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
Polish Catholic Church on the spot over paedophile priests and child abuse cover ups
Posted: Thu, 17 Oct 2013 13:08
Polish radio is reporting that a man who, as a child, was abused by a Catholic priest has written to the Pope after the Church refused to entertain a compensation claim.
The man, whose identity is protected by Polish privacy laws, is being referred to as Marcin K, and claims he was abused by Father Zbigniew R. from 2000-2001 in Kolobrzeg, northern Poland.
The priest was sentenced to two years imprisonment in 2012, but after claiming he was suffering health problems, he was released and did not serve any of his sentence.
Marcin K. says the Church knew what was happening but refused to do anything about it. He is the first person in Poland to try to obtain redress from the Church for abuse.
The victim is asking for 200,000 zloty (£40,000) from the local diocese and 100,000 zloty (€20,000) from Father Zbigniew K. However, during the first hearing on Thursday 3 September, no settlement was reached.
Marcin K. then wrote to Pope Francis: "This letter is a cry for all children who have been wronged in Poland. Your Holiness, the events of my childhood destroyed my ability to find pure love and trust. The fear of intimacy and lack of confidence in people mean that I cannot enter into a healthy relationship with another person."
Meanwhile, representatives of the Polish Catholic Church have apologised for the alleged child sex abuse carried out by Archbishop Josef Wesolowski, a 65-year old Pole who served as a papal envoy in the Caribbean island of the Dominican Republic and his 38-year-old Polish colleague Fr Wojciech Gil.
Prosecuting authorities in the Dominican Republic allege that the two men abused several boys while working there. Bishop Wojciech Polak, speaking for the Polish Bishops Conference, said: "Trust in the Church is waning. We are sorry. This is the least we can do."
Wojciech Gil, who was added to the Interpol list of wanted criminals late last month and is currently residing with his parents in southernPoland. He denied any wrongdoing in an interview with public broadcaster TVP last week. Polish prosecutors have now launched a separate investigation into the priests.
Polish Episcopate spokesman Father Jozef Kloch rejected claims that the Polish Church is trying to cover up paedophilia, and noted that new guidelines had been adopted on the matter in March 2012.
But Jesuit priest, Father Adam Zak, who is responsible for youth welfare in the Polish Episcopate said: "The scale of paedophilia in the Church in Poland is unknown. The cases that end up in court are just the tip of the iceberg."
He said 27 priests were convicted of child sex abuse in Poland over the past decade.
Meanwhile, in Argentina a priest has been given a 15-year jail sentence for the sexual abuse of adolescent boy in the 1990s. At the time of the original accusations, Fr Julio Cesar Grassi was defended by Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (later to become Pope Francis).
Grassi was leader of the Buenos Aires Happy Children Foundation, a centre for troubled boys when the crime took place and he has maintained his innocence throughout. He was jailed by the provincial court in Moron. He told the court: "In my life, all I have done was to help the children in need. The prosecutors have lied and set up a case against me."
The case is making headlines in Argentina because — according to the Wall Street Journal — Bergoglio gave an interview to the Argentine magazine Veintitres in 2006 in which he said: "There is a media campaign against Fr Grassi, a condemnation in the media." He said that Grassi had not been suspended from his duties as a priest because his case was "different" from other cases of alleged sexual abuse that emerged at the time.
Grassi was first accused in 1996. He was eventually convicted of aggravated sexual assault in 2009, but while the several appeal processes were heard, he was allowed to live across the road from the youth centre. He has one more appeal to make to the Supreme Court, which he will do from prison.
After Grassi's conviction in 2009, Bergoglio commissioned a legal study defending the priest and insisting that he was innocent. The report said that many sexual abuse claims were part of a strategy to defame the church.
Bradford issues a report on child protection in Muslim religious ‘schools’
Posted: Tue, 26 Mar 2013 16:17
An attempt is being made in Bradford to safeguard the estimated 9,000 children who attend Muslim religious schools in the city. But the National Secular Society says it is not enough and that a legal framework is urgently needed to control the network of madrassas.
Bradford Council for Mosques, Bradford Safeguarding Children Board, NSPCC, and West Yorkshire Police worked together over the last 12 months to produce Children Do Matter. The study looks at issues including child protection, staff recruitment, bad practice and child abuse.
The usual spin is put on the value of madrassas, the so-called "schools" that indoctrinate children in Islamic teachings (for instance, Kath Tunstall, Strategic Director of Children's Services in Bradford, writes: "Masajid and Madaaris play a significant role in promoting the spiritual and social development of children, enhancing their self-esteem and positive identity.").
But there is no escaping the fact that these institutions are unregulated, secretive and often provide cover for child abuse.
There have been several cases over the last few years that have reached the courts of children being beaten and sexually abused in madrassas and as alarm begins to grow about what is going on behind the closed doors of these places, the Muslim community is gradually coming to realise that it cannot simply disregard the law in relation to the treatment of children.
The report admits that madrassas vary in quality and care ("There is no uniformity or consistency", it says). Some are run in multi-million pound complexes, others in private homes. The teachers are mostly unqualified volunteers. Some give a good quality religious education, others simply force the children to learn the Koran by rote, often using physical punishment to reinforce the indoctrination.
None have any outside regulation.
The report admits: "There is an apparent level of secrecy surrounding the running of Masajid and Madaaris due to negative representations of Muslims and Islam in the media. This is not to suggest that there is anything wrong or sinister about them but this level of 'closeness' does give rise to suspicion and hinders wider community engagement."
It also admits that employment procedures and health and safety considerations are sometimes "minimal": some of these places "tend to be satisfied by a minimalist approach to ensuring proper policies, procedures and practice are in place."
The report also says:
While in some of the larger Madaaris English has become the principle medium of education alongside one of the community languages, such s Arabic, in many other Madaaris teaching is delivered in one of the community languages often by teachers with little or no command of English.
This poses considerable difficulty for children who access mainstream education in English and with very basic or no command of their mother tongue or that of the teacher.
Teachers who have no or very little command of English also tend to have least understanding of safeguarding issues, legal requirements or of the responsibilities that impact on their role. They also tend to practice the traditional methods of teaching/ discipline.
More than often, Faith teachers in Madaaris are employed for their knowledge of the faith and not for their teaching skills.
By and large, there is little provision for teachers to learn and upgrade their teaching, behaviour and class management skills. This is partly due to lack of understanding of the need for such training partly due to lack of knowledge of resources available.
Mohammed Rafiq Sehgal, the senior vice-president of Council For Mosques Bradford and the chairman of its safeguarding working group, said: "The report is an uncompromising and honest account. I hope that messages and suggestion contained in the report will be taken seriously and acted upon by those concerned."
The study was started in 2011, after religious teacher Sabir Hussain, 60, was sentenced to ten weeks in prison for assaulting pupils at the Markazi Jamia Mosque in Lawkholme, Keighley.
The key conclusions of the report include:
- Religious schools must stipulate the need for Criminal Records Bureau checks.
- There should be a register of all teachers and others at the schools.
- Parents should be more involved.
- Learning should be structured.
- Women should have greater involvement in the schools.
- There should be openness to counter prejudiced ideas of secrecy within the schools.
Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: "Reports like this are all very well and I'm sure full of good intentions, but the Muslim community cannot be permitted to go its own way and remain unregulated in areas where others are forced to act within the law. It is not good enough that these 'schools' are allowed to be so secretive and that there is no legal framework in which they must operate. Children are entitled to better than that. It is their safety and their welfare that must come first, not the desire of community leaders to simply indoctrinate them."
