‘Culture of denial’ leaving UK children at risk of serious abuse

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abuse, blame, child abuse, child sexual exploitation, Children, denial, gangs, perpetrators, rape, sexual exploitation, silence, violence

‘Culture of denial’ leaving UK children at risk of serious abuse

Children are at risk of serious abuse across England because of a culture of “wilful blindness” about the scale and prevalence of sexual exploitation across swaths of local government and in police forces, the deputy children’s commissioner warns.

In a highly critical interview given in the aftermath of the Rotherham abuse inquiry, which concluded that hundreds of children may have been abused there over a 16-year period, Sue Berelowitz said she had been “aghast” at the examples of obvious errors and poor practice she found.

Berelowitz told the Guardian she had discovered that police and council officers were in some cases still either looking the other way, not asking questions or claiming abuse was confined to a certain ethnic group – such as Asian men – or a particular social class.

Berelowitz is the author of a detailed report into child sexual exploitation in gangs and groups last year following a series of high-profile cases in towns such as Rochdale and Oxford as well as Rotherham.

On a recent field visit to a police force, Berelowitz was surprised to learn that the officers’ top search on their internal computer profiling system was “Asian male”. When she asked what would happen if the perpetrators were not Asian, the officer in charge replied that the force was “not looking for those”. “I was astonished. I said: ‘I think you better start looking.'”

She said that in other cases a culture of blaming the victims remained prevalent: “I had another case when I met the chair of the safeguarding board of a large city [meant to co-ordinate the protection of children from abuse or neglect]. When I mentioned cases of child sex exploitation, he said: ‘Oh yeah, those two girls are prostitutes always walking up and down this street.’ I won’t mention the city as you’d be aghast to learn who it was.”

Berelowitz said she was shocked to discover that although “there had been progress” by authorities in the aftermath of the grisly series of gang-rape and trafficking scandals, “there are still instances of not looking, of wilful blindness. We have to be careful none of us is in denial about the terrible reality of what happened in places like Rochdale and Rotherham.”

Because the subject matter is uncomfortable and scrutiny damaging, Berelowitz added that there was a “culture of denial” that had been exposed by Prof Alexis Jay’s inquiry into the handling of child abuse in Rotherham. It found at least 1,400 children were sexually exploited by predominantly Asian criminal gangs between 1997 and 2013.

A day after the Jay report was published, South Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner Shaun Wright, a former Labour councillor who was cabinet member for children and youth services on Rotherham council between 2005 and 2010, came under intense pressure to resign his post.

On Wednesday night, after the Labour threatened to suspend him, he resigned from the party but insisted he remained committed to his police role. He said: “I was elected to deliver the people’s policing and crime priorities in South Yorkshire, and I intend to see that duty through.”

Theresa May, the home secretary, and Wright’s party, Labour, both said he should go. Wright’s former colleague and council leader, Roger Stone, resigned following publication of the Jay report.

Berelowitz’s comments, however, are intended to broaden the issue beyond Rotherham and similar cases of abuse. She cautioned that despite the emphasis placed on the fact that most of the victims in the northern towns were poor and white, while the perpetrators were Asian, she said that the issue affected “all communities, all races”.

“Usually people say to me that it was an issue of Asian males and white girls. When we dug deeper we found Afro-Caribbean girls and sometimes boys as victims, or Roma perpetrators. There’s a culture of wilful denial to the reality out there. It’s white people, it’s Asians. Parts of every community are involved.”

Most troubling was the rise of peer-to-peer sexual abuse and exploitation, where both victims and perpetrators are minors. She said that in another extremely disturbing case, police officers had caught a gang of 14- and 15-year-olds who had gang-raped an 11-year-old over a number of days. “The police caught the offenders and charged them not with rape, but with drugs offences. I told them that the message was ‘don’t do drugs but rape is fine’. The force is now working to bring the case back.”

She also warned that the rise of technology had enabled children to be seduced and controlled more easily than before, with young girls texted threats to “murder their mother, whom a gang leader has just seen pull up in a new car, if they talk about an attack” or blackmailed with an incriminating video taken on a mobile of their own rape, filmed to ensure their silence.

There was also a gap in the research explaining what led apparently otherwise normal men to commit rape and torture on often vulnerable girls, Berelowitz said.

“Most of the research into adult males who sexually abuse children in paedophilic mode has been on white males serving long sentences in prison. There’s no research into the particular model of Rotherham or Oxford or Sheffield.

“My own personal hypothesis is that they live in a patriarchal environment and are likely to have grown up with a fair amount of domestic violence.”

