LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Church Times
July 3, 2019
By Hattie Williams
THE “unhealthy and excessive” centralisation of power in bishops in the Church of England means that they are not being held accountable for safeguarding decisions which should not be theirs to make in the first place, the Area Bishop of Buckingham, Dr Alan Wilson, has said.
He was giving evidence on Tuesday to the final hearing being conducted by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) to investigate safeguarding in the Anglican Church.
“The centralisation of all sort of things on bishops is unhealthy and excessive, and that raises the question of the accountability of bishops,” he said.
Asked by the chair of the Inquiry, Professor Alexis Jay, whether he thought that diocesan bishops should play a part in decision-making in cases of alleged abuse, Dr Wilson said: “No. Emphatically no. And that’s one of the fundamental problems with where we are right now.”
He called for an independent safeguarding body to hold bishops and dioceses to account. It was unreasonable to expect diocesan safeguarding advisers to do this.
“You cannot expect somebody who is a mid-range employee of the bishop to hold the bishop to account. It simply doesn’t work that way. . . Advice is just advice. If they [the bishop] respond badly, who is to hold them to account on that advice?”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.