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?”

In such environments, safeguarding ceases to be pastoral and becomes political. It shifts from preventing abuse to preserving power.

Speaking truth into an institution skilled in narrative preservation feels like dropping a stone into deep water. The splash disappears instantly, and the silence that follows is suffocating.