I have today published a new parliamentary briefing on the draft Clergy Conduct Measure — the legislation intended to replace the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM). You can read the full briefing here.

This paper is addressed to members of Parliament’s Ecclesiastical Committee, the small but powerful body charged under the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919 with deciding whether a Church Measure is “expedient” before it proceeds to Parliament for approval.

Why does this matter?

Because Church of England Measures are not amendable in Parliament. If the Ecclesiastical Committee deems a Measure expedient, it typically goes through both Houses “on the nod.” The Committee is therefore one of the few constitutional safeguards between defective church legislation and automatic parliamentary approval.

Last year, the Committee found the Clergy Conduct Measure not expedient. Its primary — though not only — concern was that the draft legislation provided for tribunals to sit in private by default. Last month, the General Synod amended the Measure so that tribunals are to sit in public by default. That sounds like progress — and, formally, it is. But experience under the existing regime shows that statutory wording and operational reality are not always the same thing. The real question is this: what does “public” mean in practice?

Under the current CDM, tribunals have described decisions as being “handed down in public” even where:

• there was no public listing of the hearing;
• no notice to the press;
• no opportunity for observation;
• and the decision simply appeared online as a PDF after the event.

That is not open justice as most lawyers — or most ordinary people — would understand it.

The new Measure still leaves the crucial detail to Rules that Parliament has not seen. Those Rules will determine when hearings can be private, how listing works, what gets published, and what doesn’t. Senior figures at Synod have argued that Parliament should not see those draft Rules at all.

In other words, MPs are being asked to approve the skeleton of a system without seeing the operating manual.

That is not how constitutional law is supposed to work.

The briefing also addresses something far more troubling: how serious sexual misconduct has been framed under the current system.

In one case involving what in law amounted to statutory rape of a minor, the Deputy President of Tribunals, Judge David Turner KC, described the conduct as “an intimate sexual relationship.” The decision itself recorded the victim’s account of grooming, fear and horror. Yet the public-facing description suggested mutuality. A child cannot consent in law. Language matters.

In another case, allegations of grooming, sexual assault and indecent exposure were reframed in tribunal language around “romantic affection” from a vulnerable complainant. She had no standing to challenge that framing.

The Clergy Conduct Measure does nothing to change that imbalance. Complainants still cannot challenge charges. They cannot appeal determinations. They cannot require correction of misleading public language.

If a statutory disciplinary regime cannot accurately describe sexual abuse in its own determinations, and offers no mechanism for the affected person to challenge the wording, that is not merely poor drafting. It is a safeguarding failure.

The briefing also examines structural independence. Under the proposed system, investigators, assessors and tribunal administration sit within the Archbishops’ Council’s legal team. In response to a recent data request, it was stated that even the President of Tribunals sits within that structure.

Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights requires an independent and impartial tribunal. Independence is not a matter of personal integrity; it is a matter of institutional design.

The Ecclesiastical Committee has already once found this Measure not expedient. It was right to do so.

The amended version still leaves core safeguards to Rules not before Parliament. It still replicates the tribunal structure that has produced the very problems survivors have experienced under the CDM. It still relies heavily on assurances of transparency rather than embedding it in statute.

Parliament deserves to see how a disciplinary system will operate before it approves it.

Survivors deserve a system that does not soften abuse into “relationships” or reduce serious misconduct to opaque headings.

The Ecclesiastical Committee has a constitutional duty. I hope members will read the new briefing carefully and consider whether it can honestly be said that this Measure, as drafted, is expedient.

Because if Parliament approves it without clarity, the consequences will not be theoretical. They will be borne by real people navigating a system that once again operates behind the curtain.

• Click here to read the full briefing.

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The Bishop’s Disciplinary Tribunal for the Diocese of Southwark has now published both its determination of misconduct (17 December 2025) and its reasons on penalty (9 February 2026) in the latest case involving David Tudor.

The tribunal concluded unanimously that it was more likely than not that Tudor had penetrative sexual intercourse with a 15-year-old girl on 28 April 1984, having groomed her and exploited his position as her school chaplain, RE teacher and parish priest. The penalty imposed was Prohibition for Life, together with an indefinite injunction preventing contact.

The tribunal’s reasoning is careful and measured. Its findings are robust. Its recognition of the lifelong harm caused is clear.

But there are serious issues that arise from this case — not in the tribunal’s evaluation of the evidence, but in the language used to frame the complaint and in certain assumptions embedded in the process.

“An intimate sexual relationship”

Paragraph 2 of the determination reproduces the charge as framed by the Deputy President of Tribunals:

“…formed, while she was a child (i) An intimate sexual relationship and engaged in sexual acts with Z…”

Those words matter.

The tribunal found that the first sexual intercourse occurred when Z was 15; that it followed grooming; that Tudor locked the bedroom door; that he instructed her how to put a condom on him; and that her reaction was “absolute horror”. The penalty decision explicitly describes her as having been “groomed and abused”.

To describe those facts as “an intimate sexual relationship” is profoundly troubling.

The complainant was 15. Tudor was 29. He was her teacher, her school chaplain and her priest. She was isolated, seeking guidance, and deeply influenced by him. She described being unable to articulate how he “got inside my head”.

This was not an “intimate sexual relationship”. It was the sexual exploitation of a child by an adult in authority.

“Intimate relationship” suggests mutuality. It implies emotional reciprocity. It risks reframing abuse as romance.

The Deputy President is not a peripheral figure. He is the gatekeeper who decides whether complaints proceed to a tribunal and on what basis. The way he describes conduct shapes how that conduct is conceptualised institutionally.

We do not know how Z reacted to that wording. Under the current Clergy Discipline Measure — and under the proposed Clergy Conduct Measure — she has no mechanism to challenge it. Survivors have no standing to contest how senior judicial office-holders describe what happened to them.

Language shapes culture. Culture shapes safeguarding.

What the criminal law would call it

The determination speculates that Tudor was “most likely” charged in 1988 under section 6 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 (intercourse with a girl under 16) and notes that he was acquitted.

Why speculate?

Why was a certificate of conviction (or acquittal) not obtained from the Crown Court record to establish precisely what charge was laid?

More fundamentally, consider the contrast in terminology.

Under the 1956 Act, sexual intercourse with a girl under 16 was a criminal offence. Under the modern Sexual Offences Act 2003, the relevant language is “sexual activity with a child”. Where the adult is in a position of trust — such as a teacher — separate offences apply.

No criminal statute would describe this as an “intimate sexual relationship”.

The criminal law calls it unlawful sexual intercourse with a child. Or sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust.

The contrast with the Deputy President’s phraseology could not be clearer.

The question of “consent”

The determination notes that Z “has never said that the sexual intercourse when she was 15 was not consensual”. It records that she “did not particularly invite it” but “did not refuse”.

This framing is problematic.

Under both the 1956 Act and the 2003 Act, a child under 16 cannot lawfully consent to sexual intercourse with an adult. The law does not turn on whether she refused.

But beyond strict legality lies the reality of grooming.

The tribunal itself found grooming, imbalance of power, spiritual manipulation and significant psychological harm. Z described how he had persuaded her that sex “did not mean anything” and how she absorbed his framing because of who he was.

That is not consent in any meaningful safeguarding sense.

To focus on whether she has “suggested a lack of consent” risks importing adult paradigms into a child-abuse context. Modern safeguarding practice recognises that compliance under grooming and authority is not consent.

The tribunal ultimately concludes she was groomed and abused. That conclusion is right. But the language around consent sits uneasily beside it.

A “public session” no one could attend

Paragraph 1 of the determination states:

“We announced our decision in public session on 20th November 2025 and reserved our reasons.”

Yet there was no public listing of the tribunal. No notice enabling attendance. The Church issued a press statement on 24 November referring to the tribunal process, but the determination itself was not publicised until much later.

If a decision is truly announced “in public session”, the public must be able to know it is happening and attend.

Otherwise, “public” becomes a formal label without substantive openness.

Transparency is not achieved by assertion. It requires accessibility. And members of Parliament’s Ecclesiastical Committee will need to consider this when it considers the skeletal replacement for the Clergy Discipline Measure — the Clergy Conduct Measure — when it consider’s whether the text’s deferrence to the unpublished “Rules” mean public hearings in practice.

The broader issue

It is important to be clear: the tribunal’s factual findings are serious and balanced. Its penalty decision properly recognises the gravity of the abuse and the lifelong harm.

My criticism is not directed at the panel.

It is directed at the language used by the Deputy President — a senior judicial gatekeeper — to describe the sexual exploitation of a 15-year-old girl as an “intimate sexual relationship”.

That language does not reflect modern safeguarding understanding. It does not reflect criminal law terminology. And it does not reflect the tribunal’s own findings of grooming and abuse.

If those entrusted with gatekeeping clergy discipline conceptualise child sexual exploitation in such relational terms, the Church’s safeguarding culture still has work to do — as we all know it does.

The actions of David Tudor considered by the tribunal took place in 1984. The Archbishops’ Council will repeatedly say that things have changed. Yet this post challenges something that took place now. It is now, today, that child sexual abuse was described by a senior ecclesiastical (and secular) judge as an as an “intimate sexual relationship”. And it is this that the Church of England should address now.

Safeguarding reform is not only about structural change. It is about language, assumptions and power.

Words matter.

And in cases of child sexual abuse, precision is not optional.

The post Why does the Church of England describe child abuse as an “intimate sexual relationship”? appeared first on Church Abuse.

If you don’t want to read the full 1,245 words, go to the 287-word TL;DR summary

Yesterday’s votes at the General Synod on the Clergy Conduct Measure were inevitable. Once the Ecclesiastical Committee concluded that the Measure was “not expedient”, the Legislative Committee had little realistic choice but to amend clause 31(3) so that tribunals sit in public by default.

