Sarah Molyneux-Hetherington

Title: Spiritual Abuse and the Church of England: An Exploration of Lived Experience.

In this project, I seek to understand the experience of spiritual abuse within the Church of England from the perspective of survivors, through the use of photo-elicitation and semi-structured interviews. I am primarily interested in the following questions:

• What is the lived experience of SA within the CofE? i.e., What does it look like? How is it experienced?
• Is there anything specific to the CofE that is relevant to the lived experience?

This project locates itself in the experiences of survivors and seeks to bring their stories into conversation with the culture of the Church of England. The questions that are raised will be generated from the survivors’ stories.

This project offers a critical reflection on the culture of the Church of England. It is hoped that this work will enable the Church of England to listen to the stories of those it hurt, recognise abuse sooner and respond more constructively. With the ultimate hope that this work contributes to making our churches safer places to be.

Supervisors: Revd Dr Sally Nash (Ridley Hall) and Prof. Lisa Oakley (University of Chester)