SGUK Episode 161 Episode 3 in the series of 4 podcasts on Safeguarding
The Cost of The Crown
The Vanishing Act: PR v Reality
INTRODUCTION
“Welcome to Episode 3 of Behind the Facade: When The Firm Forgets Its Own.
Today, we turn our focus to safeguarding — not just as a principle, but as a practice. Who is responsible for protecting the vulnerable when the institution is the one doing harm, or standing by silently while harm is done?
There are moments in recent history — both documented and barely acknowledged — that suggest not every absence is temporary, and not every silence is compassionate.
When health becomes a secret, it can also become a weapon — not against the individual, but in defence of an image.”
SEGMENT 1 – SILENCE AS STRATEGY
- “We’ve seen moments where a public figure vanishes — not because of confirmed illness, but because the truth is inconvenient.”
- “Public duties are cancelled. No photos. No updates. No family visits. And no concern from the institution beyond a few vague soundbites.”
- “That’s not care. That’s containment. And if this were any other employer, it would raise safeguarding alarms.”
Key message: “In silence, we hear a strategy. One that protects the institution, not the person.”
SEGMENT 2 – SUSPICIOUS EVENTS, OFFICIAL DENIALS
- Refer vaguely to “an incident late last year” involving flashing lights, emergency services, and claims that didn’t align with what witnesses captured.
- “People saw what they saw. Footage exists. No statement can erase that.”
- “Then suddenly… health updates start flowing. Conditions are named. Treatments are floated. Public sympathy is directed — but nothing is ever quite verified.”
- “A story built on ambiguity serves one purpose: to protect power.”
Key message: “Illness becomes the perfect shield — because it deflects both accountability and questions.”
SEGMENT 3 – CONTROL OVER CARE
- Discuss the lack of safeguarding policy in the royal structure — grace-and-favour housing, elderly working past retirement, no HR oversight.
- “Some look frail. Some vanish and reappear. Some show clear signs of emotional or psychological deterioration. But the show must go on.”
- “In private settings, these would be safeguarding red flags. But in The Firm, it’s tradition.”
Key message: “When no one steps in, it’s not a failure — it’s a system working as intended.”
SEGMENT 4 – THE DV PARALLEL
A few quotes from people who work in the field of Domestic violence, or have been (or still are) victims of DV. These are anonymous quotes from a handful of people. There are many organisations out there working with other groups, all of whom are trying to assist in any way that they can. Within that framework, there are many people who have been on the receiving end of one or more types of DV
- “Sometimes the signs aren’t medical — they’re psychological.”
- “Having worked with victims of DV, and having experienced some of it myself, I know the signs: isolation, emotional volatility, sudden disappearances, noticeable weight or posture changes, unspoken fear.”
- “No institution built on control can ever truly support victims — because victims disturb the script.”
Key message: “You don’t need confirmation. You just need to see what’s in front of you.”
WHAT SERVICE REALLY MEANS
“We’re told this structure is built on service.
But if those closest to the crown are not protected, not respected, not safe —
…then who, exactly, are they serving?
Perhaps the next generation will ask the same question, not with deference… but with demands.”
There are more than a handful of BRF members who are far from well, and even they are not given a break. Remember the photo of all the Royals and one poor lady had to be held up either side of her, because she was unable to stand on her own. No wheelchair in site, as if that was an embarrassment, as i am pretty sure she did not walk to position herself for the photo. It is wrong. Wheeling (metaphorically) members of the BRF out for Photo Opps but ensuring that no visible sign of walking aids are in sight. This has been the case for as long as I can remember. It implies stigma, and/or if one is a member of the Monarchy, no one should be seen as less than in a perfect state. Yet, if the physical signs are there that something is not quite right, that person or people will be hidden from view until the image is no longer visible.
So to clarify:
- They are not quotes from random people
- They are not presented as anyone’s testimony – they are merely sharing with a view it may help others. The reference sources of plenty more examples and stories of experiences and thoughts of experiences.
- Some of the statements have been crafted from more than one person, as a universal voice or observation.
- These extracts are best considered in the light of reinforcing the tone of this whole series of 4 podcasts.
“This isn’t about naming names. It’s about naming the behaviour.”
“For those who’ve worked with domestic abuse survivors — or lived through it quietly — the signs are rarely loud. They’re subtle. Isolation. Sudden shifts. Silence. Visible strain. A flicker of something unspoken.
Those who’ve seen it before… recognise it. You don’t need confirmation. You just know.”
🔹 Phrases Used in some of the podcast Slides:
Each one providing much food for thought in the silence that follows each statement shown on those slides.
- “When someone disappears, and no one asks why — that’s not tradition. That’s control.”
