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
Fugitive London priest arrested in Kosovo over child abuse allegations
Posted: Mon, 16 May 2016 09:51
A top Benedictine monk who has been accused of child abuse has been arrested after five years on the run.
Laurence Soper, now 72, former abbot of the Benedictine Ealing Abbey, was arrested in Kosovo on Wednesday 11 May. He faces serious allegations of child abuse allegedly carried out at St Benedict's school in Ealing, west London, where he taught between 1972 and 1984. The fee-paying Catholic school is attached to Ealing Abbey where Soper was abbot from 1991-2000.
In 2009, a former headteacher of St Benedict's school was jailed for eight years for abuse spanning 36 years. Both were named in a highly critical report into abuse at the School prepared by Lord Carlile QC.
Soper had been the subject of a European Arrest Warrant since 2012, following his failure to return to a police interview in London in 2011 in the expectation that he was about to be arrested.
By that stage, Soper had served for ten years as worldwide treasurer of the Benedictine Order in Rome and had been responsible for major reforms to the Order's finances. Before becoming a monk he had worked for Barclays Bank.
Neither Kosovo, nor Montenegro where he had reportedly previously been spotted, are part of the EU, so are not subject to the European Arrest Warrant obligations. Attempts are now being made to have him returned to the UK. He was living under an assumed name and appears to have been a lodger in a house and was not employed.
Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society commented: "When Soper was bailed, investigators neither took a picture of him nor required him to surrender his passport. Could this have been simply because he was a cleric? Soper was able to return to the Vatican from outside the EU and empty his bank account there without the police being alerted; was this despite or because he was a high-profile figure in the Church? We hope investigators will establish the answers to these questions and whether Soper received any assistance to remain a fugitive for so long."
Church review into abusive Bishop refuses to explicitly consider bullying of victims in its Terms of Reference
Posted: Thu, 28 Apr 2016 14:23
A victim of clerical abuse has refused to give evidence to a Church review of the Bishop Peter Ball case, after it declined to explicitly mention intimidation of victims in its Terms of Reference.
The Revd Graham Sawyer was seriously abused as a young man by former Anglican bishop Peter Ball and gave evidence at the trial at which the bishop was jailed last year, aged 83.
It took decades to bring Ball to justice and Reverend Sawyer asked that, given the role played by bullying in delaying justice in the Ball case, the Review into the matter set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury specifically address "bullying, intimidation and threats" made to victims. He asked for this request to be considered by Archbishop Welby personally.
Sharing Reverend Sawyer's concerns about the limits of the Review's Terms of Reference, the National Secular Society had also asked for the Review's Terms of Reference to be expanded to include "specific reference" to the "extent of historic and current bullying by senior figures in the Church of alleged victims and whistle-blowers."
However the Review has declined to do so, and the Review's chair, Dame Moira Gibb, told the National Secular Society that they will not make any changes to the Terms of Reference. She told the NSS that the Terms of Reference will not be amended "as we think they are sufficient to allow us to cover these issues."
In light of the Church's refusal to amend the Review's terms of reference to encompass bullying of victims by senior figures within the Church, Reverend Sawyer has said he will not speak to the Review or give evidence.
He told BBC Radio 4's Sunday programme that "It is clear that the [Review] is not going to cover [bullying and vilification], it should be explicit and it is not. … Why not say it? … No one from the Church has telephoned me to assure me they will cover those areas." The Church and the chair of the Review declined the BBC's request for an interview.
The National Secular Society had also asked that the Church explicitly consider "the extent to which Church officials sought – and/or encouraged others - to intervene with the CPS, the police and dissuading complainants from reporting to the police".
Ball had evaded justice for decades by falsely claiming his innocence and the Church went to inordinate lengths to protect him. This included intervening inappropriately with the police and Crown Prosecution Service in the 1990s. Evidence is mounting that victims and whistleblowers have been continually bullied in an attempt to silence them and that multiple complaints were ignored by the Church hierarchy.
Terry Sanderson, President of the NSS said: "For decades complainants were portrayed as fabricating their claims, something that had a devastating effect on victims, leading one to commit suicide. The catalogue of bullying by the Church against Graham Sawyer is horrific and continues even now.
"The institutional bullying and silencing almost succeeded in preventing Bishop Ball ever being brought to justice. The Church's obdurate refusal at the highest levels to specify them in the Terms of Reference should ring alarm bells about the seriousness of its intentions to look at them with the requisite priority. Maintaining the refusal means the principal witness Graham Sawyer, and perhaps others, will not give evidence and this further undermines the validity of the Review. At least he will be able to give his evidence to the Independent (Goddard) Inquiry set up by the Government.
"Given the fundamental importance of all this in delaying justice and compounding the abuse of victims, bullying should have been explicitly considered in the Review and named in the Terms of Reference."
