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
Former Anglican bishop Peter Ball jailed as victims sue Church of England over ‘cover-up’
Posted: Wed, 7 Oct 2015 13:12
Peter Ball, the former Bishop of Gloucester and Lewes, has been sentenced to 32 months in prison after pleading guilty to offences against 18 teenagers and young men – allegations Ball denied for over twenty years.
The prosecution said that for Ball "religion was a cloak behind which he hid in order to satisfy his sexual interest in those who trusted him".
The court heard that police documents in the 1990s revealed they received telephone calls of support for the disgraced bishop from dozens of people, including MPs, former public school headmasters, magistrates and a judge. In addition, his defence team claimed to have more than 'two thousand letters of support… including letters from cabinet ministers and Royal Family,' said prosecutor Bobbie Cheema-Grubb QC at the Old Bailey.
Keith Porteous Wood, National Secular Society executive director, commented: "Such volumes could not have been achieved without an huge orchestrated campaign. Copies of the letters should be examined, as complete a list as possible of writers and callers obtained, particularly for those of high profile as their support would have been especially influential. It should be established whose idea this was, who masterminded it and who carried it out.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has recently commissioned an independent review of how the Church dealt with the allegations, but the National Secular Society has expressed concerns that the review will not have the scope required to establish the full extent of wrongdoing.
Speaking after sentence was handed down, Mr Wood said: "Much more important than Ball's sentence is that this case has demonstrated the power the Church which has even recently bullied victims into silence and sought to curry favour with the law to let off perpetrators, or let them off lightly and impose reporting restrictions.
"Ball's case is a disgraceful catalogue of the legal system letting him off at every juncture. Just last month, two serious charges were inexplicably ordered to 'lay on the court file' - presumably to be ignored at least until Ball becomes too old or unfit to stand trial, a ruse he has already tried.
"Abuse victims' lives are often ruined by the abuse, they are much more likely to be substance abusers and vulnerable to suicidal impulses. One of Ball's victims, Neil Todd, killed himself and another, Graham Sawyer of Briercliffe, said that he had wished at times that he were dead. He was adamant that 'people at the highest levels of the Church are more concerned with 'saving face'."
Mr Wood said there were numerous examples of this evident in Ball's case alone.
"Evidence abounds of an institutional culture of intimidation of victims, in effect compounding the abuse, robbing the victims of justice, and not just allowing the perpetrator to escape justice, but enabling them to continue the abuse.
"The extent to which the Church's attitude has changed is as yet unclear. Several survivors were recently reported to have been told by Paul Butler, Bishop of Durham (responsible for dealing with abuse), that 'the Church was too busy working on banking reform' to have time for abuse responses, and his statement when Ball pleaded guilty was perfunctory, given the depth of the Church's complicity and the extent to which that had increased the suffering of victims. Sawyer maintains that Bishop Butler 'is out of his depth, and should step aside'.
"The first step in a change of culture that this case demonstrates to be so necessary is that employees and volunteers in all organisations involved with minors, including religious ones, should make reporting of reasonable suspicion of child abuse mandatory, with failure a dismissible offence. And the law should be amended to make the failure of those working in such institutions to do so a criminal offence."
Mr Wood is calling for the Lowell Goddard led Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse to fully examine not just the Church's role, but also the part played by the Crown Prosecution Service, by police and by politicians.
In the 1990s the CPS assured then-Archbishop Carey that no further action would be taken against Bishop Ball after he accepted a caution and resigned.
The Guardian reported that the court was told "MPs, a lord chief justice the royal family and public school headmasters all intervened" to stop Peter Ball from being prosecuted in the 1990s.
The National Secular Society has set-out twenty questions which an inquiry must answer on the relationship between the Church and police, and why the CPS did not take matters further when allegations against Ball were made. The CPS have now admitted that Ball should have been prosecuted two decades ago when the claims about sex abuse were made.
Victims are suing the Church of England for compensation amounting to "hundreds of thousands of pounds" over their handling of the case.
The Church of England has offered "an unreserved apology to all the survivors".
Catholic Church criticised at UN Human Rights Council over continued failure to address child sex abuse
Posted: Tue, 22 Sep 2015 19:32
The Catholic Church has been strongly criticised at the UN Human Rights Council for obstructing disclosure of child abuse and payment of victims' compensation.
In an oral statement at the UN Human Rights Council 30th Session in Geneva, the European Humanist Federation rebuked the Holy See for its continued failure to accept the criticisms of the Committee on the Rights of the Child over child abuse.
The UN Human Rights Council was urged to press the Vatican on clerical child abuse and to ensure that justice is done for the victims.
An accompanying written statement, prepared with the assistance of the National Secular Society, accused the Vatican of continuing to "fiercely" obstruct the disclosure of information related to perpetrators of abuse, while dragging out the payment of compensation to victims.
The statement called on the Human Rights Council to press the Holy See to make all information about child abuse perpetrators available to local law enforcement, and urged the Human Rights Council to "instruct the Church worldwide, and its lawyers and insurers, to fairly and expeditiously settle claims and cases against the Church, including for compensation".
Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said: "The Vatican has largely ignored the 67 concluding observations of the UN Committee on the Child to disclose information and report suspected abusers. Instead the Vatican criticised the Committee of experts and set up a powerless Commission on child abuse that has neither authority nor responsibility.
"Similarly, the Tribunal to oversee bishops' actions over child abuse, cynically created in the wake of convictions of bishops for complicity over child abuse, gives the appearance of being a legitimate alternative channel for dealing with reprobate bishops. Whatever the intention it prevented bishops being reported to relevant law enforcement authorities for investigation and prosecution.
"Both Commission and Tribunal have been a publicity triumph but have compounded the Church's abuse of victims."
Meanwhile, in a separate intervention, the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) has told the UN that secularism is essential for the genuine promotion of human rights around the world.
Elizabeth O'Casey, head of IHEU's delegation to the United Nations, told the UN Human Rights Council that secular democracy is "essential" for the defence and advancement of human rights, and for "guaranteeing inclusivity and ensuring four principles underscoring human rights: freedom, equality, dignity and universalism."
Ms O'Casey said secularism is "necessary for individual freedom. Its origins are rooted in the principle of free thought, from which many other rights guaranteeing freedoms emanate – such as freedom of religion or belief and expression.
"It is necessary for equality. Underpinning secularism is the equality of all under the law and a rejection of discriminatory traditional, cultural or religious practices.
"It is necessary for human dignity. It identifies individuals as equal citizens and not merely members of a religious or non-religious group; this gives dignity to the individual as a human rights bearer, not to be stereotyped as a member of a particular group or fetishized for the sake of inherently divisive identity politics.
"It is necessary for universalism. Whilst a secular democracy creates space for dialogue and the recognition of diversity, it asks that arguments are presented in universal terms so as to ensure mutual understanding. It is upon these universal foundations our rights and the vocabulary common to all humankind are grounded.
"Secular democracy provides a backdrop essential for the prevention of human rights violations."
Ms O'Casey added that human rights "will only flourish in a political framework where people are seen as human rights agents and not defined primarily by their beliefs or arbitrary characteristics [such as gender or race].
The statement called on the High Commissioner and Council to explore the role of secularism in the protection of human rights.
The Human Rights Council has attracted serious criticism this week after it emerged that Saudi Arabia had been selected to head a key UN human rights panel.
Video: Oral Statement on the Holy See's failure to protect the rights of the child. Delivered by Ms. Josephine Macintosh of the European Humanist Federation on 22 September 2015.
