Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Champion]

I completely agree with those sentiments. It is a blessing that MPs such as the hon. Gentleman fight for people when they need it, but it should not come down to an MP fighting for an individual. They pay their taxes. We have a duty to support them. That support should be accessible to everyone as an automatic right.

Survivors told our inquiry that the impact of trauma caused by childhood sexual abuse is not widely recognised by professionals, which can make it hard to get the support they need. One survivor described visiting a GP as

“a lottery as to which kind of help they will get”

and said that there is a

“lack of diagnosis and failure to understand the significance of the disclosure…many survivors are misdiagnosed with lower level issues such as anxiety and depression.”

Survivors feel that the effects of the abuse are not well known in the NHS. Frontline staff are not equipped to deal with disclosures, and they do not have the knowledge to direct survivors to appropriate treatments. It is telling that, although 89% of survivors said that their mental health had been negatively affected by abuse, only 16% said that NHS mental health services had met their needs. Another survivor told our inquiry:

“I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and of the mental health system.”

Recent studies have found that a wide range of social and environmental factors increase the risk of mental ill health, including growing up in poverty, early separation from parents and experiencing sexual abuse as a child. Professor Richard Bentall at the University of Sheffield has argued that the evidence of a link between childhood trauma and a future psychiatric disorder is at least as strong as the evidence of genetic causes. Solid evidence also shows that adverse childhood experiences can affect the brain structure, which then affects a person’s sensitivity to stressful situations and causes fluctuations in mood throughout adulthood. That has significant ramifications for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

Survivors of childhood sexual abuse have two cards dealt against them. Because the trauma of the abuse increases their risk of developing psychiatric disorders later in life, their risk of experiencing adverse conditions as an adult also increases. The findings of that research were borne out by our surveys, which demonstrated survivors’ experiences of poor relationships, unemployment and financial hardship.

Survivors need the professionals they interact with, whether they are child protection social workers, jobcentre work coaches, GPs or judges, to be curious about the circumstances that led to their current predicament, rather than just dealing with the presenting symptoms. Survivors told the inquiry they want frontline professionals to ask not, “What’s wrong with you?” but, “What happened to you?”. That professional curiosity will allow survivors to build relationships with professionals that are oriented to meeting their needs. It is key to achieving quality support and, ultimately, securing justice. Will the Minister commit to developing guidance and training on trauma-informed practice for frontline professionals, in conjunction with the specialist voluntary sector and his colleagues across Departments?

Survivors told the APPG that the support they found most important to their recovery is specialist voluntary sector counselling and therapy; I will shorten this to “specialist services” for the rest of the debate. Specialist services provide a range of options tailored to meet the needs of the survivor, including counselling, support groups and advocacy. Survivors say they value these services for a wide range of reasons: the services provide them with support regardless of whether they report to police; they are met by knowledgeable staff in a welcoming, non-clinical environment; and the staff recognise that there is nothing intrinsically “wrong” with them and that the issue is the effects of the trauma caused by the abuse.

We need to continue to develop what we know about child sexual abuse, its links to mental illness, and the most effective forms of support and therapies for survivors. The APPG wants the National Institute of Health Research to commission studies into effective therapies for survivors of abuse and I urge the Minister to support us in that aim.

The inquiry heard that specialist services face unprecedented demand without a related increase in their budgets. SurvivorsUK reported a 30% year-on-year increase in people attempting to access its services in each of the last three years. In 2017, the National Association for People Abused in Childhood—NAPAC—answered 8,500 calls and emails on its national support helpline, but that is less than a tenth of the 90,000 inquiries that it received that year.

[Sir Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and I congratulate her on securing the debate. She has mentioned one issue that we Rotherham MPs are all too aware of—without the proper services to support these people, justice will not be brought through the courts. If we look at the number of people who the Jay report says were abused, we can see that the number of people who come forward is far, far fewer than that, and without these types of services we will not get these people the justice that they deserve, and they all deserve justice.

[Sarah Champion]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend, and I congratulate him, because as a Rotherham MP he has been an absolutely tireless campaigner, both to get justice for the survivors in Rotherham and to get the support services, which we are still waiting for.

The APPG’s inquiry into adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse found that the average male survivor waited for 26 years before disclosing abuse. Therefore, it cannot be right that, at the moment survivors are ready to speak about their abuse, they are forced to join the back of a queue, with waiting lists a year long, and sometimes waiting lists are closed, due to demand and the lack of funding to meet it. Across the country, the reality for survivors is a lengthy wait for support, or limits on the number of sessions available.

Although it was welcome that the Ministry of Justice increased by 10% the rape support fund, which provides grants to specialist sexual violence support services, specialist services are seeing demand increase far in excess of 10%.