“I am not prepared to
answer that.”
This article
is written by a retired journalist, Peter Hill, who has written
many of the articles on this website. A friend of Rev Peter
Timms for several decades, he examines what he regards as a crucial
day in the Timms scandal - October 25th 2017.
In particular, he examines Rev John Hellyer’s role
as Chairman of the South East District.
--00--
District Chairs are
appointed to give leadership and have care of the life of the
Church in the District, and in particular to have care of the
ministers and probationers.
However, life can be
difficult for a minister if the District Chair,
who is supposed to help and defend ministers against accusations,
has little grasp of how to assess probity of evidence, how
interpret the finer points of the standing orders and has little
deductive reasoning.
Life becomes worse if the
District Chair turns on the minister and accuses the minister of
breaches of standing orders without any evidence to back up
the accusation. And it is even worse if the District Chair then
accuses the minister himself of making accusations without
evidence - and suspends him from all Church activities.
That, unfortunately, is
what happened to Rev Peter Timms in 2017. His District Chair was
Rev John Hellyer. Rev Timms’ key problem became clear in a
particular meeting with him on October 25th of that
year.
BACKGROUND
As I drove Rev Peter Timms
towards Crawley on that sunny Wednesday morning in October 2017,
the journey was long enough for him to remind me of the
terrible events of the previous thirteen months. A connexional
complaints panel headed by Mr Chris Kitchin, with Rev Val
Reid and Rev Chris Jones, had begun its work on three complaints he
had submitted, The panel’s work had begun in September 2016. Their
first move was to send him a document which he considered to
be a “false
confession” . They wanted Peter to affirm his guilt by signing
the document and returning it.
Peter told me that he had
known nothing of this accusation. He speculated there had
been a mix-up of cases, for the document stated that he was the
respondent, not the complainant. The opposite
was, in fact, true – he was the complainant.
During the following month
he received no adequate answers to his questions about
this document, even though it was clearly a mistake. So, on
11th October 2016 he wrote a letter to the leader of the
inquiry. He made it clear that that he had always complied,
and would continue to comply, with the rules on
confidentiality.
This response was,
apparently, not enough. The demands that he sign the confession
continued – adding that until he did, he would receive no help
from the connexional panel in any aspect of his complaints. They
wanted him to sign the document before any cooperation was
given.
It was at this point that
I had become involved, for Peter was well into his eighties – and,
in October 2016, he was taken into hospital with heart problems. I
had been his friend for some thirty years. I acted as his
secretary.
As we continued our
journey to Crawley, we discussed certain events that had occurred
in Peter’s home town of Bexhill some eleven months earlier. It
seemed that there had been some kind of surreptitious
surveillance placed upon Peter after his second stay in
hospital. I thought that it was an outrageous story, hardly
believable, yet the evidence was there for all to see.
After this incident, Peter
Timms had begun sending his objections about the connexional
inquiry to Methodist Church House. This was in
early December 2016, while the connexional panel was still sitting.
He
sent a procedural motion – called a “set-aside
motion”.
Set aside motions are
common elsewhere – they introduce a pause in some matter so that
there can be full consideration of the procedure being used, before
progressing with the business in hand. Peter had encountered
such during his long career as a Prison Governor, for prisoners
often object, through their lawyers, to the manner in which
prison inquiries are conducted.
Nothing was done about his
objections and the connexional complaints panel met later in
December 2016 without Peter being present. Its report was sent to
Methodist Church House in January 2017. His complaints were
dismissed and his behaviour criticized.
When Rev Timms heard of
this outcome, he sent a letter, in late January, to Rev Gareth
Powell, Secretary to the Conference. He asked that his
“set-aside” motion should be sent to Conference for
consideration.
The procedure was ended as
far as the connexional panel was concerned – so their procedures
could no longer be paused for consideration. Peter’s motion needed
to be expanded to take into account the panel’s report and to
consider the procedures of the complaints process in general.
Peter argued that the
panel’s report should never have been written whilst a procedural
motion had been lodged. Worse, the connexional complaints panel had
not only dismissed his complaints, but had actually castigated him
for his attitude in refusing to cooperate in the matter of the
confession document.
Let me repeat
this clearly, because it is astounding fact in this story. A
connexional panel of inquiry actually severely criticised an aged
Methodist minister because he refused to sign a document in which he
would have been confessing to a breach of standing orders.
Furthermore, it was a breach of standing orders which he had not
committed and about which he knew absolutely
nothing.
The connexional panel
ignored his objections and his procedural motion. They criticised
the arguments he had written in it which he had sent to them
during the inquiry.
Because of this, during
the first two months of 2017, Peter had written seven
additions, or addenda, to the set-aside motion. They
demonstrated, in detail, exactly how the procedure adopted by the
panel had been incorrect and not in accordance with standing orders.
Peter had drawn upon his
vast experience as a prison governor in dealing with the Home
Office. In particular, he gave a detailed account of the system of
judgement called the “balance
of probabilities” - which he had used many times as a
Prison Governor. The connexional panel had said several times that
they were using that system. But, Peter argued most cogently, they
clearly had no idea of how to reach a decision by using it.
Peter Timms told me that
he felt sure that his District Chair, Rev John Hellyer, had not had
access to these documents ,written in early 2017, which he had sent
to Rev Gareth Powell the Secretary to Conference. Hellyer may not
even have heard of the set aside motion, never mind its addenda.
