The Heart and the Feather – dealing with complaints of sexual abuse

Tags

complaints, evidence, harassment, investigation, missing stair, pagan community, predator, sexual abuse

The ‘Missing Stair‘ is a brilliant analogy about sexual predators that is taking central stage in many pagan discourses, possibly better known in the US than the UK. It’s a very useful and necessary tool to raise awareness about how and why predatory behaviour may end up being ignored, and accusations dismissed.

As it’s territory that’s well covered elsewhere, so I want to turn to a different subject: the problem of safeguarding justice on both sides. This is, if you like, the second stage. The one that comes after the stage of everyone agreeing on the need for a Code of Conduct and not dismissing accusations, even if they’re made against a well-known and well-respect figure. This is about how one handles accusations in order to be fair to everyone.

I’m sure some people reading this will be getting annoyed already. So perhaps I’d better present my credentials. Back in the early 90s I was selected by a trade union committee covering a fair chunk of England to become an expert in Equal Opportunities. Scroll on a few years and much training from a specialist lawyer and barrister, and I became a para-legal in the field. Then I worked with management to find softer solutions that were less stressful for everyone – to deal with problems so that going to court wasn’t needed. That didn’t mean being soft on perpetrators, just trying to avoid a form of nuclear fallout. I joined a specialist management team to explore all options, helping to set up and train dedicated “first port of call” workers in our offices who would help those who had experienced harassment or abuse… and to help those accused of it.

You see, I had worked on both sides as a para-legal. I’d represented people of both genders whom I suspect of bad attitudes that they really needed to change, that had brought down on them reactive behaviour from others that resulted in – quite frankly – personal messes that spilled out into the industrial environment. That dragged in all their colleagues. I was a specialist in trying to deal with such messes. I designed and ran awareness courses for managers and trade union reps. I maintained the training of the “first port” workers, arranged the training and briefing of investigators into complaints of harassment and abuse, negotiated every type of associated procedure you can think of, and spent the rest of my time mediating solutions to near-intractable problems. And, if that wasn’t enough, a spent a few years working as complaints manager for the longest established pagan organisation in the UK, designing codes of conduct and acting as an investigator.

Generally, designing codes isn’t a problem. The problem is operating them. And the biggest problem with operating them lies with one issue: how to deal fairly with a complaint.

If one makes the assumption that all accusations are untrue (or true), then everything is simple – but also unfair. For example, two good male friends of mine have suffered complaints against them. Let’s take A as an exemplar. A was accused of rape. The alleged incident took place without witnesses. Now, I knew A was the last person to have committed such a crime but – thankfully – I wasn’t involved in this. In fact, there were ulterior motives for the accusation, but none of that came out as there was no formal complaint and no investigation. It was all a matter of spoken and written allegations to anyone who was willing to listen. The complaint was assumed by many to be true because of two common but mistaken attitudes:
(1) “there’s no smoke without fire” and
(2) no one in their right mind would make such a complaint unless it were true.

Now, hopefully you agree with me that the law (or a code of conduct) has to protect everyone. So, if an accusation has been made against someone, it should be tested before being acted upon. Are there witnesses? What do they say? Are there previous complaints about the same behaviour from the same person? What was the outcome of those? Is there any evidence to support the allegation? What are the details?

As anyone who has been an investigator (and I spent many periods in my life a professional investigator, manager and trainer of wannabe investigators) knows, people lie. There are certain indicators of lies being told, most of which can be boiled down to vagueness or ‘I forget’. So detail is important. If you’ve ever watched a TV crime drama you’ll know how much of the solution comes from checking the details. This should hold for any accusation that has the power to destroy a person’s reputation within our communities. So, where’s the a code of conduct, those who have to administer it should also be aware of the basic tools for examining the evidence in order to come to a conclusion about whether or not a complaint may be true. without that, the rush to remedy one wrong – the missing stair syndrome – replaces it with a new wrong.

If there is a code, there should be an attempt to test the information before coming to a conclusion, and trying to base that conclusion on the evidence, rather than on personal prejudice. That doesn’t imply any harshness – such testing can be done with sensitivity and sympathy. Someone can be genuinely in distress, but that doesn’t mean their complaint is true. Someone can be lying or hiding something they don’t want to divulge, but that doesn’t mean their complaint is untrue. People are complicated. And, because people are complicated and things are rarely straightforward, trying to be fair means giving the accused person the right to know the details and to answer them.

Let’s take an example. Annie’s son has been bullying Brenda’s son for months. Brenda confronts Annie, who refuses to do anything. In fact, Annie goes to the police to (falsely) accuse Brenda of hitting her. The case goes to court but Brenda is only told the accusation is that she hit Annie. she isn’t told when or where or how, and is given no means to defend herself. In court, she is not permitted any representation.  The jury are asked to make a decision based on looking at the two women and listening only to Annie. Annie brings two or three friends to court to say they, also, have been hit by Brenda. Again, Brenda is not permitted to know the details and the police have not checked them in any way. I’m sure everyone hearing that would think that this process is entirely unfair to Brenda.

