ENGLAND
Christian Today
November 7, 2017
By Florence Gildea
‘I […] was worried I would be blacklisted as untrustworthy. In Westminster, where power and loyalties are hard currency, I feared making enemies’, wrote Jane Merrick as she explained why she did not report former defence secretary Michael Fallon’s attempt to kiss her to the party whips.
Labour activist Bex Bailey was told by a senior party member not to report the fact that she was raped because it might damage her career. Other women who have come forward as victims of sexual assault or harassment in Westminster have found that officials have ‘at best turned a blind eye and at worst actively covered it up’. Why is it that institutions are so reluctant to hold their members accountable for sexual assault?
It’s a pattern we are becoming used to, that is even becoming normalised: someone (typically male) empowered with a sense of entitlement, acts towards another (typically female) as if he had the right to her body and then somehow passes the burden of shame and professional consequences on to the one they have assaulted. Unless, the abuser or those around them reassures the victim, they keep it to themselves. Otherwise, the one who has been betrayed is warned: you won’t be trusted; you’ll be letting the side down. It is not surprising that efforts to hush up sexual assault scar all political parties. Such is the cost of tribalism.
Both the UK’s major political parties, I’m sure, wish perpetrators of sexual assault were only to be found on the opposite side of the Commons. All institutions, likewise, hope it is only Hollywood and Westminster where these incidents take place. Yet nothing could be further from the truth: a survey for the Young Women’s Trust found one in eight large employers admit they are aware of sexual harassment that has gone unreported. More than half of women say they have experienced sexual harassment at work, according to research by the TUC.
We all want to be immune from wrongdoing – just as much perhaps as we want to be immune from harm. It is surely the belief that we – whoever that ‘we’ is – are above such things that leads people to suggest that victims of sexual assault should not come forward. After all, we don’t have a systemic problem: it’s just a couple of bad apples. No need to make a fuss.
No wonder, then, that the Church has so often suppressed the truth of sexual assault in order to present itself as the representative of the Truth. If victims of sexual assault in Westminster can be asked to put party loyalty over their own needs, how much more can church leaders ask those in their care to prioritise God’s public image.
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