Why I’m an Advocate: The Women Who Advocated For Me – My Maternal Grandmothers

It often comes as a surprise to people when I say that my autism includes being selectively non-speaking – I am an advocate, and so I end up speaking a lot (although thankfully much of it these days can be in written form, which is helpful now that I also have dysphasia).

I was born into a family where both of my parents and my sister, who was also learning disabled and later physically disabled, suffered from severe, and extremely stigamtised, mental health illness during a time when there was no medical treatment for them, and the pressure to keep it hidden was tremendous. Nevertheless, as a mental health carer to each of them, they all needed an advocate in different ways. I was the eldest child and a carer from the age of 5. But I wouldn’t have known how to advocate, how to do that, if I hadn’t had my maternal grandmothers, who were also advocating for me, and under tremendously difficult circumstances.

If you have read any of my most recent poetry, you might have gathered that I am coming to terms with another facet of my mother’s death almost 3 years ago: she never told me the truth about my biological father. In fact she never told me anything, not even to acknowledge that the man I grew up calling dad wasn’t my biological father. She had decided I wasn’t ever to be told, and perhaps more fundamentally, didn’t believe I had a right to know. She saw it as a secret about her, and if I were to be told, that could only happen if I “earned” her trust. I was never going to be able to do that.

And yet I knew from the age of 5 that my biological father was not my dad. How I discovered that is a story for another day, but I am deeply grateful that my grandmothers – my mother’s mother and grandmother – had both prepared for the day it would happen.

When my mother ignored my questions, I turned to them; because I was already acting as carer to my parents and helping my mother with my sister, they were helping me in turn as much as they could. We had a language between us, a code: I knew I could rely on them to be honest with me.

A promise had been made to my mother under the assumption that she would tell me once I was old enough – an assumption that my grandmothers were now regretting. So my grandmother told me there was a truth to be told but that I was a little bit too young to understand; and that, hopefully, my mother would tell me when I was a little older. [Note to parents: your child is old enough to be told, in an age appropriate way, at the age they ask the question]. In the meantime, if I was mixed race, then I should try to remember it was nothing to be ashamed of (quite a lot of people, most of all my mother, were acting as if it were), and my grandmothers would always remind me – and my mother – that I had no reason to feel ashamed.

What had led to my questions wasn’t ignored either; my grandmothers had my back, and what could have been an isolating and frightening situation was dealt with: they made sure that I would be safe, and I was; and I was particularly lucky because they found an ally in my Infant School headmaster. It was only later in my life that I realised that my grandmothers had also provided me with necessary tools that made so much difference by ensuring that I started school with the ability to read, and write, well beyond the normal scope of a 5 year old.

It hurt my great grandmother especially – she had never known her biological father, but her mother had been truthful with her all her life, and her step-father had given her his name and adopted her, which was very unusual for the time, so she had long since come to terms with it. And had my biological father been just another white guy, she would have been perhaps less hurt by mother’s dishonesty, but she had played a big part in my mothers upbringing and my great grandmother was a passionate (and active) anti-racist. She had raised my mother better than to seek to both hide my father and his identity from me, and me from my father – because of his identity.

I have universal vitiligo; its the rarest form of vitiligo and I’m scared to talk about it openly, because when it started my mother absolutely freaked out in a way that terrified me. We live in a post-Rachel Dolezal world, so that also makes me nervous: I’m in my 50’s and have never admitted to something which is pretty fundamental to who I am. Vitiligo is an autoimmune condition, the first that manifested in me, and can also be genetically inherited. I don’t know if that’s the case for me. I can’t know, because of what my mother did.

I was left with 2 patches of darker skin: one on my neck, which eventually also faded after my children were born, and another on my torso, which I somehow managed to keep hidden from my mother (although being a carer, as opposed to being entirely dependent on my parent probably helped that). I learned the hard way not to make any reference to it – my mother could be very nasty when she wanted to be and any reference at all to anything to do with my father’s identity always provoked that side of her.

The last time I ever tried was when I was about 16. We were clearing away in the dining room after tea one Sunday evening. Dad was asleep on the chair, my siblings were elsewhere in the house. I pointed to the patch on my neck.

“Where do I get this from anyway?” I asked, trying to keep my tone super casual and light.

“It’s just dirt, you need to clean your neck properly,” she replied. The response was fast, her tone flat, and cold.

I honestly don’t know what hurt more about the response – that I actually went up to the bathroom and tried to scrub it off, or that she had said it at all. I only know that I literally cried with relief the next morning when I woke up and it was still there.

I escaped to my grandparents’s house in Norfolk for a weekend to spend time with my grandmother. My grandmother was deeply creative, and was always looking for ways to reassure me I had no reason to feel ashamed – and later, she started looking for ways to tell me at least something about where I came from, and how I got here. That weekend we went to the local market and ‘happened’ to find this beautiful, silky mustard coloured material, decorated along the bottom with Arabian horses mounted with Ottoman horse riders. I suspect she had found it already and had asked the stall holder to save her some. She made me a skirt with it, which I loved. And sometimes, when my mother was being especially unreasonable, my grandmother would put herself directly between us and give my mother A Talk. She did that after that visit too. I won some peace for a while – but I lost the skirt. My mother found it.

Throughout all those years, gently, insistently, persistently, my grandmothers kept trying to get my mother to see that I needed the truth. My mother put me under an insane amount of pressure, and held my father’s identity over me like the Sword of Damocles: I couldn’t be trusted because of my father’s identity, so I had to earn her trust, but could not earn her trust because of my father’s identity. For a long time I couldn’t acknowledge, even to myself, the real problem; no mental health condition causes racism.

My great grandmother took care of the spiritual stuff; she made sure that, before I ever came to faith, I understood that Jesus was an Arab Jew, and a revered prophet in Islam. She loved her Muslim neighbours; she loved cooking with the women, baby sitting for them when they needed it, and loved learning about the Islamic faith. She made sure my prayer life ran deep, and that I trusted my faith and my instincts. She was CofE, but also Quaker, Baptist, Anglo-Catholic – she worshipped as she felt led and that ability to see beyond denomination, beyond creed is very much part of my faith DNA now.

And then when I was 19, my wonderful great grandmother had her third stroke and moved out of her beloved corner of London to move in with my grandmother and grandfather. (His role in all this is ubiquitous, but again, that’s a story for another day). I could tell that my mother felt like she had won a reprieve – she became more strident at home again, getting angry at things in me that ought to make any parent happy: patience; forgiveness; loyalty; compassion. She saw him in me and I just felt lost, and utterly confused. The gaslighting was starting to wear me down. And yet… I also doubled down on those things which seemed to most remind her of him.

It’s an interesting way to rebel, to seek to be more forgiving, more compassionate, more patient, more kind, more open minded. Later – much, much later – I came to realise how much of an influence my biological father has been on me, even though we have never met, and are never likely to; and there is comfort in that.

