The House of Bishops has renewed its commitment to a robust pastoral response to “allegations of sexual misconduct, regardless of how long ago such alleged misconduct occurred.”
The bishops’ resolution, approved during their retreat at Kanuga Conference Center March 12-15, follows an open letter by the Diocese of San Diego’s Task Force for Compassionate Care for Victims of Clergy Sexual Misconduct. The open letter urged the bishops to clarify General Convention’s Resolution D034.
Task force members “have been contacted by victims of clergy sexual misconduct who are now undergoing Title IV processes because of the lifting of the statute of limitations,” the open letter said.
“Along the way we have discovered the staggering news that some within our church are interpreting paragraph 5 of the resolution … to mean that the lifting of the statute of limitations inexplicably had embedded within it another statute of limitations, namely January 1, 1996. This is clearly not what the letter communicated and, if accurate, effectively nullifies the expressed intent of the resolution.”
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
