Social media anger at Church stops abuse victims speaking out

HOSTILITY and anger towards the Church on social media is stopping abuse survivors coming forward, the Church of England’s General Synod has heard.

Speaking in a debate about new plans to tackle sexual, spiritual and other forms of abuse in the Church, Canon Simon Butler, chairman of the House of Clergy, warned that church staff were being unfairly targeted for criticism.

He said that he had also been contacted by “a number of survivors” who “feel inhibited about sharing their stories publicly because of the public tone of the conversation”.

In one case, a woman had told him that she had tried to speak out about her experience on social media but had been shouted down “by one or two people, one a survivor”. “The silencing will cause further damage”, he warned.

He told the Church’s governing body, which is meeting this weekend in York, that he was “ashamed” of the language used to talk about people working for the National Church Institutions (NCIs), a group including Lambeth Palace and the Archbishops’ Council, some of which manage abuse complaints.

“If survivors have names, so do our staff,” he said. “I’m sometimes ashamed of the way that some members of Synod claiming to speak on behalf of survivors speak about our staff. Many of them are not practising Christians, when we talk about how the world sees the Church we should remember that. So we find ourselves in something of a standoff between disgruntled survivors and the NCIs, and the anger and frustration is palpable, chiefly on social media,” he said.

Mr Butler, who is the vicar of Mary’s, Battersea, urged bishops “heal the breach” with the group “rightly angry survivors”.

He was speaking in a debate over new measures which include introducing a new policy for clergy selection and the creation of an independent ombudsman to manage complaints about how abuse allegations have been dealt with. They were overwhelmingly approved by the Church.

Introducing the measures, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, the Rt Rev Peter Hancock, who is the Church’s lead safeguarding bishop, said it will spend £7million on safeguarding this year, up from £37,000 in 2013.

The debate came after a report released last month found that a review carried out by the Church into the scale of abuse had underestimated the figures.