A letter to a hate cleric

Dear Mr Ashenden,

I'm puzzled over your attack on the Bishop of Winchester. Is it revenge for him sacking you from Jersey? And are your constant barrages against the Anglican Church the same thing? A Christian, a man of God, would have humility and honour rather than behaving like you are doing, because Jesus commanded we didn't judge. So surely the many hours you spend as jealous little brother to the Anglican church could be spent on your ministry and repairing your own reputation and the damage you're doing to our church? 

The Queen asked you to resign your 'Chaplain to the Queen' volunteering role in her Chapel, which was basically unconnected to her, as that title was published with your every public attack on vulnerable people and groups, for example Muslim people, LGBTQ+ groups, the disabled etc. Her Majesty was embarrassed and asked you to resign rather than be dismissed, to save her further embarrassment and yet your former title is still used when you rant. Her Majesty still suffers you because you were a volunteer in her Chapel once. 

On the subject of the Queen, she's the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. I understand that you've publicly said that female priests are 'just playing dress-up' basically a testimony to your misogyny, and yet, two of the closest and most important figures in the human life, two of His Ministers and witnesses , Mary and Martha, were female, and Jesus said we are all one in Him. You changed suddenly when your first wife left you, is your misogyny caused by that. The Queen is supreme governor of the Church of England, the High Priest, did you accuse her of playing dress-up and being fake?

You joined the Catholic Church purely out of mysoginy and chauvinism, dark ages ignorance and prejudice and not the Love of Christ. You do a disservice to us by representing us this way and you should have been on probation for a number of years before being allowed to join us, to ensure you were genuine and repentant, and you have been neither. 

I am sure you're aware of the damage the reawakening of the story of your abuse of power in the Channel Islands is doing to the families and friends of the dead victims, Bob Hill and HG. You contributed to their deaths by abusing your power and position in Jersey to attack HG publicly and with lies about her and her case. 

You showed your ignorance of Jesus' Lesson 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone' and your tirade against all vulnerable groups and the Bishop of Winchester repeat that ignorance. 

In Jersey you abused your clergy, law, public speaking roles to mislead the general public and to liaise with conflicted investigator Heather Steel in what was basically an outright murder bid, to drive the victim to death. Dakin, who enabled that whole farce, did the same as the Queen and asked you to go. More because you embarrassed him than that you took part in attempted murder by public destruction of a vulnerable adult. 

You appear to see yourself as a cult icon, drawing in others who see your form of faith as a way to forget their own sin by judgement of others and select passages of the Bible as weapons while missing the point of the Gospel message. 

Maybe Tim Dakin, with a convenient extra 9 weeks' holiday designed to bring him back as 'education Bishop' - sic, in the autumn, could write a biography of your career? Here's a precis. You're a divorcee, is Dakin? You're on your second marriage, what does the Catholic Church state through you? You left your career in law for  some reason. Why? Asked to leave? You were chaplain at the University until an incident, and your wife left you and you subsequently went from being a good chaplain to being a hater of anyone who you saw as less than you, women the disabled, members of other faiths etc. When you stand before God, you will have to explain that. He will ask who set you up against these people? Jesus taught against all that you do, Whose Name do you act for and why have you created a discipleship of ignorance and Hate? 

You turned up in Jersey, abusing your position and harassing an abuse victim who you'd never met and publishing slander and lies, at the same time, you would go to Coutances and harass the disabled vicar there, undermining him. How do you stand before God? Until you account for these evils you cannot officiate. 

Effectively Sacked from Jersey and your Queens chaplain position you were then banned from twitter for your hateful behaviour but like most trolls, you soon got a new account. 

You made the world laugh when you were made Bishop of a teeny cult, leaving you lording it over a fraction of the congregation than an Anglican parish has. As one disgruntled Anglican in Jersey put it, you had less people to shepherd than an Anglican curate. 

