THE Consistory Court of the diocese of Oxford has refused a school to allow the burial of the stays of a person within the grave of his late wife, due to objections by relations who alleged that he had subjected his wife to domestic abuse.
To protect the appropriate to respect for the private and family lifetime of those that could be affected by the judgment, it was handed down in anonymised form, in order that the names of those that featured in it, the situation of the parish, and any details that may result in their identification were omitted.
The Chancellor, the Worshipful David Hodge KC, recognised the importance of open justice, but said that anonymisation was appropriate within the circumstances of the current case, due to the nature of the matters referring to individuals each alive and dead which the court had to deal with.
The recently deceased husband was identified only as AB, and his late wife as CD. They had each been lively members of a parish where AB had been churchwarden. CD died in 2001. Over the following decade, AB retrained to be a counsellor, giving support through a charitable organisation to those with substance misuse. AB, who had been in the military, spent the last years of his life as a Chelsea Pensioner within the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, and continued to assist his fellow pensioners until his health failed.
In April this yr, AB’s sister and sole executrix of his will petitioned for the interment of his cremated stays with those of his wife. AB’s sister said she desired to perform his dearest wish that his stays needs to be interred with those of CD.
The minister and churchwarden concerned certified that that will not interfere with the rights of parishioners to be buried within the churchyard. The petition was also supported by the PCC. It had been AB who had bought the present memorial to CD. It was decided that giving the consistory court the duty with the difficult pastoral situation that arose was preferable to leaving it to the minister to take a view.
Objections to the petition were received in response to special notices that were served on relations. CD’s family, two of AB’s sisters, and the adult son and only child of AB and CD objected to the petition due to the domestic abuse to which, they alleged, AB had subjected CD and their son.
His son stated that AB “could be described in today’s language as each a psychopath and a narcissist, and his abusive behaviour to each my mother and I made each our lives a misery”. One of AB’s sisters said she had “witnessed first-hand” AB “hitting and kicking” CD.
The reservation of a grave space was entirely throughout the discretion of the consistory court, to be exercised with regard to the actual circumstances of the case. A college had been applied for thus that the court fairly than the incumbent could determine whether, given the objections, AB’s cremated stays needs to be laid to rest with the human stays of his former wife.
The Chancellor said that he was “satisfied that the incontrovertible fact that the presence of particular human or cremated stays in a grave would grow to be a reason for distress or conflict, or a spotlight of grievance between relations and people attending to mourn on the graveside, constitutes a very good and sufficient reason to refuse a school.”
Applying that principle, the Chancellor said he had little question that the college petition needs to be refused. The introduction of AB’s cremated stays into CD’s grave would cause distress or conflict or a spotlight of grievance between relations and people attending to mourn at CD’s grave.
The Chancellor recognised that the assertions of domestic abuse were being raised after AB’s death, and thus he was unable to defend himself. In civil cases generally, the court would all the time fastidiously scrutinise the evidence in a claim made against the estate of a deceased person, and supported only by the uncorroborated evidence of the person making the claim.
The Chancellor said, nonetheless, that he was not able to make any determination about what happened between AB and CD. And he didn’t purport to accomplish that. But he said that “the consistory court mustn’t accept the mere assertion of domestic abuse unless there [was] some credible evidence recommend in good faith, to support the existence of such abuse.”
The Chancellor was satisfied that, on this case, there was cogent evidence of such abuse from family members, and “most significantly from the one child of the wedding . . . now an adult”. The Church of England normally, and the Oxford diocese specifically, took “abuse in any form most seriously”, and the “credible evidence recommend in good faith [could] not be ignored”, the Chancellor stated. Even if AB had reflected on his faults in his final years, that might not “eradicate, or dispel the effect which they [had] created within the minds of the objectors”.
In those circumstances, it will not be simply to compel the objectors to mourn for CD at a graveside containing the cremated stays of her former husband and perceived abuser, the Chancellor ruled, and the diocese couldn’t condone such a situation, still less participate actively in bringing it about.
A college was subsequently refused.
