THE disciplinary process in regards to the Bishop of Aberdeen & Orkney, the Rt Revd Anne Dyer, is anticipated to cost the Scottish Episcopal Church (SEC) greater than £500,000, The Sunday Times has reported.
Accounts published upfront of this week’s meeting of the Church’s General Synod show that £325,000 was spent last 12 months on legal and other fees related to the investigation.
About half that quantity was spent in 2022. It is projected that an extra £175,000 will probably be spent in 2024.
It was confirmed last month that Bishop Dyer would face a Clergy Discipline Tribunal this autumn over allegations of conduct unbecoming of a cleric (News, 24 May). She was first suspended in August 2022 after two formal complaints, believed to relate to accusations of bullying, were made against her.
After she successfully appealed against her suspension (News, 10 August 2022), it was later reinstated. Bishop Dyer has now been suspended for greater than a 12 months and a half.
A 12 months earlier, a review commissioned by the Primus of the SEC, the Most Revd Mark Strange, really helpful that Bishop Dyer step back from office (News, 11 September 2021), however the Scottish Bishops as an alternative opted to start a mediation process (News, 8 October 2021).
A spokesman for the SEC told the Sunday Times that the prices were “significant but needed” for a “thorough and skilled investigation of complaints”.
“That process began in August 2022, and has involved detailed examination of the allegations by the preliminary proceedings committee after which consideration by the Church’s Procurator,” he said.
A spokesman for Bishop Dyer said: “Bishop Anne is confident that, once all of the facts are presented, she’s going to have clearly established her innocence in addition to the motivation of the small group of people who’ve campaigned against her.”
On Monday morning, a gaggle of those that had previously complained about Bishop Dyer’s conduct wrote to Bishop Strange, arguing that Bishop Dyer’s spokespeople had “made the baseless accusation that the complainers are homophobes and misogynists”.
Previously, lawyers for Bishop Dyer have said on her behalf that “a wholly one-sided and self-serving picture has been presented by a handful of people that fundamentally object to same-sex marriage and to Bishop Dyer’s appointment because the diocese’s first female bishop. . . She is clearly frustrated at being unable to reply publicly to the very personal and gruelling attacks on her” (News, 14 October 2022).
Monday’s letter, which was signed by Lord Glenarthur, Dr Stephen Goodyear, Andrew Bradford, the Revd Professor David Atkinson, Dr Alan Cundill, and Richard Murray, asks Bishop Strange to “state unequivocally that you just don’t consider that complainers are motivated by homophobia or misogyny”.