The amendment was always going to pass. It did. But inevitability does not mean that the underlying constitutional concerns have been resolved.

Indeed, the debate itself illustrated the deeper problem: how much of the system Synod and Parliament are being asked to approve is not contained in the Measure at all.

Parliament’s principal concern — but not its only concern

The Ecclesiastical Committee’s principal objection was the presumption of private hearings. The amendment reverses that presumption. That addresses the headline issue.

But the Committee raised further concerns: the absence of draft Rules, the lack of visibility over operational safeguards, and whether Parliament had sufficient information to judge expediency.

Those concerns were not technical. They go to the heart of the 1919 constitutional settlement.

Under the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919, the Ecclesiastical Committee must report on the Measure’s “nature and legal effect” and on its “expediency”. That duty cannot be discharged in the abstract. It requires understanding how the Measure will function in practice.

The Rules remain unpublished. The operational detail remains unseen. Parliament has still not been given what it repeatedly requested.

“Informal discussions” and constitutional silence

Speakers referred repeatedly to “informal” meetings between the Legislative Committee and the Ecclesiastical Committee. Such discussions may be convenient, but they are not provided for in the 1919 Act.

The 1919 Act establishes a formal legislative pathway: Measure, report, parliamentary scrutiny, approval motions in both Houses, and Royal Assent. It does not provide for private pre-legislative negotiation to substitute for formal scrutiny.

In UK constitutional culture, legislative scrutiny is conducted publicly. Evidence is published. Draft material relied upon by committees is ordinarily placed on the record. Opaque reassurance is not a substitute for visible accountability.

If draft Rules were shown formally to Parliament, they should be available publicly. If they were shown informally, Parliament should not be expected to legislate on that basis.

“Not within the function of the Ecclesiastical Committee” — and why that misses the point

Sir Robert Buckland told Synod: “Presenting a full set of rules to the Ecclesiastical Committee of Parliament risks usurping the vital role of this body in receiving, scrutinising and amending those rules before they go to Parliament.”

He continued: “Strictly speaking, the consideration of rules and other secondary legislation is not actually within the function of the Ecclesiastical Committee in any event.”

He further argued that rules: “can only ever be in draft as a matter of law, because the power to make them does not come into force until Royal Assent is given to the primary legislation.”

Formally, that has surface force. The Ecclesiastical Committee scrutinises Measures, not statutory instruments.

But that is not the Committee’s concern.

The Committee has stated that it must have sufficient information about how Measures are intended to work before it can declare them expedient. Where a Measure defers substantial operational content to Rules, those Rules are not peripheral. They are the mechanism through which the Measure takes effect.

The Clergy Conduct Measure is skeletal. It establishes offices, stages, and powers. But it leaves to Rules:

• the gateway requirements for complaints,

• the mechanics of investigation,

• the participation of safeguarding actors,

• the structure and content of reports,

• the detail of procedural protections,

• and the practical operation of hearings.

When Parliament is asked to determine whether legislation affecting legal rights is expedient, it must understand how that framework will function in practice.

If the practical safeguards, investigatory mechanics, confidentiality architecture and protections against vexatious complaints reside primarily in unpublished Rules, Parliament cannot realistically assess the Measure.

This is not Parliament intruding on Synod’s jurisdiction. It is Parliament attempting to discharge its statutory duty under the 1919 settlement. Framework legislation without operational visibility undermines meaningful scrutiny.

Why the CDM experience matters

This is not theoretical.

The Clergy Discipline Measure 2003 provides the cautionary example.

The Measure itself is consolidated and updated on legislation.gov.uk. But the Clergy Discipline Rules are not consolidated there. A composite version of the Clergy Discipline Rules is produced by the Archbishops’ Council. The Code of Practice and Statutory Guidance add further operational layers.

Over time, significant aspects of the discipline system have developed through Rules and Guidance rather than primary legislation:

• An “overriding objective” imported into the Rules.

• Confidentiality norms shaping pre-penalty proceedings.

• Publication removal periods set out in guidance rather than statute.

• A “minor complaints” process created in the Code but not expressly established in the Measure.

• Vulnerability assessments structured through Rules rather than primary text.

None of those features were debated in Parliament at the point of primary enactment.

The Clergy Conduct Measure is designed to replace the CDM. Its Rules, Code and Guidance will be drafted by the same institutional actors, through the same internal processes.

Parliament is therefore not being asked to approve a closed text. It is being asked to approve a framework that will later be populated by instruments it will never see.

That is precisely why the Ecclesiastical Committee requested draft Rules.

Uneven access and unanswered questions

Sir Robert Buckland also stated that “an indicative set of rules … about 75 per cent complete” had been supplied to members of the Ecclesiastical Committee.

Yet those Rules have not been published. Most members of Synod have not seen them.

If Parliament has seen them formally, they should be on the public record. If provided informally, Parliament should not be legislating on that basis.

The asymmetry is troubling: some appear to have access to material unseen by the majority.

A debate shaped from the top

Yesterday’s debate (you can read a transcript here) was front-loaded with senior office holders: the Bishop of Chichester, the Dean of the Arches, Sir Robert Buckland, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chair of the House of Laity — many members of the Legislative Committee itself.

When amendment 507 was debated, the Prolocutor of York spoke first. Immediately afterwards, the speech limit was reduced to three minutes.

The effect — whether intended or not — is that establishment voices frame the debate before ordinary members speak. That structure discourages dissent and narrows the space for scrutiny.

When scrutiny is already limited by the absence of draft Rules, this matters.

Public hearings “the norm” — but no apology

Several speakers emphasised that public hearings are the norm in other professions. That is correct. I have been arguing this for years. But for much of the Measure’s passage, Synod had been told the opposite.

The earlier assertion that private hearings were commonplace elsewhere has not been formally corrected or apologised for.

Transparency cannot be selectively rediscovered when Parliament insists upon it.

A rare correction — and a contrast

The Archbishop of Canterbury corrected an earlier misstatement during final approval. That immediate correction is to be welcomed. It reflects healthy parliamentary culture.

Such corrections should be routine. They should not require a speaker to be the subject of a formal complaint before realising a correction and apology is needed — as was the case with the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell last year.

The fact that a routine correction is worth noting says a lot about how the Synod is treated by senior officers of the Church.

Inevitable — but unfinished

The Measure now returns to Parliament with clause 31(3) amended.

But draft Rules remain unpublished. Informal discussions have substituted for visible evidence. Framework legislation continues to be advanced without operational transparency.

The Church has moved because Parliament required it to move.

That is necessity, not constitutional renewal.

TL;DR: Open hearings, closed details

Yesterday’s General Synod vote on the Clergy Conduct Measure was inevitable. Once Parliament’s Ecclesiastical Committee concluded that the draft Measure was “not expedient”, the Church had little choice but to amend it. The key change — reversing the presumption of private hearings — addresses Parliament’s principal concern.

But that does not resolve the deeper constitutional problem.

The Ecclesiastical Committee’s objections went beyond open hearings. It questioned the absence of draft Rules and the lack of visibility over how the system will operate in practice. Under the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919, Parliament must assess a Measure’s “nature and legal effect” and its “expediency”. That requires understanding how it will function in reality — not just reading its skeletal framework.

The Clergy Conduct Measure establishes offices and stages, but leaves critical operational detail to Rules that have not been published. Those Rules will determine how complaints are made, how investigations run, how safeguarding actors participate, what reports must contain, and how hearings function. If those safeguards and procedures are largely contained in unpublished Rules, Parliament cannot meaningfully assess what it is approving.

This is not theoretical. Under the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003, significant elements of the discipline system developed through Rules, Code of Practice and Statutory Guidance rather than primary legislation — including confidentiality norms, publication policies, vulnerability assessments and informal complaint processes. These were not debated in Parliament.

The Clergy Conduct Measure will be implemented by the same institutional actors using the same processes.

Parliament is therefore being asked to approve a framework whose real content will emerge later.

The Church moved because Parliament insisted. But draft Rules remain unpublished, informal discussions have replaced transparent scrutiny, and the core constitutional concern remains: legislation without operational visibility undermines meaningful accountability.

The post The real Clergy Conduct Measure is still behind the curtain appeared first on Church Abuse.

If you don’t want to read the full 2,450 words, go to the 300-word TL;DR summary

Why do the powers that be in the General Synod continue to mislead members about private or secret tribunal hearings being the norm?

That question sits at the heart of today’s Synod business on the Clergy Conduct Measure. Once again, members are being asked to take decisions on the basis of a claim that simply does not withstand scrutiny: that secrecy is standard practice in other disciplinary and professional tribunal systems, and that the Church of England is merely following an accepted model.

It is not.

It also matters to understand why this issue has resurfaced in today’s Synod agenda. The Legislative Committee is now asking Synod to reverse the presumption of private hearings and make public hearings the norm — but not because the Church’s leadership has suddenly accepted that it got this wrong. It is doing so because Parliament has forced its hand. The Ecclesiastical Committee has made clear that it will not allow the Clergy Conduct Measure to proceed to the House of Commons and House of Lords as expedient unless this change is made. In other words, Synod is being asked to fix a defect that Parliament has identified, not one that the Church was willing to acknowledge on its own initiative.

Crucially, the Ecclesiastical Committee did not stop there. In its scrutiny of the Measure, it also called for the Draft Rules to be provided to it — recognising, correctly, that the Rules will contain the real substance of the system: how complaints are handled, how hearings operate, what information is disclosed, and where secrecy is imposed in practice. The committee was plainly concerned that Parliament was being asked to approve a skeleton Measure while being denied sight of the operational detail that would determine how justice is actually done.

