UNITED KINGDOM
Church Times
THE use of the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM) to handle cases of clerical abuse has been questioned by a leading diocesan chancellor, Canon Rupert Bursell QC.
Writing in the July issue of Crucible, the journal of Christian social ethics, Canon Bursell, Chancellor of Durham diocese since 1989, welcomes this year’s changes to the original CDM, framed in 2003 before safeguarding was treated as seriously as today. He questions, none the less, the process of making a formal complaint, which, “unless very sensitively handled, can engender misunderstanding and further hurt to the complainant”.
Canon Bursell writes of “a very real psychological obstacle” to the necessity under the 2003 Measure of making a complaint about a priest to the diocesan bishop. “This is particularly so in the light of the manner in which clerical abuse has in the past frequently been swept under the carpet.”
Among his critique of the Measure, as now amended, Canon Bursell welcomes the relaxation of the one-year limitation period in which complaints of sexual abuse must be reported. He laments the lack of reporting on the number of cases. He advises that clergy and their spouses are precluded from holding the post of diocesan safeguarding adviser.
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