Child Sexual Exploitation by Organised Networks

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Sarah Champion

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse report on child sexual exploitation by organised networks.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey, and I know that you take a keen interest in the topic.

“Children are sexually exploited by networks in all parts of England and Wales in the most degrading and destructive ways. Each of these acts is a crime. This investigation has revealed extensive failures by local authorities and police forces to keep pace with the pernicious and changing problem of the sexual exploitation of children by networks.”

Those are not my words, but the conclusion of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. The inquiry published its report on child sexual exploitation by organised networks, also known as grooming gangs, on 1 February this year. It followed two years of hearing and evidence gathering, of which I was proud to be a core participant. The report paints a grim picture and describes a culture that forces survivors of child sexual exploitation to fight to be believed. Those who were heard were made to feel as though they had brought the exploitation on themselves.

If the abuse was prosecuted, the victims had to relive their trauma in court, where they were brutalised by an adversarial process that lacked the empathy to support them. I thank the brave survivors and victims who shared their experience with us during the public hearings; I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been. Their experiences were so similar to those of the survivors that I know in Rotherham. It was incredibly powerful to hear about the clear and organised pattern of abuse nationally, but also so frustrating to hear that the same failings by authorities to protect and prosecute occurred all over the country.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and on all the work she has done on the issue over many years. I wonder if she is as concerned as I am about the online abuse that our children are exposed to? Even today, we are hearing about children having explicit images forwarded to them, and we also hear how social media is used to co-ordinate those gangs. Does she think that the draft Online Safety Bill will deliver and protect our children online?

[Sarah Champion]

My hon. Friend raises a very pertinent point, and I commend her for the work that she has done to try and prevent this hideous crime. She is right that the initial stages of grooming are now almost exclusively happening online. Today I was with the Minister for School Standards talking about that, because the Department for Education’s teaching around grooming still features someone going up to a child in a park with a bottle of alcohol and does not tackle social media. My hon. Friend is right to raise that and the online harms Bill must reflect it.

The inquiry took thousands of hours, costing millions of pounds and effectively reached the same recommendations that I and others have been raising in Parliament for years—and that relate to what survivors have been saying for decades. However, in that time, little has actually changed. CSE is still flourishing, and abusers still seem to flout the law with impunity. The Government must now take decisive action to empower local authorities and law enforcement to protect children from exploitation.

The report makes six key recommendations that provide clear actions for Government to take. I urge the Minister to act urgently to implement them in full to prevent further horrific abuse. First, the criminal justice system’s response to CSE by organised gangs must be strengthened. The law must recognise the particular nature of sexual offences where a child is exploited by two or more people. The Government must swiftly amend the Sentencing Act 2020 to provide a mandatory aggravating factor in the sentencing of such cases. Secondly, the Minister should publish an enhanced version of the child exploitation disruption toolkit as soon as possible. The Government recognised the need to do that in their tackling child sexual exploitation and abuse strategy over a year ago, but the updated toolkit is yet to be published.

The toolkit needs to make clear that the core element of the definition of child sexual exploitation is that a child was controlled, coerced, manipulated or deceived into sexual activity. Currently, English statutory guidance defines child sexual exploitation as requiring some sort of “exchange” between the perpetrator and the victim. Barnardo’s and the IICSA report agree that exploitation does not necessarily involve exchange, financial advantage or an increase in status, not least because it implies collaboration by that child. The toolkit must reflect the fact that, both to recognise the true nature of the crime and to shift from victim-blaming, the definition must be updated.

The Government must also give agencies clear guidance on building effective problem profiles for CSE that are separate from other forms of exploitation. Problem profiling draws information about child sexual exploitation from different agencies together in one place. That process should enable agencies to understand fully the nature and the extent of CSE, and to commission services, train staff and prioritise action.

Clearer guidance on the types of data that agencies should use, and on how frequently profiles should be updated, will lead to a more accurate picture of the full scale and nature of CSE. That would enable more effective action to be taken to prevent harm and to stop organisations from protecting their data rather than protecting the child.

The third recommendation is that the Department for Education should update its guidance on CSE. It needs to reflect accurately what constitutes exploitation, the significant online threats faced by children today and the prevalence of networks of offenders.

Fourthly, all updated national guidance must make it clear that signs that a child is being sexually exploited must never be treated as an indication that a child is only at risk of experiencing that harm. Local authorities must ensure that assessments of risk and harm clearly differentiate between potential harm and actual harm. Too often, victims are already being sexually exploited, but they are incorrectly categorised as merely being at risk so little action is taken to protect them.

Fifthly, police force and local authorities must collect data on all cases of known or suspected child sexual exploitation. Accurate data about CSE cases, including the sex, ethnicity and disability of both the victims and the perpetrators, will help to identify patterns of CSE offending, particularly where those offences are committed by organised networks. That data also helps police forces to take more offensive action to disrupt and investigate offenders.

Finally, the Department for Education must ban the placement in unregulated care homes of all children who have experienced or who are at heightened risk of experiencing sexual exploitation. The evidence before the inquiry identified grave concerns about the capacity of unregulated care homes to safeguard properly children placed in their care. Sixteen and 17-year-olds should never be left in B&Bs where perpetrators have 24-hour access to them. All children are inherently vulnerable and must be protected from abusers who seek to take advantage.

Although I am pleased that many of my recommendations were included in the final report, it is disappointing to see that some of the key ones were not included.