At what point does an “improvement plan” stop looking like progress and start looking like an admission that the system itself has been profoundly dysfunctional for years?

Safeguarding within church contexts has, rightly, focused on protecting children and vulnerable adults, often where clergy or church officers have been the source of harm. But this has created a fundamental blind spot. There is far less recognition or confidence when harm flows in the opposite direction, from congregant to clergy.

This blog reflects on themes raised in Martin Sewell’s recent commentary, published on Surviving Church, about the experience of victim-survivors and the institutional response to persistent or ongoing safeguarding concerns within the Church of England. His reflections raise difficult and necessary questions about accountability, whistleblowing, and safeguarding culture. The reflections that follow draw on my own experience and build on earlier posts on Guarding the Flock.

Institutions don’t reveal themselves in their policies. They reveal themselves in rooms where they think nobody is watching...