Peter thought that when his District Chair learned of the detail,
he would immediately lift the suspension that had been placed upon
him. Apologies would then be in order. After all, at a
South-East synod in 2017, at which John Hellyer had presided, a
memorial criticising the complaints system had been passed nem
con.
Peter planned
to tell his District Chairman about how Methodist Church House had
simply ignored the procedural aspects of the “set-aside
motion” and had treated it as a simple complaint. They had then
rejected it as such. He would tell John Hellyer that the Secretary
to Conference, Rev Gareth Powell, did not appear to understand that the
procedural motion had been submitted before the panel had
held its final hearing and written its report. They had been warned
by Peter of the problem, but they had gone ahead, ignoring several
relevant standing orders.
Peter had brought with him the letter that Rev Powell has
written to him in April 2017, after he had studied the procedural
motion. It stated that he, the Secretary to Conference, the most
senior executive in the Church, did not have the power to set aside
the decision of the complaints panel. He added that even
Conference, the governing body of the Methodist Church, did not
have that power. It was an incredible position to take in the light
of Standing
Order 1100 (3 vii) which stated that there should be a means of correcting any errors which
may be made in the complaints system.
Peter had not counted
them, but he thought that there were already quite a few breaches in
standing orders in the proceedings.
When I asked Peter about
who had the power to right this wrong, he had no answer. Methodist
Church House did not have an answer to that, so why should he? He
needed help and advice – and hoped that John Hellyer would give him
it.
However, Peter
wondered if Hellyer would exhibit the care to his minister that he
should. He had asked for John Hellyer’s help five months earlier
and received a poor response. He had asked him for advice
concerned
the interpretation of Standing Orders – in particular SO 1104
(7). This had been linked with a relatively new standing order -
SO 1157, and Peter did not fully understand how the link
should be interpreted. Rev Hellyer had replied
that these were not matters on which he felt qualified to
comment.
This was ironic, Peter remarked, for in 2014, when
this whole controversy had begun, it had been Rev Hellyer’s
interpretation of the new standing order SO 545 that had caused the fuss at the Circuit meeting. It was
at this meeting that Peter had objected to the speed of the
selection of Rev Ian Pruden as the new Superintendent and had been
shouted down. It had been a nasty affair, for the microphone had
been turned off as he spoke and he had been threatened with
violence if he did not leave the podium.
We drove on through the
leafy lanes of Surrey. Things had been quiet in the dispute for a
couple of months and Peter thought that the executives in Methodist
Church House were hoping that he would shut up and that the whole
affair might be swept under the carpet.
Four months had passed
since his protests about the complaints panel had finally been
turned down. The Officer for Legal and Constitutional Practice in
London, Louise Wilkins, had told him that there was no
further mechanism that he could use in the
affair.
I knew much of the story
which followed this final rejection. Peter had asked me at that
time if I had any ideas about what he should do, for the Church
executives had told him that all future letters from him would be
filed away, unanswered and un-read. It was an extraordinary
snub – clearly designed to seal the matter in the files forever. It
signalled the deplorable fact that the executives on Marylebone
High Road were initiating a cover-up of the affair. In particular
they wished to hide the false confession and the coercion that had
gone with it. It was shameful behaviour by persons who are supposed
to have the highest integrity.
Peter now argued that,
after the sex
abuse scandal of a few years before, there could never again be
such a cover-up inside the Methodist Church. It was a new chapter
in the affair which he hoped John Hellyer would
appreciate.
The affair no longer
centred solely on his complaints about local ministers, nor on his
objections to the false confession. It was important to the health
of the Methodist Church itself that such a cover-up, as was now in
place, should not succeed.
I recall his words, more
or less, as he spoke them in the car that morning in October 2017.
“It has become common in
the Church for some to prefer the exertion of personal dominance
over others, rather than working together in Christ's love, and for
the pursuit of justice, truth and adherence to the standing
orders. We must always resist that.”
After extensive discussion
in early 2017, I had suggested that, if the executive of the Church
would do nothing, then he should appeal to the membership. That
seemed the logical thing to do, for the Church is composed of its
members, it is financed by them, and they have ultimate control
over what is done in its name.
To facilitate this, I
suggested that I should write out a report for him which might
inform members of the Church. However, I pointed out that such a
report would be long and the printing and postal charges for it
would be very expensive – far beyond Peter’s financial resources.
I offered to place the report on the internet, for I already
owned a website, based in the United States. Peter thought that
this was too drastic – but he was attracted by the idea that a
report on the internet would avoid extensive printing and a large
postal bill.
Peter asked if such an internet
report might be restricted to a small number of readers.
He wanted only senior eminent members of the Church to be
initially aware of what had been done in their name. They, he
thought, would surely intervene. He had in mind only a couple of
dozen people at the most. I agreed to his terms. The address of the
website could be given out by email.
The circulation of the
special internet address had begun in late June 2017, and Peter
Timms had been suspended from all Church activities almost
immediately. That was the reason for the meeting with the District
Chair
in Crawley
As we approached
Crawley, Peter had some news to add to the
story.
Rev Loraine Mellor,
President of Conference, had recently visited Bexhill. Peter had
contacted her and requested a brief confidential chat, hoping to
sort out the whole thing in private. She had turned him down,
stating that everything that had been done had been within the
parameters set down by the Conference.
