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
Church cut contact with child abuse victim on order of insurers
Posted: Wed, 16 Mar 2016 13:12
A report by Ian Elliott, an expert in child safeguarding, has found "repeated failures" by clergy and bishops in the Church of England to deal with reports by survivors of child abuse.
A single survivor of child sex abuse told "over 40 members of the clergy during the 1970s, 80s, 90s and 2000s" of sexual abuse he had suffered at the hands of a senior member of the Church of England, but failed to receive an adequate response – including from people in "very senior positions within the Church" and the office of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
As late as 2014 the survivor made another report of the historic sex abuse and found "the response less than adequate." The Church offered no "real investigation into his disclosures" and "every question arising from the issue of senior disclosures was entirely ignored from the outset by the bishop he reported to, the Head of Safeguarding."
The report has been made public after the Church initially released its conclusions alone. David Greenwood, a lawyer specialising in helping child abuse victims claim compensation, said in a press release that the church had "indicated that it does not wish to publish the whole report so the survivor is taking the step of providing the report to the press."
The report offers a damning verdict on the Church's response to allegations by the survivor, referred to as "B".
According to the report, it was "deeply disturbing" that despite B reporting the case to a "large number of people", some of them claim to have "no memory of the conversations."
"What is surprising about this is that he would be speaking about a serious and sadistic sexual assault allegedly perpetrated by a senior member of the hierarchy. The fact that these conversations could be forgotten about is hard to accept," Elliott wrote.
To avoid legal liability, the report found, the Church "issued instructions that all contact with a survivor was to be ended, causing considerable distress and also placing the survivor at risk." Elliott said the decision was "reckless" and contrary to the Church of England's own policy.
Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society, which has been researching clerical abuse for many years and given evidence on the topic at the United Nations, commented:
"The problem wasn't that bishops weren't trained in such matters, it is the institutional culture of denial and the bullying of the abused and whistleblowers into silence. One report suggests that 13 bishops ignored letters written in the 1990s warning of abuse by Ball on behalf of a victim who later committed suicide. I have seen evidence that such bullying persists to this day.
"I hope that the Archbishop's review into the case of Peter Ball will deal with such bullying and what appears to be the undue influence exerted on the police and CPS by the Church in dealing with this case.
"The total failure of procedures, outlined by Ian Elliott, echoes that revealed in the totally damning Cahill Report about the conduct of the Archbishop Hope of York in respect of Robert Waddington. The current Archbishop of York has decided that this report should remain in printed form rather than be more widely available on the web."
The report was released ahead of the preliminary hearing of the Goddard inquiry into child sex abuse, which will scrutinise the Church's record and policies on abuse.
Vatican officials face prosecution in France over failure to report sex abuse priest to police
Posted: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 13:25
Senior Vatican officials are facing investigation in France over the "non-reporting of crime" and endangering lives, following allegations that clerical sex abuse was not reported to the police.
Father Bernard Preynat was indicted in January 2016 for the alleged abuse of Scouts between 1986 and 1991 and admitted that he sexually abused young Scouts in 1986-1991 in the group which he had run for twenty years.
Prosecutors have now ordered an investigation into senior figures over their "failure to report a crime" after Preynat's victims said top officials in the Catholic diocese of Lyon, including its Archbishop Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, had failed to report the priest to the police, as required under French law.
In addition, Preynat's own lawyer told the judge that "the facts had been known by the church authorities since 1991".
According to AFP, the Vatican had earlier given Cardinal Barbarin its backing, saying it had confidence he would deal with the matter "with great responsibility". A source close to the cardinal claimed, "Cardinal Barbarin … quite rightly suspended Father Preynat after meeting a first victim and taking advice from Rome, and this, even before a first official complaint was made".
Keith Porteous Wood, the Executive Director of the National Secular Society, commented:
"If these allegations are true then civil authorities should seek prosecutions and send out a clear message that clerics cannot flout the law with impunity.
"The Vatican's Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors reiterated in February that bishops had an obligation to 'signal cases of sexual abuse to civil authorities', but every announcement by the Pope on this is weaker than the one before. Last year the Pope announced a Church Tribunal (rather than law enforcement) to deal with such bishops, but this Tribunal has never met. On his recent return from Mexico, the Pope declared, even more weakly, that such bishops should resign – not even saying he would force them to do so. The implicit support for Barbarin suggests that even pretensions that bishops should follow the law has been abandoned.
"French clerics seem to be leading the resistance to reporting abuse to civil authorities, thereby allowing abusers to escape jail and helping the abuse to continue unchecked."
"The Pontifical Commission's reiteration, referred to above, followed the discovery that at an induction course for new bishops at the Vatican, French Monsignor Tony Attrella told the bishops that they were not obliged to report abuse to state authorities. In 2014 the United Nations castigated the Vatican for a Cardinal congratulating a French bishop for defying the law by refusing to report child abuse."
In most countries, such reporting is not mandatory, although the United Nations has recommended its introduction, for example in Ireland.
