Child Sexual Exploitation

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I echo what has been said about listening to victims; whoever they are criticising, they must be listened to.

It is unfortunate that the statue of a naked 13-year-old boy on the front of Broadcasting House was carved by someone who abused children. However, this is not about the BBC; it is the children who matter the most. The BBC does not matter, dead celebrities do not matter, mistaken identities do not matter in the same way; what really matters is that children should be expected to be safe in the control of the state. These children are the most vulnerable because they do not have the protection of their parents and depend entirely on the state.

Only 20% to 30% of the children subject to child sexual exploitation on the narrow definition of the term are in care. Obviously, that means that 70% to 80% of those children are living in the family home. The cost of supporting a family can be as little as £3,000 per annum, whereas secure care can cost as much as £200,000 or even £500,000 per year. I accept that we need a child protection system and that not all parents are “good enough”, but I make no apology for concentrating on the failings of the state. Penny Mellor, who has campaigned against state-tolerated abuse for many years, was imprisoned because of her campaign, and was present for the north Wales inquiry, has said:

“The state as a parent is abominable, proven in Rochdale and proven in North Wales. If we are going to remove children into the care of the state then it is about time we ensured that the state is a better parent than the one we removed them from. The who is not relevant, sexual abuse perpetrated by anyone is devastating.”

It is important to recognise that the state system is still harming children. Rochdale, Rotherham and Oxford are not the whole story. One problem is the lack of accountability. Individual practitioners are basically allowed to get on with things as they wish. There are good practitioners but also bad practitioners, and their bad practice is not picked up by the system. A good example of this is from New Zealand, where social workers encouraged a 14-year-old girl to have group sex with a number of St John Ambulance workers and “divorce” her parents, who wished to discourage this. St John Ambulance has still not finally dealt with this issue and some of the workers are scheduled to receive a Queen’s Award. Another example is from Birmingham, where a child was first sexually harassed in a foster placement and then got pregnant at the age of 15, while in the control of the state. Practitioners in Birmingham have argued in the past that children should be permitted to prostitute themselves while not being allowed to make toast for each other, for health and safety reasons.

As at 31 March 2011, 160 girls in care had had their first child before the age of 16 and 120 had had their first child at the age of 16. So what happens? We know that the girls at Duncroft school were punished for complaining about Jimmy Savile. If a child in the power of the local authority wishes to complain about their treatment, they have to complain to an employee of the local authority or someone funded by the local authority. Where is the independence in that? The lack of independence in the complaints system is why many cases of abuse are not picked up until the children subject to the abuse become adults—not necessarily at age 18 but when they get the required confidence aged 25, 30 or later. Very rarely, a Gillick-competent child in his or her mid-teens may make contact with one of the very rare solicitors who are willing to take on the local authority, but usually nothing happens at least until the children are adults.

One of the worst examples of a cover up comes from Jersey. Children in Jersey had the chief of police, Graham Power, and the health Minister, Stuart Syvret, to protect their interests. However, in 2008, as soon as action was taken to investigate historical abuse, the health Minister was sacked and the chief of police suspended. What hope did those children have? It is now roughly the fourth anniversary of the sacking of Jersey’s chief of police, Graham Power, and he has put out a statement to coincide with it. I will not read it all because time is limited, but this is part of what he says:

“I would however simply for the record, remind readers what has been established from a number of credible and independent sources and disclosures. Namely, that my suspension was based on falsified documents, fabricated evidence, misleading information provided to States Members and the public by Jersey Ministers, and the testimony of a number of senior individuals who have since been publicly discredited.

The events relating to Jimmy Saville and other revelations have heightened the general awareness of the issue of Historic Child Abuse, and the substantial difficulties which stand in the way of those who attempt to bring abusers to justice.”

This cover-up has been continued by the UK Border Agency, which assisted Jersey in avoiding scrutiny by banning a US journalist, Leah McGrath Goodman, from Jersey. She is now applying again for a visa, and I hope that the Minister will expedite it.

