It will take more than an inquiry to right the wrongs of child sexual abuse

While welcoming the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, social worker Bill Stone says investment and culture change is now needed to protect children

Published by Professional Social Work magazine 30 November, 2022

The publication of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA)’s final report, after seven years of intensive inquiry, was intended to be a turning point in the story of how we respond, as a society, to the issue of child sexual abuse (CSA) in institutional settings.

The inquiry, which is now in the process of closing down, has made a number of connected recommendations which the inquiry team believes will provide a framework for protecting children from sexual abuse in the future.

The remit of the inquiry was “to consider the extent to which state and non-state institutions have failed in their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation”. A number of institutions which were known to have failed to protect children from sexual abuse, such as local authority children’s homes, boarding schools, the Catholic Church, the Church of England and other institutions, were examined in some detail and separate investigation reports published.

During the time that the IICSA has been gathering evidence, I have been working for a charity (thirtyoneeight) that helps to create safer spaces in churches and faith-based organisations and so I have been following the review closely. Whereas the research evidence on CSA in general has grown considerably over the past decades, much less is known about sexual abuse of children by people in positions of trust within organisations, so the focus on abuse in organisations is welcome.

In her keynote address in the IICSA concluding report webinar, Professor Alexis Jay who chaired the review summarised the inquiry team’s learning from their enquiries in six major themes:

  1. The shocking and deeply disturbing scale of CSA. She said “the experiences and impact of CSA cannot be denied or dismissed”. The abuse started early (79 per cent of Truth Project participants stated that their first experience of sexual abuse was when they were under 11) and often lasted a long time (average four years). A single, unrepeated incident was rare. The majority of victims/survivors (67 per cent) didn’t disclose at the time and those who did usually received an unsympathetic response.
  2. Perpetrator behaviour frequently continued for years - even decades - and often involved violence, threats of violence and coercion. Children who were vulnerable due to disability or disadvantage were particularly likely to be targeted.
  3. Organisational responses to concerns about CSA were callous, dismissive and deeply flawed. Failures of leadership were exposed and institutions prioritised their own reputations over children’s wellbeing. Power imbalances were ruthlessly exploited and extreme deference towards those with status led to investigators being told to ‘back off’.
  4. The criminal justice system is ineffective in dealing with these concerns as extreme delay and failures to prosecute often lead to complainants giving up.
  5. The internet and social media present a growing threat to children’s safety which Professor Jay described as “severe and alarming”. She gave an example that, during the first lockdown in 2020, there were 8.5 million attempts to access indecent images of children.
  6. Wider social issues. It has become clear to the inquiry team that “society does not want to talk about childhood sexual abuse. But every incident of abuse is a crime”. The culture within organisations and in society at large needs to change.

Many of the inquiry’s recommendations about particular organisations (contained within previous IICSA investigation reports) have already been implemented by the organisations themselves, but the final report outlines some key, overarching recommendations that are primarily directed at government. The three headline recommendations that Professor Jay underlined are:

  1. Mandatory reporting for those in ‘regulated activity’ with children. This recommendation is squarely aimed at those people within institutions “who know about child sexual abuse but fail to report to the statutory authorities”.
  2. The creation of new Child Protection Authorities for England and Wales. The purpose of these bodies is to ensure a consistent focus on child protection and they will sit alongside (rather than replace) existing regulators whose remits are broader.
  3. The creation of a new Redress Scheme for victims of CSA to be funded by central and local government, but contributions would be “sought and expected” from institutions implicated in the abuse.

My career-long experience in social work has frequently exposed me to the devastating, often lifelong, impact of childhood sexual abuse on children and families I have worked with. Although, in my personal practice, both working with individuals and organisations, child sexual abuse has been a major consideration, each case tends to be dealt with on an individual basis. To have large numbers of cases over a lengthy period of time brought together from diverse settings, in the way that IICSA has done, provides insight and learning that is painfully acute.

The involvement of victims and survivors throughout the enquiry - over 7,000 individual victims/survivors came forward, particularly through the Truth Project - reinforced this learning in a vivid and compelling way.

As a social worker, this is the one thing that I welcome most from all the painstaking work that has been done by IICSA since the inquiry was launched back in 2015. The sexual abuse of children is a moral and social evil that has been too long kept in the dark. It needs to be exposed to the light and the voices of victims and survivors, need to be heard and heeded.

Where I have less confidence than the inquiry team concerns the implementation of their recommendations. The abuse of children, in sexual and in other ways, is nothing new and cover ups in order to protect the reputation of powerful individuals and institutions are not new either. Exposing abuse and calling out abusers is a necessary first step, but to really tackle the problem of the abuse of children will require significant investment alongside meaningful cultural change.

For example, many of IICSA’s recommendations are predicated upon a “wide ranging programme to increase public awareness of child sexual abuse”. I couldn’t agree more that such a programme is urgently needed.

However, the events around the launch of IICSA’s final report in late October do not augur well in this respect. Having known about the launch date since it was announced back in August, I was anticipating widespread media coverage on 20 October. How wrong I was! In the event, the publication of IICSA’s final report was almost totally eclipsed by dramatic developments within the Conservative Party following the resignation of the former Prime Minster. The public conversation about child protection, which was meant to be initiated by the publication of the report barely got off the ground.

How ironic that the voices of those many victims who have been silenced for so many years should, once again, be drowned out by powerful members of the establishment jockeying for position! Oppression and abuse take many forms and are deeply entrenched in our culture. I fear that it will take more than an independent review to right the many wrongs exposed by IICSA.

Bill Stone is a social work consultant