I parked my car in the
Crawley car park and we sat in the car debating this turn of
events. Sending a false confession was within the parameters set
down by Conference? How could that be? If anything could persuade
John Hellyer to exert his leadership in the District and have care
of the ministers in it, it was surely this. He was
responsible for the care of the life of the Church in the South East
District. And that, Peter thought, was now at stake in this
dispute. Could the Church actually sanction, or condone, sending
out a false confession to a minister? It all smacked of a Star
Chamber inside Methodist Church House. Inevitably, this news would
change the tone of the meeting that day. Would John Hellyer be
prepared to take on the President of Conference?
This pronouncement from
the very top of the Church hierarchy had been issued just a week
before this crucial meeting of October 25th 2017. We
decided to raise the matter with John Hellyer.
We never even got near
doing so.
THE MEETING.
Those present at this
important meeting were Rev Hellyer, Rev Timms, Rev Deborah Cornish
and myself, Peter Hill.
It began well enough.
There was no agenda - and it was accepted that Peter would first
hear why he had been suspended.
John Hellyer said that he
would give Peter Timms five reasons why he had had to suspend him
under SO 013.
He said that Peter had
stated that the new Superintendent, Rev Ian Pruden, had refused to
enter into reconciliation talks, that Pruden had banned Peter from
preaching and that this was when Hellyer had banned him from
communicating with his Superintendent. He said that Peter had
threatened Ian Pruden in a letter.
To this, Peter simply
shook his head. Knowing him, and his gentle personality, I thought
the accusations unlikely. Presumably, Ian Pruden was making that
claim – well, but of course, he no doubt disliked the fact that
Peter had spoken up against the haste with which Pruden had been
selected as the new Superintendent. Did this really merit
suspension?
Hellyer then said
that Peter had also ignored the ban on talking to anyone in the
circuit about the affair. He said that Peter should acknowledge the
authority of the Superintendent.
John Hellyer was not
reading from any letters or emails. he was not showing Peter any
evidence for what he was alleging.
This went on for a short
while. John Hellyer made accusation after accusation without any
corroborative evidence, even though, if he was telling the
truth, such evidence should exist somewhere. It was
obviously not Hellyer’s style to produce evidence to back up his
accusations. It was all accusation piled on accusation with no
evidence at all.
The meeting had turned
into an inquisition. Hellyer’s demands for answers were often met
with the words “there is no basis for that” from Peter Timms. This
was getting us nowhere.
But then Hellyer came to
what appeared to be the nub of the dispute and the cause of the
vehemence of the accusations. I recall his words well. He said:
“I asked you to remove your dossier from the internet and I
said that it is my belief that it contains false assumptions and
statements and you asked me to give you examples. I can give you
some examples.”
This, at last, promised
evidence that might be discussed and replied to. The
“dossier” was the “report”
which Hellyer claimed was written by Peter. Of course,
I had written it. It was I who had placed it on the
internet in the United States at about the same time as the
suspension had been issued. The coincidence was unavoidable.
We waited for his
“examples”.
John Hellyer said that on
page one of the dossier it was stated that the report was covering a
case in which a complainant had been given a false confession to
sign, coerced into signing it , had been lied to, threatened,
subjected to captious questioning and put under surveillance.
Hellyer looked at
Peter and stated with emphasis
“You have no case to make”
I almost burst into
laughter – but Peter Timms calmly replied
“That’s not true.”
Hellyer did not dwell on
this, Nor did he ask Rev Timms for any explanations. He quickly
skipped over the references in my report to the false confession,
the coercion and the lies. He concentrated on the final point of
his "example" – the covert surveillance.
He said that Peter
might have a belief that he had been put under surveillance,
he might suspect he had been put under surveillance,
but he, Hellyer, was stating here and now that he had not
been placed under surveillance.
John Hellyer said this
with all the authority he could muster. However, when asked what
his evidence was for stating this, he avoided giving his evidence,
simply saying, as I recall:
“you cannot prove a
negative, you have made the accusation, it is up to you to give the
evidence for it.”
Of course one cannot prove
a negative, but there were no negatives in this aspect of the
affair.
There was a silence as
Peter and I digested this. Hellyer filled the gap.
“You have no evidence,
it is untrue.”
It seemed that John
Hellyer had made no attempt to interpret the known facts of the
matter. Did he not realise that the key
document in the assessment of the evidence was a letter from
the connexional panel itself? Was that "negative
evidence"?
Certainly it was true that
we did not know the identity of the spies in Bexhill, but that did
not mean that they did not exist. I had outlined to Peter how, as an
investigative TV journalist, I would have easily found out who they
were - but he had replied that they were clearly acting in all
innocence, the blame was not theirs. So I did not try to find them.
The important point was -
how could one possibly explain how information had got from two
separate lay persons at the opposite ends of Bexhill within a few
days to the leader of the complaints panel in London? The letter
from the connexional panel had named the meetings and the venues
and the dates when he had been seen. How could the connexional
panel have discovered those details, if they had not been told by
someone in Bexhill?
No one, not even the local
ministers in the area, was supposed to know that the detail of
Peter’s movements and that his health was important to the inquiry.
No minister had been at either of the venues on the day in
question. So it must have been lay persons who originated the
information. How did lay persons know that Peter’s health
was an issue in the inquiry’s proceedings? For that
was the key point of the information that was sent to
London.