My great grandmother had always promised me that she would be there for me until I was 21, and although she had 3 more strokes, she kept that promise. She even found a way to say goodbye, just as she had promised me too. When she died, I had locked away any questions about where I came from, and retreated into treating my mother’s inexplicable pressure and distrust of me as part of her mental health issues.

It was having my children that ignited the spark of anger, I think – they knew where they came from and I did not. My parents had divorced and still my mother could not tell me the truth. She had re-married and divorced again, and still could not tell me the truth. When she came to visit my ex-husband and I where we lived in Sheffield, with a vibrant Muslim community where I was making many friends, my mother stayed in our flat the whole weekend and refused to leave it, even to visit the Moroccan coffee house around the corner that displayed local artists work which you could buy.

One of the many things I had also personally been struggling with was serious gynecological issues for many years and whilst I was living in Sheffield I was due to have a scheduled hysterectomy; as they began the procedure they discovered I an ovarian cyst (my wonderful woman surgeon was seriously impressed with the size of it) which had just gone nuclear so my scheduled surgery became emergency surgery. My heart was re-started twice (it feels like an elephant has jumped on your chest), but they saved my life.

I returned to my home city as a newly single parent minus more than just a toxic spouse. It didn’t take long for my mother’s faux sympathy to melt and very soon she was once more wearing me down with endless criticism, pressure and gaslighting. My grandmother happened to phone after a particularly bruising encounter and for the first time in a few years I gave voice once more to my frustrations.

“What did I do? What is this thing that stands between me and her, Nan? I know I didn’t put it there, whatever it is. Why won’t she talk to me about it? Oh, gods, I’m sorry, it’s not your fault. Are you okay? How’s granddad?”

She soothed me. I know a phone call to my mother followed, and once more my grandmother put herself between her daughter and her granddaughter. It was an unenviable position to be in and I cannot imagine how hard it must have been for her. I was so much more aware by then of course, being a parent myself by that point, hence my apology.

I needed to find a way of advocating for myself to my mother.

It was the last time I ever asked my grandmother to advocate for me – I didn’t want to put her in that position again. She was becoming frailer herself and very soon was going to need my mother to help take care of her. She did not this making that harder.

Slowly – very slowly – I began to find my voice. I began to think more clearly than I had for a long time. I thought about the ways my mother herself could not contain the secret, how she saw my father in me every day, all the time, and as a result, said and did things that revealed small, tiny details that would seem like nothing on their own, but taken collectively began to make up more pieces of a shattered jigsaw puzzle.

I thought about all the ways that my grandmothers – knowing better than I would for years that my mother would not relinquish the truth – found creative ways of communicating little details to me. The skirt my grandmother made for me; my first school photograph, hung with my siblings first school photographs in my grandparents house – their pale skinned, red haired faces with mine, pre-vitiligo, always hung opposite the front door so that it was the first thing my mother and I saw when we visited. A reminder to me that I had a truth to fight for, and to my mother that she had a truth to tell. The summer my grandmother made me an Arabian Princess costume for a fancy dress competition at the village fete, when I was 7… my mother’s sucking-lemons face was priceless. (I won. My grandmother beamed). And my great grandmother, who taught me about listening to my instincts, to my inner voice, and how to trust God in prayer, who blessed me with a faith you could bend a rock around whilst still having a wide open heart.

Neither of them were perfect. My grandmother was a nightmare mother-in-law and my poor aunt put up with a very great deal over the years, with a great deal of grace. And my great grandmother had her own faults – mine is in averting my eyes from them. We shared the experience of not knowing our biological fathers, but more than that, she trusted me. She trusted my instincts and encouraged other people to trust my instincts too.

They held in the balance for decades an impossible situation – because whilst the reasons that my mother kept the secret of my paternity had nothing to do with her mental health, any attempt to raise the subject was taken as an attack and provoked issues with her mental health. And so they made skirts, and fancy dress costumes, taught me to trust my instincts, and blessed me with faith.

It was the best they could do, and when I got my DNA test results, it confirmed that it had been more than enough, because I had understood correctly what they had found a way to say to me, without words. I guess it helps that I’m also selectively non-speaking to be honest.

I do not know my father’s name, and that hurt’s in ways I cannot put into words. I know that he is patient and kind, forgiving and open minded, loyal and compassionate; I am proud of him too, and pray for him constantly. There are some other things I might know too, because my mother was never very good at keeping secrets, but whether I will ever be able to confirm them, or find out what my father’s name is, I do not know.

My mother hid my existence from him, because of his identity. And whenever the pain of that bites down, I remember that my grandmothers fought to teach me pride, to help me remember where I come from, creatively, with great love, so that I can at least know I am some of the things that my father is. And I will try to honour him, and honour God with that – and advocate for anyone who is isolated, alone, and marginalised, as my grandmothers once advocated for me.

[*In the cover photograph, my grandmother is the woman on the left, my great grandmother is the woman on the right. The tiny white haired woman in the middle is my great great grandmother and the baby she is holding is my mother.]

Dear Anglicans: Jesus Was Palestinian. Whitewashing Him Left a Hole in Our Theological Heart.

The very first thing I was ever taught about what I ought to know before I became a Christian came from my great-grandmother. She taught me that Jesus was Palestinian, and that Islam loved and respected him as the Prophet Isa, as well as honoring his mother, Maryam. She told me that whilst other (she meant white) Christians couldn’t see it, because they saw their faiths as in competition, Islam kept the memory of the Jesus/Isa who walked among us. Not the blonde, blue eyed Jesus we had turned him into. And that Jesus and his mother, who they were and what they said, made so much better sense when placed in their proper context. Jesus and his mother Mary were Palestinian Jews. They were Arab Jews.

I didn’t really understand how important it was back then, of course. I was only a child, and it was probably only obvious to my extremely intuitive grandmother that I would be the child (the eldest of 3) who would come to faith. It makes a great deal more sense to me now of course. In fact its reached the point where I realise that Jesus only makes sense as a Palestinian.

Jesus always walked between two worlds, in more ways than one. He didn’t just walk between the worlds natural and supernatural, the human and the divine – he walked between the more earthly worlds of being an Arab and a Jew. Putting His mother Mary back into her Palestinian context also puts back a power and depth to her words on finding herself pregnant. As a poor Arab Jewish woman, she had no voice in her community, and no power to change anything for the better for poor Palestinian Jewish women like her. Romans might have had Arab allies in the Ghassanid dynasty, but that did not equate to good treatment of poor Arabs and poor Arab Jews in Palestine, the country they occupied.

But to be willing to risk being cast still further aside, by being unmarried and pregnant as Mary is, was a stunning potential risk for a young woman to take, even if you believe God has given you a child who would bring so much to those Mary cared the most about. Because she knew there was a risk Joseph would not stand by her. Under any circumstances in such a patriarchal society, to be pregnant, and to claim to be so in such a manner – to the society around her it would have seemed absolutely outrageous, a scandal. Yet Mary is full only with mighty faith, with great love, with tremendous conviction, and yet a certain humbleness too.