The Church’s response to that request has been to insist that Rules cannot be drawn up until after a Measure has been passed — language used repeatedly in evidence to the Ecclesiastical Committee. That position is wrong. It is contradicted by recent legislative practice within the Church itself. When Parliament considered the Abuse (Redress) Measure, the Legislative Committee did present Draft Rules to the Ecclesiastical Committee, precisely to allow informed scrutiny of how the scheme would operate in practice. The claim that this is impossible or improper is therefore not a matter of principle; it is a matter of convenience.

Repeating a false premise to Synod

In the report to today’s meeting, the Legislative Committee again relies on a partial transcript of Synod proceedings in which members were told that private hearings are the norm in other systems, including professional regulators such as the General Medical Council. That claim has been doing heavy lifting throughout the synodical process. It was used to neutralise concern, to truncate debate, and ultimately to justify making secrecy the default position in primary legislation.

But it is false. The constitutional principle of open justice means that tribunals exercising public functions sit in public unless there is a clear and specific justification for departure. Professional regulators do not reverse that presumption. They allow privacy by exception, not as a starting point.

This was not a matter of interpretation or opinion. Parliament was told exactly that when it examined the draft Measure.

Parliament was not persuaded

When the draft Clergy Conduct Measure came before the Ecclesiastical Committee, members from both Houses repeatedly challenged the presumption of secrecy.

One peer cut straight to the point, questioning why a Church tribunal exercising statutory authority should depart from ordinary standards of open justice at all. Another asked why victims, complainants, and the wider public should be expected to trust a system that begins from privacy rather than transparency.

Most strikingly, Danny Kruger MP, drawing explicitly on a written briefing I had provided to committee members, challenged the comparison with professional regulators. He quoted from that briefing to make the point that the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service lists hearings publicly as a matter of course, and that hearings are open unless specific reporting restrictions are imposed.

The committee’s scepticism was unmistakable. Members pressed Church representatives on why secrecy had been elevated into the Measure itself, rather than left to judicial discretion on a case-by-case basis. The underlying message was clear: Parliament did not accept that secrecy was either normal or necessary.

That scepticism ultimately found expression in the committee’s conclusion that the Measure was not expedient, precisely because it made private hearings the default.

“A very robust debate”? No, there wasn’t.

In oral evidence to the Ecclesiastical Committee, the Archbishops’ Council’s lawyer, Edward Dobson, attempted to reassure MPs and peers that Synod had consciously and robustly chosen this path. He told the committee:

“There was, during the course of the debate at General Synod, an amendment that sought to reverse that presumption… There was a very robust debate and the Synod decided to stay with this presumption.”

That statement mattered. It was designed to convey to Parliament that Synod had been fully informed, that arguments had been tested, and that secrecy was a deliberate, settled choice.

It was also untrue.

The amendment in question was never substantively debated. It fell because fewer than 25 members stood to allow debate to continue — after Synod had been told, incorrectly, that secrecy was commonplace elsewhere. A procedural lapse is not a debate, still less a “very robust” one.

Being called out — and doubling down

After the evidence session, I wrote to Mr Dobson asking him to correct the record. I set out why his description was inaccurate and reminded him that Synod members had been misled about other tribunal systems.

His response did not correct the record. Instead, it attempted to redefine events. He argued that an exchange limited to two speakers was sufficient to justify the description “robust”, and that the amendment lapsing: “in effect amounted to a decision by the Synod to retain the clause as drafted.”

That is simply wrong. Standing Orders explicitly distinguish between a debate on the merits and a failure to secure enough members to permit debate. One cannot be retrospectively converted into the other.

More tellingly, Mr Dobson’s response entirely avoided the central issue. He did not explain why Synod had been told that secrecy was normal elsewhere. Nor did he address the fact that the same false claim appeared in the written report of the Revision Committee.

When pressed again on that point, the silence remained

How many times does this need saying?

This was not the first warning, nor the second.

In July 2021, even before the Measure had been drafted, I prepared a formal briefing to Synod members on behalf of the Jill Saward Organisation, setting out why secrecy in clergy discipline had no sound legal basis, why open justice mattered, and how comparable tribunal systems operated transparently.

I have also repeatedly called out the false assertion in other posts here on churchabuse.uk, including:

• 25 July 2024 – “Archbishops’ Council lies about GMC in battle for secret clergy discipline tribunals”, documenting in detail how Synod had been misled about professional regulators.
  
  
• 15 August 2024 – “Archbishops’ Council ignored chances to fix safeguarding risk assessment loophole”, showing how opacity was being preserved by design.
  
  
• 15 January 2025 – “The General Synod and safeguarding – a look ahead to February’s group of sessions”, again correcting the false comparison with the GMC and explaining how professional tribunals actually operate.
  

Each time, the same claim resurfaced. Each time, it was wrong.

So why does it continue?

Which brings us back to the question that refuses to go away.

Why do the powers that be insist on giving Synod a misleading impression on this most fundamental point — about openness, justice, and trust — even after Parliament itself has exposed the claim as unsustainable?

And what does it say about the culture behind this Measure that, when falsehoods are identified and evidenced, the response is not correction, but entrenchment?

This matters because the issue is not simply one clause in one Measure. It is about whether Synod is being treated as a deliberative body capable of weighing evidence honestly, or as something to be managed through selective information and procedural sleight of hand. When members are told that secrecy is normal elsewhere, debate is truncated. When Parliament then exposes that claim as false, the response is not candour, but a reluctant concession forced by external scrutiny.

It also matters because secrecy does not protect justice; it protects systems. Victims and survivors do not gain confidence from processes that operate behind closed doors by default. Nor do clergy accused of misconduct benefit from a system in which outcomes are hidden, precedents are obscured, and public confidence is eroded. Open justice exists precisely to prevent error, arbitrariness, and institutional self-protection.

Synod is now being asked to correct a flaw that should never have been there in the first place — and only because Parliament has refused to wave it through. That should give members pause. If this much resistance has been shown to transparency at the level of primary legislation, what confidence can there be about how the system will operate once the detail is pushed into Rules, guidance, and practice directions beyond Synod’s effective reach?

So the question remains — and it deserves an answer. Why do the powers that be persist in giving Synod a misleading impression on so fundamental a point, even after being called out by Parliament? And until that culture changes, how can anyone have confidence that the Church’s disciplinary system is being designed in the interests of justice rather than institutional convenience?

TL;DR — Why Synod is still being misled about secret hearings

The General Synod is once again being asked to take decisions on the Clergy Conduct Measure on the basis of a claim that does not stand up: that private or secret tribunal hearings are the norm in comparable disciplinary systems. They are not.

This claim has been used repeatedly to justify making secrecy the default position in the Measure. Synod members were told that professional regulators — including the General Medical Council — routinely sit in private. That is false. Open justice is the constitutional norm. Other tribunals operate with public hearings as the default, allowing privacy only by exception.

The issue has resurfaced now because Parliament has intervened. The Ecclesiastical Committee has refused to allow the Measure to proceed to the House of Commons and House of Lords as expedient unless the presumption of secrecy is reversed. The Legislative Committee is therefore asking Synod to change course — not because the Church has acknowledged error, but because Parliament has required it.

The committee also demanded sight of the Draft Rules under the Measure, recognising that these will contain the real substance of the system. The Church’s response was to insist that Rules cannot be drafted before a Measure is passed. That claim is wrong. When Parliament considered the Abuse (Redress) Measure, Draft Rules were provided precisely to enable informed scrutiny.

During the Ecclesiastical Committee’s evidence session, members repeatedly challenged the secrecy default. Danny Kruger MP quoted directly from a briefing showing that professional tribunals are open by default. Parliament was not persuaded by assurances that secrecy was normal or necessary.

Despite this, the Archbishops’ Council’s lawyer told the committee that Synod had reached its position after a “very robust debate”. That claim is inaccurate. The amendment in question was never substantively debated; it lapsed after Synod had been misled about other tribunal systems.

Even when challenged directly, the response was not correction but defensiveness and entrenchment.

The question remains: why do the powers that be persist in misleading Synod on so fundamental a point — and what does that say about the culture behind this Measure?

The post Even after Parliament called it out, Synod members are still being misled about secret hearings appeared first on Church Abuse.

See also: When “No Case To Answer” means no accountability: Why the Tudor decision exposes a safeguarding system beyond repair

See also: Stephen Cottrell’s own words — and why they fail basic safeguarding and legal tests

See also: Authority invoked, lessons avoided: what the Archbishop of York’s statement still fails to confront

And if you want a good reminder of the case, listen to BBC Radio’s original File on Four investigation

The Church of England is currently engaged in two distinct processes arising from the David Tudor case. One is a disciplinary complaint brought under the Clergy Discipline Measure against the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, which was halted at a preliminary stage by the President of Tribunals under section 17 of the Measure. The other is a national, independent Safeguarding Practice Review, still ongoing, examining the Church’s handling of the case over many years and intended to identify learning to improve safeguarding practice and outcomes for victims and survivors.

The Safeguarding Practice Review (SPR) was commissioned by the National Safeguarding Team and the dioceses of Chelmsford and Southwark to examine the Church’s handling of the David Tudor case over many years. Its terms of reference make clear that Stephen Cottrell’s actions will be part of the review. The review began work in March 2025 and was originally expected to conclude within six months. A final call for evidence was issued in September 2025, after that initial timetable had already elapsed, and in November the Church announced a further delay, citing new police information.

The review is now expected to report in early 2026. Its stated purpose is not to re-litigate disciplinary findings, but to identify learning, assess safeguarding practice and decision-making, and improve outcomes for victims and survivors. At the time the Archbishop issued his statement, this review was ongoing and unfinished.

