“Serious questions about who knew what and when?”

Andy Churcher • September 18, 2023

And here we are again, another scandal erupting in some of the UK’s most high profile organisations. This week its how the BBC and Channel 4 made decisions about engaging Russell Brand between 2006 and 2013, a period of time when allegations have now been made against him of rape, sexual assaults and emotional abuse. Today, the Conservative MP and Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee Caroline Nokes said there are "some serious questions about who knew what and when".

It’s positive that such illegal, abusive, exploitative and inappropriate behaviours are being revealed as this is the first step to stopping them even if over 10 late. Strong governance, focussing on the right areas, could potentially have protected victims of this behaviour and prevented so many people being hurt.

Strong and effective governance means that leaders understand and manage the risks associated with their organisations, specific to their sectors and act to prevent the organisation’s reputation being damaged. All organisations place or maintain people in positions of power which those individuals can use to abuse people. Such positions of power include those situations provided by the legal definitions of positions of trust [a], providing opportunities to receive public adulation or even in the management of staff. Therefore, decisions about the appropriateness of people in positions of power must be of interest to Boards.

Considering how both strategic and operational business decisions could result in the abuse of children and adults at risk, or the exploitation or assault of anyone, must be a fundamental part of the Board’s role. They must challenge the organisation’s executives about how business decisions could put people at risk, in the same way they would challenge them about the strategic implications of other management decisions.

But too often safeguarding, conduct and protection are too far down the priority list for Boards, and they are not focussed on this fundamental part of their role.

In the case of Russell Brand, it seems that specific concerns were raised about his conduct to executives, but he remained in prominent presenting roles with the broadcasters. But the parallels to similar failings are stark, including the way allegations of abuse within gymnastics were responded to by the Board of British Gymnastics [b], the descriptions by the Baroness Casey Review of the Met Police’s governance arrangements as “fog” which contributed to the failings there [c], and numerous conclusions of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse [d]. Sadly, there are many more.

Lord Laming concluded in 2003 in his inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbié: “Never again should people in senior positions be free to claim – as they did in this Inquiry – ignorance of what was happening to children.” Hopefully we are moving to the point where senior leaders are unable to claim ignorance to any of these issues and prioritise safeguarding, conduct and protection alongside their other responsibilities.

Keep Safeguarding is working with organisations, large and small, to refine their structures to effectively provide oversight of safeguarding and misconduct issues to ensure they provide effective governance in this area too. Give as a call if you are interested in finding out how we can help you.

Sources and further information:

[a] How are we going to do it?, Positions of trust: Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 factsheet, Home Office 2022

[b] The Whyte Review: Final Report of Anne Whyte QC, Sport England 2022

[c] Baroness Casey Review Final Report Metropolitan Police Service 2023

[d] The Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, IICSA 2022

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It's time to make X our ex!

By Andy Churcher • September 10, 2024

It's been a long time coming... we even took a break in 2022 after Elon Musk bought Twitter. But its increasingly clear that we’ve both grown apart from each other and we can no longer stay together. Don’t get me wrong, from a safeguarding and online safety point of view, I cannot say with confidence that X is any worse than any of the other platforms. The only way social media platforms seem to be able to make the business model work is to avoid large workforces and rely on technology to moderate content. The online safety risks from inappropriate content are now well known. They also all seem committed to having some sort of encryption on their messaging services which, while apparently protecting our privacy, creates worrying space for abusers to communicate with each other and share abusive content. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way of doing business in the 21 st century without engaging with social media and so, at the moment at least, engaging with the market on these platforms is an uncomfortable necessity for many people working in safeguarding. However, for Keep Governance and Safeguarding, our relationship with X has moved from uncomfortable to untenable. Keep Governance and Safeguarding operates to reduce the risk of abuse, neglect and exploitation through supporting strategic leaders and safeguarding managers, driving improvement in organisational safeguarding arrangements and creating ways to empower children and adults at risk. Our work to deliver on this mission is guided by our values in which we commit to always being collaborative, knowledgeable, personable, thorough and respectful . As recent actions have shown, it doesn’t seem that Elon Musk and X are working to similar values to ours and I feel increasingly uncomfortable using the platform. Twitter had banned a number of far-right voices but these were lifted by Elon Musk after buying it. If it was just about championing free speech I am not sure I would have had a huge problem with this, but he has himself published provocative, disrespectful and ill-informed posts and commented on, and therefore promoted, some from these previously banned accounts. During the riots which for a week or so erupted in the UK following misinformation spread on social media about the awful murders of children in Stockport in August, Elon Musk shared posts which seem to have little or no basis in the truth. He also made provocative comments on other people’s posts, clearly intended to stoke fires rather than try contributing to a calming of the situation. In one such example, which he later deleted, Elon Musk shared an image on X which promoted a conspiracy theory about the UK building "detainment camps" on the Falkland Islands for rioters as if it were a headline from the Daily Telegraph. He is happy to share ill-informed, antagonistic and inaccurate views with over 197 million followers on X, and is at best agnostic about the consequences of these actions or, at worst, deliberately trying to stoke right-wing opinions to undermine otherwise stable democracies. He has reposted numerous posts which personally attack the leadership in Brazil, a country trying to ban X, demonstrating a huge lack of respect for the legal processes of another country and undermining their leaders with his written attacks. In Australia, where the government are trying to regulate content on social media platforms, their eSafety Commissioner was attacked in posts by Elon Musk which led to her receiving a huge amount of online abuse including death threats. He is also taking a group of major companies to court for boycotting X… surely it is the right of any company to decide what platforms they use to interact with the market. For me, the real problem here is the hugely amplified voice of the owner of a platform. With a large amount of money, he has bought himself the ability to speak directly to many people, and his voice unfortunately reflects values which clearly do not align to those of Keep Governance and Safeguarding. So, we will shortly stop posting our social media updates to X and will be adding Youtube to our suite of socials. I am grateful that as a company in most of our work we have the ability to choose who we work with.

Keep Governance and Safeguarding