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour, for He has looked with favour on the lowly state of his servant; Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things in me and holy is his name; indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. He has come to the aid of his child Israel in remembrance of His mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” Luke 1: 46-55 NRSV Updated Edition 2021

The Jesus that non-believers (who don’t buy into all the miracles) like, is the Jesus of the deepest, most patient, most abiding, most faithful, most brave, most forgiving love. And all of those things are true. That’s a big part of who Jesus was – its one of the parts that the ultra right wing ‘Christian’ Nationalists dislike the most, and work hard to avoid. But some non-believers find that kind of love hard to understand, perhaps because it comes in the context of a God who seems often the very opposite of loving in the OT. I would argue that, much as in politics, you get the God that you vote for.

“For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity, and as one from whom others hide their faces, he was despised and we held him of no account” Isaiah 53: 2-3 NRSV Updated Edition 2021

If you look at how Jesus challenged the established institutions, it required incredible conviction: teaching women as part of his ministry, equally to men; challenging ideas about just who our neighbour’s are (which still challenge people, just as much now); whilst these, among many other facets of his ministry, made him extremely popular with poor people, Jesus knew he wasn’t always as popular with some people. And here’s where Christians tend to fall down – into that trap of “the Jews murdered Jesus.” No. The Roman penal system, and people, murdered Jesus. People’s sin murdered Jesus. That’s kind of the point.

Jesus was also very, very specific about eschewing the need for material wealth, and insisted that his disciples give up all of their possessions when they became his disciples.

Jesus was Palestinian. Anyone who knows any Palestinians, or has worked with Palestinians will tell you that they have a capacity for love and generosity, even under the worst of circumstances, that is just wild. No material possession matters more than love, and hope is as important as breathing. Once they love you, they love you for life. They have reserves and depth to their patience that a ship could anchor itself to. And all of that love, and generosity, and patience and hope, is bottled into a people who have been occupied for thousands of years, and that breeds a special kind of courage.

“Today, everything is made in China. Except courage, courage is made in Palestine.” Anthony Bourdain

Jesus was a Palestinian because Jesus could only make sense as a Palestinian. For everything that followed in his ministry – everything he had to do; the sacrifice he was called to make… That kind of love, that sort of courage, the kind of sacrifice required – could only come out of Palestine.

“By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. They made his grave with the wicked, and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.” Isaiah 53: 8-9 NRSV Updated Edition 2021

And now here we are – in the middle of a genocide of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian Christians, who can date their bloodlines back to the time of Jesus, are nearly extinct. Just 10 weeks ago Justin Welby was declaring that ‘precious Israel’ was not an apartheid state. Now he pleads for a ceasefire, when he had already told Israel that he was willing to literally ignore one of Israel’s major forms of oppression. He has made no apology for this. Perhaps he thinks this is unimportant, but it is not. And it is not his only failing in respect of a marginalised community. His recent rearguard action, to deflect from his failings over Palestine, and the crumbs now given to the LGBTQ community, do little to make amends for this; there are wounded bodies piling up on Welby’s watch, from the victims of abuse, to the BAME communities, the disabled communities and the flaws in the crumbs offered to LGBTQ community – all of whom he has wounded through his managerial, conservative leadership.

“Rather, your inequities have been barriers between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lives; your tongue mutters wickedness.” Isaiah 59: 2-3

It is understandable that Welby is scared by what he is seeing – it is far, far more frightening to live it. But these are Jesus people. They meet it with the same love and courage Palestinians have greeted each and every day – since they have lived under one occupation or another for a very long time now. They still reach for freedom and peace, justice and equality as they have done since Mary’s day and before.

Jesus was a Palestinian – and whitewashing him created a hole in our theological hearts as white Christians. We are shocked and horrified by the pictures of genocide coming out of Palestine right now, but we must remember that this is not the first time Palestine have endured a genocide at the hands of Israel. There are elder Palestinian refugees today struggling to find safety who were refugees struggling to find safety in 1948. Hold space each day for prayer for Palestine. You don’t need to overthink it. Just pray for peace and an end to the killing. Let the babies grow up with their families now.

And I do like to hope that if smart phones had been available when Bosniak’s, the Bosnian Muslims, were under genocide in 1992-1995 that the majority of ordinary people then, as now, would object just as strongly, and demonstrate just as loudly, because we’re human beings who see these things and we just know what right from wrong is. And that every person coming out to demonstrate for Palestine now is feeling just some of that amazing spirit, that love of Jesus, who was Palestinian.

It is time to completely re-orientate and re-think our discipleship and theology, and reclaim and re-center Jesus the Palestinian Arab Jew, and Mary the Palestinian Arab Jew. Our faith, our theology and our churches will be better, and braver, for it.

poem: your whispered sorrow

It might as well have been hours, not months turned into years

for I have barely begun to undo myself from the decades of your lies

and silence spun; you who whispered truth from behind your death

and similarly your late regret;

it is too soon, too fresh, too raw

for you to ask for forgiveness yet.

How can it have been any more than mere days, surely not I have

wept for so long; and yet so much was taken, and I, complicit, where

others hearts must too, be spared; you leaned on that –

but in the leaning, took me for a fool;

it is too soon, too fresh, too raw

let me have truth, and let me choose.

The Lessons That Must Be Learned Pt 1: Using The Media To Weaponise Disability & Monster A Disabled Woman

I said from the start that the prosecution and police had to pull off a slight-of-hand to convict Auriol Grey because, by the very nature of her disabilities, she could not possibly have pushed over Mrs Ward without falling over herself. Let me break it down:

1. Auriol has loss of muscle strength down her entire right side due to part of her brain being removed as a baby. She has cerebral palsy, which affects balance, and talipes (a birth defect of the foot).
2. Auriol is visually impaired as a result of the operation as a baby. Because of her particular disabilities she has to focus on where she is walking so that she doesn’t trip up over something: that particular pavement has raised metal drain covers down one side (they are why Auriol is unable to give way), so the pavement is made narrower and harder to navigate from Auriol’s perspective. Because of her visual impairments, Auriol does not recognise that Mrs Ward is approaching until they are barely 2 feet apart.
3. Auriol is cognitively impaired, and was assessed as autistic whilst in prison. Her brain underwent severe trauma at birth, and further trauma as a baby, and she processes the experience of trauma differently – it takes her brain a while to fully process any information it receives at moments of extreme stress.
4. Auriol was clutching her shopping bag up to her chest with one arm, which remained the case as the two women passed each other, and she is still doing so as she turns around when she realises something is wrong and see’s the accident unfold.

