Making church safer for all: Efforts extend beyond sexual misconduct to bullying, mistreatment
https://archives.anglican.ca/link/article39597
- Author
- Swift, Diana
- Material Type
- Journal Article
- Journal
- Anglican Journal
- Date
- 2016 May
- Author
- Swift, Diana
- Material Type
- Journal Article
- Journal
- Anglican Journal
- Date
- 2016 May
- Volume
- 142
- Issue
- 5
- Page
- 11
- Notes
- "The Anglican Communion's Safe Church Consultation emerged from painful revelations in the 1990s that Christian churches -- supposedly places of trust -- were sometimes magnets for bullies and predators and sites of misconduct and abuse. In 2008, the consultation addressed this phenomenon at Creating a Safer Church, an international conference in Woking, U.K., an in 2011 a second international conferences, Partnering for Prevention, in Victoria, B.C., continued the scrutiny of religious structures that perpetuate abuse. In a revitalized commitment to improving the welfare of people in Anglican churches across the Communion's provinces -- clergy, parishioners and community members alike -- renewed efforts in education, training and screening are under way to ward off abuse and when, inevitably, it happens, to quickly respond". "A strong impetus for these efforts have been the Ecclesiastical Insurance Office, which made harm-prevention and risk-management measures standard requirements for church insurance coverage". "Archdeacon Tanya Phibbs oversees safe-church initiatives in the diocese of Huron, where all regional deans are trained to do basic instruction". "The diocese of British Columbia has been offering safe-church training for the past six years ... Now the Rev. Sheila Flynn, canon pastor responsible for sexual misconduct and screening in faith, has written a customized plan, drawing on the two earlier programs but adding locally relevant elements such as homelessness and First Nations issues". "With implementation falling to dioceses and parishes, approaches to church safety vary widely across Canada. And Canon Bruce Bryant-Scott, rector of Victoria's St. Matthias Anglican Church, would like to see the current patchwork replaced with national standards like those adopted by the Anglican Church of Australia 'so that the policies used in the Arctic are the same as those used in Toronto. Right now, how sexual misconduct is handled depends an awful lot on where you are'".
- Author is "a regular contributor to the Anglican Journal".
- Subjects
- Anglican Communion Safe Church Network
- Sexual abuse - Religious aspects - Anglican Church of Canada
- Sexual abuse - Religious aspects - Anglican Communion
- Child sexual abuse by clergy - Anglican Communion
- Child sexual abuse by clergy - Anglican Church of Canada
- Child abuse - Religious aspects - Anglican Church of Canada
- Child abuse - Religious aspects - Anglican Communion
- Child sexual abuse - Prevention
- Bullying - Religious aspects - Anglican Church of Canada
- Bullying - Religious aspects - Anglican Communion
- Ecclesiastical Insurance
- Insurance, Churches - Anglican Church of Canada
- MacDonald, Mark L. (Mark Lawrence), 1954-
- Phibbs, Tanya (Tanya Marie), 1967-
- Flynn, Sheila (Sheila Jean), 1946-2017
- Bryant-Scott, Bruce (David Bruce)