may have occurred in dioceses whose former leaders have died.”
Peters says that they were not advised to lay charges with church authorities. “The response we clearly received was to lay a charge at the police station,” she says.
Last year, a year after approaching the church and after decades of holding the secret of his abuse close to his chest, Hendricks walked into the Bishop Lavis police station to lay a charge against the former priest. There, he was told that, legally, he could not do so.
“It took a lot of courage to lay that charge. I was very intimidated and kind of reluctant, but I knew it was something I had to do. So, I was really disappointed. I remember thinking: ‘Why am I doing this? Shouldn’t I just let this whole thing go?’”
Yet in June 2017 the high court in Johannesburg ruled that section 18 of the Criminal Procedure Act, which states that, although crimes of rape may be prosecuted at any time, sexual abuse crimes lapse after 20 years, was irrational and arbitrary.
Acting Judge Clare Hartford invalidated the time limit for sexual offences and ordered that sexual offences could be prosecuted with-