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
NSS urges Irish PM to force pope to pay abuse compensation debt
Posted: Thu, 19 Jul 2018 15:59
The National Secular Society has urged the Irish PM to force the Catholic Church to pay a €7 million shortfall in compensation owed to survivors of clerical child abuse.
The compensation scheme Caranua was set up in 2014 to run a fund of €110 million promised for people who were abused in Catholic institutions as children, to help with health, housing or educational needs.
These institutions include Catholic faith schools and the Magdalene laundries, institutions run by Roman Catholic orders that operated as penitentiary work-houses for so-called 'fallen' women. They have been given protection from being sued by survivors after promising to give compensation to Caranua.
The Times reported that Catholic institutions have failed to pay all the money owed to survivors, causing a €7 million shortfall in the amount they would receive. Applications for grants from survivors will not be accepted after next month.
Carauna has less than €24 million left, but estimates that it will cost more than that to cover its remaining administrative costs and the applications for grants from survivors that it is already processing.
In an open letter to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, NSS president Keith Porteous Wood said if Catholic institutions continue to default, Mr Varadkar should ask the Pope to cover the debt. If the Pope fails to do so, Ireland should consider closing the Irish embassy in the Vatican, the letter states.
In its letter, NSS also argues that the assets of any Irish religious organisations in default should be seized and any immunity against them being sued by survivors should also lifted.
Mr Porteous Wood commented:"Religious groups in Ireland have been shamelessly reneging for years on their commitments to pay compensation, compounding the clerical abuse of victims, the highest level known in the world."
"Such blatant failures do not even prompt censure by the Church. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar should now insist on the Pope assuming responsibility to pay these debts in the interests of victims, whose welfare he assures us he takes to heart."
NSS has been working for many years to help secure justice for survivors of clerical abuse and has raised the issue several times at the United Nations.
C of E’s “industrial-scale whitewash” of sexual abuse exposed
Posted: Fri, 22 Jun 2018 10:53
The Church of England engaged in a huge cover-up of sexual abuse by vastly reducing the number of cases it deemed to require formal action, a BBC report has shown.
The report says the church looked in to 40,000 case files during a past cases review (PCR) in 2010. The church found a range of ways of whittling down the numbers and concluded that just 13 cases of alleged child sexual abuse needed formal action.
The church excluded cases of sexual offences which had been decriminalised, meaning those involving abuse of boys aged 16 and 17 may have been unrecorded. It left out cases involving those who had died, retired or were deemed no longer to pose a risk.
It left out those related to a cleric who was allegedly addicted to pornography and another said to have had an "obsessional interest in satanic ritual abuse". It left out allegations of grooming behaviour.
One diocesan bishop did not engage with the review at all and the church left many files containing allegations unopened.
It is not clear whether all 40,000 cases related to abuse claims.
Email exchanges suggest the C of E's leaders prioritised the defence of its reputation and that of Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury at the time. In an email a press adviser to Williams said "the real danger here is that these stories are used to suggest that the CofE is as bad as Rome, both in abuse and cover-up" and "the aim must be to distance the current ABC (archbishop of Canterbury) from it as much as poss".
The email was sent during the Chichester sexual abuse scandal in October 2010.
Richard Scorer, a National Secular Society vice-president and head of abuse at the law firm Slater and Gordon, said the report was a reminder of the need for a law requiring the reporting of known or suspected abuse to the police.
"The BBC report confirms not only that the church's past cases review was grossly inadequate, but that senior leaders in the church deliberately excluded relevant cases in order to minimise the numbers and embarrassment to the church.
"This report confirms that until we have a mandatory reporting law, requiring the reporting of known or suspected abuse to the statutory authorities on pain of criminal sanctions, the churches will continue to hide embarrassing cases when it suits them. It is high time that the law stepped in to stop these constant cover ups of clerical sex abuse."
In most cases survivors were not asked to give evidence to the PCR. Survivors have criticised the church's response.
One campaigner, Gilo, told the NSS: "It looks like they shoehorned this into an eggcup to make it disappear. This was industrial scale whitewash. I wonder how all those who took part in this process felt as they watched their numbers whittled down.
"It's disturbing the way that individuals across the church - across dioceses - were in effect pressurised into complicity into this process."
Phil Johnson, a campaigner and joint winner of the NSS's 2018 Secularist of the Year prize, told the BBC the church's response had been "wholly inadequate". He described "a sense of paralysis almost" and said the church saw survivors "as the problem".
Earlier this year the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse heard evidence of serious safeguarding failures and cover-ups during three weeks' worth of hearings into the Church of England's handling of abuse in Chichester.
The C of E says it is taking the criticism seriously. It says it will support the recommendations in a report on the subject from Sir Roger Singleton and it has commissioned a survey to ask for the views of survivors.
Following the BBC's revelations the church published the Singleton report this morning. The report was due to be published next month.
