Bishop accused of bullying wants to rebuild trust

Scotland's first female bishop has vowed to rebuild trust and relationships in her church after accusations of bullying.

The Right Reverend Anne Dyer - the Scottish Episcopal Church's Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney - was suspended in 2022, and was due to face a disciplinary tribunal after three complaints were made against her.

The church's independent procurator decided last year after reviewing the evidence that it was not in the public interest to pursue matters any further, and she began a phased return to work.

Speaking to BBC Radio Shetland, Bishop Dyer said it was now time to try to "move forward".

The church's procurator, Paul Reid KC, decided last October to drop a number of bullying charges against her, despite finding that there was enough evidence to provide a "realistic prospect" of conviction under church law.

Bishop Anne welcomed the result at the time, but four of the church's bishops - including the Primus, the Most Reverend Mark Strange - later urged her to reconsider.

In an open letter he asked her to consider "whether she is still the right person to lead the Diocese".

Bishop Dyer described the intervention as "ill-considered and inflammatory" and accused her colleagues of threatening her in "an unprofessional and un-Christian manner".

Twenty three clergy and lay members of the Scottish Episcopal Church from Shetland and a priest based in Orkney then wrote their own open letter in support of her return.

Speaking during her first visit to Shetland for three years, Bishop Dyer agreed things were not yet back to normal.

"I am visiting my priests, and people, and finding out how they are in their lives, but also wanting to hear from them about what they think God is doing in their churches," she said.

"The period of the process was extremely prolonged, it was stressful, for absolutely everybody that was involved in it, there was a time when I thought it was never going to come to an end, but thankfully it did.

"So from October we've been turning a corner and moving forward."

She said the welcome back had been "very warm indeed" and mending relationships was being worked on.

"When any relationship is strained you can't just automatically snap back to how things were previously," she said. "It wouldn't be right to pretend nothing has gone on, and nothing has been said.

"So in all cases we are working hard at thinking about what does it mean to be reconciled, and how does professional mediation help us to address the things we need to speak about in order that we can move forward.

"Most of those conversations are confidential, but they are taking place, we are taking the healing very seriously indeed."

Bishop Anne said she wanted to reassure everyone that she wanted to listen very carefully to their experience.

She added: "I hope that they would hear me as well, that I want to respect our differences, because some of this is about differences, about opinions, on what the church should be like, and how we go about things, that our differences need to be respected, and they have my full assurance that I would do that."