These two processes serve different purposes and operate to different standards. A Section 17 decision determines only whether a complaint proceeds to a tribunal; it does not make findings of fact after a hearing, and it does not exhaust wider questions of safeguarding leadership, institutional learning, or systemic failure. The difficulty with the Archbishop’s public statement following the Section 17 decision is not its timing, but the way it sought to present that procedural outcome as a point of closure while the broader safeguarding review remains unfinished.

By framing the Section 17 decision as definitive, and by invoking senior judicial authority — emphasising that the President of Tribunals is also a judge of the Court of Appeal — to reinforce that framing, the Archbishop’s statement did more than explain a procedural outcome. It shaped how that outcome would be understood — and, crucially, how it would be reported — at a point when a wider safeguarding process remains unfinished.

That risk was not theoretical. It materialised almost immediately in media coverage of the Archbishop’s statement. Within hours, mainstream outlets reported the outcome as a substantive exoneration. The Guardian ran the headline “Archbishop of York cleared of misconduct over handling of sexual abuse case”. Premier Christian News used“Archbishop of York cleared over handling of abuse case”. The Church Times headlined: “President of Tribunals finds no case to answer for Archbishop of York in David Tudor case”.

That framing did not arise from the President’s decision itself, which stopped the complaint at a preliminary stage and expressly acknowledged serious mistakes and regrettable decisions. It flowed from the Archbishop’s own characterisation of the outcome. The danger identified above — that a Section 17 threshold decision would be treated as final vindication, and would dominate the public narrative while a Safeguarding Practice Review remains ongoing — therefore moved rapidly from risk to reality.

Respect for the independent reviewer

It is important to be clear about what this critique is not. It is not a criticism of the independent Safeguarding Practice Review or of the reviewer herself. Sue Williams is a former senior police commander, appointed precisely because of her professional independence, experience, and credibility. The Terms of Reference make clear that the review is designed to examine evidence, identify good and poor practice, and apply professional judgment on the balance of probabilities in order to improve safeguarding outcomes.

There is no reason to doubt the reviewer’s integrity or competence. The concern lies elsewhere: in the institutional context in which she is being asked to work, and the signals being sent publicly by the Church’s most senior leaders while her work is ongoing.

Two foreseeable risks created by the statement

The Archbishop’s statement creates two distinct and foreseeable risks, both of which are grounded in recent Church experience rather than speculation.

First, the risk of dampening critique.

When a senior leader publicly frames a Section 17 decision as definitive exoneration, and explicitly associates that outcome with the authority of a senior judge, it inevitably raises the stakes for anyone who later offers criticism. An independent reviewer, however robust, cannot be unaware that any adverse findings may be portrayed as contradicting what has already been presented to the public as a quasi-judicial clearance. That does not mean the reviewer will soften conclusions — but it does mean the institutional climate has been made more difficult than it needs to be.

Second, the risk of delegitimising the review’s findings if they diverge.

This risk is not hypothetical. Following the publication of the Makin Review in the John Smyth case, there were public attempts by figures linked to the Archbishops’ Council and the National Safeguarding Team to question, contextualise, or resist aspects of the findings — particularly where they touched on reporting failures and senior responsibility. That experience shows how quickly review findings can be contested when they are uncomfortable.

By issuing a statement that strongly asserts “no possibility of misconduct”, the Archbishop has inadvertently provided ammunition for supporters to challenge the SPR’s conclusions if they are critical. If the review identifies failures in leadership, decision-making, or safeguarding culture, the response may not be “what can we learn?”, but “how can this be right if a senior judge said otherwise?”.

That dynamic undermines the very purpose of a Safeguarding Practice Review.

Narrative closure versus safeguarding humility

There is also a deeper problem of leadership judgment.

The Archbishop’s statement could have taken a different tone. It could have said, in effect: this is an interim procedural decision; serious concerns remain; an independent safeguarding review is ongoing; I will listen carefully to its findings. Instead, the statement prioritised reassurance — to himself and to the institution — over restraint.

That choice matters because safeguarding leadership demands humility in uncertainty. When processes are ongoing, particularly those designed to learn from harm, leaders are expected to resist the urge for premature validation. In this case, the Archbishop chose language that effectively said “I am in the clear”, rather than “this is one step, and more scrutiny is to come”.

The victims and survivors are once again placed second. Their experiences are acknowledged in words, but subordinated in practice to the need to assert reputational closure.

A continuing failure to grasp the structural problem

Most troubling of all is what the statement again fails to address: the structural safeguarding failure at the heart of the Tudor case.

The Archbishop repeats the claim that there was “no power” to remove David Tudor earlier. Yet he offers no recognition that this remains a live safeguarding defect, nor any indication that he intends to do anything about it. A bishop still cannot remove a priest in circumstances of known safeguarding risk. That is not merely a historical curiosity; it is a present danger. A Safeguarding Practice Review is precisely the mechanism through which such systemic failures should be confronted.

By presenting the disciplinary outcome as effectively final, the Archbishop’s statement diminishes the space for that necessary structural reckoning.

Another red flag — and a necessary conclusion

None of this requires an allegation of bad faith. But safeguarding is not assessed by intention alone. It is assessed by judgment, awareness, and the ability to place institutional learning and survivor wellbeing ahead of personal validation.

In that respect, this statement is another red flag. It shows a continuing tendency to conflate procedural outcomes with moral clearance, to close narratives prematurely, and to underestimate how power and messaging affect safeguarding processes still in train.

For a leader already criticised for failures of curiosity, reflection, and structural action, this is not a minor misstep. It is part of a pattern.

Safeguarding credibility depends not only on what leaders say, but on what they choose not to say while others are still doing the work of truth-finding. On that measure, the Archbishop’s statement falls short — and reinforces the case that his position is no longer tenable.

Leadership that repeatedly places reassurance before accountability cannot deliver a safer Church. At this point, the only responsible course left is resignation.

The post Archbishop Stephen Cottrell says he has been cleared — but the Tudor case is still under review appeared first on Church Abuse.

See also: When “No Case To Answer” means no accountability: Why the Tudor decision exposes a safeguarding system beyond repair

See also: Stephen Cottrell’s own words — and why they fail basic safeguarding and legal tests

See also: Archbishop Stephen Cottrell says he has been cleared — but the Tudor case is still under review

And if you want a good reminder of the case, listen to BBC Radio’s original File on Four investigation

The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, has issued a statement following the publication of the Section 17 decision in the David Tudor case. The tone is measured and pastoral, and the language carefully chosen. But read critically, the statement reveals not reflection, but entrenchment — and a continuing failure to address the structural safeguarding problem at the heart of the case.

A striking feature of the statement is its emphasis on the fact that the President of Tribunals is a “Court of Appeal judge”. That fact is true, but its use here is deeply misleading.

The President was not sitting as the Court of Appeal. He was acting as a single decision-maker under the Clergy Discipline Measure — an internal ecclesiastical process that lacks the core features that give Court of Appeal decisions their authority. There was no public hearing, no adversarial testing of evidence, no full disclosure of documents to the complainant, and no robust appeal mechanism. The President’s decision was final in practice.

By contrast, the Court of Appeal operates with openness, procedural transparency, and institutional accountability. Parties have access to the evidence relied upon. Decisions are reasoned in public. Appeals are possible. The Supreme Court has repeatedly stressed that transparency is not optional in serious adjudication — most notably in Cape Intermediate Holdings Ltd v Dring, which underlined the constitutional importance of public access to documents underpinning judicial decisions.

Invoking the judge’s title while ignoring the procedural limits of the process is a clear warning sign. It seeks to appropriate the authority of a senior appellate court without acknowledging that the safeguards which give that authority its legitimacy — openness, evidential transparency, adversarial testing, and effective appeal — are absent from the processes established under the Clergy Discipline Measure. When Sir Stephen Males sits as a judge of the Court of Appeal, he operates under fundamentally different rules, procedures, standards of openness, and mechanisms of accountability than when he sits as President of Tribunals in clergy discipline proceedings.

A second and more serious concern appears in the Archbishop’s closing paragraph. He states that safeguarding standards have “changed and improved significantly since Mr Tudor was allowed back to ministry in the 1980s”.

That framing is profoundly problematic. The actions under scrutiny were not taken in the 1980s, nor in a period of undeveloped safeguarding awareness. They were taken decades later, when trauma-informed practice, victim-centred safeguarding, rigorous record-keeping, and sensitivity to power imbalance were already well-established expectations across public bodies, charities, and the Church itself. By relocating the issue to an earlier safeguarding era, the statement implicitly lowers the standard against which the Archbishop’s own decisions are to be judged. That is not an incidental choice of words; it reframes contemporary decision-making as if it belonged to a different moral and professional landscape, and in doing so deflects responsibility for actions taken in a period when better was both known and expected.

Most telling of all is what the statement does not say. The Archbishop once again relies on the claim that there was “no power” to remove David Tudor earlier. Yet he offers no indication whatsoever that he recognises this as a continuing structural failure, let alone that he intends to do anything about it. A bishop still cannot remove a priest in circumstances like Tudor’s. That prohibition remains. The statement contains no acknowledgement that this is unacceptable for safeguarding, no commitment to legislative reform, and no recognition of his own responsibility, as a senior Church leader, to address it.

Other red flags remain. The statement reiterates that decisions were taken “in accordance with advice”, without grappling with whether following advice absolves responsibility. It re-centres the narrative on the eventual suspension in 2019, while avoiding the harder questions about earlier choices to confer authority and honour. And it presents regret as sufficient, without analysing why those regrets did not translate into different decisions at the time.

