OPINION: Dr. Christopher Longhurst KSO
The New Zealand Catholic Church’s Safeguarding Guidelines clearly establish a structure in which the Church’s National Safeguarding and Professional Standards Committee (NSPSC) is responsible for overseeing the work of its National Office for Professional Standards (NOPS). NOPS, in turn, is responsible for coordinating responses to complaints under A Path to Healing, the Church’s redress protocol for complaints of sexual abuse by clergy and religious.
So far, so good.
But when we look more closely at who occupies the chairs of these bodies and who sits around their respective tables, the apparent separation between oversight and accountability becomes considerably less clear. What appears on paper to be a system of oversight raises a more difficult question in practice: Who, ultimately, is overseeing whom?
The New Zealand Charities Register identifies Philip Keith Hamlin, the principal of Hamlin Law, Auckland, as Chair of the NOPS Committee, a position recorded from 1 October 2004 (National Office for Professional Standards, New Zealand Charities Register, registration no. CC49787). The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry also identified Philip Keith Hamlin as Chair of the NSPSC, and recorded his involvement with this committee since 2004 (Witness Statement of Philip Keith Hamlin
WITN0254001, 21 September 2020).
Mr Hamlin’s own evidence to the Royal Commission explains how this came about. When NOPS was formally restructured as a registered charity in 2013, “the NPSC members [became] its trustees” (WITN0254001 at 31).
In other words, the committee responsible for overseeing NOPS is, at the governance level, NOPS’s own committee members. That raises a simple though profoundly important question: When the overseer and the overseen are the same people, is anyone really being independently overseen?
This is not merely an abstract question about corporate governance. It goes to the heart of what safeguarding is supposed to achieve: independent accountability when the institution itself is the subject of concern.
My own experience illustrates why this matters.
When I raised concerns with Mr Hamlin as Chair of the NSPSC about the operations of NOPS—including concerns that NOPS investigations into complaints I had made were not being properly undertaken—I was referred back to NOPS.
When I subsequently raised my concerns with Catholic Bishop Michael Gielen, who was a member of both the NSPSC and the NOPS Committee at the time, I was again referred back to NOPS.
When I then approached the bishop responsible for the Commission overseeing NOPS and the NSPSC, Stephen Lowe, I was again referred back to NOPS.
After I repeatedly explained to them that being sent back to the very office whose conduct I was complaining about was not helpful, I then received correspondence from a barrister, Kathryn Dalziel, instructed by both NOPS and the NSPSC in relation to my complaints.
Ms Dalziel’s letter opened:
“I have been asked by the National Office for Professional Standards (NOPS) & National Safeguarding and Professional Standards Committee (NSPSC) to write to you in respect of your complaint to NOPS and the NSPSC.”
Ms Dalziel’s letter went on to warn that my complaints could be dismissed unless I ceased pursuing them.
That response illustrates precisely why the question of independent oversight matters.
I was raising concerns about the operations of NOPS and the manner in which my complaints had been handled. The NSPSC was the body responsible for overseeing NOPS.
Yet rather than encountering an independent avenue through which NOPS’s conduct could be challenged, I found myself responding to legal correspondence from a lawyer instructed by both NOPS and the very committee responsible for overseeing NOPS.
To be clear: this is not, in itself, proof of misconduct by any individual. Nor does it establish that anyone acted improperly. The issue is more fundamental than that.
Where does independent accountability begin when a complaint about NOPS is handled within a structure in which the same people are involved in both NOPS and the body charged with overseeing NOPS?
For a survivor or complainant, that distinction matters enormously.
However, independent accountability matters just as much to the wider public because
safeguarding is not merely an internal Church matter. It concerns the integrity of institutions entrusted with the protection of vulnerable people and the public’s confidence that allegations of clerical sexual abuse will be handled fairly, transparently and independently.
When an institution is responsible for overseeing its own safeguarding processes, the question is not simply whether a particular complainant feels heard. It is whether the public can reasonably have confidence that the system is capable of holding itself to account.
In the case of the New Zealand Catholic Church, the Royal Commission found that its leaders “have not been accountable or transparent to their congregations and the broader community about the nature and extent of abuse and neglect by their members” (Whanaketia, 2024, ch. 7, para. 199). Yet the Commission did not, in this finding, explain why this failure of accountability and transparency has persisted.
Thus, this editorial piece points to the structure of the Church’s own safeguarding system as one possible explanation. When the body responsible for overseeing NOPS is itself the NOPS Committee—with leadership and membership intersecting—what, ultimately, is really being safeguarded?
Independent accountability is not a concession made to difficult complainants. It is a condition of public trust. Otherwise, an institution risks becoming simultaneously the subject of the complaint, the investigator of the complaint, the overseer of the investigator, and ultimately the arbiter of whether its own processes have operated appropriately. That is the point that must not be lost.
The question, therefore, is not whether particular individuals are good people. It is not
even whether they act in good faith.
The question is whether the structure itself provides accountability.
References: Abuse in Care / Charities Register
Disclaimer: This article is published as an Opinion piece. The views expressed are those of the author, Dr Christopher Longhurst, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CVNZ News or its editorial team.
The statements made in this article are based on publicly available information, personal experience, and the author’s interpretation of governance structures within the New Zealand Catholic Church.
Nothing in this article alleges misconduct, wrongdoing, or improper behaviour by any individual or organisation.
CVNZ News publishes opinion pieces in the interest of public discussion, transparency, and accountability on matters of public importance.
2 Comments
Although Dr Longhurst is careful to acknowledge that the Catholic church’s safeguarding and governance structure may not, in itself, constitute misconduct on the part of any individual, the fact remains that this structure did not arise by accident. It was established by people, and its operation continues to depend upon the active participation of those serving on these two committees. In my view, responsibility therefore cannot simply be disclaimed by pointing to the structure itself. I consider the establishment and continued operation of this arrangement to constitute misconduct. Indeed, I believe it goes further: the structure is so fundamentally misleading in its representation of safeguarding that, in my view, it may amount to fraud. At the very least, it makes a profound mockery of the very principles of safeguarding it purports to uphold.
This structure is utter fraud! How can the lawyer Dalziel pretend she is acting for two different committees when they are the exact same people? Surely she must have known this?