A further important
question was - how did the information reach Methodist Church House
within just a few days? And why did the connexional panel trust
this information to the point when it was turned into an accusation
and a trigger to bring the final hearing to a swift, and
unjust, end?
The letter, the
transmission of confidential information from the streets of Bexhill
to the offices in London, these were not "negatives" as John
Hellyer would have them. They were undeniable facts that needed to
be explained. It seemed to me that there was only one possible
explanation. But could Hellyer come up with
another?
In order to deny the
allegation about spying, Hellyer would need to come up with some
credible hypothesis to contradict the logical sequence of events
that was necessary for all this to have happened.
He failed to do
so.
Such things as occurred in
the spying scandal do not happen by accident, they require
planning. It was in this deductive approach to the interpretation
of the facts that Peter’s proof lay. His hypothesis was the only
reasonable one in the circumstances. All other possibilities were
eliminated - what was left was clearly the truth.
There had been an attempt
to affect the outcome of the inquiry by “keeping an eye on”
Peter. Moreover, this had been done by lay persons who must
have reported to one of the ministers involved in the connexional
inquiry. It had all been done with evil intent, it was not worthy
of the Methodist Church.
The
connexional panel had used this information as an excuse to advance
the date of their final hearing by a month - and thus making it
impossible for Peter Timms to adequately represent himself at that
hearing.
Someone had set spies on
Rev Peter Timms - and that person had finally killed his case
off.
There was an additional
point which later became important. Surely the connexional panel
would not have believed and acted upon the word of one or two
persons alone, particularly lay persons? They surely must have
had great trust in their source for the allegation. So who had
a sufficient level of trustworthiness for them to accept the
information as true?
It had to be a senior
minister. But no such person had been present at the places where
Peter Timms had been seen by the spies; he had met only lay
people.
This had led to the worst
aspect of the whole spy affair. The connexional panel had obviously
spotted a problem in what they had done by advancing the date of
the final hearing - and they tried to hide it.
In their final
report they omitted the details of this aspect of the affair.
The letter they had sent to Peter, which outlined his movements in
Bexhill was not mentioned. Instead, the panel gave an
entirely different reason for advancing the date of the hearing as
they had.
I
repeat this for the sake of clarity and because this behaviour is
so reprehensible that one can hardly believe that methodists
committed it.
In
their final report, the panel claimed that Peter must have been
fit to attend the earlier hearing because he could produce
"voluminous documents".
That reason for their action was not
mentioned in the letter they had sent to him - when they changed
the date of the hearing. In fact what they alleged was absolutely
impossible, for when they made their decision, they had no idea of
the length of Peter Timms' contribution to the evidence. Much of it
was not even written yet.
The truth was that the connexional panel
did not receive the "voluminous documents" until several weeks
after they moved the date of the hearing! It could not have played
any part in their decision to change the date.
And as for Peter Timms' fitness to write
anything - the panel that all such documents
were being compiled by me.
They knew of my involvement as Peters' secretary.
The abominable truth about all this was
clear. The connexional panel hid their true reason for changing the
date of the hearing - no doubt because they were ashamed of their
actions. This was typical of the deceptive approach that the panel
had used throughout the inquiry - but in this case they deceived
the Church, not Peter Timms.
Peter had made the
connexional panel's redaction of evidence clear in one of the
addenda to his procedural motion. The executives in Methodist
Church House knew that the panel had hidden the evidence which
first raised the question of surveillance. The connexional panel
had effectively lied to the Church by their
omission.
This redaction of evidence
damned them.
However, at the October
meeting, John Hellyer claimed that Peter had no evidence about
surveillance - so it followed, he said, the claim was untrue.
This was the level of reasoning with which we were
working.
The truth was,
conversely, that it was the accusation by Hellyer, that there
was no surveillance, that required hard evidence. Peter had every
justification to turn on Hellyer and say “you have made the
accusation that I have no evidence, it is up to you to give the
evidence for that accusation.” But that, it seems is not
how things work in the Methodist Church. Peter remained silent. I
thought that trying to be nice was not always the best way
forward.
There was little wonder
about why John Hellyer had tried to dismiss the surveillance
so quickly. The consequence of the covert surveillance had been
devastating. The connexional panel used the accusation as an excuse
to bring the date of the final hearing forward by a month -
to a time when Peter could not possibly attend because he was still
ill. They made no attempt to discover the truth of all this. They
simply found against him in his absence.
The panel claimed that
Peter was fit enough to attend the new, earlier, hearing. Why,
then, when Peter objected, had they not spoken to Peter’s doctor to
check whether he was fit enough to attend an earlier hearing? Peter
gave them permission to approach his doctor, but no one on the
panel cared to even lift up the phone. Apparently, the three
members of the connexional panel were greater medical experts that
a GP in Bexhill.
No
doubt they have their General Medical Council diplomas on the wall
at home.
From
the extant documentary evidence, we can deduce with some certainty
why
this was all covered up in the final report. There had been a major
breach of standing orders as well as of common
decency.
It was lies by omission.
Hellyer seemed to have recognised it as such and had tried to gloss
over the unpalatable facts.
I wondered how he could
have been so misguided as to raise the matter in the first place.
Was it guilty conscience - had he actually been involved in the
surveillance scandal? After all, surely the connexional panel
could trust his word on the matter?
The answer to the
accusation Hellyer made against Peter Timms had no evidence to
substantiate it. However, the accusation raised one of the worst
points about this particular connexional panel. The panel seemed
willing to hide the truth from the Church in order to cover up
their shameful actions. The truth were far too
unpalatable.
