Whenever I speak to another person about safeguarding in a church context, I am aware of an enormous number of variables which affect the way I understand and present the topic.  The other person may be a victim/survivor and, if that is the case, I may find myself brought face to face with the issue of trust and how an abusive experience may have undermined the ability to feel safe within a church.  A safeguarding conversation with someone who is a church employee will likely be different.  It may be important in our exchange to consider the issues around reputational damage.  I might enquire, for example, whether the steps taken to manage an abuse or harm episode have done something to mitigate the threat to the church’s reputation?  Conversations that consider this whole area of institutional damage are probably extremely common. but I usually only hear about them second-hand. 

My present situation as a retired clergyman looking at the institution from the outside, for the most part, means that for me the first type of conversation is more typical.  People are regularly contacting me about their individual experiences of abuse.  Many sufferers also want to talk about their prolonged and frequently unsuccessful attempts to achieve any degree of closure from church authorities.  Nevertheless, it is often possible to have a measure of sympathy for the individuals who have some authority in this situation, since they are often themselves victims of an unwieldy and unresponsive system.  A bishop with a substantial in-tray of incidents of safeguarding failure must feel sometimes close to despair when he realises that few of the pastoral, legal and financial demands of a survivor can be met.  Those officials who have safeguarding responsibilities within the institution, have an unenviable and well-nigh impossible duty to support all victims of abuse.  At the same time their position within the church structure requires them to defend the institution from the accusations of inadequate or incompetent pastoral care.  I am in fact quite relieved to be in a place that does not require me to justify or defend the church institution whenever, in my judgement, it has failed in some way.  

Every victim of a safeguarding catastrophe is looking for some kind of resolution or solution to their suffering.  Often all that is required is sympathetic emotional support provided by pastoral listening.   Close attention by a sensitive listener to what is being shared of abuse or bullying, is vital to help the sufferer in knowing, perhaps for the first time, that their pain is being heard.  The conversation with a survivor may need to go up a gear and offer practical help in pursuing the complaints process that the Church of England has made available.  This is not a level of support that I offer, but sometimes I can suggest names of people to talk to.  One option that I do have is to invite the survivor to write up their story and publish it on this blog suitably disguised.  The stories that have appeared from time to time on Surviving Church have allowed my readers to support the anonymous survivor, at the same time gaining insight into the enormous range of scenarios that are present in the word safeguarding. 

The sheer range of stories and episodes that are covered by the word safeguarding is important for us to embrace. As I have already indicated, much will depend on who is using the word and what perspective they have, either as a sufferer or as a manager.  Another way of thinking about the meaning of the word is to suggest that it is a notion that operates along a continuum.  In using the word at one end of the continuum, I may be speaking about the support of someone experiencing abusive behaviour.  At the other end of the continuum, the word is describing something less personal and more formal. While the word ‘safe’ normally refers to the needs of a vulnerable individual, it could also suggest the instinctive response of institutions to defend themselves from accusations of incompetence or worse. Communication will be impossible if, for example, one side in a conversation is talking about safeguarding in terms of the pain of victimhood while the other side is aware only of the word in the setting of legal process or schemes of training.

The ability to move quickly up and down the spectrum or continuum of the different meanings of safeguarding is perhaps one of the most important skills we would ask of anyone working professionally in this area.  The skill of deep empathy is required alongside the ability to enable the formal legal processes to operate smoothly.  This is particularly important for the newly minted category of church employees known as Diocesan Safeguarding Officers (DSO).   In the space of the past fifteen or twenty years we have seen this creation of a totally new church profession.  Every Diocesan bishop in England has appointed an individual to operate a local structure.  This is concerned simultaneously for the welfare of abused individuals and preserving the reputation of the institution. Part of the task of these officers is to provide safeguarding training for clergy and church officials as well as administer core groups to manage suspected transgressors in the area of sexual and physical abuse.  None of these DSOs is known to me personally, but I think it is safe for me to observe from conversations I have had, that the quality and competence of these individuals is varied.  The best dioceses for safeguarding seem to be those where the bishop has taken a personal interest in safeguarding and takes care to ensure that pastoral support is offered to both the individuals known to be the victims of abuse as well as the accused perpetrator.  The atmosphere in dioceses where senior clergy are less willing to get involved in the complexity of safeguarding can be chilly in the extreme.  Clergy may feel exposed and vulnerable if they sense that their bishop is indifferent to their plight when they are abused or accused of a misdemeanour.  The same thing goes for a lay person who fails to get a proper hearing or the opportunity to raise a complaint. 

In writing these comments about safeguarding, I want to repeat the suggestion that everyone involved in its implementation should recognise that the word always has at least two meanings.  At one end of our imaginary safeguarding continuum, we find one form of its implementation that focusses on compassionate protection and care.  In other words, the safeguarding that is being practised here is an expression of what Christians call love.  Christian safeguarding is, or should be, an expression of the same quality of care that that Jesus commended to his disciples as they seek to serve and care for one another.  While this love, expressed in compassionate safeguarding, exists at one end of the continuum or spectrum, there is another use of the same word which, at the opposite end, aligns itself to the notion of justice.  Safeguarding can be seen, not only in the story of the Good Samaritan but also in the story of the unjust judge who was pestered by the widow demanding to be heard.  This latter story is the typical narrative of many safeguarding sagas.   What a story of this kind tells us is there was initially a failure of justice and fair dealing.  What is needed to resolve and complete such a narrative is a successful appeal to the institutions of justice.  We want to see vindication and justice provided for the complainant.   In this case safeguarding involves the pursuit of truth, transparency and honesty.

Safeguarding, if it is done correctly and properly, will respond to these two Christian imperatives -the call to love and the call to provide justice for the discouraged and down-pressed.  At any one moment the task of safeguarding will necessarily prioritise one of these, but both will always need to be present in any proper display of safeguarding within the Church.   When either love or justice is taken from the safeguarding process, what remains is something hollow and empty.  The church as a whole must ensure that a one-dimensional safeguarding is never allowed to reign supreme and that both ends of the safeguarding continuum are permitted to have equal emphasis in making our church safe for all its members.