Nazir Afzal is the new head of the CSSA, the Church’s safeguarding body, a role he took on only recently. He’s a Muslim: it was a widely welcomed, if unexpected, appointment. One thing struck him: “I’ve never, in all my career, encountered such low expectations, such an expectation of failure”, he said cheerfully. “Online and in blogs, you had people saying, it’s good that he’s taken on this role, but he can’t possibly succeed.”
In the course of his career – he’s 59 – he has done an awful lot of work on sexual abuse. His most celebrated decision, as regional Crown Prosecution Service head, was to prosecute the abuse of vulnerable girls in Rochester, by Muslim men. It is a dispiriting area of expertise, but he is driven, as he says by “passion to protect the vulnerable”. He has, he says, “prosecuted literally tens of thousands of cases. I prosecute without fear or favour.”
