Religious organisations and communities are frequent targets of abusers.
Religious institutions are often well-placed and strongly motivated to cover up incidents of sexual and physical abuse.
We work to hold these organisations to account and get justice for abuse victims and survivors.
Many religious organisations enjoy a close relationship with the establishment and tend to see themselves as above the law. This can increase the risk of abuse, prevent perpetrators from facing justice, and impede efforts to support and compensate victims and survivors of abuse.
Those intent on abuse are often attracted to religious institutions. Such organisations give access to, and sometimes extreme control over, numerous children and vulnerable adults.
When abuse does occur, religious organisations often act to protect the reputation of the institution above the rights of the victim. They may pressure the victim to stay silent and move the perpetrator to somewhere unaware of their reputation.
Many religious institutions also have influence and connections that enable them to evade justice and scrutiny, often for decades.
All forms of abuse, be they sexual, physical or psychological, can cause serious harm. Victims of abuse in religious settings have suffered physical and mental health problems, including addiction, self-harm and suicide.
Abuse can take place in any religious setting. That's why we work at the national and international level to hold religious organisations to account for safeguarding failings, and to ensure victims and survivors can get justice.
Take action!
1. Share your story
Tell us why you support this campaign, and how you are personally affected by the issue. You can also let us know if you would like assistance with a particular issue.
2. Write to your MP
Ask your MP to support our work to end abuse in religion settings
3. Join the National Secular Society
Become a member of the National Secular Society today! Together, we can separate religion and state for greater freedom and fairness.
Latest updates
Catholic Church covered up abuse of 1,000 children in Pennsylvania
Posted: Wed, 15 Aug 2018 15:19
Catholic Church leaders in Pennsylvania covered up the sexual abuse of more than 1,000 children by more than 300 priests over a 70-year period, according to a major new report.
A grand jury in the US has said an examination of internal documents from six of the state's eight Catholic dioceses had found more than 1,000 identifiable victims. It added that there were probably thousands more victims whose records had been lost or who were afraid to come forward.
One priest abused five girls in the same family, including one who was abused from the age of 18 months. Another was allowed to remain in post after impregnating a young girl and arranging for her to have an abortion.
Other instances detailed by the grand jury's report, which was published on Tuesday, included a priest raping a young girl in hospital and a priest who tied up and whipped a child.
The report says: "We believe that the real number of children whose records were lost or who were afraid ever to come forward is in the thousands.
"Despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the church have largely escaped public accountability.
"Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades. Monsignors, auxiliary bishops, bishops, archbishops, cardinals have mostly been protected; many, including some named in this report, have been promoted."
The attorney general of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, said the church had shown "complete disdain for victims" and its leaders had "protected their institution at all costs". In some cases he said the cover-up had "stretched all the way up to the Vatican".
He added that there had been an "intense legal battle" over recent months as some of those named in the report appealed to Pennsylvania's Supreme Court to block its release.
Shapiro said: "They wanted to cover up the cover-up."
The grand jury said church officials followed a "playbook for concealing the truth", including by downplaying the nature of abuse, assigning untrained priests to investigate their colleagues and lying to parishioners about the reasons for a priest's removal.
The report also recommended extending the statute of limitations to allow older victims to file civil lawsuits against perpetrators and the church. Pennsylvania's state legislature has so far resisted calls to do this and the church has lobbied against it.
The report comes shortly after the resignation of the former archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, amid accusations of sexual abuse of young priests and children.
This week the authorities in Chile also raided the headquarters of the Catholic Church's episcopal conference as part of an investigation into sexual abuse.
The National Secular Society has been at the forefront of holding religious institutions to account for child abuse and ensuring that victims of institutional clerical child abuse have access to secular justice.
Read more detail in the New York Times: Catholic priests abused 1,000 children in Pennsylvania, report says
“Establishment” helped abusive bishop evade justice, inquiry hears
Posted: Thu, 26 Jul 2018 17:09
Powerful figures including an archbishop of Canterbury, senior politicians and judges helped a bishop evade justice and continue to officiate after he committed sexual abuse, an inquiry has heard.
Evidence heard at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) this week has revealed that a series of high-profile public individuals lobbied police and prosecutors on behalf of Peter Ball. Ball, a former bishop of Lewes and Gloucester, was jailed for 32 months in 2015 for sexual offences against 18 teenagers and men.
Senior clergy, MPs, an appeal court judge and public school headmasters were among those who sent letters in support of Ball when police first investigated his conduct in 1992-93.
The police cautioned Ball on one count of gross indecency in 1993, after which he returned to church duties. He was given permission to officiate at services and preached at 25 schools between 1996 and 2002. One of Ball's victims, Neil Todd, killed himself in 2012.