Safeguarding accountability is not about tone, titles, or reassurance. It is about systems, evidence, and the willingness to confront uncomfortable truths. On that test, the Archbishop’s statement suggests that the most important lesson of the Tudor case has still not been learned.

The post Authority invoked, lessons avoided: what the Archbishop of York’s statement still fails to confront appeared first on Church Abuse.

If you don’t want to read the full 1,400 words, go to the 300-word TL;DR summary

See also: When “No Case To Answer” means no accountability: Why the Tudor decision exposes a safeguarding system beyond repair

See also: Authority invoked, lessons avoided: what the Archbishop of York’s statement still fails to confront

See also: Archbishop Stephen Cottrell says he has been cleared — but the Tudor case is still under review

And if you want a good reminder of the case, listen to BBC Radio’s original File on Four investigation

Yesterday’s blog examined why the “no case to answer” decision in the David Tudor case is unsustainable. This supplement takes a different but equally important approach. It examines the Archbishop of York’s own words, as recorded in his response to the complaint, and measures them against four benchmarks:

1. good safeguarding practice and process;
2. his public statements to the media;
3. the duties imposed on charity trustees by law; and
4. the Church of England’s own safeguarding policies.

The difficulty is not tone, sincerity, or intention. It is process, evidence, and accountability.

Memory is not safeguarding: why records matter

In his response to the complaint, the Archbishop accepts overall responsibility for decisions affecting David Tudor but says that he has “no actual memory” of the processes by which Tudor was reappointed as Area Dean. He then adds that he is “sure” he would remember if safeguarding professionals had questioned the propriety of those reappointments — and that they did not.

This is not a minor point. It goes to the heart of safeguarding governance.

Safeguarding systems do not rely on personal recall. They rely on records. Where a known abuser is subject to ongoing restrictions; where risk is said to be “managed well”; and where decisions are taken to extend responsibility, authority, or visibility, safeguarding standards require a clear, contemporaneous documentary trail. That trail should include:

• written advice from safeguarding professionals;
  
• minutes or notes of meetings where risk and role suitability were discussed;
  
• documented consideration of alternatives and mitigations;
  
• explicit recording of victim and survivor impact; and
  
• a reasoned, recorded justification for the final decision taken.

These records are not optional, and they are not kept for their own sake. They exist precisely so that, when decisions later come under scrutiny, the organisation can demonstrate how safeguarding judgments were made, what information was considered, and why particular risks were judged acceptable or unacceptable.

The Archbishop repeatedly emphasises that Tudor’s risks were being “managed well”, with regular oversight and professional involvement. If that is correct, then robust records must exist. If they exist, they should have been used, cited, and relied upon in responding to the complaint and in reviewing safeguarding actions. A review that looks past records and instead relies on a failure of memory is not a meaningful review at all.

If such records existed but were not used, that raises serious governance questions. It suggests that record-keeping is treated as a compliance exercise rather than as a tool for accountability and learning. Records that are not used to inform review and scrutiny serve no safeguarding purpose.

If, on the other hand, those records did not exist, then the claim that risk was “managed well” is unsustainable. Risk management that cannot be evidenced is not risk management; it is assertion.

Either way, reliance on “I’m sure I would remember” falls far short of what safeguarding policy expects. It reduces safeguarding to personal confidence rather than demonstrable process — exactly the failure mode that safeguarding frameworks are designed to prevent.

The “I can’t remember” defence in law and public accountability

This problem is not unique to the Church of England. Courts and statutory inquiries have grappled repeatedly with the question of what weight can be given to an office-holder’s inability to remember key decisions.

The consistent legal and public-law position is clear: an inability to remember does not absolve responsibility, particularly where the individual held a senior role and where proper records should have existed.

In the UK Supreme Court and Court of Appeal, cases involving historic wrongdoing, institutional failure, or public authority decision-making regularly emphasise that responsibility does not depend on personal recollection. Courts look instead to contemporaneous documentation, established processes, and what ought reasonably to have been recorded. Where records are missing, that absence itself can support adverse inferences about governance and control.

The same principle is repeatedly applied in Independent Statutory Public Inquiries. From child abuse inquiries to major public disasters, inquiry chairs have consistently rejected “I can’t remember” as an adequate answer where the witness was responsible for systems, policies, or decisions. The expectation is not perfect recall; it is that proper records exist and can be examined. Where they do not, that absence is treated as a failure of governance.

Inquiries have also been explicit that senior leaders cannot rely on memory loss while simultaneously asserting that systems were robust and risks well managed. Those two positions are logically incompatible. Either the system was robust — in which case it should have produced records capable of scrutiny — or it was not.

Against that backdrop, the Archbishop’s reliance on lack of memory, coupled with personal assurance (“I am sure I would remember”), is not a neutral evidential position. It is a red flag. It indicates a safeguarding system that cannot demonstrate its own workings when challenged.

Administrative convenience over safeguarding priority

The Archbishop explains that he was reluctant to reappoint Tudor as Area Dean but did so because he was told that there was nobody suitable to replace him. That explanation is treated as mitigating context, but it is troubling when measured against safeguarding norms.

Area Dean is not a marginal role. It carries authority, influence, and symbolic weight. Where a known abuser is involved, safeguarding best practice requires positive justification for extending responsibility — not merely an explanation of difficulty.

Good safeguarding governance would expect to see a documented options appraisal: who else was considered, what interim arrangements were explored, whether the role could be left vacant, whether duties could be redistributed, and why each alternative was rejected. It would also expect explicit consideration of the safeguarding and trauma impact of maintaining a known abuser in a senior position.

Without such evidence, the explanation reads as administrative convenience taking precedence over safeguarding priority. That is precisely the cultural failure safeguarding regimes are designed to counteract.

“We knew he shouldn’t have been allowed back”

One of the most significant statements attributed to the Archbishop is this: “We knew he shouldn’t have been allowed back into ministry, but since he had been, and we couldn’t remove him, we were working hard… to manage and minimise the risk.”

This is an extraordinary admission. It acknowledges that Tudor’s presence in ministry was itself recognised as wrong, yet treats that recognition as a fixed constraint rather than a trigger for escalation.

Safeguarding leadership is not about accommodating acknowledged failure. It is about challenging systems that perpetuate risk. Managing risk while accepting that someone should not be in ministry is not safeguarding; it is containment.

This sits uneasily with the Archbishop’s public statements at the time, in which he insisted that “everything was done” to manage risk, that Tudor was not ignored or protected, and that action was taken as soon as legally possible. Those assurances demand evidential backing. Without records showing how victim impact was assessed and prioritised, they cannot be substantiated.

Charity trustee duties and structural neglect

As a diocesan bishop and later Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell was a charity trustee, subject to legal duties to act where he knew of serious risk to beneficiaries and of systemic governance weaknesses.

His own words show that he knew bishops lacked effective powers to remove clergy in high-risk safeguarding situations. That was not theoretical; it constrained his actions directly. Under charity law, identifying such a defect is not the end of the matter. Trustees are required to take reasonable steps to remedy known structural risks, including escalation and reform.

Instead, the inability to remove became an explanation rather than a problem to be solved. The status quo was accepted, even as its consequences were acknowledged. That is what neglect looks like in governance terms: not bad faith, but failure to act on known, ongoing risk.

The contrast with Hindley

The later case of Andrew Hindley at Blackburn Cathedral demonstrates that such paralysis was not inevitable. When safeguarding risk was treated as intolerable, the Church was prepared to contemplate radical structural options to bring the situation to an end. The lesson is not that a neat statutory power existed, but that senior leaders knew the system was not powerless when the will to act was present.

Policy versus practice

The Church of England’s safeguarding policies emphasise victim-centred practice, defensible decision-making, transparency, and accountability. Measured against those standards, the Archbishop’s own account reveals repeated gaps: reliance on memory rather than records; administrative convenience outweighing safeguarding priority; public assurances unsupported by evidence; and acceptance of structural incapacity without meaningful challenge.

None of this requires an allegation of bad faith. But safeguarding is not judged by intention. It is judged by process, evidence, and outcomes. Using the Archbishop’s own words, the conclusion is unavoidable: the actions described are not defensible when measured against safeguarding best practice, public assurances, charity trustee duties, and the Church of England’s own standards. That is why accountability cannot end with “no case to answer”.

• This post was amended on 31 January 2026 to correct the name of Andrew Hindley

TL;DR — Why the Archbishop’s own words matter

The latest decision in the David Tudor case concluded there was “no case to answer” in relation to the Archbishop of York’s handling of safeguarding concerns. This follow-up examines the Archbishop’s own recorded words — and finds that they do not withstand scrutiny when measured against safeguarding standards, charity-law duties, and the Church of England’s own policies.

In his response to the complaint, the Archbishop accepts overall responsibility but says he has “no actual memory” of key decisions, relying instead on personal assurance that he would remember if safeguarding professionals had raised concerns. That is not a safeguarding answer. Safeguarding depends on records, not recall. Where risk is said to have been “managed well”, there should be clear documentary evidence showing how decisions were made, what advice was given, what alternatives were considered, and how victim impact was weighed. If such records exist but were not used, both the records and the review process are deficient. If they do not exist, claims of good risk management cannot be sustained.

The Archbishop also explains that a known abuser was reappointed to a senior role because there was “nobody suitable” to replace him. Safeguarding practice requires positive justification for extending authority and status — not administrative convenience. There is no evidence of a documented options appraisal or of victim-centred decision-making.

Most strikingly, the Archbishop acknowledges that the individual “shouldn’t have been allowed back into ministry”, yet frames safeguarding as managing risk within that reality rather than challenging the system that allowed it. That sits uneasily with public statements insisting that “everything was done”.

As a charity trustee, the Archbishop had a legal duty to act on known, systemic safeguarding risks — including defects in the Church’s powers to remove clergy. Accepting those defects without meaningful challenge is neglect, not inevitability.