Now, I want to be fair to Brenda. The problem, of course, is that (a) to be fair to both parties, an investigation should be carried out – but professional training for this sort of activity is rare, and without that, prejudice tends to creep in. And (b) if a code is fair to all parties, and the investigations are impartial and unprejudiced, then the conclusion will often offend the complainers. and their friends. And, once that happens, everyone resorts to gossip.

Another problem is that often, complainants don’t want to go ‘on the record’. They want to make their complaint, to be believed, and for the person they complain about to be punished – all without their name being mentioned. As you can see (if you’ve read this far) that means they don’t want the accused to know the details of the complaint, in case s/he subjects them to more harassment and/or threats. I’ve seen that happen, too. But if the evidence isn’t presented to the accused, we’re back to Brenda.

If you think I’m going to come up with a solution to all this mess, you’ll be disappointed. Neither I nor any expert I talked to had one. Oh, we issued instructions to everyone during an investigation not to gossip, and we did all we could to protect the accuser and his/her friends and allies against harassment – but you can’t protect someone from snubs and worse, in the workplace. And the same goes for the pagan community. The sad truth is that finding a solution means compromise on both sides. I’ve worked on mediations that have broken my heart and – after hours of intensive work to gain an agreement – left me ill for hours. And no one was really satisfied because a compromise often means getting the bare minimum of what you want. But sometimes, that’s all there is.

So, no – no solutions. We do not have Anubis’s scales to measure what lies in the hearts of those involved in a complaint. All I’m doing is raising awareness of some of the issues I haven’t seen discussed much. However, if you want to read one excellent conversation (within the LARP community) that touches on these points, try this.

Nature Worship

One of the ‘essentials’ deemed to characterise paganism is nature worship. This is another fun area where language gets in the way, between monoculturalists and recons, at least in the UK. I can’t speak for the US.

So I got into a conversation about this, recently. It began with someone posting a link to a medieval work that is fascinating. It’s by an 11th century German Bishop and it’s pretty similar to other clerical fulminations against pagans. Because it includes a list of penances, it details specific sins and the penance to be given for each sin. This means outlining common forms of folk magic and witchcraft practiced in that time and place.

To my eyes, it echoed things I’d come across in Anglo Saxon texts and other Christian edicts against folk religion pagan remnants. The problem was, that someone felt it provided evidence for ‘nature worship’. I skim through it and can’t see anything that leaps out at me. so I ask, which bits? this is what I’m pointed to:

OK, reasonable enough at surface glance, if one is inexperienced in dealing with these texts. But the problem is that this is being filtered through the mind and worldview of a medieval Christian bishop. What he’s describing sounds like Christian-speak to me.

Now I’m not a medievalist, but one of the first things I did when I became a pagan was to read Prof Ronald Hutton’s works. He’s a historian, and he never commits himself to express an opinion that the text can’t support. I prefer that. I prefer to distinguish between what the evidence tells me and what I choose to believe. I like to know the difference. Yeah, I know – it’s kinda weird. Especially for a pagan. 😉

So, I say: Although those things are part and parcel of Heathenry, by then they were surely a part of folk religion, rather like the various customs attached to Hallowe’en, Christmas or the New Year these days? The acts tend to linger even where all religious significance has fled, at least for 90% of the population. Most of the remaining 10% are the Christian priests railing against the practices, much as you see reports occasionally of modern priests going off on one against yoga in church halls, or astrology.

So the person I’m talking to decides to define worship. A very reasonable thing to do, in the circumstances. They explain what worship means to them, which comes down to awe and reverence and the observance of ritual acts to express that. A nice definition and one I have no problem with. If that’s one’s definition, then surely reading that stuff about observing pagan customs at certain times means worship and sure-fire evidence a continuing pagan religion. Doesn’t it?

Well, call me a skeptic, but…

Now you’re wondering where I’m coming from, aren’t you? OK. It comes down to importing our meanings into someone else’s actions. The first amazing thing I encountered, when I started studying theology, was that different words are used in very different ways in different times. Cultures change and word usage moves quickly. Over the years, I’ve seen a number of documents relating to bishops, monks, priests and popes trying to dissuade or threaten old time Heathens and Celts from engaging in the old-time practices. Some of those practices continue today, such as clootie trees. Some are associated with practices foreign to Anglo Saxon peoples today, such as mound sitting and feasting the dead (though that’s still practised in Baltic states, halfway between Slavic and Heathen religions).

Worship is an old Anglo Saxon word meaning (broadly) ‘worthy of respect’. The medieval clergy did their best to ensure that Heathen ways were not regarded as ‘of respect’. From the outset, they tried to sever the ties with the ancestors, by making graveyards into places to be feared, rather than places to consult (and share food with) one’s elder kin. Here’s an example of that from the late 7th century. ‘Punishments for heathens and others who turn from the Church of God’ :

If anyone, in ignorance, eats or drinks by a heathen shrine they are to promise never to do so again and to do forty days penance on bread and water. If it is deliberately done again, that is, after a priest has declared that it is a sacrilege and the place of demons, the offender shall do penance on bread and water for thrice forty days. But if it is done to glorify the idol the penance shall be for three years.

