{"id":142599,"date":"2025-11-16T08:58:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T08:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/142599\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T08:58:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T08:58:07","slug":"presbyterian-church-under-real-pressure-over-safeguarding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/142599\/","title":{"rendered":"Presbyterian Church under real pressure over safeguarding"},"content":{"rendered":"

The work of the day ahead had already been agreed with the news desk, when an obliquely worded email dropped into my inbox.<\/p>\n

It was 8.36am on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

It came from the press office of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland \u2013 a denomination with congregations on both sides of the border.<\/p>\n

There were three short paragraphs.<\/p>\n

The first said the church would make a “significant announcement of public importance” that afternoon.<\/p>\n

“While we are unable to share specific details beforehand, they will be presented at the news conference, which we hope you\u2026will be able to attend,” it said.<\/p>\n

The details of the time and location were all that was added.<\/p>\n

It immediately piqued my interest.<\/p>\n

A quick phone call did not elicit any additional information, but I got the sense that this was big and that it concerned “safeguarding” \u2013 a phrase that has become synonymous with abuse.<\/p>\n

I called the RT\u00c9 news desk back to scrap the earlier plan for the day.<\/p>\n

I did not know what the story was, but it sounded like one we ought to be at.<\/p>\n

A 4pm press conference meant a tight turnaround for the Six One News.<\/p>\n

We wanted to get ahead of the story by gathering relevant footage, but with no detail it was hard to know where to start.<\/p>\n

We settled on taking pictures of the church\u2019s ornate headquarters in the centre of Belfast \u2013 known as the Assembly Building.<\/p>\n

Its gothic architecture, in the style of a Scottish baronial castle, includes nods to the all-island nature of the Presbyterian church.<\/p>\n

Carved into the Scrabo stone are the coats of arms of towns and cities such as Bandon, Dundalk, Monaghan, Galway and Tralee.<\/p>\n

Latest census figures show around 22,000 Presbyterians in the Irish Republic predominately in the border counties and Dublin.<\/p>\n

The numbers in Northern Ireland stand at 316,000. It is a faith with significant reach, though obviously not all are church goers.<\/p>\n

When we arrived for the press conference it quickly became apparent that a degree of news management was in play.<\/p>\n

The Moderator, Reverend Dr Trevor Gribben, would read from a prepared statement but would not take any questions.<\/a><\/p>\n

Journalists were told there was time for only three questions of other church leaders ahead of separate one-to-one interviews.<\/p>\n

The assembled media was not happy and said as much. Then Dr Gribben walked in and stood behind a lectern.<\/p>\n

The previous day he had represented the island\u2019s Presbyterians at the inauguration of President Catherine Connolly \u2013 reading the gospel at the ceremony.<\/p>\n

Now he announced that he was quitting a job that he had only taken up in June.<\/p>\n

He is the first moderator in the 185-year history of the church to step down.<\/p>\n

\"Dr
\nDr Trevor Gribben made the announcement at a news conference in Belfast<\/p>\n

He told the room that an internal investigation and report had uncovered “serious and significant failings” in church safeguarding between 2009 and 2022.<\/p>\n

“As a result of this people have been placed at risk.<\/p>\n

“We are aware of a number of people who have been harmed, and we believe there may well be others as yet unknown to us,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We apologise unreservedly for this.”<\/p>\n

Dr Gribben was quitting not just because he was the Moderator and head of the Presbyterian Church, a role that\u2019s re-elected every year.<\/p>\n

For years he had been a senior figure in the church administration, described by one theologian as effectively the chief executive.<\/p>\n

The safeguarding failings had happened on his watch.<\/p>\n

No sooner had he dropped this bombshell than he was shepherded out of the room.<\/p>\n

Journalists were full of questions; it was left to others to try and field them.<\/p>\n

What was the nature of the abuse; how many victims had been affected; were children among them?<\/p>\n

They simply did not know.<\/p>\n

Safeguarding policies had been in place, but they had been a paper exercise.<\/p>\n

Read more: PSNI in discussions with Presbyterian Church over safeguarding<\/a><\/p>\n

There had been a failure to make mandatory referrals to statutory agencies like the police and social services; people who had come forward had not been believed; convicted offenders returning for worship had not been adequately monitored.<\/p>\n

From what little information they held, those harmed appeared to number in the low single figures from three congregations, at least one of them in the Republic of Ireland.<\/p>\n

But the reality was they had no handle on what they were dealing with and were promoting a phone line and email address for those affected to come forward.<\/p>\n

As the journalists began to pack up and prepare to tell the story there was confusion about what exactly had been going on.<\/p>\n

We were not clear on who had been harmed, how many of them there were, how they had been harmed, or by whom.<\/p>\n

In the days that followed the Presbyterian Church continued to take bad press.<\/p>\n

There had been a drip feed of newspaper stories in recent years and allegations of a toxic culture.<\/p>\n

They included claims of bullying, abuse of power and concerns over the use of non-disclosure agreements in church disputes with ministers.<\/p>\n

Much of all that was gone over again, though it is still unclear what, if anything, it has to do with the current crisis.<\/p>\n

Then on Thursday the PSNI said it had been engaged in “ongoing discussions” with the Presbyterian Church to ensure proper disclosure mechanisms for potential victims who wished to come forward.<\/p>\n

These discussions had started when concerns were raised by the church following the conviction of an individual in 2024 for child sexual offences.<\/p>\n

That conviction appears to have been the trigger for the church to carry out its internal review.<\/p>\n

The church is a registered charity in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

Northern Ireland\u2019s Charity Commission has requested a copy of its safeguarding report. The commission believes it contains an entirely new set of allegations, not previously raised.<\/p>\n

The leadership of the Presbyterian Church finds itself under real pressure.<\/p>\n

Former and serving ministers have gone public to criticise the lack of clarity in the moderator\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a general disavowal of the idea that the church should be left to deal with a problem of its own making.<\/p>\n

Safeguarding experts have said there must be an independent review which can command confidence and which will publish its findings.<\/p>\n

There is a sense that there\u2019s more to come in this story. The church has asked for people\u2019s prayers.<\/p>\n

It is going to need them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The work of the day ahead had already been agreed with the news desk, when an obliquely worded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-142599","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}