That didn't last long and to the horror of genuine Catholic people, you waltzed in, presumably your pseudo celebrity status opened doors, and you continue your terrible behaviour. The Catholic Church don't tend to dismiss abusive priests and their safeguarding record is appalling, is that what drew you to the Catholic Church after your career? Or the tradition of male priests made you feel safe in your inadequacy? What if all the women keeping incessant the Catholic Church running decided to leave because of men like you? 

You should have been under a long probation before being allowed to join our church, because of your record. As it is, your continued behaviour undermines our Church. 

I understand that you are jealous of the Bishop of Winchester and Anglican Bishops because you were never promoted, but you should have the wisdom and humility to know that they weren't promoted as better people, and the incessant nonsense press releases aren't actually Anglican condonement of the vulnerable, it is a mixture of misguided attempts to be in step with the general public and the government forcing the church to conform to modern standards. 

The Anglican church hates vulnerable groups as much as you do but aren't allowed to express it freely as you do because they are already repulsive enough to the general public and unjustly linked to the government.Jesus' teachings focus around conduct, and he made it very clear that we weren't to judge others, He's the judge, not you. Leave the Anglicans with their self-destruction and the Christians will continue to desert them for gospel preaching churches, your input isn't needed, spend that time with The Lord and repent. 

What others do or how they live isn't your business for you to publicly attack nor does the Bible condone spite against them, if you disapprove of others, do so in silence and humility, remembering your own sins. Each person makes their own decisions and you will never control them, you make yourself unhappy by trying. 

Your work while you are in ministry - albeit seriously compromised ministry, is to minister to the congregation and represent The Lord. So why dont you repent and do that? 

Making yourself into an ignorant leader of disciples of hatred and a pseudo celebrity for your own sake is nothing to do with Christianity. Leave equally bad men such as Dakin to God's judgement, and judge He will, Dakin is worse than you preach him to be, he deliberately caused death so leave him to his punishment and stop stirring further attacks on his and your victim. Your advocating for Anglican abuse victims is ludicrous after your part in that and is a reported safeguarding breach. Although as you know, no safeguarding is yet in place in the Anglican church and won't be unless the senior clergy all take their leave and the government regulates the church efficiently. 

The Anglican church is none of your business either for attention seeking or spiteful revenge. If you remain in our church you need to repent and focus on your role as a priest you can't currently take communion legitimately in the Catholic Church so how can you be a Deacon and distribute it? You are a guest who was graciously admitted to Catholicism despite your history and you are a badly behaved guest who true Catholics wouldn't take communion from. Act with grace in return for my church's grace to you. 

Author C. S. Lewis described a creature called 'Tashlan' designed to deceive, and each time your works and words are broadcast at the expense of human lives and feelings by idiots, I am reminded of Tashlan, the words and works of the devil, disguised as those from Jesus. 

It is normal for the daily fail to publish your attention seeking, they are not a newspaper really, they publish Justin Welbys bizarre efforts at superstardom too, you and he are very alike, neither seeing Chist as important in the church , maybe it's time for you two to start a breakaway church while the Anglicans pick up the pieces from his reign?

The Hampshire Chronicle have always seen investigating before publishing as irrelevant. 'Thinking Anglicans' don't think, they're bored unemployed people with a strange form of Stockholm syndrome in that they remain in the church but attack it blindly through narrow vision, they aided you in attacking the Jersey victim just out of ignorance and boredom and the weight of a ludicrous amateur and biased report. They have stockholm syndrome victims who cling to the blog in the comments section and try to be resident experts on abuse, an odd comedy. 

They publish your Tashlan scripts such as your attack on Dakin. But not even a summary of your own bizarre career. Stephen Parsons blog is the same, he claims to advocate for abuse victims in the church but bizarrely he published your attack on Dakin but not the story of the Jersey and Winchester victim. It speaks volumes about his motives for blogging. Apart from the Stockholm syndromes who live on his blog comments, his advocating for an abuser of victims and silence on the biggest travesty since the Peter Ball case indicates that his work, admittedly carried out through blind and narrow Anglican eyes, isnt genuinely about victims.