Teresa Cooper, who says that she was held down by six members of staff and injected with drugs while at Kendall House at the age of 14 and that she was also sexually assaulted in a drugged state, is continuing at the age of 45 to battle to get the evidence to find out why the Government did not act to stop that. We have a duty to provide her and other survivors with the records they ask for.

There have also been numerous police operations, including Operation Rose in Northumbria, Operation Care in Liverpool, Operation Aldgate and Operation Gullane in Yorkshire, Operation Goldfinch and Operation Flight in south Wales, and Operation Camassia in Birmingham. Frequently, such operations do not get to the bottom of the issues. A few, such as that in Kincora, managed to make the link between the abuse and people external to the institution. We need to empower the survivors by providing them with the information to argue their cases. Perhaps we can then also consider the question of who turned a blind eye.

It is often easier to see that there is a cover-up than to get to the truth. For example, if people listen to last Friday’s interview with Stuart Syvret on BBC Radio Jersey—it will be available on iPlayer for a few days—they will hear how the BBC is acting as a tool of the establishment by trying to prevent him from arguing his case. Mike Stein, in his excellent article in Child and Family Social Work in February 2006, explains how widespread this problem was, with a possible one in seven of children in care being subject to abuse. Australia has implemented an all-embracing inquiry, which is a good idea, although the details are complex. I believe, however, that the priority should be to empower the survivors.

We also need to act urgently to find out what is happening to children in the care system today. In the year to 31 March 2011—I do not have the later figures—according to the SSDA903 return, 430 children aged one to four, 350 children aged five to nine and 630 children aged 10 to 15 left care for “other reasons”. These are the children who have left care and we do not know what has happened to them. Have they been trafficked, have they been abducted or have they run away to live on the streets because they were unhappy in the control of the state?

The statistical system used in the USA is called AFCARS—the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System— and records when children run away, but our Government do not bother. Clearly, they do not care sufficiently to ask local authorities to tell them. When I asked the erstwhile Minister, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), to record such instances and change the statistical basis, his response was that to find out nationally how many children are trafficked from care, abducted or run away would lead to

“an unnecessary increase in reporting requirements.”—[Official Report, 13 December 2011; Vol. 537, c. 642W.]

We need to go further. We clearly cannot trust all local authorities to tell the whole truth about everything. We already have a system for auditing what happens to the money. We really ought to have a system for checking whether we are told the truth about what happens to the children, or do the Government only care about the money and not about the children?

The secrecy, lack of transparency and consequent failures in accountability clearly failed children in the past, but they are also failing children today. We need to protect the rights of children and adults to complain and bring in greater scrutiny of family court proceedings. It is the secrecy that arises from the family courts that allows the system to avoid scrutiny and local authorities to simply say, “We are acting in the best interests of the child,” when clearly they are not.

Finally, Parliament needs to be more willing to look at individual issues before they hit the top of the news agenda. There needs to be a threshold at which collective action occurs.

There is disagreement between two particular positions that have been debated today. I have a little time, so it is worth going into this in detail. There is an argument that all we need is a bit more information sharing, but the evidence from Rochdale is that that does not work and that people are not acting. We need to ensure that people are motivated. That is the problem with the independent reviewing officer—they are not independent. The independent reviewing officer is employed by the local authority. I want to address the Lancashire county council case.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman is saying and do not want to take issue with it, but I would caution against suggesting that the evidence from Rochdale shows that information sharing does not work. The evidence from Rochdale so far shows that people failed to fulfil their responsibilities and that, had they done so and connected the threads of information and believed the victims, there would have been a much earlier and different outcome.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

May I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) and others on securing this valuable debate? I apologise for missing the start of it. I was taking evidence in the Home Affairs Committee for the child sexual abuse inquiry that we are conducting.

It is nearly 25 years since I worked in child protection. Whatever has happened and whatever progress has been made, some familiar problems persist. There will always be scandals in departments and agencies, and individuals who fall short of what we expect. However, the real concern must be over the doubts that continue to be fostered about the claims of those who have been abused. As others have said, that is not new.

