Victim-survivors don’t experience safeguarding as a policy. They experience it as a decision: will you protect me, or will you protect yourselves?

Many bishops now carry moral residue: the enduring weight of having chosen what was least disruptive rather than what was right.

Justice does not simply need to be done; it needs to be seen to be done. Yet the Church of England repeatedly behaves as though how things look to survivors is an inconvenience rather than a safeguarding imperative. Survivors are told to “trust the process” while watching the same group of senior leaders rotate roles; gatekeeper today, colleague tomorrow, and respondent the next.

The Church does not need a nurse to hold its hand. It needs a surgeon to cut out the cancer.

When I found myself in a management meeting as the newly arrived safeguarding adviser — a lay observer in a collar-heavy room — I was utterly fascinated. The dynamics. The factions. And what appeared to me to be an almost obsessive preoccupation with sex. Then someone said it: “Shall we talk about LLF?”

safeguarding is not an “add-on.” It is an expression of pastoral care — rooted in the same common sense and compassion that shape all good leadership. When safeguarding is embraced as part of vocation rather than a burden, the church becomes a place where people can truly flourish.