From The Church Times-
THE Bishop of Ripon & Leeds, the Rt Revd John Packer, has rejected claims by the Unite trade union that bullying among the clergy is “rife”.
The allegation is based on figures released by the union, which says it deals with 150 cases of bullying among the clergy a year. Unite currently has 2500 members in its faith-workers branch, the majority of whom are ministers of religion.
Last month, the union backed the Revd Mark Sharpe in his case against the diocese of Worcester. Mr Sharpe said that he had been the victim of a four-year campaign of harassment in the Teme Valley South benefice (News, 18/25 December). Unite described the benefice as “toxic” (see below).
Rachael Maskell, a national officer at Unite, said that cases of bullying among the clergy they were dealing with were becoming nastier, “to the point of criminal activity.
“Clergy are becoming seriously ill as a result of bullying, and some even suicidal. We want to see the Church being pro-active in stopping these cases in the first place, but there is a denial there’s an endemic problem.”
She said that bullying ranged from verbal, physical, and even sexual harassment, and called for a comprehensive new system to be brought in. The clergy should be granted the same employment rights as secular workers.
The Revd Gerry Barlow, a former Baptist minister who chairs the faith-workers branch, said that he had heard of several cases involving bishops. One example was the withdrawal of clergy licences “as a whole sale way of getting rid of clergy be fore common tenure is introduced”.
When he had worked on the Unite helpline four years ago, it received three calls a fortnight from clerics; this had gone up to three a week.
The rest is here-
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=87203
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