I Was a Diocesan Safeguarding Adviser: When a PR Firm Controls the Narrative, Truth Becomes Optional

I have watched victim-survivors do the hardest thing imaginable: tell the truth about what was done to them. I have also watched institutions do something far easier—praise safeguarding in public while protecting power in private.

Survivors do not experience safeguarding as a policy. They experience it as a decision: will you protect me, or will you protect yourselves?

Let me be clear. Many safeguarding practitioners within the Church of England work with courage, skill, and integrity under immense and often impossible pressure. I worked alongside them. This is not an attack on current or former colleagues, nor is it an attack on faith. It is a direct challenge to an institutional reflex that overrides safeguarding when it becomes uncomfortable, expensive, or reputationally risky.

I have seen what happens when a disclosure threatens hierarchy, money, or status. Safeguarding is quietly rebranded as “conflict,” “misunderstanding,” or “risk management.” Survivors are told to wait, to be patient, to trust a process that keeps moving the goalposts—sometimes for years. Meanwhile, those with power are given time, privacy, and the benefit of the doubt.

When safeguarding becomes real, messy, and dangerous to reputation, the Church responds like any institution under threat: it turns to crisis communications.

Enter stage left: Luther Pendragon

Luther Pendragon is a public relations and communications agency routinely retained when scrutiny intensifies and reputations are at risk. Their role is not mysterious. It is widely understood that such firms are engaged to manage narrative, reduce fallout, preserve leadership credibility, and stabilise institutions under pressure.

They have also represented a range of high-profile and controversial clients facing significant public, regulatory, or reputational challenge.

In many contexts, this is reasonably described as “just communications.” And in many contexts, it is.

It is also a matter of public record that Luther Pendragon has acted for Church of England dioceses, including the Diocese of London. In my experience as a Diocesan Safeguarding Adviser, Luther Pendragon had a seat at the table in most Safeguarding Case Management Group meetings where reputational considerations were in play.

That fact alone ought to concern anyone committed to survivor-centred safeguarding.

Safeguarding failures are not a communications problem. They are failures of power, culture, governance, and truth—failures that cause harm and demand accountability.

When communications and spin sit at the centre of a safeguarding response, the institution has chosen itself. Public relations exists to protect organisations. Safeguarding exists to protect people.

When those priorities collide, safeguarding is always sacrificed.

When safeguarding is treated as a reputational crisis, survivors stop being people and start being risk. Their disclosures become “issues.” Their testimony is labelled “sensitive.” Their insistence on accountability is reframed as “escalation.” They are pathologised as the problem, and the Church begins to behave less like a refuge and more like a brand under threat.

This pathologising is insidious. It allows the institution to preserve a pastoral self-image while relocating responsibility onto the person who spoke up.

Distress becomes instability. Persistence becomes obsession. Accountability becomes a lack of proportionality. What looks like care becomes containment. What is named as safeguarding becomes control. It no longer functions and becomes the means by which institutions finish what abuse began.

And then, to really finish the job, communications steps in. A suitably moderate bishop is rolled out; smiling, dead behind the eyes, reciting a script written to reassure, not to reckon. Language is diluted until it carries no weight at all.

Abuse becomes “inappropriate behaviour.” Coercion becomes “misunderstanding.” Systemic patterns are filed away as “historic issues.” Nothing is denied. It is translated. Sanitised. Made safe.

What is being protected is not people, but the institution’s ability to continue without interruption. Harm is acknowledged just enough to neutralise it. Survivors are left holding the truth in full, while the Church congratulates itself on its tone.

Process becomes the shield.

Confidentiality becomes the muzzle.

Public relations becomes the alibi.

You do not need to be an insider to recognise this. You can hear it in the tone. When challenged, the Church becomes grave, professional, controlled. It knows how to perform concern while quietly protecting itself.

This is not about individual wrongdoing. It is about structures that prioritise institutional safety over human safety. Safeguarding exists to protect people. Communications exists to protect the institution. When those purposes collide, reputation will always win.

Institutional self-preservation is not safeguarding. The Church cannot continue to conflate the two.

Safeguarding that answers to reputation is neither independent nor credible.

Until safeguarding is structurally independent of institutional self-interest, survivors will continue to bear the cost of organisational comfort.

At what point did safeguarding stop, and public relations take over?

~Michelle Burns

Guarding the Flock

Writing this blog takes time, care, and a lot of tea. If it’s been helpful to you, you’re very welcome to buy me a cuppa as a small way of supporting it. No pressure at all – I’m just glad you’re here - Michelle