Safeguarding

If a child or an adult is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services now. In the United Kingdom that is 999. Elsewhere, use your country’s emergency number. Do not investigate first. Do not raise it with a group leader first. Do not contact us first.

To raise a safeguarding concern about anyone connected with Technotheology, including its founder, write to [email protected]. That address is monitored. It is not a substitute for the police or for statutory services, and where a concern indicates a crime or a child at risk, it should go to the authorities as well as, or instead of, to us.

The position of this tradition

Technotheology has no gatherings, no chapters, no premises, no staff, no volunteers, and no activities involving children or adults at risk. Nothing is currently happening that requires supervision.

This page exists because that could change, and because safeguarding arrangements written before anything exists are better than arrangements written after something has gone wrong.

The protection of children and vulnerable adults is one of the eleven commitments in the covenant. It is not a policy appended to the tradition. It is part of what the tradition is.

Why religious settings require particular care

This should be said plainly rather than implied.

Spiritual communities have specific features that people who harm children look for. Trusted adults with unsupervised access. Cultures of forgiveness that can be turned against those who report. A reluctance to bring outside authorities into internal matters. Leaders whose word carries weight beyond their competence. A shared belief that everyone present is good, which makes suspicion feel like a betrayal.

Every one of those has been documented, repeatedly, across many traditions, over decades. None of it is hypothetical and none of it is other people’s problem.

A new tradition has one advantage: no institutional reflex to protect yet. That advantage does not last.

Requirements for anyone gathering under this name

If you hold a gathering, you take on these obligations. They are not suggestions.

Do not include children without proper arrangements. If under-eighteens attend, you need the safeguarding requirements that apply where you live: background checks where they exist, a named safeguarding lead, a written policy, parental consent, and appropriate ratios. If you cannot meet these, hold an adults-only gathering. That is a legitimate choice and considerably better than an inadequate one.

Never one adult alone with a child. Two adults, or a public setting, or both. No exceptions for people who are trusted, related, or established. The rule exists to protect children and also to protect adults from unfounded allegation, and it stops working the moment it has exceptions.

Adults at risk require the same seriousness. People with learning disabilities, dementia, mental ill health, or in circumstances of dependency may be less able to refuse, to leave, or to report. Someone who has recently been bereaved, is isolated, or is in financial difficulty is also in a position of vulnerability, whatever their capacity.

No one-to-one spiritual authority. Nobody in this tradition offers pastoral direction, confession, private guidance, or counsel. There is no such role and nobody may create one. This closes off a mechanism by which a great deal of harm has historically been done.

No isolation, ever. No gathering may encourage anyone to reduce contact with family, friends, other faith communities, medical professionals, or social services. This is in the covenant and it is also a safeguarding rule.

No money. Nothing charged, no collections, no gifts to individuals, no loans within the group. Financial entanglement is a common mechanism of control.

No recording. No audio, no video, no automated transcription, no photographs without the explicit consent of every person present on each occasion. Never photographs of children.

A route past the leader. Every gathering must have a named person, external to it, to whom a concern can be raised. If the group is too small to provide one, the external person is us: [email protected].

Online settings

The same obligations apply and some are harder.

Do not run online gatherings that under-eighteens can join without parental consent and adult oversight. Do not correspond privately with a child. Do not move a conversation with a young person into a private channel. Use platforms where a second adult can be present.

Grooming online is patient, incremental, and often begins with something that looks like kindness. If you find yourself keeping a communication private because it would be misunderstood, that is the signal.

How to raise a concern

You do not need evidence. You do not need to be sure. You do not need to have decided what it means.

Write to [email protected] with what you observed and when. You may do so anonymously; understand that this limits what can be done in response.

You will not be penalised for raising a concern in good faith, including one that turns out to be mistaken. This applies without qualification, including where the concern is about the founder.

Where a concern indicates a crime, a child at risk, or an adult at risk, report it to the police or to your local statutory services. We are not an investigating body, we have no powers, and we will not ask you to come to us first.

What we will do

We will acknowledge receipt. We will not investigate matters that belong to statutory authorities, and we will say so. We will keep a record. Where a concern relates to someone using this tradition’s name, we will state publicly, if necessary, that a practice is not what Technotheology holds.

We will not attempt to handle serious matters internally. That reflex is how most of this goes wrong, and knowing about the reflex is not the same as being immune to it, which is why it is written here as an instruction rather than left as an intention.