The logic of the sequence
of the events, the fact that a cover-up had been constructed to
hide this shameful affair, all this proved that something underhand
had gone on – and that could only be covert surveillance.
But Hellyer was adamant –
“you have no proof, it is untrue”.
I recalled Peter’s words
in the car about the preference in the Church for personal
dominance, over justice and the truth.
This episode
raised an important question. Why had John Hellyer fallen into the trap of attacking
the question of surveillance - when examination of the
provenance of the evidence led to such a terrible truth? Had he not
considered the evidence of the panel's letter and the redaction in
their report?
I began to wonder about
John Hellyer’s abilities with regard to probative evidence. What
ability did he have to seek and find best evidence? What was the
level of his ability to establish the provenance of evidence? Just
what did he regard as enough proof to label some statement as true?
We soon learned.
John Hellyer quoted a
section of the internet report in which I had claimed that there
had been a contravention of SO 040. My report claimed that there
had been a failure to fulfil obligations because of the delay in
telling Peter about the evidence which supported the allegation
mentioned in the false confession. This troublesome delay had
caused problems which had prejudiced the inquiry.
John Hellyer noted, with
some relish, Peter’s (sic) mistake in this. He quoted it as an
example of how Peter did not understand the Standing Orders -
and muddled them. For, he said, SO 040 concerns
ministers – and Mr. Kitchin was not a minister.
Therefore, SO 040 did not apply in this case.
I could see that this was
his “rabbit out of the hat”, carefully rehearsed, to
demonstrate his superior knowledge and mastery of the standing
orders.
However, it betrayed the
level of probity of evidence to which he was accustomed. For whilst
it was true that SO 040 concerned ministers and not lay persons, Mr.
Kitchin, as the leader of the panel, had been acting as an agent
of the other two persons on the panel – who were both
ministers.
The troublesome delay had
been caused not by Kitchin, but by the panel – the majority
of whom were ministers. That was where the failure to fulfil
obligations had occurred.
If, in fact, the ministers
were subsequently to claim that they had known nothing of what Mr.
Kitchin had been doing in their name, that he was not acting as
their agent and that they knew nothing about the false confession -
then they were certainly guilty of failing to fulfil their
obligations. For they should have known about it
all.
Kitchin himself claimed
that the other members of the panel had considered the matter.
The significant point at
the meeting in Crawley was that John Hellyer clearly did not
understand the rules of agency. More to the point, he had not
checked the strength of his evidence.
My heart sank. This really
was an inquisition.
John Hellyer went on. He
said that when Peter had sent an email to John Troughton – the one
that had been leaked to the inquiry and which was the basis of the
false confession – Peter had claimed that this too was done under
SO 040. But, once again, Hellyer pointed out, John Troughton,
though a senior circuit steward, was a lay person, not a
minister and therefore not subject to SO 040.
Such was the apparent
satisfaction in his face as he said this that I mentally added
the word “SNAP!” to his accusation.
However, John Hellyer was
again mistaken. In his haste to condemn Peter, he himself had
muddled the situation. He had forgotten that Peter Timms, as a
minister, was, of course, subject to SO 040 and that, if he had not
sent the email in question, he might have later been accused of
having failed in fulfilling his obligations to the Church. That was
why I had written that the matter had been under SO
040.
The accusations went on.
Hellyer stated that Peter had been “leading worship” in breach of
the terms of the suspension. Peter denied this. He said that he had
not even been invited to lead worship - because everyone who
might possibly issue such an invitation had been told that
leading worship was forbidden to him.
Hellyer did not ask why
Peter denied the charge. He simply repeated that Peter had been
leading worship. He again offered no evidence for his accusation.
Guilt, it seemed, was established simply because John Hellyer said
so.
Peter told me afterwards
that he had led the singing of hymns at the Richmond Care Home
where he worked – but that he had not preached there. Could
this be the basis for the accusation? The spy who we were
aware of in the care home might have reported the incident to
Hellyer. However, if this was indeed the source, both the spy and
John Hellyer had failed to appreciate the significant point.
The terms of Peter’s suspension covered activities
exclusively within the Methodist Church and, more specifically,
within the South East circuit. The care home in Bexhill did not
come under Hellyer’s jurisdiction.
It is difficult to argue
with someone such as John Hellyer whose grip on the probity of
evidence is so weak.
I realised that Peter was
not going to be able to present his defence by explaining to John
Hellyer why he had agreed to allow me to place the report on the
internet.
Hellyer was not listening.
When Peter did offer a
response, Hellyer simply repeated the accusation. After a
while, Peter made a signal to me and I drew the false
confession out of the folder that I have brought to the
meeting.
It was an important
moment. Peter and I had debated this area of the dispute for weeks.
The confession document had been sent because of the email incident
in August 2016. This incident is mentioned above in the matter of
the use of SO 040.
Peter had alerted the
invitation committee in Bexhill that the person, whose station they
were proposing to extend, Rev Ian Pruden, was the subject of an
outstanding complaint. This email, the connexional panel had
claimed, was a breach of the confidentiality of the
complaints procedure that Peter himself had launched.
The national inquiry began
in the month after the email was sent. However, Peter Timms knew
nothing of it until two months later when the connexional panel
finally told him of the evidence behind their accusation and their
judgement.