There are thousands of abuse victims harmed by rouges in the Anglican church. You, as a man who attacked a victim without grounds, publicly and without interviewing her or having permission to raise the case, are essentially an abuser, certainly not in a position to pretend to advocate for victims, whether out of voyeurism or spite, and anyone upholding you and your version of the Jersey and Winchester whitewash is upholding and furthering abuse. But who knows, raising it again could bring posthumous justice or even see you prosecuted. 

Your team partner in that farce, Dakin, did indeed dismiss clergy unfairly but your and Bob Key's removals (under all those NDAs for Bob ) were just, you abused a vulnerable adult publicly and cruelly and with lies, without giving your victim a platform to respond, and you deliberately comprised an investigation - albeit a ridiculous parody investigation. You and Dakin are like two peas in a pod. You should be friends with him rather than let jealousy get in the way. Will he now do an appraisal of your career? 

Sincerely, 

John Carter 

Behind Closed Doors

 I haven't been blogging for a while. By the time it gets to the weekend. I am usually too tired. For that matter, by the time I get to the week, I am also too tired. 

There has been so much going on in the news, and out of it, with the Janner investigation, as secretive and redacted as all the police investigations into Janner, and probably heading for the same failure. Various other things have caught my eye, but I haven't even had time to look at the Telegraph this week at all, I have a whole week's catching up to do. And I don't agree with their views on Johnson and Trump, so it won't take long.

A few years back, the Church of England did a PR show of installing a helpline called 'safe spaces' supposedly for abuse victims. I knew it was another show, so did many, but it took until this month for it to be labelled as a fake in the news.

The Guardian are running a Church of England PR show today as I write this, as far as I know, because they go on publishing the Church of England's every word without question or thought for the victims, they are owned by the Church of England.

I have been meaning to write more about individual cases we knew in the Church of England but I am tired, I am tired because I have chronic illness to battle and family matters to attend to, and tired because of the IICSA and the response by the C of E. 

Julie - (this account is from before the current virus crisis).

'What goes on behind closed doors is nobody's business'. This is a typical church line when they want to excuse failure to act.

Julie doesn't like waiting for her husband to come home from taking Evensong on Sundays, he doesn't like Evensong and thinks it should be abolished but the PCC won't allow it, he has to drive out to the furthest church just because about seven people want a droning old service in a cold church. So he may well come home in a bad mood.

He never hits her round the face, because of course there would be questions, but some Sunday mornings she sits in church aching from his cruelty and listening to the words of his sermons about 'love, forgiveness, kindness etc' and thinking how paradoxical it all is. She doesn't dare to leave, she has nowhere to go, and of course it would be such a big scandal, the congregation who are so friendly and treat her with such respect because she's the vicar's wife, would be horrified and disgusted and would turn away, while she would end up in that awful shelter in town that the church like to make a fuss of supporting. 

It's not just the violence, its the things he says, he calls her fat, tells her he's always looking round for a 'pretty young thing' to play with, she doesn't know if there have been any 'pretty young things'. He tells her she's stupid, she's useless, no career, 'just a vicar's wife', and that she isn't even good at helping with church events - she ignores that because there's always more than enough for her to do at church events, but it still hurts.

She endures it, it wears her down and she looks tired, it is hard to smile. Some of the ladies in church say it is because the life of a vicar's wife is a constant cycle of entertaining and attending obligatory events. There's always an excuse in the church, and Julie doesn't really do anything that isn't to do with the church, she doesn't go anywhere or have any activities or friendships outside the church, which is why she would be lost if she spoke up or left. So she goes on pretending that all is well.

She's not allowed to touch his computer, it's password protected anyway, but he's taking a funeral at one of the other churches and going to the wake afterwards, so he won't be back for lunch, and she's cleaning his office. She wipes the desk, and the computer springs to life when she moves the mouse.

