What does it mean, in practice, to say that reporting child abuse should be mandatory? It sounds appropriately severe, but it begs the question of what must be reported. It is rarely blindingly obvious that abuse has been committed or who has committed it: it is an iniquity that lives in the shadows. If the proposed law means that one must report every accusation or suspicion of child abuse, this would create an insane burden both on those who report and those – presumably chiefly the police – who must receive the report. Alexis Jay’s IICSA recommendations called for mandatory reporting of any child abuse ‘disclosure’; but surely personal judgment is needed about what, if anything, is being disclosed. Must every rumour, or even every direct accusation by alleged victims, automatically be passed on without further enquiry? If so, malicious or unbalanced persons will use the opportunity to make false accusations. The person reporting would then be driven by compliance, not conscience. He/she would just shove the accusation through and consider his job done. As DPP, Sir Keir Starmer, perhaps panicked by the Jimmy Savile saga, institutionalised the doctrine that ‘victims’ must be believed without establishing the facts. This helped create an unmanageable system, of which IICSA was a symptom. Now his government promises to legislate on mandatory reporting, not because it believes it to be right, but because it fears opprobrium for appearing to do nothing.
Behind this problem lies that conceptual hubris of ‘safeguarding’. Yes, children have been badly safeguarded in many institutions of church, state and education. It does not follow that those in charge of safeguarding must be given ultimate authority. ‘The protection of institutions must never be put before the protection of children,’ says Yvette Cooper. Perhaps, but the truth is that one protection should assist the other. Unprotected or collapsing institutions will protect children worse. If safeguarding is the only consideration, then any institution can be destroyed, as came quite close to happening to Ampleforth College a few years back when Ofsted sought to undermine the school for what felt like ideological reasons. The zealots of safeguarding who have brought down the Archbishop of Canterbury and now seek to bring down the Archbishop of York are making a God of their own profession, claiming for their processes something not far short of infallibility. Now they are using the row about ‘grooming gangs’ to promote once more the IICSA recommendations. Yet IICSA’s work was founded by Theresa May on entirely false accusations made against Edward Heath, Dwin Bramall, Leon Brittan and others, for example, those against the late Bishop George Bell, without ever pursuing the consequences of these falsities. IICSA did not tackle the much bigger subject of rape of underage girls chiefly committed by gangs of Muslim men of chiefly Pakistani origin. We need safeguarding from safeguarders.
Like almost everyone I know, I greatly enjoyed the film Conclave, while entirely disbelieving the denouement. It brilliantly conveys the closed world of its subject – the election of a Pope – with the outside world being, literally and solely, noises off. I noticed that, rather as in a Jacobean revenge tragedy, the names of the main participants (all cardinals) hint at their characters. The devious, cowardly candidate is called Tremblay. The camp, bitchy one is called Bellini. The virile, nakedly ambitious African candidate is called Adeyemi which means, in Yoruba, ‘The crown suits me’. The reactionary cardinal is named Tedesco, which is Italian for German: I take this to be a dig against the late Benedict XVI. The main character and semi-hero – British and perfectly played by Ralph Fiennes – is called Lawrence. Here I may be reading too much into it, but Lawrence is the English version of Lazarus, which can mean ‘God has helped’ or ‘bright one’. The original Lawrence, of course, was grilled by the Romans and then sanctified.
Although the drama is subtle, it was inevitable, given the power imbalance in the Anglosphere film industry, that Conclave would seek to vindicate liberalism. The film is, broadly, a Pope Francis version of what should happen after he dies. But I suspect a liberal victory is not the prevailing trend. Many good things came out of the Second Vatican Council – Christian ecumenism, for example, and the greater emphasis on freedom of conscience. But Catholic liberalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. If aggiornamento is the guiding principle, how can one expect young men to make the immense sacrifices involved in becoming a celibate priest or young women to take the veil? The future Pope Francis made his first profession as a Jesuit before Vatican II, and of course all previous popes were older than he. The next Pope, whoever he is, will be the first brought up in a post-Vatican II environment. For someone like Francis, the opening up in the 1960s must have been exciting, but it has proved much less inspiring for the succeeding generations. It is hard to find priests under 60 who follow that school of thought. To those thinking of ordination, liberalism does not say: ‘Give your life to Christ’. It whispers: ‘Why bother?’ I hope future popes will not be reactionary, but it is likely, and appropriate, that they will be conservative.
Despite decades in the media, I never quite understand why we all choose to cover some subjects and ignore others. A current example is Turkey. It is a pivotal nation in the future of the Middle East, a Nato member run by an intolerant Islamist who is also a cunning pragmatist, playing off great and regional powers against one another, persecuting Kurds, fighting for dominance in Syria, supplying arms here, there and everywhere, controlling trade routes, profiting from migrant flows and even selling cheap dentistry and plastic surgery to British visitors. Yet hardly anyone reports it. Why? Why does the BBC, which has the money for public service broadcasting, shed so little light?
Comments