Hard Lessons

I thought there was little that could surprise me regarding the darker side of our nature. But the scandal emerging around the misdeeds of various people involved in the charity Oxfam has taken me aback. The revelations about young volunteer workers for the charity in their high street shops being abused particularly.

Something I know now that I didn't just ten years ago: Any organisation at all, regardless of its background, in the private or public sphere, needs necessarily to be monitored, indeed policed, as a likely location for abuse - whether psychological or physical. This sounds cynical, I suppose. But I don't think it is. It's just an acknowledgement of what we now know for sure about the way things are, the way we are.

And acknowledgement of the way things are is the beginning of a way forward.