There is at least one similar invocation against priests who help, by blessing food and drink at graves. And you’ll notice how ttalking with and respecting one’s ancestors has been reframed in Christian-speak as an idol. It’s a short step from there to a demon, and so graveyards become shunned. But there are many steps on the way and, during that process, actual worship – something done knowingly in honour of a god or other unseen being (my definition) – dwindles down to superstition – something done without knowing the reasons, because you were taught that it either creates good luck or averts bad luck. Just for an example – were you aware of how and why graveyards came to become spooky when you walk through one and shiver?

The point is this: the existence of practice (which lasts longer than belief) is no evidence of belief. Celebrating certain festivals, such as Christmas, is a common thing in most modern Western cultures, but it’s no evidence that those who celebrate it are Christians. Even worse if we were to judge the depth of that imaginary religious belief by the numbers of family and presents, and amount of food and drink. Ritual is not evidence of belief.

We understand that. Every year, when the Churches cry out against the commercialism of Christmas and asks everyone to remember the ‘real’ Christmas, we understand that the Yule logs and Christmas trees and drunkenly attending Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve are not worship of anything. Even if the Church tells us it is. At Christmas the demon is the modern one of commercialism, whereas for Hallowe’en many priests descend to more medieval language.

But that still doesn’t make trick-or-treaters demon worshippers. That’s all in the mind of the priests, not the participants.

Let’s go back to astrology. Many Christians are extremely attached to reading their horoscope. That doesn’t make them pagan or even non-Christian – but some clergy will label it both pagan and worshipping the stars. I’ve never encountered any daily horoscope readers willing to claim they worship the stars, but to that clerical mindset, anyone that refuses to lay something aside on being told it’s not Christian is engaging in idolatry by worshipping something other than Christ. And it must be worship, or else they would give it up.

So I become a bit cautious when reading a clerical sermon or essay within that mindset, which was common in medieval times. I am having to rely – in effect – on the description given by a fanatic fundamentalist Christian who believes that’s straight devil worship. Just because the guy giving the description says it’s devil worship, doesn’t mean there’s a devil or that there’s any worship going on – in the sense he means, anyway

If you ask me what I think was going on in the minds of those who carried out these acts – stripped of the Christian description of it. For 90% of them, I think it’s exactly the sort of thing that drove my mother to avoid walking under a ladder; or those who deliberately stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve to ‘see the New Year in’, often by sending someone out into the night with certain artifacts, to return to the house after midnight in order to guarantee good luck for the household. I’ve asked the questions about “where do you think the luck comes from?” or “Why does this thing have to be done in that way? Who says it has to be?” and been told (in effect) that that’s the way it is. Some people become irritated or flustered when asked how their folk beliefs marry up with Christianity but that doesn’t mean they are worshipping (in the case of the New Year’s Eve ritual) coal or money.

We have no idea what was in the mind of those who carried out such rituals a thousand years ago. I would love to believe they knowingly did this understanding they represented a remnant of pagan practices, and they did these things for that reason.

One argument put is that most people were closer to nature, back then, and so it is reasonable for nature worship to have continued. And that reading of worshiping the stars and the sun is an expression of that. But this is a modern mindset. It assumes that all people shared the modern nature=good concept. however, we cannot push that back into earlier centuries. They thought differently, then. As recently as Victorian times, given the choice, millions abandoned nature to live in the city slums.

Yes, the folk back before the Industrial Revolution were dependent upon nature. I agree most people worked the land and even those who didn’t would have had lives governed by the cycle of growing food. I’ve spent most of my adult life living in rural areas, listening to the farming programmes and even visiting farms. As a Heathen, I spend a lot of my life living by a lunar calendar, closely observing the natural cycle around me. The Heathen worldview is deeply embedded in me – a worldview that is greatly attached to the natural world, but which would resist any attempt to label that as ‘nature worship’.

In my experience, many of those who talk about worshipping nature aren’t the people who depend upon it for their lives. The pre-Christian pagan peoples of Europe – Celtic, Heathen, Hellene, Slavic or Roman peoples didn’t express a worship of nature. They saw the world as alive with hidden folk and gods, and their relationships of respect were with those wights and gods who might make their hard lives easier. Their relationships were to *people*, and this is marked by the Heathen word wight, which originally covered the gods, hidden folk, animals and humans. These days, it’s reserved for the hidden folk, but not back then.

Their rituals – such as the Anglo-Saxon Æcerbot or an equivalent Roman ritual to Mars – were designed to persuade the gods and hidden folk to help them control the land and their fates. The church in medieval times (and parts of it still, today) call that ‘idolatry’ and worshipping the sun or moon or stars or whatever. That’s a simple weapon for the priesthood to smack heads with. It doesn’t mean those accused of it actually worshipped nature, any more than it means dressing your child to go out trick-or-treating is worshipping the devil.

It’s a matter, as ever, of trying not to export one’s own beliefs and assumptions into another culture.

Yeah, more easily said than done. 😉