After five years of working in good faith with the Church of England to design a survivor-focused Redress Scheme, the Redress Survivor Advisory Group has published a damning Open Letter to the Archbishops’ Council stating they can no longer support the scheme in its current form.
The group warns that the Church has systematically sidelined survivor input and introduced hostile, re-abusive barriers to access.
Key Failures Highlighted in the Open Letter:
- Sidelining Survivor Voices: In recent months, the Church has completely marginalized the group, failing to consult them on key issues and entirely ignoring their views when they were consulted.
- Re-traumatizing Psychiatric Assessments: The Church has introduced a requirement that all applicants must submit to a new psychiatric assessment simply to receive funding for therapy—even if the survivor already has an established therapist.
- Unattainable Maximum Payouts: Following a review of the Scheme’s tariff, the structure has been manipulated to make it effectively impossible for any survivor to actually achieve the advertised maximum payout of £667,000.
The working group is calling on the Church and the Scheme administrators to urgently address these structural failures and fulfill their original promise to offer survivors dignity, respect, compassion, and genuinely generous redress.
Read the Documents:
Read the Church Times coverage and Church statement HERE
Download the full Open Letter to the Archbishops’ Council HERE