The Scottish Episcopal Church had charged Anne Dyer with multiple offences, including of having bullied, harassed and discriminated against a disabled adult. The SEC found that there was a “legal sufficiency” of evidence to support these charges and that there was a “realistic prospect” of convicting Dyer of them at trial.
However, despite these findings, the SEC chose to end the disciplinary process against Dyer before the charges were due to be heard at its Clergy Discipline Tribunal. It then lifted Dyer’s suspension, allowing her to return to the position of power she occupied when the SEC’s own charges indicate she misconducted herself, including by bullying, harassing and discriminating against a disabled adult.
The charge relating to this particularly troubling allegation against Dyer reads as follows (you can read the original document here):
‘You did behave or conduct yourself in a manner unbecoming of a member of the clergy and in such away which brings or is likely to bring the Church into disrepute in that you did, between November 2018 and September 2020, bully, harass and discriminate against [PERSON A], and in particular you did:
(a) bully, harass and discriminate against [PERSON A] to the point that she was signed off work, in breach of SEC safeguarding policies;
(b) commence an ultra vires review of [PERSON A]’s role, in breach of the Episcopal Diocese of Aberdeen and Orkney Constitution;
(c) bully, harass and discriminate against [PERSON A] by conducting an improper and ultra vires review of her role and making her redundant, in breach of the EDAO Constitution and SEC safeguarding policies; and
(d) further prejudice [PERSON A]’s wellbeing by making her redundant despite the government’s furlough scheme designed to ensure that organisations did not need to make precipitous redundancies during the first “lockdown”.’
An anonymous member of St Paul’s and St George’s Church, one of SEC’s biggest donor churches, said: “The SEC seems to have lost the plot. How can it possibly be right to unsuspend somebody your own independent lawyer has found could realistically be convicted of bullying and discriminating against a disabled person?
“It’s a sick decision and shows, regardless of all its pretences to the contrary, how unsafe the SEC really is on Bishop Mark Strange’s, the other bishops’ and the Provincial Standing Committee’s watch. Goodness knows what John Wylie, the SEC’s safeguarding tsar, is doing. I can only assume he condones the SEC’s decision, which seems to be to protect its own bishop at all costs, regardless of the harm it causes others.
“I hope Ps and Gs draws a line in the sand and makes it clear that the SEC has behaved unacceptably. We must suspend our giving to the SEC until it demonstrates that it is serious about safeguarding people.
“Its the only course open to us as Christians who place store in faith, people and community rather than power, control, and club memberships and expensive foreign trips.
Leave a Reply