by Anon

Once upon a time, the CofE marked the departure of its clergy and lay staff with a Farewell Service. A homily might be given, and gratitude expressed for all the work a departing staff member had done, the help and support they had provided to others and to the church, and for their tireless, faithful vocation.  Refreshments might follow, perhaps some speeches, and maybe a gift or some flowers.

Even in pared-down dioceses on their uppers, you could at least anticipate a short liturgy with the bishop in the chapel of a diocesan HQ, followed by the small conference sandwich selection from M&S. But I suspect that nothing like this was prepared for Dame Christine Ryan, who suddenly stepped down from her role as the CofE’s Executive Chair of Safeguarding Structures Programme Board (whatever that is) after barely a year in post. (Her appointment was only announced at the end of September 2025).

And so, in the spirit of Private Eye’s fictitious poet-in-residence, E.J. Thribb, here are some lines to mark her departure.

So, Farewell then,

To Dame Christine Ryan

Executive Chair of the Church of England’s

“Safeguarding Structures Programme Board”,

(Whatever that was).

We never found out what it did.

Or was eventually supposed to do.

It must be strange to leave a job

That never really started

And was probably just a sinecure.

Which is why I imagine you left.

Once you discovered

You were just another CofE safeguarding mannequin

Only there for window dressing.

Keith’s mum says

It’s all smoke and mirrors anyway.

And that Mr Nye makes all these jobs up

To keep the Charity Commission distracted

As well as General Synod confused.

And that nothing will ever happen.

Which is why you had to organise your own farewell.

Private Eye recently exposed accountability and transparency failures at the highest levels of Church of England governance (no. 1682, Summer 2026, p. 49). It dubbed William Nye, Secretary General of the Archbishops’ Council and General Synod, “Head of Exceptionalism” and named Simon Gallagher, Director of the Central Secretariat, and Alex McGregor, Head of Legal Affairs, as complicit in oversight and management lacking meaningful accountability. Victims of Church of England sexual abuse – and those accused, falsely or otherwise – will testify that decision-makers on truth and justice appear to operate above the law.

This seems like a good moment to remind readers of Surviving Church that it was only in July this year that we noted that the CofE’s favourite publication, Chaff Weekly, had carried a press announcement on 30 September 2025, reporting that  “Dame Christine Ryan [has been] appointed Executive Chair of Safeguarding Structures Programme Board” (whatever that is)….”. We noted that this

“sounds good…But nine months on, the silence is deafening. It remains the case that there is still no body – independent, professional, internal or external – overseeing the CofE where you could complain about their poor or unjust safeguarding procedures and hold bishops and officers accountable for their actions or inaction. The CofE leadership wants to keep it that way.”

We went on to comment that

“The press releases on the NSP, RSSB, SSPB, SRG – so many new chaff-like bodies and debris have been commissioned – feature lovely, fetching photos of the appointees. Any nervous church and Synod members from the Home Counties are bound to feel comforted by the press releases and the people posing for their pictures. After all, these folk all look so, well, reassuring….”.

Commenting on the Church of England’s report on trust and accountability (‘Trust and Trustworthiness’, July 2027, General Synod Paper 2457: https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2026-07/gs-2457-renewing-trust-addressing-the-challenges-of-trustworthiness-in-the-church-of-england-v2.pdf), Archbishop Sarah Mullally said, “if hope is the fruit, trust is the root”. Yet the fruit remains bitter because the governance in Lambeth Palace in safeguarding and so many other areas lacks any meaningful accountability and transparency. Without cultivating them, trust is impossible.

The scale of the problem was recently set out in a letter to the Editor of the Church Times (11th September 2026) from Dr Andrew Graystone, who writes (under the subheading ‘Accountability and Church of England Bishops’):

Madam, — During the House of Lords debate on the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, the Bishop of Manchester, Dr David Walker, told the chamber that “public bodies need scrutiny” (News, 4 September). The Bill, which is sometimes referred to as “the Hillsborough law”, is intended to replace the offence of misconduct in public office with a new “duty of candour” for public authorities. Dr Walker went on to say: “When authority figures are not held properly accountable, and denial and defensiveness are enabled, our communities are further fragmented.”

He is right, of course; and yet denial and defensiveness precisely characterise the experience of so many victims and survivors of abuse in the Church of England. One example is the refusal of the National Safeguarding Team to publish the “independent” review of its handling of the case of the former Bishop of Liverpool Dr John Perumbalath. Another is the complete failure of the Church to hold serving bishops and archbishops accountable for their failings in the case of John Smyth. I could give many more.

The offence of misconduct in public office was always obscure and ill-defined, though it had its uses. It was the offence under which Bishop Peter Ball was convicted after abusing young men for decades. Unfortunately, the new law, as it is currently drafted, will not apply to bishops. So, ironically, the Bill that Dr Walker is championing will have the perverse effect of making it easier for bishops to avoid scrutiny.

Is that really what the Church wants, as it seeks to rebuild on the ruins of public trust and confidence?

Graystone’s perceptive letter recalls decades of police and institutional cover-up over the 1989 Hillsborough disaster in Sheffield, where inadequate crowd control needlessly killed 97 Liverpool fans. He rightly highlights the Church of England’s similar conduct in safeguarding controversies.

Safeguarding serves as ecclesial virtue signalling and reputation management, rarely truth or justice. The continued use of ‘insiders’ for supposedly ‘independent’ reviews of difficult cases reflects corporate nepotism: the church ultimately cares only about itself.

In this culture, trust quickly erodes, prompting church members and clergy to disengage and withdraw. Church of England safeguarding remains unregulated, unlicensed, unaccountable, and largely unprofessional, leaving abuse victims and the falsely accused to navigate labyrinthine processes driven more by PR than truth or justice. Increasingly, many choose to leave instead.

By claiming that “safeguarding in the church is everyone’s responsibility,” the CofE originators of that phrase mean the very opposite: in the Church of England, no person or body ultimately takes responsibility. Which is why Dame Christine and others start looking for the exit door shortly after they arrive.

Next up is the Redress Scheme, where once again the CofE hierarchy has sought to stack the deck with its chosen ‘insiders’ whilst all the while claiming that these appointees are ‘independent’. Nobody believes or trusts any announcement from Lambeth Palace.

And on safeguarding, the CofE hierarchy seems to be spending all its money on window dressing to avoid the day of humiliation when the Charity Commission or Parliament finally imposes independent external regulation. But for victims of abuse and those damaged by the CofE’s corrupted and incompetent safeguarding procedures, that day cannot come soon enough.

Meanwhile, we wish Dame Christine well as she departs.  The CofE press release doesn’t say why she left, or even whether she had somewhere else to go.  We suspect she eventually realised she was wasting her time as another mannequin in the CofE’s safeguarding shop window. We are sorry that there was no Farewell Service of any kind for her, or any event to mark twelve months of, er, frustration at the reigning culture of inaction and inertia in Lambeth Palace.

The growing list of those who have left the Church of England over its safeguarding debacles gets longer and longer with each passing week. Soon there will be nobody left at all, other than a few bishops and a handful of senior Lambeth Palace staff, insisting all is well, and that change is coming “at pace”. Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights?