Children and Families Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2013 Grand Committee

I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to tell me that the Government are at last willing to implement the ban in the Education and Skills Act 2008. Children deserve our protection. Violence is no way to enforce either learning or discipline and we need to make that absolutely clear. Working with communities is all very fine and welcome but there are still some places where the general disapproval of such behaviour is ignored and many parents are reluctant to stand up and complain because of the pressure from their fellow faith adherents and senior people in the faith. We need to support those parents and make it easier for them, since it has proved very difficult to stop this behaviour by any other strategy. I beg to move.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, with the permission of the Grand Committee, I will speak sitting down. I declare an interest as a trustee of UNICEF. My name is on Amendment 243 and I support all that my noble friend Lady Walmsley has said. I wish to add the following. Given that the last detailed research on this topic was carried out more than seven years ago, I believe that it is important for the Government to commission a study to estimate the number of cases of possession or witchcraft among children. Following the dreadful Victoria Climbié case and one or two other well publicised cases, these cases are clearly still arising. The Metropolitan Police have reported more than 81 cases over the past 10 years. I suspect that the position is worsening rather than improving.

The impact of being called a witch or of possessing evil spirits is traumatic. AFRUCA—Africans Unite Against Child Abuse—told the story of Amelia, the mother of young Luke, who has a mild form of epilepsy. She said that,

“when Luke was about three and a half, he had an epileptic episode at a church service.

The pastor noticed and immediately turned to the congregation and said, ‘Here is a manifestation of the devil. This boy is possessed by evil spirits.’

The consequences were immediate and very upsetting. I saw the older children shunned Luke and when he approached friends who were his own age and too little to understand what was happening I saw their parents calling them to come away from Luke. We protected him from knowing what was happening, of course, but I was angry and my husband was even angrier.

We tackled the pastor, and when he realised Luke had been experiencing an epileptic seizure he was initially a little argumentative, saying epilepsy could be a sign of possession, but we told him he needed to study his bible better. In the end he was ashamed and preached a sermon about the difference between epilepsy and witches. Our friends understood what he was talking about, but he didn’t actually retract the allegation”.

AFRUCA says:

“Accusing a child of being having harmful supernatural powers is dehumanising, leading to a process of moral exclusion as the child is henceforth viewed as less than human, evil, a criminal not deserving moral consideration. It opens floodgates to all forms of other abuses including infanticide. The child is, of course, likely to share these beliefs, a horrific experience”.

In 2010, UNICEF carried out a study: Children Accused of Witchcraft, by Aleksandra Cimpric. On pages 48 and 49, two of the key recommendations are:

“Promote legal reform to decriminalize witchcraft, allow for the prosecution of persons harming children and provide special protection to children in contact with the law”,

and:

“Raise awareness and educate legal professionals”.

What has been encouraging is that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, reported, a number of African countries have taken the UNICEF report and have made legal provision to protect children. We have not yet done so in this country.

This does not just affect churches, mosques or communities from Africa. Over the past 18 months, I and other noble Lords have heard from members of the Exclusive Brethren, a sect that split from the Plymouth Brethren in the mid-19th century. I have met children and young people who were told that they were evil and tainted and who were shut away from their community until they had “learnt to think right”. One former member told me that anyone who disagrees with the elders is pronounced evil and possessed of the devil. They handle exorcism by dismissing, shunning and excommunicating the child or young person in a practice known as “shutting up”. This group believes that children get evil spirits through contact with the outside world.

I met one young man who had been abused by an adult within his community. He reported the abuse and was then distressed and shocked when he was told immediately to get on his knees and pray for repentance and for the expulsion of the evil spirits. He subsequently left the Exclusive Brethren, but he said that it took him some years to recover from feeling ashamed and responsible for the abuse and to understand that he was not possessed by evil spirits. There is, therefore, a wider application than that commended by AFRUCA.

I reiterate the points made by my noble friend Lady Walmsley. This is not an attempt to curtail beliefs. This is solely about the protection of children, their families and those with whom they come into contact. It is time that the UK caught up with the many African countries that are way ahead of us in legislation.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I am going to find myself in the difficult position of disagreeing absolutely with the two noble Baronesses. I am surprised that they have not had the context, because much of what I hear sounds like the work that we did two years ago, when I chaired the Trust for London committee that looked at child safety issues in relation to witchcraft and children accused of being possessed by evil spirits. I spent two years working with AFRUCA, the Somali community, the Victoria Climbié Foundation and others looking at the issue. During that time, we managed to disentangle what was at first thought to be an issue of belief but what, as became clear and as the two noble Baronesses made quite clear, was not about belief but about child protection.

In all the examples I have ever heard, if proper attention had been given to present child protection legal enactments, all those children should have been properly protected by the existing legislation. I agree with the noble Baronesses that if that is not so, we will need something additional—but, as has been said, all the organisations that took part in the round table, except for AFRUCA, did not see the need for a change in legislation. What they saw a need for was the education of social workers who simply do not understand the issue, and for more work to be done with these communities.