In Depth:  The Revd Melvin Tinker; Andrew Graystone; Bishop Gavin Ashenden; The Revd Dr Peter Sanlon & The Revd Carl Chambers

Dear Sir,

Over recent years we have learned that abusive Christian leaders commonly use church structures to groom victims for their own perverse pleasure. John Smyth QC did this through the Iwerne network, and his close friend Jonathan Fletcher has done it through his extensive contacts. It is a common feature of this kind of abuse that the perpetrators have given into temptation incrementally, and have come to slowly justify their behaviour in their own eyes. The consequence of this is that they find it very hard to repent when confronted. This remains the case even when some are brave enough to recognise that they have been victims of such abuse, such abusers and the structures on which they have relied do not therefore automatically repent and seek to put right the wrong they have done. Instead, they very often double-down on the power and influence they initially used. They continue to justify their behaviour in their own eyes in order to prop up their wilful self-deception to disguise, minimise or continue their abuse. It is common for victims of physical, sexual and emotional abuse in the church to complain that the ways in which they are treated in the aftermath of disclosure - what they call secondary abuse – can be worse than the original offence.