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Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Brisbane - Safe Ministry?

On Sunday, the Courier Mail ran this story:

Call for church to protect little ones
QUEENSLAND’S Children’s Commissioner is calling on the Anglican Church to “show they have done enough” to protect children at a controversial Brisbane parish, which contains a convicted pedophile priest, an alleged pedophile and a practising priest with his own seedy past .

Commissioner Elizabeth Fraser said she was concerned “a convicted pedophile may be in positions of a church where there are not appropriate safeguards in place”.

The parish council at Fortitude Valley’s Holy Trinity Church has challenged reintegration protocols regarding convicted pedophile Robert Francis Sharwood – claiming they are “oppressive”.

“The church needs to provide leadership by demonstrating that they have done enough to protect vulnerable people, including children and young people,” Ms Fraser said.

“We are not aware of any breaches under our Act, but we are very concerned that a convicted pedophile may be in positions of a church where there are not appropriate safeguards in place.”

Anglican Church Brisbane Bishop John Parkes yesterday maintained the church was providing a safe environment for children and parishioners, but admitted he was disappointed the Holy Trinity parish council had challenged some of the protocols regarding Sharwood.

“The parish has not fully implemented the protocol and conversations with the parish are continuing, but they have fully implemented that part which deals with supervision,” he said.

“We are not soft on sexual abuse.”

Then yesterday we got this:

Anglican Church stance ‘fails children’, advocates say

ANGLICAN priests charged with child sex offences cannot be stopped from performing some church duties or kept away from children in the congregation until they are found guilty, Brisbane’s Anglican Dean says.

However child protection advocates say the stance is a breach of the church’s duty of care.

Brisbane Bishop John Parkes said priests who had been charged with child sex offences were immediately stood down from their position and their licence suspended, which meant they could no longer perform ministerial duties.

But, he said, alleged pedophile priests could not be stopped from interacting with children as part of the congregation nor from participating in church duties open to any lay person – such as singing in a choir, Bible readings or being part of the cleaning roster.

Until they were convicted, they were entitled to be considered innocent until proven guilty, Bishop Parkes said.

Innocent until proven guilty. That is, of course, a noble principle.

But allegations of sexual misconduct are slightly different.

Brisbane Diocese has a Professional Standards Unit with a good number of resources. From that page we find their protocol for dealing with complaints [pdf].

What do you do with someone who is alleged to have commited an offence? In the glossary of the protocol we read this:

Stand Down and Prohibition
If an allegation of sexual harassment or assault, or sexually inappropriate behaviour is nade against a worker, the worker may, after being given opportunity to be heard, be stood down from his/her position until the allegation has been dealt with after consideration of the following:

the seriousness of the conduct alleged in the information

the nature of the material to support or negate the allegations

whether any person is at risk of harm
the effect on the respondent, a relevant Church body or the Church

any similar allegation within the previous ten years

It seems to me that Bishop Parkes is confusing a principle of law (innocent until proven guilty) with the necessary safe standards that the Church is called to.

What readers should be aware of is that the Anglican Church in Australia has gone through a tough period on this question over the past few years. A while ago the ArchBishop in Adelaide didn’t respond appropriately to allegations of the abuse of children in his diocese. That event, and others, led to some fantastic work being done across Australia. The fruit of that work is seen in the Professional Standards Units in Dioceses across the country. The Sydney unit is particularly well structured and I’ve already been through 3 lots of training in these issues in my 4 years here.

As I’ve said before, the Church must be a safe place for offenders. Not so that they may be free to do what they wish but safe, in that they should know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. But the Church must also be safe for everyone, and be seen to be safe. Brisbane, it seems, is rapidly failing in this area by allowing a parish to challenge and set aside the protocols. And when a Bishop supports them in doing so, well it just makes onlookers roll their eyes. John Parkes’ ArchBishop is Phillip Aspinall, the Primate of Australia. Surely he can get the rector, the parish and the bishop to affirm the protocols and be transparently safe?

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