Serious concerns for child protection?

By CRFR associate researcher Dr Sarah Nelson

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Several points about the absolute discharge given in Scotland last week by Lady Scott to Daniel Cieslak, who was convicted of raping a 12 year old girl, will greatly concern child protection campaigners for their potentially far-reaching implications.

First, the sentence and the judge’s remarks could be seen as in effect lowering the age of consent. The reason Mr Cieslak was convicted of rape, rather than of an under-age sexual offence, was that consent (which must be informed consent) is legally impossible under any circumstances for children under 13.

However, despite this legal impossibility the judge, who accepted that the accused genuinely believed the girl was over 16, was reported to say "Here the victim willingly participated in the sexual intercourse and there was, in fact, consent.” So there could not be consent: and yet there was. That contradiction surely needs urgent clarification. Otherwise both the absolute discharge and the judge’s remarks risk giving a “green light” to anyone wishing to have sex with a child under 13, by saying that they looked over 16. The current law is also undermined.

Secondly, while mitigating factors may well exist in an accused’s individual case – which can be reflected in length of sentence – sentencing is always also a statement of how seriously a society takes particular acts. It also deters others. So for instance the increased sentences for domestic abuse, for drink driving or dangerous driving, and other offences now taken more seriously by modern society. The absolute discharge and the remarks made a very different form of public statement.

Thirdly, there are strongly suggestive indications that the victim may have already been a vulnerable child in need of extra protection. Two girls of 12 and 13 were wandering alone in Edinburgh city centre in the small hours of the morning. One of them, it was reported in some media, quickly showed sexualised behaviour with a stranger, Mr Cieslak, whom she had met in a taxi queue, then later had sex with him. These behaviours are very common reactions in some children and young people who have already been sexually abused or exploited, and would be recognised as such by anyone working with survivors of these crimes.

Was an investigation made before the trial into their circumstances, and were the girls already known to anyone who should have been protecting them? There had been more than time enough to find out between the incident in 2015 and the court case. If so, was this information passed to the court?

The reason those questions are especially important is twofold. It has now emerged that countless vulnerable girls of similar ages and behaviours to this girl were carefully groomed into agreeing to sex, then raped and brutalised by gangs in the child sexual exploitation scandals of Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford, Derby and elsewhere. The reason most were left unprotected for years by police and social services was because they were dismissed as willing partners, as “little slags”, or as “child prostitutes” by the authorities themselves. Many had been vulnerable children, already previously abused or neglected.

This knowledge, which we all possess now, makes it especially important for authorities and courts to protect children showing early sexualisation or “difficult” behaviours, not simply to accept as Lady Scott did of the girl in the case that she had “no concerns, and there was no suggestion of her being distressed". If we allow them to be dismissed as “willing” or “active” participants”, we surely contradict both Scotland’s child protection policies and its National Plan to counter child sexual exploitation.

Even where a young person is between 13 and 16 - and may indeed have limited consent, Scotland’s “National Guidance on Under-age Sexual Activity: Meeting the Needs of Children and Young People and Identifying Child Protection Concerns” recommends factors which must be considered in judging risk and the need for protection. They include informed choice, the circumstances of the sexual activity, a history of being in care, and a history of previous abuse.

In the (English) Neil Wilson case in 2013, appeal judges and Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) strongly criticised a judge who leniently treated the abuser of a vulnerable 13 year old, and said the girl was a predator and “egging you on”. Appeal judges made the highly important statement: “An under-age person who encourages sexual relations with her needs more protection, not less. The Attorney General is therefore right to say that the victim's vulnerability was an aggravating, rather than a mitigating feature”.

Is it time for such unequivocal statements – and for a Crown appeal against this sentence – north of the Border?

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Student who admitted sex with 12-year-old cleared as judge calls girl ‘active participant’, Daily Record, 17-3-17. http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/student-who-admitted-rape-12-10045698

Full details of English child sexual exploitation scandals in: Nelson, S (2016). Tackling Child Sexual Abuse: Radical approaches to prevention, protection and support, Policy Press, Chapter 4.