The closest thing to any physical contact the police had was a still frame picture of Auriol’s left hand as it had brushed against Mrs Ward’s chest as they passed each other – the path being so narrow at that point that you can, if you blow up the CCTV and play it slowly, see Mrs Ward push to get her bike through. This is a detail that the appeal court missed – the path becomes much narrower where a lamp post is cited, and it was at that point that the two women passed each other. We know this because the police released interview footage of them showing Auriol those still frame photo’s, as if someone with her cognitive impairments, already under extreme stress, would be able to explain them.

Without anything to be able to show that Auriol had actually made any physical contact with Mrs Ward – and possibly aware by this point that Auriol would have been unable to do so without falling and injuring herself as well – the police needed to be able to provide a motive, something that could be made to retrospectively paint Auriol’s actions in a more aggressive, criminal light. What they chose says everything about the root ableism at the heart of the original charge against Auriol – the police chose to question Auriol’s feelings, as a visually impaired person, about shared use pathways (pathways designed to be used by both cyclists and pedestrians).

It’s the one other piece of interview footage the police released – and crucially the crux of the prosecutions case. Rather than believe that a physically disabled, vulnerable woman felt scared that she might have an accident when startled by the presence of a cyclist, the police chose instead to use Auriol Grey’s response to monster her, first to a jury, and then to a hungry media.

They were helped by a judge who we now know made misdirections in law – but he also denied Auriol a guardian ad litem, even though she has, not to put to fine a point on it, part of her brain literally removed, as well as being cognitively impaired. Why was he able to do that? Why did he sentence Auriol before receiving court ordered medical reports? What was the rush?

And why scapegoat Auriol in the first place?

What there should have been, as the police fed their ablest narrative to the media, was someone willing to critically engage with it and wonder why the police would be dehumanising so profoundly this profoundly disabled woman.

You think Auriol has no feelings or empathy because you are relying on ablest stereotypes about cognitively impaired and learning disabled people, and the police have been weaponising those stereotypes against Auriol from the start. After her conviction, Det Sgt Dollard ‘revealed’ that some of the CCTV had to be withheld because – he suggested darkly – of how horiffic it supposedly showed Auriol to be.

Again – where were the questions? The simple interrogation of such statements? Incidentally, the link, which includes Det Sgt Dollard’s statements, is to some local news reporting that did actually challenge some of the police, and the judges narratives around the pathway on which the accident occurred.

In Part 2 we’ll look at how, before the overturning of her conviction and since, the media continues to be relentlessly ablest, and unable, to discern the corruption that tried to destroy an innocent disabled woman.

The Lessons That Must Be Learned: The Systemic Discrimination’s & Judicial Abuses Which Jailed Auriol Grey

Last year, before I had to step back to look after both my dad’s health needs and my own, I made a number of video’s concerning what was evidently to many of us in the disabled community a miscarriage of justice – that of disabled pedestrian Auriol Grey, jailed for 3 years for manslaughter, after her actions, having been startled by the presence of the late Mrs Celia Ward coming towards her on a bicycle, supposedly caused Mrs Ward to fall off her bike into the path of an oncoming car.

For reference: Auriol Grey is cognitively impaired – following a birth trauma (the umbilical chord had been wrapped around her neck, and she had been starved of oxygen), she suffered severe seizures, and she had brain surgery as a baby: for clarity’s sake, part of her brain was removed. She is visually impaired and has muscle weakness down the full right hand side of her body as a result of this. Auriol also has cerebral palsy and talipes; she is learning disabled and was diagnosed with autism following an assessment whilst in prison.

The late Mrs Celia Ward was 77 and was hearing impaired, to the extent that she only cycled on pavements and dual use & cycle pathways.

Yesterday, the Court of Appeal agreed that this was indeed a miscarriage of justice:

In our judgement, the prosecution case was insufficient even to be left to the jury.

Mrs Justice Yip & Mrs Justice Farbey, R -v- Auriol Grey, 8 May 2024

Whilst I disagree with some elements of the judgement – I would strongly refute that any of Auriol’s actions made any difference to the outcome of that tragic accident, and that there are several other factors which have been entirely ignored due in large part to societal conventions loosely associated with not speaking ill of the dead – the judgement itself is clear. That this was a clearly unsafe conviction is so named, and for that I am grateful. It places a great many questions before the CPS, and these can now be carefully examined in light of this judgement.

But the judgement has its limitations, and there are questions it is not designed, nor has no authority to answer.

The spotlight on the judge’s misdirection’s in law do not similarly come with a spotlight on his deliberate withholding of Auriol’s rights under the Equality Act 2010, but then neither does it, nor can it cover the abuses and discrimination’s that led to Auriol being charged in the first place.

And for that, you have to start with the police Det Sgt Mark Dollard who, after Auriol’s conviction, having successfully weaponised all of her disabilities against her, then did much of the heavy lifting when it came to monstering Auriol to the press, who in turn repeated it, uncritically.

Where was the critical media, asking why a Detective Sargent was referring to a profoundly disabled woman in such profoundly dehumanising terms? Where was the critical journalist’s eye that was able to ask the hard questions?

Auriol Grey deserves peace, and time and privacy and the right to heal because she is and always was an innocent woman. We, in the meantime, need to discuss the many discriminations and systemic failures that led to an innocent woman being imprisoned for a crime that never was.

And part one needs to be the media. We’ll start there.

Matthew 18 & The Disobedient Church: Is It Time That It Cut Off It’s Hand?

I’m taking a break for a few days or so from twitter which, apart from Reddit, is the only social media platform I use (the vagaries of my dysphasia mean I struggle to process other forms of social media). But when on there in the last few days, I expressed my exasperation at the attempts on the part of some in the charismatic church to draw a parallel between the Charismatic church and their response to the abuse committed by Mike Pilavachi, through his various ministries run via Soul Survivor, and the way in which the L’Arche community handled the revelations of the appalling abuse committed by Jean Vanier, their founder.

Not all of my expressions of that exasperation were well put, however – and with apologies to Natalie Collins for a rather inept response to her thoughtful engagement, I want to dig into that with a little more clarity, and reflect both the direct teaching Jesus gave to the abused, the abusers, the Church, the ways in which the Church as a whole (and individuals within it) disobey him to whom we are discipled – and in some cases even twist the very direct teachings of Jesus into attacks on those they abuse.

Jesus was always consistent in his message to abusers – in Matthew 5:29 he points to the men who divorce their wives in order to marry other (younger) women. He reminds them that adultery is abusive, and makes it clear that they should act radically to improve their own behaviour and have better self-discipline (that they should “gouge out their eye”). In Matthew 18, he warns against abusing “little ones” (children and the vulnerable), and his message is equally as stark. It is better that you drown than harm them, says Jesus (vs 6), but he goes further, harking back to his earlier message to abusive husbands – if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off, he says. (A warning to those who would inflict physical forms of abuse). If your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out – a warning to those who look upon children and the vulnerable with with a consumptive or salacious eye. And this isn’t an exclusive list of the abuses Jesus is concerned with – See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my father in heaven, he says (vs 10). Be warned, then – for every abusive thought and deed against the vulnerable, God will know.