Peter had then defended
his position on this in a report to the connexional panel. He
repeated it at length
when later writing the addenda to his “set-aside” motion.
Briefly, he had argued that
he had an obligation to remind the secretary of the invitation
committee, John Troughton, of Pruden's situation and of Troughton's
responsibilities to the invitation committee. If he had not done
so, Peter could, himself, have been judged to be in
breach of SO
040 .
This was
because, as a responsible minister, Peter could see where the
invitation committee's considerations were heading. They were on
exactly the same path as they had been two years before. They were
heading for trouble. He was recalling the disturbance when Rev Ian
Pruden had first been chosen as Superintendent - the turning off of
the microphone and the threats to drag Peter from the podium.
Peter did not want a
repetition of the events of two years before. He hoped that, when
reminded of the situation, John Troughton would suggest to his
chairman, District Chair John Hellyer, that an independent chairman
from another District might be brought in to manage the extension
of Ian Pruden’s employment. That was the appropriate route laid
down in standing orders for such circumstances.
There was the additional
fear that if the invitation committee went ahead, and Pruden’s
appointment was extended to a further five years, there would be
severe embarrassment if the complaint by Peter against Pruden was
upheld.
Peter had a further fear.
If Pruden’s position was backed by the committee, this
would clearly indicate that there had been nothing wrong in the
original selection of him in 2014. That would threaten to
prejudice the inquiry by the connexional panel against the
complainant - Peter Timms. There would be a potential breach of SO
1100.
Unlike John Hellyer, Peter
Timms had clearly foreseen this problem and had hoped to avoid
it.
Peter’s position on this
matter had been lodged with Methodist Church House some ten months
before the meeting with John Hellyer. Peter thought that Hellyer
must have heard of it and must have a reply prepared for this
meeting.
The email in question had,
of course, been the reason for sending the false
confession.
I was curious about what
Hellyer would come up with. Peter and I had long wondered if there
was any possible justification for the confession document. I
thought that there had to be a legitimate reason, hidden somewhere
in some ambiguous paragraph in the standing orders – a paragraph
which might perhaps give the connexional panel the right to send
it. Reasonable people do not issue such false confessions and then
try to make the recipient sign their rights away. Hellyer had
already shown his knowledge of the minutiae of the standing orders.
Had he found some justification even when the connexional
panel had not?
There had been a problem
with the various editions of the standing orders, which had
complicated matters. Peter had been working with the 2013 edition -
for the dispute had begun in 2014. However, the panel began
its work in 2016 and had been working with the 2015 edition, which
had included the new SO 1157. Peter had not been aware of this
and did not obtain the latest edition during the first month
or so of the inquiry. Repeated questions to the panel arising from
this confusion had been ignored - with the accompanying
demand that he first sign the confession.
When he finally obtained
the same edition of the standing orders that the panel was using,
he had studied SO 1157 intensely. One clause bothered him. Clause
(7) stated that the
“conducting officer from
time to time may take account of any and all previous breaches in
deciding whether and if so in what manner to exercise the powers
under clause (6) if there is a subsequent
breach”
One interpretation of this
might have been behind the panel’s actions, for they were certainly
claiming that there had been “previous breach”. A signature on the
false confession would acknowledge and affirm
this.
This passage allowed a
panel to initiate action under clause six. That in turn allowed the
panel to decline “to provide the respondent
with copies of further documents or further information in
connection with the relevant complaint or
charge.”
This certainly seemed to
be what the panel in the Timms case had done, and here, apparently,
was justification for their actions.
Peter and I had debated
this for many hours and reached the conclusion that a “previous
breach” could only mean a decision which was the outcome of a
complaints procedure. Only when there was finality in a case
could the term “previous breach” apply.
This had not happened in
the Timms complaints process. What the panel had been presented
with, by the anonymous accuser, was an alleged breach. Thus,
it did not come within the terms of SO 1157.
Of course, if Peter had
ever signed the confession, the panel could have taken it into
account and found against him in the decision over his present
complaints.
The panel's insistence that
he sign the confession
clearly showed their bias. It would have been a
quick way out of their problem in assigning guilt. No wonder that
they had exerted such pressure on him to
sign.
Peter and I
had prepared argument on this for the meeting
with Hellyer. We reasoned that John Hellyer must have known that
the alleged breach had no proper foundation. Its provenance was
obscure and its probity weak. It could easily be dismissed.
What if Hellyer had
already recognised and considered that argument. He would
have had to dismiss it as baseless. So where else might he raise an
accusation? He must surely have prepared some other argument that,
in some way, might justify the “false confession” document? After
all, when he had come to the matter of the false confession in his
opening statements he had told Peter:
“You have no case to
make”
Perhaps Hellyer would try
to throw a different light on the confession document, by
interpreting some of its words as being obscure or equivocal -
and therefore misinterpreted by Peter Timms. We thought that
he would have some surprise up his sleeve.
We had decided that we
would press for evidence that the “previous breach” had, in some
way, gone through a judicial process. That was the only way in which
this supposed breach might have authenticity and evidential value.
We were surprised.
John Hellyer did not mention SO 1157. He had no clever arguments.
I began this section of the
meeting by holding up the false confession. I read a short section
and, as I recall, began the discussion wit the
words
“Please tell us why this is not a false confession sent to
Peter Timms. And do you condone false confessions being given out
and coercion applied to make people sign them?