Scottish Government (2010) National Guidance. Under-age sexual activity: Meeting the Needs of Children and Young People and Identifying Child Protection Concerns” [para 47]. Available at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/333495/0108880.pdf

Barrister suspended from sex cases after court comments BBC News (online), 07/08/13; Attorney General's Reference (No 53 of 2013) [2013] EWCA Crim 2544 (para.20). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23605577

Sexual Abuse: A Crisis for Football?

Following her CRFR seminar series on childhood sexual abuse, CRFR Associate Researcher Dr Sarah Nelson reflects on the recent disclosures of abuse in football.

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In the space of a mere three weeks, since several former professional footballers spoke publicly about their sexual abuse as young players, more than 850 people have called a special NSPCC helpline. More than 55 professional and amateur clubs have been linked to allegations; in excess of 20 police forces are investigating; and helplines receive more calls daily.

Does this mean that football is somehow more prone to childhood sexual abuse than other sports? The answer to that anxious, understandable question is likely to be “no”.

Football is played more widely than any other sport among 11-15 year old boys, and thus the sheer number vulnerable to abuse is bound to be greater. In addition, it is not a particular sport, a particular religion, profession, or group within society which is most likely to have perpetrators of child sexual abuse (CSA) within it. It is the way in which particular values and other factors come together, encouraging abuse to continue in that particular setting.

Especially with respect to abuse from outside the family – as in this case - they include:

• The extent of power the adult has over children (in football, control over the boy in achieving his longed-for, dream career);
• The importance of children’s obedience to adults (in children’s sports, the coach’s role; in many other settings, strongly patriarchal values towards women and children);
• The extent to which parents and community trust, or defer to, the abusive adult (in children’s sports the selfless, helpful coach; with clergy, supposed men of God);
• The social stigma and low credibility faced by some children and teenagers (only relevant to some children in this case, but very relevant to abuse in care and child sexual exploitation);
• The culture of the particular setting, in silencing, dismissing and/or disbelieving victims (“macho” male values and bravado in football, rugby, boxing or snooker; in some ethnic and religious groups, the power of shame).

It may perhaps seem surprising that opportunity is not included above. However, the factors described create it in themselves. Also, abusers rarely need special or additional opportunity. They skilfully create opportunities out of little, even in “plain sight” of others - as the prolific abuser Jimmy Savile demonstrated.

Football coaches are not somehow more dangerous than people elsewhere. It is not that most coaches are abusers, but that youth football is one ideal setting to which the minority of abusers against boys will gravitate. This is precisely why no-one involved in coaching should take personal offence at the need for clubs and schools to be extremely vigilant about their recruitment and monitoring.

Nor should men involved in coaching the sport now protest that they are not trusted any more, that children or parents will think they are unsafe, and that they are put off volunteering at all. There can be a defensive self-indulgence about this, though it may sound harsh to say so. Adults working in professions where there have been scandals can be assured that children and young people sense when the ways in which adults talk, behave and touch are safe or unsafe. Survivors of sexual abuse will confirm this. If you are a safe person, and with no sexual interest in young people, they will sense it.

It is still very understandable that parents will feel more anxious than before. They can find at least considerable reassurance in the children’s safeguarding initiatives, in football and other sports, which are now in place. They can take an active interest in what these are, and how they might be improved, in their own children’s clubs.

One of the greatest of safeguards lies in parents telling their children repeatedly to let them know straight away if anyone makes them feel uncomfortable in a sexual way, and that they will not be angry with them, will not dismiss nor blame them -whoever that person is - even a family friend, relative or respected member of the community.

When parents say this, they need to mean it too. So they should talk through with each other, or with a support organisation, any understandable difficulties they would have in taking on board difficult information about somebody they trust.

