This is a brief overview of highpoints from the last 25 years, with more detail for recent years.
- 1984 and 1985: UUMA chapters in the southeast and the Pacific northwest articulated their concerns about the effects of clergy sexual misconduct on congregations and ministry. They requested the UUMA Executive Committee address issues of sexual ethics in the ministerial Code of Professional Practice.
- 1987 and 1988: UUMA ministers amended their Code to include sexual ethics. The Ministerial Fellowship Committee used this Code as a basis for addressing the issues of clergy sexual misconduct, and began the process of adapting their procedures subsequent to this.
- 1991 Hollywood, FL, General Assembly: the UU Women’s Federation Board and the UUA Women and Religion Committee members issued a Call to Action. The Task Force on Clergy Sexual Misconduct (Task Force I) was convened with representatives from concerned UU organizations and planned their work in programming, education, and healing involving both laity and clergy.
- 1992: the UUA Department of Ministry and UUMA sponsored training of ten clergy teams, who then conducted trainings and educational workshops in most UUMA chapters and theological schools.
- 1992: the UUA Board of Trustees appointed a Task Force on Congregational Response to Clergy Sexual Misconduct (Task Force II). It was charged with creating materials to deal with congregational responses to the issue of clergy sexual misconduct and to make recommendations concerning laity education.
- 1995: the Resolution Toward Safe Congregations and Right Relations was passed.
- 1997: the UUA published Creating Safe Congregations: Toward an Ethic of Right Relations.
- 1998: the UUA staff convened the Safe Congregations Panel, to recommend to the Association a UUA response and ministry to victims/survivors of clergy sexual misconduct
- 2000 Nashville General Assembly: the Safe Congregations Panel issued Restorative Justice for All: Unitarian Universalists Responding to Clergy Sexual Misconduct, including a set of 13 recommendations.
- 2005: the UUA published The Safe Congregations Handbook.
For several years after the 2000 GA, nothing much happened. Those on the outside assumed the UUA was gradually instituting the recommendations of the Panel. However, about two years ago, some things started to come to light which made us question this assumption.
- Jan. 2006: The Safe Congregations Panel wrote the UUA Board requesting a response to their report. In response, Rev. Tracey Robinson-Harris issued a report.
- Oct. 2006: The MFC Report to the Board said it “met … with UUA attorney, Kay Hodge, and Beth Miller, the new Director of the MPL, to talk about a number of on-going complaint cases and MFC rules and policies in responding to them. It was agreed that a major overhaul of MFC rules is needed.”
- Upcoming, on the Jan. 2007 Board Agenda: at the Congregations Working Group, Rev. Jory Agate (MFC chair) and Rev. Tracey Robinson-Harris (Director, Congregational Services) will be talking about Restorative Justice.
What leaps out at me in recent events is not so much what’s there, as what’s missing. To start with, at least some of January, 2006, report is inaccurate. For example, it states that: “The complainant is informed and involved at critical points.” Currently, a complainant does not even receive a copy of the finding in the case they initiate. But more to the point, where is the voice of victims over the past year, subsequent to the January, 2006, letter to the Board? Neither victims nor trusted representatives, such as Rev. Fred Muir, chair of the Panel, appear to have been included in the follow-up. Sources indicate that a year ago, the Board said they would invite Rev. Muir, but this has not yet happened.
One can speculate at length as to why and what next. Our hope is that the Board hasn’t felt ready to handle this and is trying to get up to speed — that these other meetings are merely prepatory. I must confess, though, that all I can think of is Jedi Master Yoda: “Do, or do not. There is no ‘try.’”