Book Review: Scandalous Immoral and Improper: The Trial of Helen Percy

Scandalous Immoral and Improper:

The Trial of

Helen Percy

Argyll Publishing, 384pp, £9.99

Review by

JIM FERGUSON

There is a saying in circles where faith plays a major role – “form a committee and God leaves the room”. Looking back at what happened when the Church of Scotland’s Presbytery Committee of Angus convened in 1997, it seems that God took an extended holiday. Although Helen Percy alleged she was raped by an elder in her congregation, when she appeared before the committee it was she who faced their charges. Her painfully detailed account of her time as a minister in the parish stands as a damning indictment the hypocrisy of supposedly devout Christians, so much so that at times the reader is left wondering this book is set in 20th-century Scotland or 17th-century Salem

Sexually abused as a child, Ms Percy attempted to leave behind her traumatic start to life by severing contact with her family and studying divinity at St Andrews University. She graduated with honours, and was ordained as a Church of Scotland minister in Paisley’s Greenlaw Church.

After three years, however, she left after her plans to develop the ministry in the face of difficulties caused by the treasurer’s embezzling of funds, failed to win approval. In 1994, she moved on to share the ministry of six parishes in rural Angus with the Rev Robert Ramsay.

By this stage of the narrative, she has already revealed some of the horrific details of her childhood. Yet this is no misery memoir. Percy is a writer of rare talent, carrying the reader through her recollections of the trauma she was to face, not just with the sexual encounter itself, but with its equally horrendous legalistic aftermath in the church’s court, in a book in which the central drama of the story is also leavened by intelligence and humour.

Ms Percy claims that she was raped by a married man, a church elder she considered a friend. As a result she became pregnant and was abandoned to arrange and undergo an abortion. While the Kirk endeavoured to protect both the man and his family, Percy was denied any meaningful support by her employers, who pursued a case against her for behaviour which gives the book its title.

Isolated, confused and clearly suffering from a progressive mental breakdown, Percy was pressurised into giving up her position and abandoning the very calling that had given her life meaning and a possible avenue for recovery from the trauma of her past.

By the end of this account the reader can be forgiven for doubting if those in authority in the Church of Scotland throughout this episode were as well versed in the word of God as they appeared to be in the minutiae of Church law.

The case became public through the actions of Rev Ramsay, who told parishioners that Ms Percy was solely to blame for her fate because “she has serious mental problems and needs help”. In Percy’s account however, this help amounted to little more than leaking confidential documents and initiating the Kirk’s moves against her.

One can only hope that the resultant furore and deeply damaging publicity surrounding this case have led to wholesale changes in the way the Church might conduct its affairs in the future. For while the hierarchy were able to muster the services of some of the highest-paid lawyers in the land, they appeared unable to avail themselves of the services of a qualified psychologist or anyone with a passing knowledge of the effects of child abuse.

In the candid telling of her story, Ms Percy, details behaviour which examined on a rational level is at times breathtakingly naïve and immature. At one stage of her many cross-examinations, she admits to “an intimate relationship”, genuinely unaware of the meaning of the word “intimate” in the context that is presented.

Nowadays there is enough evidence to suggest that this childish naiviety is in fact real evidence of the serious long-term effects of child abuse. And at the time of her trial there were doubtlessly doctors and academics in Edinburgh who, if asked, could have shown that the nature of some of the “evidence” presented against Ms Percy was actually evidence of the fact that many women who suffer such experiences grow up unable to determine the nuances of mature relationships. That the trauma, in effect, suspends the neurological development of part of their brain chemistry, which in normal development allows us as adults to make qualified decisions about the appropriateness of relationships and take controlled decisions in times of danger and stress.

Despite the church authorities’ ignorance of this, and despite legalistic machinations that seemed to amount to institutional bullying, Ms Percy’s faith remained unswerving. She recognised that the actions of her accusers bore no resemblance to the philosophy she had chosen to guide her life. She bowed her head, joining them in the prayers they offered, moments before their subsequent actions seemed to contradict the compassion ostensibly at the heart of their faith. At her most despondent Percy tried to work out who she feels more sorry for the rapist, his wife or his children.

It’s not just the Church who ought to consider the consequences of their action. Scotland’s media, all too ready to write about “the randy rev” could do well to the same. The Scotsman, then under a very different editorial regime, churned out its own share of lurid headlines. Few people come out of this story well, but one man who does is Richard Holloway, then the Primus of the Episcopal Church. Having been refused any effective pastoral care by three successive moderators, Ms Percy is invited by him to have a chat over a cup of coffee. He listened to her story and when she had finished told her that what had happened was the result of systemic failure and organisational dysfunction. “Most of the churchmen who judged you,” he says. “It was their own guilt they projected onto you.”

There is, however, something close to a happy ending to this tale. After resigning from the Church of Scotland, and overcoming a severe depression, Helen Percy spent six years in Africa. Although she doesn’t write much about it, this appears to have been a time of healing, during which she had a normal, healthy relationship. Once back in Scotland, she went back to the Angus hills to train as a shepherd.

Tomorrow Helen Percy will be tending sheep somewhere in the Angus glens. Some of those who emotionally abused her, judged her and condemned her will be preaching from the pulpit. At least one flock is assured of genuine, loving pastoral care.