Amongst the genuinely disturbing scale of current revelations about football there are some very encouraging aspects. In a “macho” sport notable for silencing any issues of sexuality which do not involve boasting about women, numerous men continue to come forward publicly with courage and strength, to talk openly and angrily about an abuse which still fills many men with deep shame and humiliation.

They have set a striking example to others who remain silenced. They have spurred on inquiries about past, unacknowledged crimes – and a greater alertness to current ones.

Sarah Nelson is author of Tackling Child Sexual Abuse: Radical approaches to prevention, protection and support (Policy Press, 2016). Several chapters in this book describe research carried out at CRFR, including research with male survivors.

http://www.children1st.org.uk/what-we-do/how-we-help/safeguarding-in-sport/

https://sportscotland.org.uk/about-us/our-publications/archive/child-protection

The Scottish Football Association urges anyone with any information relating to abuse or inappropriate behaviour – whether current or historic – to get in touch via the NSPCC’s helpline 0800 023 2642, or email childrenswellbeing@scottishfa.co.uk

Families, Relationships and Societies, issue 2

Eagerly awaited by many of us at CRFR, issue 2 of Families, Relationships and Societies has just been published. Many of the articles draw on the rich accounts of qualitative research, and themes of relationships and parenting dominate.

Access to the journal is free for 2012 by emailing tpp-frs-trial@bristol.ac.uk.

Taking the relationships theme, Julie Carter explores theories of commitment from a female perspective in her interviews with young women aged 19-30 years. Lester Coleman and colleagues outline an academic and voluntary sector collaboration seeking to enhance relationship support for 'mixed' couples and families. And lastly, Ciara O'Dwyer and colleagues are interested in how grandparents cope with relationship breakdown among their adult children.

Parenting is another strong theme. Rhiannon Evans and Sally Holland make an important contribution by positioning their research on child protection within the context of 'troublesome' families - policy areas which are typically dealt with seperately. The authors suggest that many protective activities are carried out by communities labelled as 'troublesome'. Issues of child safety are similarly picked up in research by Anna Conolly and Jenny Parkes. Their work has gathered the experienes of young people's living in areas affected by high youth crime in relation to their parents' strategies to keep them safe.

Jeni Harden and colleagues present a very different aspect of parenting, exploring how parents negotiate paid work and care responsibilities. The authors emphasise the inevitable flexibility that emerges in boundaries between work and home, for example in relation to how time is managed and negotiated.

Sandra Cunning and colleagues shift the focus to evaluation, presenting a case-study of a Canadian mental health agency where evidence-based practices were implemented as part of a significant organsiational change process.

While Artur Steinerowski and Mike Woolvin present findings from an action research project in rural Scotland to reflect on the challenges and opportunities to support older people to establish social enterprises.

The Open Space article this month is from our own Sarah Morton and close collaborators David Phipps and Sandra Nutley to ask how research can be used to influence family services and policies. The article begins by outlining the growth in academic understanding of reserach use and offers some emerging lessons about reserach use can be improved. It continues by relating experiences of CRFR's work over the last 10 years and also experiences from the Knowledge Mobilization (KMb) Unit at York University in Toronto, Canada.

 

Editorial is by Brid Featherstone & Tess Ridge.

Visit the contents page by clicking here to access all the articles.

When soundbites don’t help addicted parents …or their children

Sarah Nelson, Author of Care and Support Needs of Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse (February 2009)

The poignantly short life and brutal death of the toddler Brandon Muir, violently killed by his mother’s boyfriend in Dundee, has provoked renewed debate and soul-searching among politicians, media and many of the public. Not just about apparent failings in child protection generally, but in particular about how to safeguard children in the estimated 50,000 Scottish families where one parent at least is addicted to drugs.

As three separate child protection reviews get underway in Dundee, drastic “solutions” have been touted, as they are each time such deaths happen. These range from taking all or most addicts’ children into care - unrealistic without huge resources, given the large numbers of children and the hard-pressed, shrunken fostering and residential sectors – to giving addicts contraception along with their methadone. (A eugenic “solution” familiar to historians, it is unclear exactly what type of contraception is being dreamt of, and how it will be given: as so often happens, the restraint seems to apply only to females).