When thinking about this debate, I was reminded of a book written by Jeffrey Masson in the early ’80s called “The Assault on Truth”. It was based on a study of previously unpublished letters belonging to Sigmund Freud. It exposed the idea that Freud’s original seduction theory was based on the notion that emotional disturbances in adults stemmed from actual early traumatic experiences, the knowledge of which had been repressed. As Members will know, Freud eventually renounced that theory in favour of the view that his woman patients had “fantasised” their early memories of rape and seduction—a view on which psychoanalysis was eventually based.

Masson was sacked from his position as project director at the Freud archives for his views, but it is clear that Freud had the gravest doubts about abandoning his seduction theory, despite being under enormous pressure from civilised Viennese society who could not tolerate the idea. Masson discovered, however, that not only had Freud read contemporary literature documenting the high incidence of sexual abuse of children, but he had witnessed autopsies of children who had been raped and murdered. Denial of the victims’ claims remains the problem, just as it was in Rochdale or with Savile.

We must try to move from denial to the acceptance that such awful things happen in our society—on our streets, in our homes with those polite respectable parents, and in children’s homes where children in particular ought to be safe. The problem, however, is that people do not think that they will be believed. “Nobody else would have believed me; he was a judge”, said one adult survivor talking to ChildLine. Another said, “My father was a policeman and a mason.” We need to listen to children and young people, and take their disclosures seriously.

With all due respect to the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) whose point I take seriously, as well as the problem of not listening there is the problem of dereliction of duty. I was stunned to hear the former chief executive of Rochdale council say that he had no knowledge of what happened there. He had never asked or heard any rumours, and none of the well-paid senior managers had brought the matter to his attention.

More than ever in this day and age there must be a duty for those in charge—those paid the grand salaries—to ask and provide evidence of when and how they regularly take a proactive role in seeking out information on such matters. It is a disgrace that someone can preside over a scandal and receive an enormous pay-off or early retirement settlement just as the scandal breaks; they are being rewarded for not protecting children. We need services that ensure that when young people find the courage to report abuse, they will be believed. Most importantly, we need to know that the cycle of abuse will be brought to an end.

We need to believe the victims. Sure, their stories might not always tally; they might get things wrong or misremember events and dates—how good would any of us be after years of abuse? We need to try to avoid confusing believing a victim and assessing how good a witness they might be. Those two things are not identical.

As I say, people get confused. When reading a Sunday newspaper this weekend, I was struck by a report about Steve Messham and how easy it was to conclude that various events in his life pointed to his being a liar and an unreliable witnesses. If that man is not traumatised by his experiences, who is? There may be an argument for smarter journalism at the BBC, but there is not one for ignoring what happened to Steve Messham.

[Lyn Brown]

Does my hon. Friend agree that part of our problem is that people who deal with such vulnerable children do not have the training to enable them to understand the veracity of the child, and to differentiate telling the truth and being a good witness in court?

[Steve McCabe]

I accept that entirely. I shall make a point on that before I conclude my speech, but I wanted to come back to how victims are left feeling.

Victims describe themselves as being in a cycle of fear and shame. They think no one will believe what is happening, and that they are to blame for the exploitation they are suffering. Barnardo’s points out that a key difference between sexual exploitation and sexual abuse is that exploitation often starts with grooming. In the beginning, the young people believe they are involved in a genuine relationship. It is therefore not that surprising that feelings of guilt accompany the problems when they try to deal with them.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) said, it is true that survivors can move on, but they can do so only if they get the right help and support. We need to separate the search for evidence to convict the guilty from the support that victims need. When I was involved in this work nearly 25 years ago, I worked closely with the police to try to find evidence to convict. I must confess that I am not sure that enough of my attention was focused on the needs of victims.

As my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) has said, we need people in all the key agencies who have absolute understanding. We need a twin track. When someone comes forward and discloses, they need help, support and counselling to get them through, but they also need specialised help to get them through the court process, such as independent sexual violence advocates, and expert witnesses to advise the judge and jurors on what has really happened. More than anything, lawyers need to be guided to avoid inappropriate language and behaviour in the court that seeks further to victimise people.