Using the Archbishop’s own words, the conclusion is unavoidable: the actions described are not defensible by safeguarding, governance, or legal standards. Accountability cannot end with “no case to answer”.

The post Stephen Cottrell’s own words — and why they fail basic safeguarding and legal tests appeared first on Church Abuse.

If you don’t want to read the full 1,500 words, go to the 479-word TL;DR summary

See also: Stephen Cottrell’s own words — and why they fail basic safeguarding and legal tests

See also: Authority invoked, lessons avoided: what the Archbishop of York’s statement still fails to confront

See also: Archbishop Stephen Cottrell says he has been cleared — but the Tudor case is still under review

And if you want a good reminder of the case, listen to BBC Radio’s original File on Four investigation

The decision by the President of Clergy Discipline Tribunals to dismiss the complaint concerning the Archbishop of York’s handling of the David Tudor case is not simply unpersuasive. Read carefully, it is unsustainable on the evidence, inconsistent with ordinary judicial reasoning, and fundamentally misaligned with contemporary safeguarding and charity-law standards.

This is not a matter of hindsight, nor of personal animus. It is about governance, accountability, and whether the Church of England’s disciplinary system is capable of responding credibly when safeguarding failures involve senior leaders.

On the evidence, it is not.

A threshold test quietly rewritten

Under the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003, the President of Tribunals must decide whether there is a case to answer. That is a gateway test. Its purpose is to filter out complaints that are frivolous, vexatious, or incapable of amounting to misconduct even if proved — not to determine the merits of contested safeguarding judgments.

Yet in this case the President reformulated the test. He stated that a matter should proceed only if there were a “real prospect”, taking the case at its highest, that a tribunal would find misconduct.

That formulation does not appear in the Measure or in the Clergy Discipline Rules (made by Statutory Instrument). No authority is cited for importing it. And its practical effect is decisive: it allows the President to weigh evidence, assess credibility, and determine reasonableness at the very stage designed to avoid that exercise.

Having raised the bar, the decision repeatedly acknowledges that:

• serious mistakes were made,
• decisions were “regrettable”,
• and the Archbishop “could and should have been more curious”.

Yet it concludes that no tribunal could reasonably find misconduct.

That is not neutral gatekeeping. It is a merits decision, taken by a single office-holder, without the testing, transparency, or adversarial scrutiny that a tribunal exists to provide.

Good faith treated as a shield against accountability

A central strand of the reasoning is that the Archbishop acted “in good faith”, relied on safeguarding advice, and was dealing with an “inherited situation”.

All of that may be true. None of it answers the charge.

In ordinary judicial, regulatory, and safeguarding contexts, good faith does not negate neglect. Senior office-holders are routinely found culpable where they:

• know of a serious risk,
• have authority or influence to mitigate it,
• but fail to act reasonably in light of that knowledge.

Misconduct under the Clergy Discipline Measure expressly includes “neglect or inefficiency in the performance of office”, a statutory definition the President expressly acknowledges, but then undermines in practice by treating good faith as effectively dispositive rather than as one factor to be weighed.

That is not how safeguarding accountability works in the NHS, education, charities, or regulated professions. It should not be how it works here.

Managed risk is not the same as suitability for authority or honour

The most serious flaw in the decision lies in its treatment of status and power.

The President accepts that the safeguarding restrictions imposed on David Tudor were so significant that they demonstrated he was not suitable to minister as an ordinary parish priest. Yet he simultaneously concludes that appointing and reappointing him as Area Dean, and conferring an honorary canonry, could not amount to misconduct because those steps were taken in accordance with policy and safeguarding advice.

That reasoning is incompatible with safeguarding reality.

Safeguarding agreements manage known risk. They do not confer endorsement. They do not render a person suitable for senior roles. And they do not neutralise the safeguarding significance of authority, visibility, and institutional honour.

Senior diocesan offices and honorary canonries are not administratively neutral. They signal trust. They enhance credibility. They expand access and influence. In safeguarding terms, they are risk amplifiers, not incidental decorations.

The assertion that any risk arose solely from Tudor’s parish role — and not from these additional offices — is not a finding grounded in evidence. It is an assumption, and an implausible one.

Speculation substituted for professional curiosity

The decision concedes that a civil settlement in 2012 ought to have prompted greater curiosity, because it suggested the possibility of additional victims.

That concession should have been decisive. Instead, it is neutralised by speculation: the President reasons that if Tudor had been asked further questions, he would likely have denied further offending, and therefore nothing would have changed.

That is not judicial reasoning; it is conjecture.

Safeguarding practice does not excuse a failure to inquire on the basis that the answers might be unhelpful. The duty is to ask, to reassess risk, and to strengthen safeguards when new information emerges — not to assume the outcome in advance.

“Independent judge” — but not institutionally independent

In his separate decision concerning publication, the President described himself as an “independent judge”.

That description is, at best, incomplete.

The President of Clergy Discipline Tribunals is paid by the Archbishops’ Council. The Archbishop of York is not a peripheral figure in that body: he is its chair and president.

This is not an allegation of bad faith. It is a statement of structural conflict of interest. In any other safeguarding or regulatory system, the appearance of independence would be regarded as compromised where a decision-maker is funded by, and institutionally connected to, the leadership of the organisation whose conduct is under scrutiny.

Independence is not only about personal integrity. It is about structure.

Charity law, trustee duties, and neglect of a known structural risk

As Bishop of Chelmsford and later Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell occupied roles carrying not only episcopal responsibility but formal charity trustee duties.

He was — and remains — a member of the House of Bishops by virtue of both offices. The members of the House of Bishops are collectively at the heart of safeguarding policy, legislative reform, and governance oversight.

In addition, by virtue of his office as Archbishop of York, he became not only a member, but also the chair and president of the Archbishops’ Council. The Council is the Church’s principal executive charity body. It is responsible for proposing legislation, coordinating safeguarding policy, and bringing draft Measures to the General Synod.

Recent correspondence from the Charity Commission to General Synod members and diocesan bishops make those trustee expectations explicit.

Trustees must not merely respond to individual incidents. They must act where they know of systemic or structural risks that expose beneficiaries to harm.

The David Tudor case revealed exactly such a structural risk. The Archbishop repeatedly relied on the assertion that he had no legal power to remove or suspend a priest in circumstances where serious safeguarding risk was known and accepted.

That difficulty was not theoretical. It affected him directly. It constrained his own decision-making. And it shaped the outcomes in this case.

Crucially, that meant he also knew — or ought to have known — that every other diocesan bishop was subject to the same incapacity in comparable circumstances.

In charity-law terms, this is the decisive point. A trustee who becomes aware of a governance or legal defect that prevents a charity from protecting beneficiaries is expected to take reasonable and proportionate steps to remedy that defect, not merely to accommodate it.

Those steps include escalation, reform, and — where necessary — legislative change.

As a member of the House of Bishops and chair and president of the Archbishops’ Council, Stephen Cottrell was uniquely positioned to act. He could have pressed for, and required the initiation of, draft legislation to be brought before the General Synod to address the inability to remove or suspend clergy in high-risk safeguarding cases. He could have insisted that the structural weakness exposed by the Tudor case be remedied for the whole Church.

He did not.

The likely defences are predictable: that legislation takes time; that responsibility is collective; that safeguarding reform is complex. None withstand scrutiny. Trustees are not required to guarantee outcomes, but they are required to take reasonable steps when serious risks are known. Here, the risk was known, personal, systemic, and ongoing — and the status quo was accepted.

Measured against Charity Commission expectations, that is neglect of trustee duty: knowledge of a serious safeguarding risk combined with a failure to take reasonable steps to eliminate or mitigate it.

A disciplinary system not fit for purpose — and not fixed by reform

This case exposes a deeper truth. The Clergy Discipline system is not fit for purpose in serious safeguarding cases.

Threshold decisions are opaque. Power is concentrated in a single office. Conflicts of interest are structural. And senior leaders are effectively insulated from scrutiny by design.

Nor will this be cured by the proposed Clergy Conduct Measure. Despite changes in language, the critical architecture remains: a powerful president, a high gateway threshold, and limited transparency. In cases like this, the “tribunal” is largely theoretical.

Two unavoidable conclusions

Two conclusions follow inexorably.

First, the Clergy Discipline system — and its proposed replacement — cannot deliver credible accountability in serious safeguarding cases. It is structurally flawed and institutionally defensive.

Second, the position of the Archbishop of York is untenable. Not because of malice or bad faith, but because he presided over — and failed to correct — a system that placed institutional continuity above safeguarding integrity.

Leadership requires more than regret. It requires responsibility.

In this case, responsibility now requires resignation.

TL;DR — Why the Tudor decision matters

A senior Church of England disciplinary decision has concluded that there was “no case to answer” in relation to the Archbishop of York’s handling of the David Tudor safeguarding case. That conclusion does not withstand scrutiny.

The President of Clergy Discipline Tribunals rewrote the legal threshold he was required to apply. Instead of asking whether there was a case to answer — the statutory test in the Clergy Discipline Measure — he applied a stricter, invented standard: whether there was a “real prospect” that a tribunal would ultimately find misconduct. That test appears in neither the Measure nor the Clergy Discipline Rules. It allowed him to decide the merits himself, at the gateway stage, without a tribunal ever hearing the case.

The decision repeatedly acknowledges serious failings: that mistakes were made, that decisions were “regrettable”, and that the Archbishop “could and should have been more curious” when new information suggested the possibility of further victims. Yet it then treats “good faith” as effectively dispositive — a near-complete defence — despite the fact that misconduct under the Measure expressly includes neglect or inefficiency in the performance of office. In safeguarding and regulatory contexts, good faith does not cancel neglect.

