Justin Welby's resignation does little for holding abusers accountable

The Archbishop of Canterbury awoke on Monday to the worst possible headlines - for him. I doubt if he managed to eat much breakfast inside his beleaguered redoubt at Lambeth Palace. Never has there been such a deafening clamour for an Archbishop's head to roll.

Practically every newspaper carried glaring front-page headlines demanding Justin Welby resign, preferably before the day was out. Breakfast radio and TV predicted the inevitability of his demise, even though no Archbishop of Canterbury since the very first was appointed - St Augustine in 597 - has been forced to quit.

So this was, by any standards, a grimly historic moment. And sure enough, by lunchtime on Tuesday, Welby had fallen on his sword. He had no choice. An independent report had showed his handling of the Church of England's worst ever child abuse scandal was abysmal.

His failures meant that a prolific abuser - a monster of a man who indulged sadistic appetites by beating boys and young men on the bare buttocks with a cane, often until they bled - was never brought to justice.

This week it also emerged - via victims' harrowing testimony - that John Smyth used his powers of oratory as a trained barrister to persuade them that the beatings were a way of expiating their sins before God. His skill in the dark arts of coercive control was extraordinary. Often his prey would be talked into accepting repeated torture at his hands.

Welby learned something of Smyth's depraved activities in 2013, and very likely earlier than that. But he did nothing. In his resignation statement, the Archbishop spoke of his shame, referring to "the long-maintained conspiracy of silence about the heinous abuses", and "my long-felt and profound sense of shame at the safeguarding failures of the Church of England".

It has long been known that a certain type of depraved man is drawn to join the police, to provide the power and opportunity to abuse and rape women. And it's clear that much the same perverted principle is at work here. Men like Smyth use organised religion as a carapace under which to fulfil their twisted desires.

They hide in plain sight. And all too often the organisation puts the reputation of the institution above the victims' rights to justice.

I'd like to close with: "Never again."

But there are other John Smyths out there, and their wells of evil cunning run deeper than we can possibly imagine.

I don't know if the chest infection that's laid Queen Camilla low is the same bug doing the rounds since the beginning of autumn, but I wouldn't be surprised.

It's a nasty little specimen. Just when you think you've shaken it off, it sneaks back. I know several usually healthy people who have needed not one but two courses of antibiotics to knock it on the head.

Richard is on his third - he's been hacking, spluttering and wheezing for nearly five weeks now. If you get it, run, don't walk, to the doctor.

Swearing has become so common that it's close to losing its sting. Even the F-word has diminished impact now. I saw it used both in speech and in an accompanying written caption in a question on a mainstream Saturday night quiz show last week. The studio audience didn't turn a hair. And this was no late-night programme: it started at 9pm.

Even judges agree that the F-word is now an embedded part of our language. Last week, a tribunal ruled that the sacking of an employee who had used "foul" language towards a colleague was a clear case of unfair dismissal.

TV wordsmith Susie Dent says we've come a long way since Victorian times, when chicken breast was chastely described as "white meat" and a gentleman would never talk about his "trousers" for fear of provoking thoughts of what they concealed. Even bulbous chair and table legs were modestly covered in muslin drapes because they were deemed to be too suggestive.

Apparently swearing is more common in the north. Hmm. Tell that to my London-born-and-bred husband.