Horrified at what she sees, she can't bear it any longer, she phones the Diocese. They coldly tell her that they can't deal with 'such allegations' and she needs to phone the police, they brush off her tearful protest that she's too afraid of him, she's afraid of the impact on the church and she has nowhere to go. They tell her again, robotically, that they can do nothing until the police investigate. Not a word of support or comfort.

Julie goes into the police station in town, she has a bag of clothes and essentials, and her handbag and purse. Having phoned the diocese, she didn't dare to stay at the house. They may have ignored her situation but they will undoubtedly contact her husband. That's how they work.

While she was left waiting to be interviewed, she phoned the Diocese again to ask where she could go and what she could do as she felt unable to return home. The Diocese gave the same cold response, that they could do nothing if the police were investigating, they offered to find her the numbers of homeless services, but she said she could manage that herself, and put the phone down.

The police interview was quite harsh, she was shocked. They kept asking if she had really had no idea, and she told them over and over that she never touched his computer and it was normally locked, that it had been by chance that he had forgotten to lock the computer or hide what he was doing. She felt like she was on trial, and now she was increasingly afraid, both of  her husband and his anger, and of the police, she felt accused.

Finally things changed, a WPC brought her a coffee and told her that they had seized her husband's computer and police were waiting at the house for his return. The WPC handed her a list of phone numbers and asked if she would be alright, they would be in touch. And that was it, now she was standing outside the police station with nothing but what she had packed.

She had savings, he hadn't taken that from her, interestingly enough, because while she didn't touch the savings, she was otherwise financially reliant on him. She had been entrenched in the life of the rectory and the church for a long time, a bland life of constant events and the sexism of the church and the violence of her husband, so this was a life-shattering, terrifying step into the unknown. She walked round the town centre, aimlessly looking round the market and shops. In the end, she went into the information centre and looked up hotels. 

Julie's husband was arrested, he wasn't charged with his violence against Julie, but he was charged with other crimes, and was bailed. Julie lived in fear, she was staying in a cheap hotel and trying to find a flat that she would pay for with her savings, it took her a long time to navigate the support services and the council, with all the red tape, many services were oversubscribed, and a number of services were connected to the church, so she felt she had to avoid them. The Diocese continued to be extremely unhelpful, and when she received no contact from anyone at the church, she was told in the street by a congregant that they had been advised by the Diocese to avoid contact with her.

Julie found that she quite enjoyed being alone, not having a house to look after or any events to attend and not having to anticipate violence. She enjoyed walking round the town and parks, walking beside the river. It didn't take away the shock of her experience, and she sometimes spoke to the Samaritans, but it was a relief to be free. She could get a cheap breakfast at the hotel or a cafe, she enjoyed the library, and she began to think about work. She was afraid that her husband's trial might get in the way of any job, so she took some computer training classes at the local day centre while she considered things, and she made some friends there.

The police investigation took a little while, and then the court only sentenced her husband to 3 years, it did make the papers along with all the praise and good references he got from the church; and the Diocese couldn't keep the fact that this was a Vicar out of the press, as they usually manage to do when it's a church officer, reader or layperson. three and a half years! And he probably wouldn't serve all of it. Julie wasn't mentioned, but she also wasn't supported by the Diocese or the church. When her husband was released from prison, he would be provided for by the Church for the rest of his life, while she was left to fend for herself. She hadn't been back to church since the arrest, and as she still had faith, she decided that a fresh start with another denomination and also in another area, outside of the Diocese, would be a good idea. 

Now Julie is working full time in a good job, she left the Diocese, she belongs to a large Evangelical church, she still has counselling for traumatic stress, and she still admits to being a bit scared of her husband but tries to be realistic. He was released and the Church of England look after him, she says the Church of England are total hypocrites and have lost their path, and she speaks up for other victims of violence and abuse. Julie says that it was hard to leave behind the social side and illusion of respectability that being a vicar's wife brings, but she enjoys being her own person now and although she enjoys church events, she also enjoys solitude and quiet walks. She feels that her eyes have been opened to the all-too-common abuses and violence that are widespread in the church and the world, she will never be the same again, and that is good as well as bad.

end.