Our thoughts are with the survivors.

Our thoughts are with the survivors.

It is a phrase I heard repeatedly last week. Often, it came just before someone launched into a detailed, and at times salacious, discussion about the alleged perpetrators. They were rich, famous, entitled — the kind of people we reassure ourselves are far removed from our own workplaces and communities. It would not happen here. I have caught myself thinking that too. But the question we rarely sit with is this: what are we doing to support the survivors among us?

Our thoughts are with the survivors.

Are they, though? Because if they were, Monday morning might look different. Team meetings might include a brief, practical review of safeguarding procedures. People might remind themselves who to contact, what to do, how to respond. Instead, more often than not, the conversation stays informal — confined to kitchens and corridors, dressed up as curiosity but drifting into gossip. That feels closer to the truth.

Our thoughts are with the survivors.

Survivors are not visibly marked. We do not wear lanyards or carry signs. We do not know if it is Tracey in accounts or Tim on reception. What we do know is that media coverage — relentless, graphic, unavoidable — can land heavily on those already carrying harm. While others speculate, they may simply be trying to get through the day: holding it together in meetings, stepping away when it becomes too much, managing reactions no one else can see.

Our thoughts are with the survivors.

But intention without action is thin. I remember being in student accommodation some years ago, pinned against a wall while a man used my wheelchair to block my movement and access to the lift. When I reported it, the response was laughter. No escalation, no safeguarding lens, no sense of urgency. Just an individual left to decide, in the moment, whether something counted as serious.

It is easy to rank experiences, to suggest some incidents are “not as bad” as others. But fear does not scale neatly. If you been victimised before the fear is real. If an organisation cannot respond appropriately to what it considers “small”, it is unlikely to respond well when something more widely recognised as serious occurs.

Our thoughts are with the survivors.

I have also sat through safeguarding training as a trustee, working through scenarios, identifying warning signs, rehearsing appropriate responses. It all made sense in theory. Yet beside me sat someone who quietly shared that when she raised a real concern, she was ignored — deemed “not work-related”. The gap between policy and practice is where people fall through.

Our thoughts are with the survivors.

In our local leisure centre, a broken door to an accessible changing room remained unfixed for months, despite repeated reports. The space was left insecure: discreet, poorly monitored, and vulnerable. It should have been an obvious priority. It was not. Only when I made the situation impossible to ignore — loudly and publicly — was action taken.

Safety should not depend on persistence, confidence, or the willingness to escalate. And yet, too often, it does.

Our thoughts are with the survivors.

There is also a quiet contradiction in how organisations approach disclosure. Publicly, there is increasing recognition of trauma and its impacts. Privately, many people who disclose conditions such as PTSD still find themselves managed out, or deemed unsuitable. The message becomes conflicted: speak up, but not in a way that inconveniences us.

Our thoughts are with the survivors.

So what would it mean to take that statement seriously? It would mean moving beyond sentiment into structure. It would mean having clear, lived safeguarding processes, not just policies on paper. It would mean training that equips people to act, not just to recognise. It would mean environments where concerns are heard, recorded, and addressed — consistently.

Most of all, it would mean being willing to talk about sexual harassment and violence against people without deflection or discomfort. Because if we cannot talk about it honestly, we are unlikely to respond effectively when it happens.

There is work to do. A great deal of it. And it starts by asking whether our thoughts are really with survivors — or whether we have simply learned to say that they are.