Out of the miasma - a way to children’s safety - Chapter 12.4 - Towards becoming child-safe organisations

Oct 6, 2026

Upload by Aditya

Out of the miasma: a way to children’s safety examines the Royal Commission’s findings on institutional responses to child sexual abuse, focusing especially on Anglican bishops and how organisational culture contributed to harm. Drawing on analysis of Section 12.4, it highlights recurring patterns—passivity, indecisiveness, misplaced trust, diffused responsibility, and distraction—and argues these failures remain relevant even as individuals retire or die. The text proposes a thinkable framework for church leaders, aiming to guide Australian Anglican communities toward becoming child-safe, low-cost, and well-managed organisations through practical action and specific resources.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryReligion & Spirituality

FormatPDF

Pages13

Reading Time33 min

AccessFree to download

Out of the miasma: a way to children’s safety

Chapter 12.4 - Anglican responses and recurring failures

Organisational culture and the path to child-safe churches

Focus on perpetrators and what the research suggests

Action framework and low-cost organisational management

Out of the miasma: a way to children’s safety Andrew Cameron Chapter 12.4 of Book 1 of Volume 16, Religious institutions, of the Final Report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse1 makes haunting reading. Of course the entire report is vastly more than haunting. Its monumental juxtaposition of callous and casual abuse alongside torrents of anguish, distress, and trauma testifies to what Hannah Arendt famously described as“the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil”: its capacity to destroy and ruin, all the while positioned in plain sight without comment, reaction, or care.2 But, as an Anglican priest, it behoves me to pay special attention to the analysis of the Anglican Church in that chapter. Section 12.4 summarisesthe commissioners’ findings concerning the responses of various Anglican bishops to reports of child sexual abuse, spanning several decades. Behind these accounts are literally millions of documents and thousands of personhours of testimony, from which the commissioners have narrated a series of episcopal behaviours and omissions. Like any self-respecting Aussie despiser of authority, I find it exceedingly simple to read of these bishops and their failures with a sneer. But that would be to miss how “typically Anglican” their failures remain, and the peril to children that remains if we simply scapegoat bishops past. Section 12.4 haunts me because it feels so contemporary, so current, even though many of those mentioned have retired or died, and notwithstanding that some attitudes have changed for the better. TheRevdDr Andrew Cameron is Director of St Mark’s National Theological Centre. This article has been peer reviewed. St Mark’s Review, No. 245, September 2018 (3) The primary purpose of the Royal Commission has been to receive the stories of those wronged and to find them some little justice. A secondary aim has been to get to the bottom of organisational cultures that set the conditions for such wrongs. Sadly, the problem is more complex than allows the identification of some notional “bottom”. Even so, I have been reading the Royal Commission’s work from this perspective. St Mark’s work with leaders-in-training makes the organisational culture of this thing we call the church, and these things we call churches, a matter of penultimate importance, with the safety and wellbeing of all who encounter these entities of paramount importance. Churches, of course, are never immune to the human dynamics and social psychology that characterise every collective human endeavour. The church is in its own way entirely creaturely and therefore susceptible to every proper human necessity, and every human weakness, seen in other human groupings. Despite the fact that we are called to something better, we are every bit as prone to the tribalism, inequities, exploitations, and diffusions of responsibility seen in other human groups. Even at our best, our people retain all the proper human needs for care as are found in any group anywhere. I hope this point requires no proof, theological or otherwise. It follows that insights gleaned by the Royal Commission into the functioning of our groups are data to be worn, felt, and learnt, however awful that process. As a denizen of Anglican groups, section 12.4, for me, touches upon a miasma of organisational breakdowns that are not insurmountable but certainly habitual and complexly interrelated. In the commission’s historico-legal narratives of past Anglican life we see passivity; indecisiveness; well-intentioned naivety; a conflation of forgiveness with trust; an addiction to politeness, masking terrible ego-defences and tribal loyalties; the inability to resolutely oppose the successful and the charming; constant distraction born of focus upon other demands, now long forgotten; and a myopic focus upon “lesser matters of the law” (to borrow from Matthew 23:23). What haunts me is how these aspects of the narrative ec

FAQs

What does Chapter 12.4 in the Royal Commission’s Final Report focus on?

It summarizes commissioners’ findings on Anglican bishops’ responses to reports of child sexual abuse across several decades, including behaviours and omissions.

Why does the author consider Section 12.4 to be especially contemporary?

Because the described patterns of organisational breakdown feel current and continue to mirror cultural difficulties in the author’s present experience, even when some attitudes have improved.

What organisational problems does the author identify as contributing to harm?

The text points to passivity, indecisiveness, naive well-intentioned responses, confusion between forgiveness and trust, politeness masking ego-defences, inability to oppose harmful success, distraction, and narrow focus on “lesser matters of the law”.

Oct 6, 2026

Upload by Aditya