UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian
Harriet Sherwood Religion correspondent
@harrietsherwood
Tuesday 15 March 2016
For almost 40 years, Joe has struggled to be heard by the Church of England over the sexual abuse that has blighted his life. The depression, anxiety and occasional suicidal thoughts that have dogged him since he was a teenager were, he says, as much the product of the church’s failure to listen to and act on his anguish as the original assault in 1976.
He speaks of a culture of inertia, obfuscation, denial and cover-up. “I raised core, critical issues with a very significant senior slice of the church down through the decades. I told an astonishing number of people.”
Even when, finally, he formally reported the abuse, he felt “blanked”. “It’s a very effective device for shutting down an issue. And you leave the issue, the burden, on the survivor’s shoulders – who feels cowed, intimidated by the weight of silence.”
Joe hopes that Tuesday’s publication of the C of E’s independent review of its handling of his case – with its recognition of the church’s failures, along with the apologies he has received from a handful of senior figures – will allow him to finally attain an inner equilibrium. But he is in a very small minority, he says. “As things stand, most survivors will probably not receive a personal apology or any real justice. I am one of the lucky few.”
His story begins when he was 15. Garth Moore, the chancellor of the dioceses of Southwark, Durham and Gloucester and the vicar of St Mary’s Abchurch in the City of London, was a family friend. According to Moore’s obituary, published in 1990 in the Ecclesiastical Law Journal, he was “the foremost canonist of his generation in the Church of England”.
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