Most troubling is the treatment of power and status. The decision accepts that safeguarding restrictions on Tudor were so serious that he was not suitable for normal parish ministry — yet concludes that appointing and reappointing him to senior diocesan roles, and conferring an honorary canonry, could not amount to misconduct.

That reasoning ignores a basic safeguarding principle: status, authority, and honour increase trust and influence, and therefore increase risk. Managed risk is not the same as suitability for leadership.

The President also describes himself as an “independent judge”, but the office is funded through the Archbishops’ Council, which is chaired and presided over by the Archbishop of York. That is not an allegation of bad faith, but it is a clear structural conflict of interest that would be unacceptable in most safeguarding or regulatory systems.

Finally, the case exposes a deeper governance failure. As Bishop of Chelmsford and later Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell knew that bishops lacked effective legal powers to remove clergy in high-risk safeguarding cases. That problem affected him directly. It also affected every other bishop. As a senior charity trustee and chair of the Church’s main executive body, he was in a position to press for legislative reform to fix that defect. He did not. Under Charity Commission standards, knowingly accepting a serious, systemic safeguarding risk without taking reasonable steps to remedy it amounts to neglect of trustee duty.

Two conclusions follow. First, the Church’s disciplinary system is not fit for purpose in serious safeguarding cases — and proposed reforms will not fix that. Second, the position of the Archbishop of York is untenable. Not because of malice, but because accountability, safeguarding credibility, and public trust now require responsibility to be taken.

The post When “No Case To Answer” means no accountability: Why the Tudor decision exposes a safeguarding system beyond repair appeared first on Church Abuse.

The criticism I make of the Church’s handling of this safeguarding complaint does not arise from a single decision, nor from a single failure of judgment. It is the product of a sequence of complaints, processes and refusals stretching back to 2019, in which the Church of England — at various levels — repeatedly chose institutional convenience over clarity, learning and pastoral responsibility. In doing so, senior Church figures not only kept the truth hidden; they conspired — whether knowingly or through systematic incompetence — to concoct lies.

At every stage, senior figures spoke about safeguarding culture and lessons learned. At every stage where those words required action, they failed to act.

The most recent and most visible failures are those of the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, and the Archbishop-Elect of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally. Both refused to apologise and refused to commission an independent lessons-learned review when given the opportunity to do so, even though such a review was promised to the victim in this case at least as far back as 2021.

That refusal was not an isolated lapse. It was the endpoint of a pattern that runs through the handling of three distinct complaints under the Clergy Discipline Measure, and through the reasoning of the President of Tribunals, who declined to take further action against the Archdeacon of Nottingham.

Three complaints, one pattern

The first complaint was made in 2020 by the Archdeacon of Nottingham, Phil Williams, against the Revd Anthony Giles, Rector of Epperstone, Gonalston, Oxton and Woodborough. The underlying facts were serious. A parishioner had disclosed sexual abuse, indecent exposure and coercive sexually explicit communication by her vicar.

She approached the Church with a straightforward question: “This is what my vicar did — is that OK?” She was told by safeguarding officers that it was sexual assault and an abuse of position of trust.

Yet when the matter reached senior ecclesiastical figures, it was reframed. After reading the narrative put forward by the archdeacon, the Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham, Paul Williams (no relation), described the complaint as concerning “an intimate relationship outside of marriage”. The Deputy President of Tribunals, Judge David Turner, described the behaviour as “consensual”. That reframing minimised the safeguarding dimension and set the tone for what followed.

What was reported as sexual assault and indecent exposure — and investigated as such by Nottinghamshire Police — was treated by the Church as a priest not seeking safeguarding advice when he was aware that a vulnerable woman had romantic feelings towards him. 

The actual complaint that Mr Giles had to face in his clergy disciplinary tribunal was:

The actual complaint that Mr Giles had to face in his clergy disciplinary tribunal was that:

1. In 2015, at a time when he was aware of feelings of romantic affection towards him from Ms AB, a vulnerable woman, he:
   1. failed to seek assistance or advice from the diocesan safeguarding team as to how to respond appropriately to her; and
   2. in failing to seek assistance or advice, placed the concerns of his own reputation above the pastoral needs of Ms AB; and
2. During 2017, he:
   1. sent text messages to Ms AB which were inappropriate in frequency and content; and
   2. in doing so, failed accordingly to observe or maintain appropriate professional boundaries.

This was a complete distortion of the complaint, but Ms AB was unable to challenge it. She tried: she complained to the bishop, to the archdeacon, to the diocesan safeguarding team, to the national safeguarding team, to the Archbishop of York, to anybody who would listen. But nobody did listen. She had no voice in the Church’s process. No victim has a voice in the Church of England’s safeguarding processes. They are silenced.

That complaint resulted in Mr Giles being prohibited from acting as a priest for six months — but he was not removed from office. This, despite the statutory penalty guidance putting it the other way around: a tribunal should decide whether a priest should be removed from office and then decide whether it should also prohibit the priest from ministry, either for a limited term or permanently. Looking through the published tribunal judgments, this is the only case where a priest received a prohibition from ministry but who remained in office. In effect, his punishment was a six-month paid holiday, on top of the time he previously spent suspended pending the outcome of the tribunal.

The Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham and the Archbishop of York have both expressed privately to Ms AB that they do not want Mr Giles to continue in ministry. But neither of them has done anything to bring about his removal from ministry. He continues to “serve” his parishes to this day. Meanwhile, Ms AB has been forced to leave her home and relocate to another town, and has rarely stepped foot in a church as a result of her treatment at the hands of the Church’s processes (Matthew 18:6 springs to mind).

The second complaint was brought by me in 2020/21. It concerned the Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham’s handling of the case, including his decision to question the victim himself, contrary to recommendations in previous lessons-learned reviews, his failure to ensure appropriate pastoral care was provided to the victim, and his mishandling of safeguarding responsibilities. That complaint was rejected by the Archbishop of York.

In a covering letter dated 18 December 2020, sending the bishop’s response to the complaint to the archbishop, the bishop’s solicitor said: “the bishop would want to extend an unreserved apology to [the victim] if she felt that the support she received was inadequate.” Despite that assurance, the bishop has never apologised to the victim. He apologised for what Anthony Giles did, but not for his own actions, nor for the inadequacy of the support she received.

The third complaint was made by me in August 2025. It concerned the Archdeacon of Nottingham’s continued refusal to provide the victim with a copy of his original complaint and the misrepresentation of her account within Church processes. This complaint reached the current President of Tribunals, Sir Stephen Males.

He decided to take no further action. His decision, and his reasoning, expose how deeply embedded these problems are. It is this third complaint that this blog post explores.

“It is not clear”: uncertainty as a shield

The President of Tribunals’ decision notice halting my complaint about the Archdeacon of Nottingham relies heavily on a single device: the assertion that key matters are “not clear”. That phrase appears repeatedly and does crucial work. It allows the decision to avoid grappling with evidence without having to reject it.

One example is central. The President states that “it is not clear whether Ms AB was ever told of” the earlier decision of the Deputy President. He goes on to say: “It would appear that she was not told because, if she had been, she and the Complainant [me] would have understood that the Respondent had included her allegations in the 2020 Complaint and the present Complaint might have been avoided. Plainly she ought to have been told and, if she was not, that was a failing.”

Yet the evidence before him was clear because in paragraphs 21–22 of her witness statement, Ms AB explains that the Deputy President’s decision notice was sent to her, that she read it, and that it caused her significant distress.

She describes the sense of being blamed and disbelieved, and the way the wording in the Deputy President’s decision notice compounded the earlier harm. This is direct, first-hand evidence. The Deputy President’s decision could not help her to understand that the archdeacon had included her allegations. Her allegations were of sexual assault. Sexual assault can never be described as “consensual”.

The President does not say that he rejects Ms AB’s statement. Nor does he explain why it should be regarded as unreliable. He simply declares the matter “not clear”.

That approach recurs elsewhere. The President says it is “not clear” what the complainant was told by safeguarding officers when she first raised her concerns, despite her statement setting out a consistent account: that she was told the conduct amounted to sexual assault and abuse of trust. He says it is “not clear” whether procedural handling caused harm, despite detailed evidence describing the impact on her mental health, family life and faith.

In another passage, the President treats references in the chronology to instructions attributed to the Bishop as of unclear basis, despite those references being identified in the witness statement and supported by an annexed chronology quoting dated instructions that were provided to me (the complainant) by the bishop — and my statement set out the documentary basis for those claims. Again, no evaluation is offered; uncertainty is simply asserted.

The most troubling aspect of this reasoning is not disagreement with the complainant’s case, but the absence of analysis. The decision does not weigh evidence or explain why it fails to meet the required standard. Instead, “not clear” becomes a full stop. It functions as a way of preserving institutional comfort while avoiding accountability.

An aborted judicial review

I had intended to bring a judicial review against the President’s decision. The concern was not merely the outcome, but the manner in which evidence appeared to be disregarded rather than evaluated. That is not what should be expected of a decision-maker who also serves as a judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales.

I engaged in pre-litigation correspondence with the Archbishops’ Council and the Office of the President of Tribunals, primarily through their external solicitors, Sharpe Pritchard LLP.

Ultimately, I did not progress the application for a judicial review — not because my concerns lacked substance, but because the potential remedy available to the court was so limited. If the court had found that the president’s decision was unlawful, the most it could have ordered was a fresh decision by the same decision-maker.

The court could not substitute its own assessment of the evidence. Faced with the prospect of further delay, further exposure and the likelihood that the same focus of protecting the Church would be repeated, I did not proceed to litigation.