A lawyer for some of the victims, William Chapman, said members of "the establishment" had provided Ball with money and accommodation, legal advice, a private detective and references, along with approaches to the police and the prosecuting authorities.
Chapman said he used the phrase "the establishment" advisedly, pointing out the established nature of the Church of England. He described the church as "directly plugged in at the heart of our constitution" and "innately powerful by design".
He added that Ball's friends had been willing to "add their weight" against the due criminal process and went "far beyond the normal obligations of friendship".
Fiona Scolding, the senior counsel to the inquiry, said "influential friends both within and outside the church" had helped to buttress Ball's power.
She said Ball had told people after his arrest that four cabinet ministers had offered him a "bolthole from the press".
On Tuesday George Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, said he had sent one of the letters because "at that time" Ball was "a deeply respected man of the church".
In his testimony Carey admitted making "mistakes" but denied the church had made "immoral mistakes".
He told the inquiry the church's efforts to discipline Ball had "fizzled out" because officials thought he was a "sick man" who was going to retire.
At one point during his evidence Carey also said: "All of us at the time were saying, well, he wasn't raping anybody. There was no penetrative sex. And I think our weakness was actually to put it as the lowest of the low instead of seeing that whatever it is, it's unbecoming of a bishop."
Scolding said Carey had offered Ball "uncritical support". And on Thursday a former Lambeth Palace employee, Andrew Nunn, said Peter Ball "clearly was guilty" but "the problem was the archbishop at the time didn't want to believe that he was".
Last year an independent review into the C of E's handling of child sexual abuse revealed that Carey had dissuaded the police and Crown Prosecution Service from charging Ball, despite knowing concerns had been raised about him.
Carey also provided a lengthy witness statement on Ball's behalf in 2014. Chapman said this was an attempt to stop further charges being brought as an "abuse of process".
The inquiry has also heard that the prince of Wales remained in friendly contact with Ball after the caution and gave him "small gifts of money".
On Friday the inquiry will hear a written statement from Prince Charles. In a draft copy of this reported by The Times the prince said he was "certainly not aware at the time of the significance or impact of the caution".
"Whilst I note that Peter Ball mentioned the word in a letter to me in October 2009, I was not aware until recently that a caution in fact carries an acceptance of guilt."
Scolding said the inquiry had made an agreement with the prince's lawyers that he would submit a written statement after they challenged its capacity to compel him to give a formal witness statement.
Richard Scorer, a lawyer representing some of the victims and a National Secular Society vice-president, said Charles's claim that he did not understand the significance of a caution was "frankly astonishing".
"To my clients, this extraordinary lack of curiosity looks like wilful blindness."
He expressed "surprise and concern" that the prince did not have to provide a formal witness statement.
He added that Ball had found other bishops to be "perfect accomplices". He said they had been prepared to "turn a blind eye to his abuse over many decades", "cast doubt on his guilt", "smear his victims" and "rehabilitate him".
Graham Sawyer, a Church of England priest who was abused by Ball as a young man and named the joint winner of the NSS's Secularist of the Year award for 2018, strongly criticised the C of E's handling of complaints of abuse.
He said the church was running an "ecclesiastical protection racket" which prioritises its reputation above the interests of the individual. The abuse he suffered, he added, "pales into insignificance when compared to the enduringly cruel and sadistic treatment that has been meted out to me by officials, both lay and ordained, in the Church of England".
"I know from the testimony of other people who have got in touch with me over the last five or ten years that what I have experienced is not dissimilar to the experience of so many others."
On Wednesday the detective who ran Gloucestershire Police's investigation into Ball in the 1990s, Wayne Murdock, told the inquiry that Lambeth Palace "knew an awful lot that was going on" but withheld information.
Stephen Evans, the NSS's chief executive, said the evidence provided a "damning reminder of the need for independent oversight of the Church of England's approach to safeguarding, mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse and the disestablishment of the Church of England".
"We've seen again that the C of E cannot be trusted to get its own house in order over child sexual abuse. IICSA needs to make a strong recommendation for legal change to make it obligatory to report reasonable concerns of child sexual abuse to the statutory authorities.
"It's particularly shocking to see the network of powerful people who went to bat for a child abuser rather than his victims. Deference to Church of England bishops meant horrendous abuses were shrugged off. The assumption that its clerics were moral exemplars who behaved ethically betrayed vulnerable people who suffered at their hands.
"The Peter Ball case study provides yet another good reason to bring about an end to the privileged status of the Church of England and begin the process of disestablishment."
This article was originally published on Tuesday 24 July and then updated on Thursday 26 July to include new evidence from the inquiry.