- “You can’t claim to protect the nation if you won’t protect your own.”
- “If safeguarding only applies to some, it applies to none.”
- “They say it’s about service. But what kind of service demands silence, suffering, and sacrifice?”
- “The less they tell us, the more they reveal.”
- “This isn’t about one person. It’s about what the system does to anyone who becomes ‘inconvenient’.”
Topics to Include:
Safeguarding framework.
A Guide to building Safeguarding in your Organisation
“Safeguarding isn’t just for schools and care homes – it’s a core responsibility for all organisations. It’s about creating a safe environment for everyone involved: your employees, customers, and any vulnerable individuals your business interacts with. This comprehensive guide will equip you with the knowledge and steps to implement a robust safeguarding policy within your company.
Understanding Safeguarding:
Safeguarding encompasses protecting individuals, particularly children and vulnerable adults, from harm. This harm can be physical, emotional, sexual, or neglectful. By creating a culture of safety and awareness, you can minimise the risk of abuse and ensure a positive experience for everyone involved.
The Safeguarding Process:
Here’s a breakdown of the key elements to consider when building your safeguarding framework:
Policy Development: A well-defined safeguarding policy forms the foundation of your efforts. This policy should clearly outline:
The company’s commitment to safeguarding.
- Definitions of abuse and neglect.
- Roles and responsibilities of staff in safeguarding.
- Procedures for identifying and reporting concerns.
- Access and reporting procedures for customers (if applicable).
- Disciplinary measures for breaches of policy.
Risk Assessment: Identify potential safeguarding risks specific to your organisation. This might involve the nature of your work, clientele, or the environment you operate in. Regular risk assessments ensure your policy remains relevant and effective.
Training and Awareness: Equip your staff with the knowledge and skills to recognise signs of abuse and neglect. Training should cover topics like:
- Recognising different types of abuse.
- Safeguarding procedures within the company.
- Communication techniques to talk to someone who might be at risk.
- Reporting and escalation protocols.
- Confidentiality and information sharing.
Record Keeping: Maintain clear and concise records of your staffs credentials, criminal records checks and so on. These records should be stored securely and in accordance with data protection laws. Our packages can support an organisation of any size in a safe, secure and efficient manner.
Reporting: Establish a clear and accessible reporting system for employees and customers to make disclosures about potential abuse. This should include internal reporting channels and information about external reporting bodies where necessary. You will also need to keep concise records of any reported potential abuse.
Collaboration and Communication: Maintain open communication throughout the organisation about safeguarding policies and procedures. Engage with relevant external agencies to ensure a coordinated approach to safeguarding.
Building a Safeguarding Culture:
Creating a safeguarding culture goes beyond policies and procedures. It’s about fostering an environment where staff and customers feel comfortable raising concerns and reporting suspected abuse. Here’s how to achieve this:
- Open Communication: Encourage open dialogue about safeguarding and empower staff to speak up without fear of judgment.
- Leadership Commitment: Senior leadership must openly champion safeguarding and demonstrate a commitment to its importance.
- Listening and Taking Action: All concerns reported must be taken seriously and responded to promptly with appropriate action.
- Promoting Wellbeing: Foster a work environment that promotes the well-being of your staff, reducing stress and burnout that can contribute to safeguarding risks.
Demonstrating Safeguarding Credentials to Customers:
Transparency is key to building trust with your customers. Our safeguarding passport, in our view, is the best way you can show your customers that your staff are safe. They can see it for themselves and your staff do not need to continually carry their hard copy documents with them.
Here are some other ways to communicate your safeguarding commitment:
Publish your safeguarding policy on your website and make it easily accessible.
- Display safeguarding accreditation logos or certificates, which includes the use of our logo if you’re a client of ours.
- Include information about your safeguarding procedures in customer-facing documents. The share option and QR code on our app makes this easier for your staff to do in real time.
- Train customer-facing staff to answer questions about safeguarding practices.
Investing in Safeguarding:
Implementing a robust safeguarding framework protects your staff, customers, and ultimately, your company’s reputation. By investing in training, clear procedures, and open communication, you can create a safe and positive environment for everyone involved.
Additional Resources:
The National Safeguarding Network (https://safeguarding.network/) offers a wealth of safeguarding resources and training.
- Your local authority may offer safeguarding training and guidance specific to your area.
- Industry-specific safeguarding organisations may also provide relevant resources.
Coercive Control:
Here’s a look at 12 major signs of coercive control, along with some resources that can help you get out of a bad situation. They are listed in the article, but I will only read out the headings of the 12.