If you choose to do what is wrong, says Jesus, then you are making a choice from a bad place and you must act – you must excise that which is bad within you, and you must do whatever is required to that end. Jesus leaves no room for ambiguity here. Only radical action and self-discipline will suffice.

But then Jesus widens the teaching, for this is not just for the individual – Jesus instructs his Church in the matter. If someone in the Church is sinning (behaving abusively) against their brother or sister, and will not change after they have been spoken to in private (vs 15 &16), then it becomes a matter for the Church to deal with. And if that person who is behaving abusively still will not change, then Jesus instructs the Church to “…treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”

In other words, to shun them. To cut them off, like that hand – or gouge them out, like that eye.

We know how shocking this teaching is to the disciples because Peter immediately asks about the frequency of forgiveness in light of it. Jesus does, after all, teach us that forgiveness is so important – and he reassures us that this teaching continues to allow forgiveness to happen as part of an ongoing process (vs 22 “…”I tell you not seven times, but seventy-seven times”) and warns against bearing unforgiveness where one has been forgiven.

Apart from a brief statement on his facebook page that made no real acknowledgement of his decades of grooming children, of psychological, physical and spiritual abuse of young people and the bullying and gaslighting of innumerable colleagues, Mike Pilavachi has shown no real repentance and no willingness to change. He has not and is not ‘cutting off his hand’, or ‘gouging out his eye’.

Similarly, the majority of Charismatic church leaders have been utterly silent about the episode – the Rev Coates soft soaping, ticket selling stint in Premier Christianity notwithstanding. Some have complained that those calling for leaders to speak up in solidarity with victims “have an axe to grind” against Charismatic theology. And whilst there have been those who have individually provided thoughtful, careful, victim-centered responses that reflect Jesus’s love for those who have been hurt – corporately, Charismatic Church leaders have chosen to ignore every human pleading, seemingly more concerned with the reputation of their tradition than with the hurting and the vulnerable, or with obeying Jesus. Some, like JJohn, have shown support to Mike Pilavachi, but had not a single word to say about those he harmed.

They are not, in light of Pilavachi’s lack of repentance, treating him like a ‘pagan or tax collector’.

They also number some of those most resistant to the idea of independent safeguarding in the Church of England. Along with a great many victim-survivors, and those who have advocated and campaigned about this for a very long time indeed, I shake my head in wonder – at the intransigence, and the utter inability to recognise that safeguarding and redemption are not at odds with each other, but are entirely bound together. But why are independent safeguarding procedures in the church so necessary?

If Mike Pilavachi isn’t enough of an example, you need to look at the example of Alan Scott and Jeremy Riddle, not just because these are church “leaders” who deny the authority of any oversight – but because these are church “leaders” who have openly used Matthew 18 to attack victims, or used it to avoid answering accusations from abuse victims..

Strictly speaking, Matthew 18 doesn’t deal with how to treat abusive Church Leaders. But then strictly speaking, “leaders” like Jeremy Riddle and Alan Scott work very hard to ensure that they are not ever accountable to a Church with oversight in the first place. This is another facet of abusers – in whatever role they inhabit, they will always seek to Avoid Accountability because if you’ve found yourself in a situation where abusing your position is providing you with the power you have come to crave, avoiding accountability is necessary to surviving and thriving as an abuser. Whether you are using others to shield yourself and your abuse from view – as Jean Vanier appeared to use L’Arche – or removing your church from the group of church’s that provided oversight, as Alan Scott did, or simply operating outside of a Church’s nominal oversight, by being “unorthodox”, as Mike Pilavachi did, ensuring that accountability doesn’t happen is necessary to success as an abuser.

Therefore twisting Jesus very clear message of freedom to the abused – and equally clear message to the abuser, if they want the same freedom – must itself be subverted once it is inevitably invoked. Perhaps to some it would seem astonishing that the wife of a man accused of abuse, and an account representing Alan Scott, also accused of years of abuse, would feel so comfortable turning Jesus’s words of liberation for the abused, against the abused, so freely on social media. To others of us, however, it is less astonishing than it is entirely predictable.

Jesus says to the abused: I believe you; you did nothing wrong – you are not to blame. Come. Rest.

Jesus says to the abuser: You have done wrong – change your ways. It is on you. Come. Work hard.

To the abuser who is not prepared to acknowledge their guilt, that message is death, not life. It is life, but they have to be prepared to accept their guilt, and take full responsibility for their choices.

For abusers in the Church, Jesus offers no escape; he never says to them, in any way, “but don’t worry guys, I’m going to sacrifice my life so that you don’t have to answer for your sin”. In Jesus’s teaching, guilt is fully located in the abuser, and in Jesus’s analogies it is the flesh of the abuser which is cut off, or sacrificed because of their sin – not that of Jesus. This is not a sin that can be pinned to a cross in some wordy-but-meaningless confession. Jesus will not accept their sin on his being.

In a culture where there is a great deal of money to be made for the successful, for the entrepreneurial, for the charismatic/Charismatic, for the evangelical Christian “leader”; where disability is a thing to be cured not accommodated, let alone seen in leadership (ironic, when so much of the New Testament was written by an epileptic); where you still can’t be a woman without being a sin by default, whatever your state of coverage, and whose leadership is still more likely to be defined by that (either because it’s directed towards other women generally, or because it’s concerned with women generally); where to be LGBTQ is to be debated, “prayed away”, patted on the head with “love the sinner not the sin”; where race and racism collide with terrifying frequency and antisemitism is shockingly rife across all traditions – and see how fast the room clears whenever someone dares to remind anyone that Jesus was an Arab Jew – in such a culture it is easy for the eloquent grifter and the abuser to thrive.

Strictly speaking, Matthew 18 doesn’t deal with abusers of the type that are Mike Pilavachi, Alan Scott and Jeremy Riddle, because the teaching that Jesus gives us about the “wolves in sheep’s clothing” – the false prophets – is found in Matthew 7, and his instruction to the Church is again equally stark, and clear: cut them off. They bear false witness and bad fruit.

The problem is that the Church continually fail to recognise the “bad fruit” that these false prophets produce – Mike Pilavachi, Alan Scott, Jeremy Riddle, Mark Driscoll et al – because they become so enthralled with the numbers of bums on seats: which isn’t the “fruit” they bear. The work of the Holy Spirit cannot be ascribed to the hand of man. The “bad fruit” these false prophets bear is the pain, suffering, hurt, humiliation and shame that they inflict on their victims, and it is immensely frustrating that the Church still needs to be told, repeatedly, that it is ignoring this evidence continually.