Hellyer's reply was that,
in his judgment, along with that of others, Peter should not have
contacted John Troughton prior to the meeting of the invitation
committee concerned with the extension of Rev Ian Pruden as
Superintendent. He did not address the wording of the confession
document, he merely sought to justify his position by speaking
about the supposed breach of confidence. He was relying on the
judgment of some un-named individuals to support his contention.
He did not mention any due
process.
It was a tit-for-tat
approach. He gave no reason why he considered Peter’s email to be a
breach of confidentiality, nor did he give the names of the
“others” whom he mentioned as agreeing with him. It was the same
kind of argument we had heard already on that day. John Hellyer
considered that such was so – therefore it was so. No further
evidence was needed.
I could not believe that
this was the depth of thinking that had brought Peter Timms to the
edge of the ruin of his career, the break-up of his marriage and a
few final years of ignominy in his life in the Church to which he
had devoted his life.
I told John Hellyer that I
considered that he was the man in charge and he was condoning a
false confession. I read out the particular paragraph which
encapsulated the confession. I asked him again if he condoned the
action by the connexional panel to which he replied
“I am not prepared to
answer that”
How could a senior
executive of the Methodist Church give such an answer?
He was confronted with the evidence that the Church had
issued a false confession to one of its ministers and, when asked
if he condoned the practice, replied that he was not
prepared to give an opinion.
I had not been asking
whether he agreed that the document was a false confession - I had
asked if he condoned the practice of the Church in issuing false
confessions.
Who in the Methodist Church
might possibly condone issuing a false confession?
Why was John Hellyer
“not prepared” to answer that particular question? And what
exactly did he mean by that phrase?
Had he not even read this
offensive document?
Even if his justification
for addressing the matter of the email, as yet unexpressed,
was correct – was this the way the Church should go about dealing
with it? Does one not need to present any evidence at all for such
a breach of all normal manners when handling such an important
matter?
Where was due process in this?
If Hellyer was not
prepared to answer any questions about the key document in the
entire affair, there seemed little point in continuing the meeting.
I passed my copy of
the confession document across the table to Rev Deborah Cornish and
picked up a letter that the panel had sent Peter a month later, in
October 2016.
I pointed out that this later
letter from the panel had softened the tone,
saying
“I said that
there may already have been a breach of confidentiality"
rather than the original
outright accusation. The word "may" indicated that they were
back-tracking on their demands.
However, the demand that
Peter must sign the confession was still there:
"return the signed
undertaking in the next few days"
So, the letter was yet
another trick to try to persuade Peter to sign the confession - for
the confession clearly stated that he was guilty of the
charge; there was no maybe about it. It was not the first
trick that the panel had tried in an effort to persuade Peter to
sign the confession. Nor was it the last.
I was about to make this
point, when Rev Deborah Cornish indicated that she had now finished
reading the original confession document. She passed it along the
table to John Hellyer. It lay on the table between them as I
passed the later, captious, letter across the table to her.
I turned and pushed the
confession document further towards Hellyer. He waved it away. He
would not even touch it.
Nothing further could be
gained from the meeting. The suspension was to stand. Peter pointed
out that this was tactically a bad move, if Hellyer wished him to
stop his objections. Peter now had nothing whatsoever to lose.
Hellyer had punished him as far as he could; there was nothing
left, short of expulsion from the Church.
The connexional panel had
completely ruined his reputation in the Church - and in Bexhill.
And John Hellyer would do nothing to help him in
this.
We prepared to leave. I
asked that John Hellyer should read again the passage about spies
in Bexhill – for it seemed to me that he had not thought it
through. Peter said that perhaps the worse aspect of this
was the defamation of character that he had suffered –
largely because of what John Hellyer had done and
said.
“That defamation,”
he said, “is the ultimate of the
abandonment of your responsibilities.”
Voices were raised and I
stood up, telling Peter that we should leave. I apologised to
Deborah Cornish, saying “I am sorry it has been noisy,” –
for she was sitting with her mouth agape at what had happened. I
did not want there to be further damage done because of rash
words.
On the stairs down to the
ground floor, I mentioned to Peter that he had been astute in
saying that there was no further punishment that Hellyer might give
him. I was to be proved wrong, for John Hellyer is an intelligent
and ingenious adversary.
Within a few months a
campaign of “nuisance grievances” started up in Bexhill, engineered
by Hellyer’s friend, senior circuit steward John Troughton.
The complaints were numerous – and included spurious allegations of
criminal behaviour allegedly committed by Peter Timms.
These charges were all
baseless and they extended beyond accusations against Peter.
They defamed various other members of the Church in Bexhill. The
worst charge was that he had intimidated a female. This was the
aspect that had angered Peter the most. He asked the woman in
question if she had ever felt intimidated by him. She totally
denied Troughton’s allegation.
The moment that Peter
raised his objections, Troughton withdrew the grievances with a
short apology - only to then come up with more accusations. These
nuisance grievances had to be dealt with and it took time.
Peter was actually preparing to have a heart pacemaker fitted, but
he answered Troughton's charges.
In March 2018, after Peter
had finally managed to get Troughton into reconciliation talks,
Troughton agreed, before a senior member of the church, that the
allegation that Peter had breached confidentiality by the email he
had sent in 2016 was not true and that Peter’s rationale for
sending the email to him was sound. Peter was, after all, as a
minister, a member of the invitation committee. He might have
raised the matter during the committee meeting - but that might
have caused embarrassment to Rev Pruden.