It’s understandable that concerned people feel despairing at times about the problem, and about the suffering of some addicts’ children, and are therefore tempted by the sound and fury of such drastic solutions. Angry feelings against addicted parents, and renewed blaming of social workers and health visitors, may be merited in individual cases; but when generalised, do they help vulnerable children, or distract attention from measures that will be more constructive for them?

Does it make sense for instance to spend more on the children and less on the adults?
Some recent research suggests that putting more resources into supporting addicted adults may actually make the children benefit from better, safer parenting. One issue which has consistently been neglected in policy, despite much research and practice evidence is the very damaging trauma in the backgrounds of many addicted parents.

Those who have been addicted for a long time, or who have found it impossible to remain “clean” from substance misuse, are often using drugs and alcohol as a kind of self medication- in a sometimes desperate effort to blot out very distressing experiences and memories. That kind of misuse is much harder to stop, because the cost to them, without support, is to resurrect sometimes unbearable flashbacks and memories.

These bad experiences can include childhood beatings and sexual abuse, neglect, emotional cruelty and for adults domestic abuse from violent partners. For example my own Beyond Trauma research, published in 2001, with women who experienced childhood sexual abuse trauma revealed that a high percentage had sought refuge in drink and drugs, even as children or teenagers, and needed skilled support to help them cope with the trauma once this “crutch” was removed.

In my latest study, Care and Support Needs of Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse, a quarter of the interviewees were addicted even before their teens, and half of them by their teenage years. The prisoner and ex-prisoner group were addicted very young to a variety of drugs, after experiencing extreme forms of trauma.

Of course, not all drug addicted parents are victims of abuse. However, many are – for example in 2004, one specialist drugs counsellor in a large and busy Edinburgh health centre found that 85 % of her client group had suffered childhood sexual abuse. In fact a growing number of international studies had already revealed links between substance misusers and a history of child abuse when Dr Jane Wilson of Stirling University carried out her Scottish research , with colleagues Susan Morris and Rowdy Yates, more than ten years ago.

Her research team found even higher figures than existing studies suggested. They used the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire with male and female addicts at three Scottish treatment units. The average age when these had first misused more than one substance was only 15.

Among the women, two-thirds had experienced childhood sexual abuse and more than half childhood physical abuse. Almost half of the men had experienced childhood physical abuse, and more than a third sexual abuse. Wilson and her colleagues called for a wider look at young people and adults with poly-drug use. They warned that in most cases trauma histories may not have been shared with health and social care professionals, and that their needs may have been “unidentified and unmet”. They urged more staff training and recommended “integrated programmes, which address both trauma and substance misuse.”

Those recommendations have made little headway in those ten years, despite further recommendations from major Scottish Executive reports like “Mind the Gaps” in 2003. Specialist, dedicated resources to help addicted adults recover as far as possible from childhood sexual trauma and other violence are still tiny, particularly (and ironically) in major cities like Edinburgh where there have long been serious addiction problems.

Yet research and practice experience indicates that they can actively enable addicted adults to become both more secure and competent as parents, and equally important, to regain the self-esteem which has usually been severely undermined or lost altogether. That loss is one key reason why women in particular often feel they are worth no more than to accept a violent and abusive partner, who is dangerous not only to themselves but to their children.

Obviously, the most basic aim in child protection has to be preventing children being abused in the first place. But creating safer less neglectful home environments for those children, free of possibly dangerous people who may wander in and out to collect or to deal in drugs, will be one part of that primary prevention exercise. Boosting post- trauma services for desperate, addicted parents, and giving staff the training and confidence-building to deliver these services on a wide scale, would prove a small cost in terms of potential benefits to both vulnerable parents and their children.

For more information about the project that led to the report Care and Support Needs of Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse see http://www.crfr.ac.uk/Research/malesurvivors.html