Safeguarding and redemption, within the context of a society that treats people as things to consume, is and must be bound together; and in ensuring it is independent, it is the Church obeying Jesus’s own teaching of doing whatever is required in the face of the abuser; of cutting off it’s own hand in order that abusers cannot thrive; of cutting off the abuser directly – it is the shepherd, protecting the flock from the “ravening wolves”.

L’Arche responded to the reports of Jean Vanier’s abuse, after his death, by ordering a full, top down inquiry into the whole community and organisation, with its priority being Vanier’s victims and the disabled members of the community. By doing so, it exposed how Vanier used L’Arche to cover his own abusive behaviour – a revelation that caused great, and lasting, pain and harm in and of itself. If the Charismatic Church had the stomach to order an investigation into itself over Mike Pilavachi’s ministry, (it has not) it would still be difficult to draw a parallel, because “community” is itself a word that get’s located, and re-located, depending on which leader you follow. And when will it do something about it’s ableism, which is systemic, and abusive, in and of itself?

When you proclaim you are proudly “counter cultural” whilst being part of a Church that is hyper-consumerist, inexorably tied to increasingly right wing political parties, and all whilst appealing to the working class with the wicked, false “prosperity” gospel, which proliferates in one form or another across more than just Charismatic and Evangelical circles; when you have stood to one side in silence as Christian Nationalism and Christofascism have raised their ugly heads once more; when you disobey the one to whom you are discipled, whose name you carry, so that not even a victim of abuse can be safe in his house, you cannot then claim parallel with those who do obey, and who do care about the little ones and the vulnerable.

Your lip service, I assure you, does not count.

Dear Anglicans: Why Did the South African Communion Declare Israel an Apartheid State?

If the Israeli governments vote to ‘settle’ (take yet more of Palestine from the Palestinians) the Gaza envelope – as well make further illegal land grabs in the Palestinian West Bank, and continue to threaten the incredibly small Armenian community – isn’t enough to persuade you that the people, and land, who are under threat are not, in fact, the Israeli’s, perhaps you will listen to your brothers and sisters in the Southern African communion.

For reasons that require no illustration, Black people in South Africa are the experts on apartheid. They lived under it for far too long and their release from that bondage, from that oppression, was a long overdue answer to a million prayers. But they knew that they were not the only ones to suffer that oppression, and Nelson Mandela was very clear that South Africa’s freedom from apartheid could not leave behind their brothers and sisters in Palestine.

“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” President Nelson Mandela, 1997

Bishop Desmond Tutu, until his death in 2021, was a constant prophetic critic of the Israeli governments, whose theology spoke to a God who favoured the enslaved and oppressed over those who sought conquest and brought oppression – and was therefore on the side of the Palestinians, yet never losing sight of Jewish humanity. His vision and message began with the God of Exodus, the God of liberation: “When our people groaned by virtue of the burden of racist oppression, we invoked the God who addressed Moses in the burning bush… We told them God was notoriously biased in favour of those without clout; the poor; the weak; the hungry; the voiceless.” (Generation Palestine: Voices From the BDS Movement 2012).

For Black people in South Africa, then, the reality of the oppression suffered by the indigenous Arab people of Palestine – Muslim, Christian and Jew alike – is a cause that has never been far from their hearts or minds, and in taking to the International Court of Justice the case for the genocide being committed against the Palestinians in Gaza, Naledi Pandor and her colleagues follow in the footsteps of some of South Africa’s most committed liberators.

To answer why the Anglican Church of Southern Africa declared Israel to be an apartheid state last year, we can look at some of the evidence gathered by B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. As they describe plainly: “One organising principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another, Palestinians.” You can also check out information from Amnesty International here.

That underlying principle – the supremacy of Jewish people, not just in Israel, but eventually the whole of Palestine – is the key to understanding all of this. It is, and has always been, the driving principle of Zionism and any even cursory reading of the founders of Zionism and the first leaders of Israel (who enacted the Nakba in 1946-48), makes this very clear. The goal has always been to remove every Arab from Palestine.

“From the River to the Sea” has never been a genocidal cry – but a cry for freedom, a “groan by virtue of the racist burden of oppression.” When Archbishop Thabo Makgoba released the Church’s statement last September – in what was widely interpreted as a rebuke to Archbishop Justin Welby’s de facto declaration that there was no apartheid in Israel – he said:

“When Black South African’s who have lived under apartheid visit Israel, the parallels to apartheid are impossible to ignore. If we stand by and keep quiet we will be complicit in the continuing oppression of the Palestinians.” (Emphasis mine)

And so I ask – how many babies must be buried alive, or blown apart, before the Anglican Church repents of its complicity? How many women? How many children? How much death and oppression and ethnic cleansing is required before the Church of England says – we were wrong and we are sorry?

How much genocide does it take?

The Psychological Torture Of Genocide: How Israel Uses Drones to Lure Victims, “Hunger Games” Style

It has been almost 7 months since the start of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and – as Francesca Albanese succinctly described it in the opening line of her report to the UN, Gaza itself has been destroyed. The number of women and children murdered, buried alive, burned, sniped, and brutally murdered accounts for approximately 70% of the dead. Men still try and dig out survivors with their bare hands as their infrastructure has been destroyed, preventing any other means of rescuing and saving those who could have been. Countless journalists, academics, healthcare workers and others have been targeted and murdered by Israel, using their carefully kept lists of Palestinians.

From the use of white phosphorus at the outset of the genocide, to the ‘flour’ massacres most recently, the many crimes against humanity being committed in Gaza are hard to keep up with; every day there is some new horror that the Palestinians – indigenous to the land, who have lived on it, farmed it, nurtured it, wrote poetry under the stars on it, and raised countless generations on it – apparently must endure, whilst Western governments continue to give cover to Israels murderous rampage. The latest is perhaps quintessentially Israeli, in its use of technology, and psychological torture.

Israeli drones – quadcopters – are playing recordings of crying infants and distressed women to lure out Palestinian’s to area’s where they can be targeted by snipers.

If you’ve never met a Palestinian, then let me tell you a little something that you might not otherwise know – Palestinian’s are outrageously, wildly kind and generous as a people. No matter how little they have, they will always share it. And no matter how horrific their circumstances, they will never ever leave anyone behind. Israel knows this: it is how they have been able to commit so many flour massacres. They know that every man, no matter the how likely it is that the IDF will be using the promised aid as a bait, will still try and get some food for the family, friends and neighbours, no matter the risk.

It shouldn’t need saying how horrific, how cruel, how disgusting it is to lure out people who will always answer the cries of a child, of a woman in distress, just so that you can shoot them.

And yet here we are.

Why Does the Church Struggle to Reconcile Redemption & Safeguarding?