The scale of abuse, too, was alarming. The office of the Children’s Commissioner estimated that 16,500 children are at risk from abuse from criminal gangs. In London there are about 3,500 street-gang members, Berelowitz’s most recent work says, adding that estimates that one in 20 of the population had suffered intra-familial abuse “are far too low”. “In London alone there are about 3,500 young people aged between 13 and 25 involved in street gangs. There is a level of extraordinary violence involved. Now any girl living in a neighbourhood is at risk. I’d say there was more than one girl for every gang member at risk,” she said.

Reinforcing the point that the problem is not easily categorised, a report from University College London and Barnardo’s reveals that the number of boys affected by child sexual exploitation may be much higher than previously thought. The report – which looked at 9,042 children affected by childhood sexual exploitation and supported by Barnardo’s since 2008 – reveals that 2,986, or one in three, were male.

Society, said Berelowitz, was only just coming to terms with the disturbing nature of the problem and the scale of the abuse. “I think we are facing a public health problem here. We need to mount a public information campaign like that done about seatbelts and get money for therapy. We cannot arrest our way out of this problem.”

We must identify girls at risk from gangs

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gangs, isolation, risk, self-harm, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, vulnerability

We must identify girls at risk from gangs

When I met Rita she was 17 and in custody for the 13th time. Her offending had escalated from moped theft and “antisocial” behaviour with boys when she was 11, through to firearms possession. She had been self-harming for the past three years, had contracted chlamydia, was malnourished, had developed an addiction to crack cocaine, and was being sexually exploited by the street gang to whom she was associated.

This had not happened to Rita overnight. It was the consequence of years of exploitation by her male peers, isolation from her friends, exclusion from school, and being sexually abused by a family member when she was eight years old. From a young age, a myriad of professionals had opportunities to intervene and protect Rita, but, instead, her risk snowballed.

A report published this week by the Centre for Mental Health demonstrates that Rita’s case is not a one-off. The report is based on data from 8,000 10- to 18-year-olds, who, following their arrest between August 2011 and November 2012, were screened for 29 different risk factors and health issues, such as family conflict, homelessness and victimisation, as part of a study to identify the most appropriate interventions. The screening process was a pilot run in 37 areas of England. Gang-involved girls were found to be over nine times more likely to exhibit 19 or more of these risk factors than the other young people screened.

Gang-involved girls navigate harmful environments and relationships. According to the study, young women who had “histories of parental imprisonment, poor parental mental health, parental substance misuse, or neglect” were three to five times more likely to be gang-involved than other girls who were screened. In addition, they were three times more likely to be identified as victims of sexual abuse and four times more likely to have been excluded from school.

The same girls were also more likely to have difficulties with their physical and mental health and wellbeing than other young people screened. Like Rita, 30% were reported to be self-harming or at risk of suicide, and were over three times more likely to have sexual health needs.

When public attention is focused on the horrendous accounts of groups of adult men sexually exploiting girls around the country, it is easy to forget about girls and young women who are at risk from their peers. The information provided clearly demonstrates that risk can be present in homes, peer groups, schools, neighbourhoods and in wider society, which increases the vulnerability of girls to street gangs. This report provides a statistical backdrop to the accounts given to me by hundreds of women and girls during the Female Voice in Violence project; now it is time to turn the stories and figures into action.

From preventing vulnerability, to the identification of girls linked to gangs, through to the programmes delivered to support them, and routes of safety that are offered, our processes need to be gender-specific. This groundbreaking report throws into sharp relief the impact of gang-association and the opportunities that exist to intervene across a young woman’s lifetime. Of the girls that were screened, 73% engaged with an intervention that was offered to them. It is critical that all agencies who work with girls and young women use the evidence to mobilise and evaluate interventions that will better identify and protect those involved with gangs.

Thousands of children sexually exploited each year, inquiry says

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abortion, abuse, alcohol, child sexual exploitation, Children, control, crime, drugs, gangs, humiliation, mental health issues, miscarriage, perpetrators, power, pregnancy, punish, rape, sexual assault, smartphones, social networks, STDs, support, threaten

Thousands of children sexually exploited each year, inquiry says

Thousands of children are raped and abused each year, with many more cases going unreported by victims and unrecorded by the authorities, according to an official study presented as the most comprehensive inquiry to date of the scale and prevalence of child sexual exploitation in England.

The disturbing and at times horrific study, which describes a range of traumatic and violent sexual crimes perpetrated mainly against girls, by male teenage gang members and groups of older men, was described as a “wake-up call” for safeguarding professionals by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England (OCCE).