- Isolating you from your support system
A controlling partner will try to cut you off from friends and family or limit contact with them so you don’t receive the support you need, says clinical psychologist Cali Estes, PhD.
Here are a few ways they do this:
- suggesting shared phone and social media accounts for convenience
- moving you far away from your family so that it’s hard to visit them
- fabricating lies about you to others
- monitoring all your phone calls with your family and cutting the line off if anyone tries to intervene
- convincing you that your family hates you and doesn’t want to talk to you
- Monitoring your activity throughout the day
“Abusers pursue coercive control through attempts to make themselves omnipresent,” says Wendy L. Patrick, PhD, a career trial attorney and expert in criminal law.
They do this by wiring your house with cameras or recording devices, sometimes using two-way surveillance to speak to you at home during the day.
“This invasive surveillance often extends to private areas, such as the bedroom and even the bathroom,” notes Patrick, “adding an element of humiliation to what is already a clear boundary violation.”
All of this allows them an added element of control and also serves as a reminder to you that they’re watching.
- Denying you freedom and autonomy
Someone exerting coercive control might try to control your freedom of movement and independence.
Some methods include:
- not allowing you to go to work or school
- restricting your access to transportation
- stalking your every move when you’re out
- taking your phone and changing all your passwords
- Gaslighting
“The abuser must always be right, and they will force the victim to acknowledge this,” says Estes. They’ll manipulate, lie, and gaslight to get their way and convince you that you’re wrong.
Example
Say your partner comes home from work, expecting dinner to be served. They said they wanted steak before they left. When you serve dinner, they might throw it on the floor, scream, and yell that they wanted burgers, claiming that you’re too stupid to follow simple directions.
You then find yourself questioning your own memory, apologizing, and re-making dinner.
- Name-calling and putting you down
Malicious put-downs, name-calling, and frequent criticisms are all forms of bullying behavior.
They’re designed to make you feel unimportant and deficient, says Melissa Hamilton, PhD, a criminologist and expert in domestic abuse.
- Limiting your access to money
Controlling finances is a way of restricting your freedom and ability to leave the relationship.
Some ways they’ll try to exert financial control include:
- placing you on a strict budget that barely covers the essentials, such as food or clothes
- limiting your access to bank accounts.
- hiding financial resources
- preventing you from having a credit card
- rigorously monitoring what you spend
- Reinforcing traditional gender roles
Regardless of the type of relationship you have, your partner may try to make a distinction between who functions as the man and the woman in the relationship.
They’ll attempt to justify that women are homemakers and mothers, while men are the breadwinners. Using this argument, they may coerce you into taking care of all the cleaning, cooking, and childcare.
- Turning your kids against you
If you have children, either with the abuser or someone else, they may try to weaponize the children against you by telling them you’re a bad parent or belittling you in front of them.
This attitude can create a rift in the relationship between you and your kids, and may make you feel powerless.
- Controlling aspects of your health and body
They’ll monitor and control how much you eat, sleep, or time you spend in the bathroom.
Your abuser may require you to count calories after every meal or adhere to a strict exercise regimen. They may also control which medications you’re allowed to take and whether you go for medical care or not.
You may feel as though you’re always walking on eggshells and that your body is no longer your own.
- Making jealous accusations
Jealously complaining about the amount of time you spend with your family and friends, both on and offline, is a way for them to phase out and minimize your contact with the outside world.
They might also do this in an effort to make you feel guilty.
- Regulating your sexual relationship
Abusers might make demands about the amount of times you have sex each week and the kinds of activities you perform. They may also demand to take sexual pictures or videos of you or refuse to wear a condom.
“The victims may come to an ‘understanding’ that if they do not comply with their perpetrators’ demands or desires,” Hamilton says, “then they may face significant consequences.”
- Threatening your children or pets
According to Hamilton, if physical, emotional, or financial threats don’t work as desired, your abuser may try to use threats against others in an attempt to control you. For example, your kids or pets may be at risk.
This can look like:
- making violent threats against them
- threatening to call social services and say you’re neglecting or abusing your children when you aren’t
- intimidating you by threatening to make important decisions about your kids without your consent
- threatening to kidnap your children or get rid of your pet
How to get out
Coercive control is a pernicious form of domestic abuse that entraps you in a hostage-like situation. Regardless of the history with your abuser, even if it included some happy moments, you don’t deserve this treatment.
Getting out of an abusive relationship can be complex, even more so when children are involved. But with a bit of planning, you can make a safe exit from the situation.
Here’s what you can do:
- Maintain communication with your support systems whenever possible. This is important regardless of your abuser’s displeasure, says Patrick. You should also make sure family and friends have all of your contact information and check in on a regular basis.