In 2010, the Methodist Church decided to submit itself to an independent review of it’s historical and current handling of abuse within the Church. The review took a little over a year to complete, between 2013 and 2014, and was released a year later in May 2015, as “Courage, Cost and Hope” with the following apology:

“On behalf of the Methodist Church in Britain I want to express an unreserved apology for the failure of its current and earlier processes fully to protect children, young people and adults from physical and sexual abuse inflicted by some ministers in Full Connexion and members of the Methodist Church. That abuse has been inflicted by some Methodists on children, young people and adults is and will remain a deep source of grief and shame to the Church.

“We have not always listened properly to those abused or cared for them, and this is deeply regrettable. In respect of these things we have, as a Christian Church, clearly failed to live in ways that glorify God and honour Christ. 

Methodist Church, 28th May 2015

Whilst it was by no means a perfect response, it came from a place of penitence and repentance, and a willingness to listen to, and learn from, victims of abuse. There were a number of themes, and findings, in the report which would be as relevant to the Evangelical, Charismatic and wider Anglican Church (and certainly many other traditions), as they are to the Methodist Church. In the context specifically of culture and accountability, it found the following:

• Difficulty of ministers and lay persons in reconciling the theology of forgiveness and redemption with safeguarding
• The unacceptably high number of reported cases of abuse where the internal or external processes (accountability) were not satisfactory.
• Effective early intervention where a colleague’s behaviour is a cause of concern is made more difficult by both a lack of direct support, and a lack of knowledge of what to look for and how to deal with the situation.
• Supervision of staff (in the context of safeguarding) is recognised as an effective measure, and a clear and explicit theological basis for a supervisory structure needs to be implemented.
• The failure of leaders to listen to children, young people and vulnerable adults when concerns were raised – the report suggests that this is due in part to a weakness of accountability.

[Emphasis mine] There are 3 fundamental key learning points in relation to culture and accountability in the report which reflect it’s focus on victims:

• The pain of victims is lasting and amplified when they do not feel listened to.
• The voices of children and vulnerable young people are not listened to and their need for separate support not provided.
• The same supporter cannot meet the needs of the victim/survivor and the perpetrator.

[Emphasis mine] When I first read the report, and saw those first two learning points written down, I was relieved to see them – but seeing the third came as something of a surprise. I had long been frustrated by the Church believing both were possible and seeing it enunciated was a moment of hope.

As an advocate – and a victim/survivor of abuse, rape and IPV myself – it is of course obvious. This is not to suggest that (for example) a perpetrator who was themselves abused should not receive therapy and support. It is simply to point out that if you minister to the perpetrator, you will do so at the expense of the victim: the report was very clear about this.

And yet to many in the Church, and in Christian organisations, that is a message that has not been either received – or understood. And this is, largely because Christians “struggle to reconcile the theology of forgiveness and redemption” with safeguarding. And this is despite Jesus providing them with the framework to do so (Matthew 18: 6-9 & 15-20, Matthew 5:29).

How far this is due to the failure (or refusal) to understanding physical, sexual, emotional, psychological and spiritual abuse as an abuse of power is more difficult to discern; yet so entangled has the Church become in its muddled theologies of redemption, it has lost sight of the simple, yet to some, startling, fact – the abuser is the oppressor. And the abused, the oppressed.

Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun;

I saw the tears of the oppressed – and they have no comforter;

Power was on the side of the oppressors – and they have no comforter.

Ecclesiastes 4:1

As the Church of England considers the Jay Report around independence in safeguarding – something that many within the Church remain resistant to – it is clear in light of the ongoing fallout from Pilavachi’s decades of abuse through his network of ministries, with the support of many influential figures in the Evangelical and Charismatic wing of the Anglican Church, that it can no longer allow for renegades to exist outside of safeguarding frameworks, no matter how “great” the move of God appears to be through their work.

But I do hope that they end the repeated mistake of allowing church’s and church leaders to think that they can minister to both victim and perpetrator, because such a ministry will always be at the expense of the victim. These things must, always, be kept separately. You can either minister to one, or the other – but not to both.

And in the deep, ongoing silence from Nicky Gumbel, Holy Trinity Brompton and others I ask myself – have they repeated that mistake?

Or have they chosen a side?

“That’s Just Mike”: How Abusers Weave Culture, Complicity, Silence & Fear Into Patterns of Abuse

It never ‘just happens’: it’s never a one off, or something that only began recently. Someone who abuses another person – physically, emotionally, psychologically, sexually or spiritually – has engaged in abuse and abusive behaviour before. It is a choice that is always part of a pattern of many incidents, some of which may well have been reported. It never comes out of the clear blue sky. It is not the result (in a church context) of a ‘lack of faith’, or because ‘the devil overcame’ the abuser. An abuser does not ‘fall’: their behaviour is not an accident. It is a choice that is the result of wanting power, and wanting to exercise power and control over that person, and others – there are always others.

This is something that is very much evident, both in Let There Be Light, and in the Soul Survivors podcast – and because it is the victims voices which are centered, we are given the opportunity to discern that a pattern of behaviour was being practiced and established over decades by Mike Pilavachi. It involved children – Matt Redman was a highly vulnerable 13-year old, who was being sexually abused by someone else when he met Pilavachi, and who was then groomed by Pilavachi after Redman disclosed that abuse to him, and after Pilavachi helped Matt Redman report the sexual abuse to the police. But Redman was not the only one. It also included (as described in the film) “athletic” young men particularly from vulnerable backgrounds; and co-workers whom he bullied and controlled with erratic, unpredictable tantrums. When Matt and Beth Redman became engaged, he stopped speaking to them until the day before their wedding. Like many other aspects of Pilavachi’s abuse, this is described by some of his former interns and ‘favourites’: how he stopped speaking to them when they began new romantic relationships with women. His abuse spans decades and impacts probably hundreds of people – as Beth Redman points out in the recent podcast interview, there are a great many victims who have not felt able to come forward and speak to the NST investigation.

Pilavachi put himself in a context that protected him. Evangelical Christianity is very much more conservative, exclusionary of LGBTQ identities and there are few, if any, women or disabled people in its leadership. Indeed, Pilavachi’s aversion of women in leadership roles is another underlying theme that the podcast highlights. Pilavachi is a performer, charismatic on stage, but moody and unpredictable in private; and it is clear that in the eyes of the now established Charismatic and Evangelical Church he could do no wrong, which will have acted as a powerful layer of protection. But he was also outside of the usual safeguarding structures of the Church for a large part of his ministry. He was not ordained for much of it, and he was ‘accountable’ largely to those who championed him.

The podcast looks at some of the relationships that mentored and supported Pilavachi here, but Natalie Collins also digs more deeply into the complex network of leaders and organisations that Pilavachi worked with, connected with, and built around himself here. Natalie also hosts a guest post from a woman who reported her experiences to the NST investigation here. I strongly recommend both posts to you. Natalie has covered this since the story first broke in great detail over a number of articles, and has worked to bring to light the suffering and damage caused by a great many other abusive Church leaders, having long campaigned on this issue. The continued, deafening, silence about Pilavachi – from the likes of Holy Trinity Brompton, Nicky Gumbel, J John and others – before and since the release of the NST report, nevertheless speaks volumes.