It draws an alarming picture of serious sexual crimes against children: girls groomed, then drugged and raped at seedy “parties” in private homes and warehouses organised by groups of men, for profit or pleasure; assaults in public parks, schools and alleyways by gang members influenced by violent pornography, and intent on threatening, punishing or controlling young women by means of forced oral sex, and anal and vaginal rape.

The report says that victims commonly suffer serious physical and emotional harm as a result of their experiences, including severe mental illness, and drug and alcohol problems. Some victims contract sexually transmitted diseases, become pregnant, have terminations or suffer miscarriages.

“The reality is that each year thousands of children in England are raped and abused by people seeking to humiliate, violate and control them. The impact on their lives is devastating,” said the inquiry chair, deputy children’s commissioner Sue Berelowitz.

The inquiry was established in 2011 to investigate what it saw as mounting concern about child sexual exploitation. The inquiry team, comprising academics and senior safeguarding professionals from the police, NHS and charities, collected data and evidence from local authorities, police forces and primary care trusts. It took oral evidence from 68 professionals and 20 sexually exploited children across the country.

It concluded that too often police, local authorities and other safeguarding agencies have failed to spot or act on the warning signs of sexual exploitation, despite what it says is 20 years of evidence that large numbers of children are being sexually exploited in the UK. “Too many child victims are not getting the protection and support they need,” writes Berelowitz in the foreword to the report.

It criticises safeguarding professionals who labelled victims as “promiscuous” or “asking for it”. This “worrying perspective” suggested officials too often assumed that sexually exploited children, many of whom exhibited disruptive or aggressive behaviour, were “complicit in, and responsible for, their own abuse”.

Debbie Jones, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, said: “It is clear that we cannot make assumptions about victims or perpetrators based on their age, ethnicity or whether they are in care. Making such assumptions will risk some children not being identified as being sexually exploited and not receiving the protection that they so desperately need.”

The inquiry’s interim report published by the OCCE says that despite media attention surrounding a number of high-profile court cases involving groups of Pakistani men and white British female victims, sexual exploitation was widespread. There was no evidence that perpetrators belonged disproportionately to a particular ethnic group.

“The vast majority of the perpetrators of this terrible crime are male. They range in age from as young as 14 to old men. They come from all ethnic groups and so do their victims – contrary to what some may wish to believe,” writes Berelowitz.

The study found the largest group of perpetrators were classed as “white” males, but because there were gaps in official data recording, and because many victims found it hard to identify their attackers, it was impossible to estimate accurately who and how many people were sexually exploiting children.

“What all perpetrators have in common – regardless of the differences in age, ethnicity, or social background (information on disability or sexual orientation was rarely available) – was their abuse of power in relation to their victims, and that the vast majority were male,” the report said.

Although it identified 2,409 children and young people as “confirmed victims” of sexual exploitation in gangs or groups over a 14-month period, and estimated that 16,500 children were at “high risk” of sexual exploitation during a 12-month period, the report said this was an undercounting of the true scale of the problem. The report did not consider cases of sexual exploitation by “lone perpetrators”.

Anne Marie Carrie, chief executive of Barnardo’s, which works with 1,000 victims of child sexual exploitation each year, agreed that the figures were undercounted: “We agree with the OCCE that it is likely that the figures of both confirmed victims and those at high risk only show us the tip of the iceberg.

All kinds of children and young people, both male and female and across a range of ethnic backgrounds, were sexually exploited, the report found. Although vulnerable youngsters in care or from dysfunctional families were most at risk, children “from loving and secure homes” were also abused by gangs and groups.

“The characteristics common to all victims are not their age, ethnicity, disability or sexual orientation, rather their powerlessness and vulnerability,” the report states.

The study found that 28% of the victims reported to the inquiry were from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. The report says: “This information is significant, given that the general perception appears to be that sexual exploitation by groups, in particular, is primarily a crime against white children.”

Technology was used widely to initiate, organise and maintain child sexual exploitation. Victims reported being harassed through text messages, and perpetrators would often film and distribute incidents of rape via smartphones and social networking. Younger perpetrators had in many cases been exposed to violent pornography, the inquiry found, and it speculated that this informed abusers’ understanding of sexual relationships.

Berelowitz writes: “We need to ask why so many males, both young and old, think it is acceptable to treat both girls and boys as objects to be used and abused. We need to know why so many adults in positions of responsibility persist in not believing these children when they try to tell someone what they have endured.”