That context matters. When a system concentrates so much power in a single decision-maker, and offers so little meaningful oversight, no ability for challenge or appeal, and no ability for those decisions to be scrutinised by being made in the open, the quality of that decision-maker’s engagement with evidence becomes critical. In this case, the repeated invocation of uncertainty in the face of specific, sworn evidence undermines confidence in the process itself.

A missed opportunity for apology and learning

It was against this background that the Archbishop of York and the Archbishop-Elect of Canterbury were approached. The request made to them was modest and reasonable. It had two parts: an apology acknowledging the harm suffered and the Church’s failures in responding to it, and the commissioning of an independent lessons-learned review as had been promised in 2021. The request was, in effect, an invitation for the Church to honour its own commitments.

Both leaders refused.

The wording of their responses was strikingly similar.

On 10 October 2025, the Archbishop of York wrote:

“It appears you are proposing litigation against the Archbishops’ Council. It would be inappropriate for me to enter into dialogue with you over this, and therefore … I won’t be answering your questions, or any further questions which relate to or arise in relation to any claims you may make.”

On 27 October 2025, the Archbishop-Elect of Canterbury replied:

“It appears that you are proposing litigation against the Archbishops’ Council. And whilst I am not yet a member it would be inappropriate for me to enter into dialogue with you over this, and therefore … I won’t be answering your questions, or any further questions which relate to or arise in relation to any claims you may make.”

Both of the Church of England’s most senior bishops stated that because litigation was proposed, it would be “inappropriate” to enter into dialogue, and therefore no questions would be answered. No apology was offered. No review was commissioned. Engagement ceased.

That position was not legally compelled. An apology does not amount to an admission of liability. Commissioning a lessons-learned review does not prejudice legal proceedings. These are well-established points, repeatedly made in safeguarding reviews — including safeguarding reviews commissioned by the Church of England, purportedly so they could learn lessons from past mistakes and not repeat those mistakes again. The refusal was a choice.

Words without weight

What makes that choice so damaging is the contrast with the public statements of those involved. The Archbishop of York has spoken eloquently about humility, repentance and the need for the Church to listen to survivors. The Archbishop-Elect of Canterbury has emphasised cultural change and the importance of trust. Those words are on the record. They are frequently cited as evidence that the Church has learned from past failures.

Yet when faced with a real case demanding precisely that response, both leaders retreated behind legal process. They chose distance over dialogue, silence over apology, and delay over learning.

This is precisely the pattern identified and criticised in countless lessons-learned reviews: fear of litigation inhibiting apology; process displacing pastoral care; institutional defensiveness compounding harm. The tragedy is not that the Church was warned. It is that those warnings were ignored when they mattered.

Conclusion: lessons ignored, not learned

Taken together, these events form a coherent picture. A safeguarding complaint reframed as consensual. Concerns about handling dismissed. Evidence treated as “not clear” despite being detailed and specific. Apology withheld. An independent review promised and not delivered. Senior leaders stepping back when moral leadership was required.

The Archbishop of York and the Archbishop-Elect of Canterbury are not responsible for every decision taken along the way. But they are responsible for how they responded when the failures were laid before them.

They had the authority — and a moral duty — to apologise. They chose not to.

They had the authority — and under current guidance, I would argue, an obligation — to commission an independent review. They chose not to.

Safeguarding reform cannot rest on speeches and statements alone. It is tested in moments like this, when apology is uncomfortable and learning carries risk. In this case, the Church’s most senior figures failed that test.

Until that failure is acknowledged, the promise that lessons have been learned will remain exactly that: a promise, repeated, but not kept. And for this victim — as for so many victims of the Church of England’s safeguarding processes — the truth remains untold.

And the sad fact remains: when Stephen Cottrell and Sarah Mullally were confronted with a moment requiring moral leadership, pastoral courage and institutional honesty, they both chose to walk by on the other side. They opted for silence, refused to apologise, declined to commission the promised independent review and then withdrew entirely.

Neither has contacted me, nor the victim, since it became clear that the proposed judicial review would not proceed.

• This post was edited on 27 January to correct some typographical errors, including the name of the Archdeacon of Nottingham.

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The Archbishops’ Council’s latest safeguarding paper to the General Synod is not merely inadequate. It is offensive.

Offensive not because it is clumsily written, or because it lacks polish, or even because it is complacent in tone. It is offensive because it has been produced, approved, and circulated as if the last six months had not happened at all.

The paper, a GS Misc report authored by the Council’s Director of Safeguarding, Alexander Kubeyinje, and dated “February 2026”, is not due to be debated. It is not scheduled for discussion. It will simply be placed before Synod and noted. And it offers a breezy account of progress, improvement, and confidence in direction at precisely the moment when confidence has collapsed.

That dissonance is not accidental. It is institutional.

Since the last meeting of General Synod, the Charity Commission has issued a formal rebuke to the Archbishops’ Council itself and official warnings to two Church of England charities. Those warnings are unprecedented in the modern history of the Church. They are not misunderstandings. They are regulatory findings of mismanagement in safeguarding.

In the same period, it emerged that an abuse survivor, known publicly as “N”, had a complaint about the Bishop of London improperly set aside by Archbishops’ Council staff, in direct contravention of the Church’s own safeguarding rules, requiring the matter to be reopened. That is not historic failure. That is recent practice.

At the same time, Parliament has rejected the draft Clergy Conduct Measure, citing fundamental concerns about secrecy, lack of transparency, and the inability to assess safeguarding consequences. Questions are now being asked in Parliament about whether the Archbishops’ Council is capable of handling safeguarding at all.

And yet, the Director of Safeguarding reports to Synod with a paper that reads as if none of this exists.

So the question must be asked plainly: is this institutional blindness? Or is it institutional contempt?

A report that gaslights survivors

Safeguarding reports are not neutral documents. They do not land in a vacuum. They are read by survivors, by victims, by advocates, by campaigners, and by those still trapped in Church processes. To write, at this moment, a report that foregrounds how well things are going is not merely tone-deaf. It is actively harmful.

It tells survivors that what they have experienced does not matter. It tells them that regulatory findings of failure are footnotes. It tells them that Parliament’s rejection of Church legislation is an inconvenience, not a warning.

If this is the best the Archbishops’ Council can produce after the last year, then the problem is not communications. It is governance.

The Director of Safeguarding may be the author, but this document did not emerge unexamined. It would have been read by senior staff. It would have been cleared. It would have been authorised for circulation. And that means it passed across the desk of the Secretary General, William Nye.

William Nye is not a bystander in this. He is not a junior official. He is the chief executive of the Archbishops’ Council and the secretary to its trustees. He understands governance. He understands regulatory risk. He understands, better than most, how this paper would be received by survivors and by the wider public if they were aware of it.

Which raises an unavoidable question: how did this paper come to be approved?

Blindness, cynicism, or something worse?

There are only three plausible explanations.

The first is that the Director of Safeguarding is so institutionally embedded that he is genuinely unable to see the scale of failure around him. That would be alarming in itself.

The second is that the Archbishops’ Council as a whole is institutionally blind: so insulated from consequence that regulatory warnings, reopened complaints, and parliamentary rejection barely register.

The third is more troubling still: that this paper is a deliberate act of defiance. A not-very-subtle message to Synod that says, in effect: things are bad; we know they are bad; you know they are bad; we know that you know they are bad — and we are going to carry on as if nothing is wrong.

If that is the case, then this is not incompetence. It is contempt.

And if the Secretary General knowingly allowed this paper to go forward, then responsibility rests with him as much as with its author.

Throwing someone under the bus?

There is another possibility, which should trouble Synod deeply.

Is this paper designed to fail?

Is the Alexander Kubeyinje being positioned as the public face of a narrative that senior leadership knows is indefensible — a convenient figure to be sacrificed when the backlash inevitably comes? That would be a familiar pattern: responsibility pushed downwards, accountability retained upwards.

If that is what is happening, it is cynical in the extreme. And if it is not, then the alternative is no less damning: that senior leadership genuinely believed this report was appropriate.

Either way, it speaks to a catastrophic failure of judgment at the centre of the Church.

Where are the trustees?

The Archbishops’ Council is a charity. Its members are trustees with individual legal duties: duties to act prudently, to avoid harm, and to ensure that the charity does not mislead those it affects.

So trustees must now ask themselves some very direct questions.

Did they know that the Director of Safeguarding intended to present such a report to Synod at this moment?

Did they know that the Secretary General would approve its circulation?

Did they consider the risk of harm to victims and survivors from a paper that presents a falsely reassuring picture?

And if they did not know — why not?

Trustees cannot hide behind process. Regulatory warnings have already made clear that passive governance is not acceptable. Silence is not neutrality. It is complicity.

Time for resignations

At this point, calls for “learning lessons” are an insult.

If a safeguarding director can produce a report this detached from reality, then he should not remain in post. If a Secretary General can approve its distribution in the aftermath of regulatory rebuke and parliamentary rejection, then he should not remain in post either.

This is not about punishment. It is about credibility.

Safeguarding cannot be led by people who are unable — or unwilling — to acknowledge failure when it is staring them in the face. It cannot be overseen by governance structures that respond to crisis with denial.

Resignations, or dismissals, are not acts of aggression. They are acknowledgements that leadership has failed and that trust has been broken.

Synod should not let this pass

General Synod should not allow this paper to be “noted” and forgotten. Members should ask why it was written, why it was approved, and why it bears so little relation to reality.

And the wider Church should ask a harder question still: if this is what the Archbishops’ Council is willing to say to its own Synod, what does it say behind closed doors?

Because one thing is now painfully clear.

The problem is not that the Church does not know how bad things are.

The problem is that those in charge appear determined to behave as if it does not matter.

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