And yet Jesus empowers us not to suffer in silence, but to speak (Matthew 18:15-20). He understands that it is necessary to call out harm where it is being done, and it must be dealt by the church. I would insist that there should never be any onus on the victim to speak to the abuser privately, even with support, and that it isn’t always safe for them to do so. Hence, Jesus has already commissioned the Church itself to take responsibility for abusive leaders, and it cannot shy away from it’s responsibilities to do so. This does not impede us from the ongoing process of forgiveness (Matthew 18:22) but the harm must be acknowledged and especially where it causes harm to children or ’causes them to stumble’ (Matthew 18:6-9) – we cannot know how many young people were emotionally, physically, psychologically and spiritually harmed by Pilavachi’s abuse, and the silence that protected him. And the person causing the harm must take full responsibility for their behaviour: they must take whatever radical action is required and exercise self-discipline in pursuing it (Matthew 5:29, Matthew 18: 8-9).

But when the Redman’s took their concerns to senior Church leaders, they were told “that’s just Mike” – three words which would have more successfully silenced others who do not have the platform and standing in the Evangelical and wider Christian community that the Redman’s have; and they note, without bitterness, the ongoing silence from Church leaders who should be speaking out against abuse, and who should be standing with victims.

“…It’s not right for everyone to speak out, but I think the silence from a lot of leaders, even today as we launch Let There Be Light, I think is part of the problem in Church culture. Why can’t we just say it is wrong that someone abused their platform and privilege, and we stand with survivors, and we stand against spiritual, psychological, emotional, physical abuse; I don’t know what is so hard about that for leaders in the Church today to say.” Beth Redman

Soul Survivors Podcast, 09/04/2024

They, like many of us, wonder why it is so hard for those who should know better to do so, but they refuse to make any demands, save for one: justice. Mike Pilavachi was allowed to resign and to date has suffered no real consequences for his actions.

Beth Redman highlighted another problem that I don’t believe would have been unique to her, in the Evangelical Christian Church – she didn’t know about the National Safeguarding Team.

I did, but on it’s own, that isn’t enough because how does that help you when something is said, or happens, that you know is worrying and troubling, but you haven’t been empowered to trust your experience; and just as importantly, the knowledge and understanding to know how to deal with it? “Tell your church’s safeguarding team” isn’t enough when you don’t know what to say, how to say it, or indeed whether or not you should even say it at all.

Because abusers are very good at making things looking like a ‘they said/I say’ situation. What would you feel able to say in the following situations?

• A new pastor makes what feels like a very inappropriate comment to you – he is married, you are a single parent. But you might have misunderstood – would it be better to brush it off, and not worry about it? Would people think you were making trouble?

• Your vicar tells you that a highly vulnerable woman that they had helped at a previous ministry had made an accusation about her husband – but he really is innocent, and you do believe that, don’t you? (It feels like the vicar is trying to convince herself. But what are you supposed to do with that? If you reported it, are you dragging a vulnerable woman into something she might be trying to put behind her, and which was going to amount to a he said/she said thing?)

• A pastors wife tells you that when she met her husband, her first instinct was “I can’t trust him”, but she then goes on to describe ‘love bombing’ behaviour. You are aware that the pastors wife was previously abused as a child. What do you do with that knowledge? What do you say to her? Who can you tell?

One of the most striking, though not surprising, things listening to the podcast is this: Pilavachi was already a practiced abuser when he began his ministry, with victims from that first ministry at Chorleywood having come forward. I believe he will have victims from outside the Church, and I think the Church would be wise to make a wider appeal, once the second investigation is concluded, to any victims to so that help and support can be provided to them too.

One thing is certain: until the Church – the whole Church, across all traditions – recognises and accepts the need to ensure that it’s responses to abusive leaders are victim centered, and based on the abuser taking full responsibility for the choices that they have made; and until the Church accepts that it must learn from victims and their advocates how to better identify abusers, and patterns of abuse; until it learns that humility, the Church will continue to make victims – not offer the safe haven to them that it should.

Jesus’s Message to Abusers (Holy Trinity Brompton Take Note)

When we’re looking at scandals and failings within church leadership, many people are asking: “How do we stop this? How do we create contexts where leaders don’t fall? What needs to change?” Rev Archie Coates, Premier Christianity, 10/04/2025

“If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.” Jesus, Matthew 5:29

Mike Pilavachi did not ‘fall’. The devil did not overpower him. He made a choice – like every other abuser, he made that choice repeatedly, and he knew exactly what he was doing. And just like every other abuser, he ensured he put himself in a context where he was enabled and excused by those who would be prepared to enable and excuse abusive behaviour. People who would be happy to make the trade off; people who would be prepared to look the other way; people who wouldn’t feel capable, or have the faith or moral courage to call him on his behaviour. Because that’s a big part of how abusers operate, and need to operate in order to do so successfully – and Mike Pilavachi was able to successfully abuse and bully a great number of people for decades. And that requires silence and complicity.

Holy Trinity Brompton may, or may not, be preparing to pave the way for Mike Pilavachi’s redemptive return narrative (something which sadly isn’t unusual, especially in evangelical, conservative Christian circles) but whether they are or not, it’s worth pointing out that Jesus already had the answer for the Rev Coates question, and whilst it might seem brutal to the abuser, it is nevertheless the Good News, the Gospel that he brought us.

He didn’t say – wait until I’ve been nailed to a cross lads, then confess your sins on that and we’re golden.

He didn’t say – whoops, you fell, wasn’t your fault, the devil overcame you.

No – he allows neither for the excuse of the accidental, nor the ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ of the incapable. What Jesus does is tell the abuser: you made a choice. It was a bad choice made from a bad place, and its on you. You have to take responsibility for it. You have to exercise self-control, and discipline. Do it, no excuses, get it done.

And that applies to those around the abuser too. The context, if you like, that so concerns Rev Coates.

The gospel is powerful and for the abused person – groomed into believing it was their fault, something in them that made the abuser do it, made them “fall” – Jesus comes with the truth from God that entirely, and rightly, relieves them of a burden that was never theirs to bear. Jesus came with a redemption that didn’t require him to be nailed to a cross to achieve, and his words seem harsh only to those who can find excuses or justifications for abuse.

Whether or not Mike Pilavachi and Holy Trinity Brompton are laying the groundwork for Pilavachi’s “redemption and return” story – Pilavachi has yet to face any consequences from the Church for his abuse and Holy Trinity Brompton have yet to say anything at all about someone that they have extremely close links to – the Rev Coates ought not to be confused about how to ensure that Church leaders do not abuse others.

Jesus came with the answer and I’m fairly sure the good Reverend has a bible.