Sanctified Silence: Abuse, Power, and the Price of Looking Away
There was another story on the BBC front page today, this time about the Church in Wales. Four people have come forward to BBC Wales Investigates to say that abuse was ignored by the Church, and they’re now calling for an independent inquiry. Former Bishop of Swansea and Brecon, Anthony Pierce, was jailed earlier this year for child sexual abuse. What the BBC uncovered is staggering: concerns about Pierce were reported to Church officials back in 1986, 13 years before he became Bishop but nothing was done. Once appointed, Pierce became the ultimate safeguarding authority for the diocese.
He was sentenced in March 2025 to four years and one month for five counts of indecent assault against a boy under the age of 16, committed between 1985 and 1990.
Meanwhile, Graham Sawyer, a former priest and abuse survivor himself, tried to raise the alarm in 2002 about Darren Jenkins, a youth leader and lay reader in Pontypool. His warning was met not with action, but threats.
“I was told I should be very careful or I’d end up in court,” he said. “Whenever there’s a problem, they close ranks and ignore. If that doesn’t work, they attack you with great ferocity.”
Jenkins was later convicted in 2006, for raping a 16-year-old boy five times.
None of this is new.
In 2012, CPS head Keir Starmer reviewed the decision not to prosecute Jimmy Savile in 2009, despite multiple allegations going back to the 1970s. In January 2013, Alison Levitt’s report confirmed what many already knew: if police and prosecutors had approached the allegations differently, Savile could have been charged. Operation Hibiscus later revealed dozens more allegations, including 32 tied to former Scarborough mayor Peter Jaconelli, another predator who abused for decades and died without facing justice.
We must keep asking: Why are people who sexually abuse children so well protected?
Perpetrators of child sexual abuse thrive in silence. They exploit the discomfort, the social awkwardness, the instinct to look away. They know CSA is taboo. They know even the mention of it makes people squirm. And they use that discomfort as cover.
They hide not just in shadows, but in plain sight.
They count on the deep cultural impulse to preserve appearances over truth. As long as CSA remains wrapped in stigma, shame, and polite avoidance, perpetrators are protected. And every time we change the subject or say “not here, not now,” we become part of the smokescreen they operate behind.
We have people in Victorious Voices who were abused by clergy of the Catholic Church, by priests who were moved on to other churches and went on to abuse there too. There is a serious rot that goes unchecked throughout our society, and we cannot continue to turn a blind eye to this. It’s easy to dismiss this topic because in the past victims have been weak and invisible.
These days, not so much, and we will have accountability.