- Call a domestic violence hotline regularly. Keep track of where your nearest public phone is and periodically weigh your options with a professional. Our resource guide can provide you with more options.
- Practice how to get out safely, and practice often. If you have kids, teach your kids to identify a safe place, such as a friend’s house or the library, where they can go to for help and how to call the police.
- Have a safety plan. “When deciding to leave, victims should have a plan regarding where to go and who to stay with,” Patrick adds, “recognizing that the initial period of separation might be the most dangerous in terms of an abuser attempting to reconcile — through both legal and illegal conduct.”
Some people working within family businesses, can be unfortunate to receive this type of behaviour from more than one individual. The legislation around Coercive Control now includes that the abusers can be more than one person, and it includes groups, including Family Groups.
Conclusion:
Building a culture of safeguarding is a continuous process. By regularly reviewing your policies, procedures, and training, you can ensure your organisation remains a safe haven for everyone. Remember, safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility; working together, create a safer world for all.”
Laura Richards BSc (Hons), MSc, MBPsS
hose of you have been with me since 2021, when I first began this series of podcasts, know that when it comes to Coercive Control I support the work of Laura Richards. Worked for a while in Scotland Yard as a Behavioural Analyst, and has gone on now to consultancy globally, and is also a successful Author, and highly respected in the industry. I did two full podcasts on her work alone, and I often refer to her work in other articles. One day I would love to do a podcast with her. It may take a while, but I am confident it will happen one day.
Here is an extract from her website:-
What is Coercive Control?
Coercive control is a strategic pattern of behaviour designed to exploit, control, create dependency and dominate. The victim’s every day existence is micro managed and her space for action as well as potential as a human being is limited and controlled by the abuser.
Initially lovebombing and charm may occur to get the victim into the relationship. Gaslighting, isolation, economic control and financial abuse and rules and regulations are gradually introduced over time once the victim is emotionally invested as well as a consequence if they are broken. The rules apply to the victim rather the perpetrator creating a double standard and the victim fears the consequence if she breaks a rule.
Over time, coercively controlling behaviour erodes the victim’s sense of self, their confidence and self-esteem, agency and autonomy.
The abuser creates an unreal world of contradiction, confusion and fear. Moreover 51% of victims do not even know that they are being abused, manipulated and controlled.
Coercive control correlates significantly to serious harm, femicide, homicide, familicide and suicide.
A number of feminist psychologists in the 1970s identified the domestic abuse victims that they worked with as living like hostages and coined the term ‘coercive control.’
This dangerous form of abuse relies on a range of behaviours or actions that can be very subtle and nuanced. The intention is to exploit and dominate and to ultimately deprive the victim of their most basic rights and needs. Over time, the victim may lose the very essence of being, the sense of who they are, their likes and dislikes, rendering their needs and desires irrelevant – hence hostage taking and living under an enforced regime.
At first the perpetrator may be charming and put the victim on a pedestal by the effective tactic of love bombing. Once under their spell, love bombed and intoxicated with love, their behaviour will change. The victim might wonder where the person they fell in love with went. They may not even recall when the change took place or how it happened.
Where did the term ‘coercive control’ originate from?
The art of brainwashing is sophisticated. The abuser replaces the victim’s inner narrative and thoughts with their own. Gradually, the victim’s voice is eroded and replaced with the abuser’s narrative – their views, needs, desires, wants which is placed above all else.
The behaviours can be very different in each case because it depends on the victimology. It’s very idiosyncratic to the victim and tailor-made as a plan to target them. And it can happen to anyone.
These behaviours can include strategies such as pseudo-caring tactics that appear to be attentive and thoughtful, while in reality the perpetrator is actually just micro managing the victim and limiting their space for action. They may appear super attentive and into the victim in the beginning, but all the while they may be social engineering and data mining and storing up information about the intended victim or creating an atmosphere of co-dependence.
When we understand coercive control, it’s really about a power imbalance, entrapment & utter domination.
Psychological Issues leading to Mental Health issues
How can any business be truly successful and have a safe environment if the law does not have to be followed, and scrutiny is poor or non existent?
If there is no legal scrutiny and a business can volunteer to pick and choose record keeping and are never challenged why. Some things are in place – it places all the people who work or live in that environment to be At Risk.
A Final Closing Slide Quote
“There’s a kind of silence that doesn’t mean peace —
It means something happened, and no one wants to say what.”
And the longer the silence lasts, the louder the questions become.
Ivy Barrow
01 June 2025
Reference Sources
https://www.safeguard-me.co.uk/blog/tpost/lfstpiv011-the-successful-formula-for-safeguarding
https://www.healthline.com/health/coercive-control#isolation