However, clearly, there had
been no breach of confidentiality.
Troughton's agreement on
this, however, took place some six months after the meeting with
Hellyer. The reconciliation agreement meant that Hellyer’s
justification for the false confession, on the grounds that Peter
had breached confidentiality by sending an email to John Troughton,
had been proved to have no basis at all.
No wonder then, that
Hellyer had not been prepared to talk about the false confession.
He was intelligent enough to realise that Peter’s rationale for
sending the email had been correct and in line with standing
orders.
And yet, of course, the
incident demonstrated Hellyer's poor grasp of proper procedure.
Even if Peter Timms had,
indeed, breached confidentiality, such a charge would need to go
through due process in order for it to be established as fact. Even
then the manner in which the connexional panel had tried to coerce
him into signing the confession would have been improper.
This final action in the
email affair cast doubt on the motive of the anonymous person who
had sent the email to the connexional panel of inquiry; and
it cast doubt on Hellyer’s motive in supporting that person’s
contention about it.
Driving away from the
meeting, only one phrase went round and round in our heads:
“I am not prepared to
answer that”
It had been the very centre
of the argument - and that was all that Hellyer would say on the
matter. We were both astounded by it.
The image of John Hellyer
pulling his hands back to avoid even touching the false confession
has stayed with me ever after. I thought that I saw fear in his
eyes, but I could not guess why that should be.
According to SO 700
(10), "District Chairs are appointed to give leadership and
have care of the life of the Church in the District, and in
particular to have care of the ministers and
probationers".
I find it difficult to
find any word in this quotation from SO 700, which might reflect in
any way John Hellyer’s performance as South East District Chairman
during the meeting with Peter Timms of October 25th
2017.
Nor do I find any mention
in any standing order of any authorisation for a District Chair to
ruin a man’s career and public reputation by raising what is, at
best, merely an untried, unproven, prima-facie case against
him. For Hellyer had presented no firm evidence for his assertions
on that day.
He had acted like an
inquisitor. He made the accusation - there was no
defence.
The worst aspect of it all
was that John Hellyer had attempted to justify the false confession
by quoting an incident of alleged misdemeanour, when Peter Timms'
actions had been quite legitimate and proper. Hellyer had
failed to understand that this particular accusation should have
played no part whatsoever in the matters before the connexional
panel of inquiry.
The act of sending the
email to the connexional panel was not only a breach of standing
orders, but a blatant attempt to prejudice the panel against Peter
Timms.
During the journey back to
Bexhill, Peter remarked on another aspect of the meeting - why had
Hellyer, as his District Chair, made no effort whatsoever to
support him against the connexional panel of inquiry? It had set
him wondering, and he referred me to a passage in his set aside motion.
He
had quoted the eminent Methodist expert on the standing orders, Clifford
Bellamy:
"A District Chair is not
entitled to communicate with members of a connexional complaints
team appointed to investigate a complaint"
He
wondered if there was enough evidence to suggest that John Hellyer
had done exactly that - in both the matter of the email and of the
spies. Could it possibly be that Hellyer was at the very heart of
the unfair tactics being used against Peter? After all, said
Peter, the panel must have been given the information on both
issues by someone they would trust. Would they have trusted lay
persons enough to make the accusations? Would not a District Chair
be seen as far more trustworthy?
These questions might have been
answered at the meeting. It has been set up to discuss why the
suspension was in place. Discounting the twenty minutes or so at
the beginning, when John Hellyer had kept us waiting,
the meeting nevertheless lasted around 35 minutes. There was ample
time, one might have thought, to discuss at least the main
issues.
In
fact Peter Timms had not managed to reply to any of John Hellyer's
accusations. Hellyer had refused to engage with him, simply
repeating his accusations when Peter denied them.
Peter had not been alerted to
any of the accusations, so he had come to the meeting without any
of the documents he would need to defend himself against the
charges.
However, the main reason why he had
been unable to present any defence was that John Hellyer had simply
refused to enter into any kind of discussion on matters such
as the surveillance in Bexhill and the false confession. Not only
had he refused to discuss the false confession, but he had even
refused to read it.
A greater issue now
appeared which we were to debate over the next few weeks.
Peter had been keen to confine the debate to persons within the
Methodist Church, indeed only to very senior members. I had now
seen at first hand the attitude of a leading member of that Church.
The Methodist Church is an
established church in England and subject to Parliament for its
ethical conduct. As a journalist, I could not condone hiding the
information of this affair away from Parliament and the
public.
If
I kept quiet about this, I would become complicit in the cover-up that they were creating. I would
harm my own reputation as a journalist.
In the end it was
inevitable that I had to break my word to Peter on our agreement
about confidentiality, which I had given him in the past. I
bitterly regretted this, but there was now a higher call. We
cannot allow cover-ups to hide the misdeeds of executives in any of
the major establishments in our nation.
My decision
produced a breach between
me and my friend, which has remained.
Within a year of the Hellyer
meeting, a Select Committee of the House of Commons produced a
report which supported my position on this. It would seem that
future legislation will ban the kind of cover-up that was created
by the Church in this dispute.
I
went on to make a film
about the case, and to create this website - so that the
people of the nation might know what the Methodist Church does to
innocent ministers who fall foul of the wrath of the executives of
the Church.
I hope that this will be seen
as a true service to the Methodist Church.
-Peter Hill
