Conclusions and recommendations
Child Sexual Exploitation: scale and prevalence
1. Despite
recent criminal cases laying bare the appalling cost paid by victims
for past catastrophic multi agency failures, we believe that there
are still places in the UK where victims of child sexual exploitation
are being failed by statutory agencies. The police, social services
and the Crown Prosecution Service must all bear responsibility
for the way in which vulnerable children have been left unprotected
by the system. The recent verdict in the Oxford trial demonstrates
that contrary to ill-informed beliefs that localised grooming
is a crime confined to Northern cities, in fact, no assumptions
can be made about where child sexual exploitation takes place.
This is a crime that can happen anywhere. Belatedly agencies have
made positive steps to try and improve the situation but there
is no doubt that both in terms of support for victims and prosecution
of offenders, a postcode lottery still exists and agencies are
still failing to work effectively together. Those cases of children
at risk identified by the Office of the Children's Commissioner
must be monitored by local authorities who have overriding responsibility
for the welfare of those children. (Paragraph 16)
2. We take this opportunity
to record our gratitude to the Office of the Children's Commissioner
for its work in the area of child sexual exploitation and support
all of the recommendations made as part of both the accelerated
report and the interim report. We recommend that the Government
publish a timetable for implementation of these recommendations
which will ensure they are in operation by January 2014. (Paragraph
17)
3. We do not doubt
the commitment of either the Minister or the Department for Education
to tackling child sexual exploitation. However, the commitment
must be maintained in the future if the Government wishes to tackle
the issue with any degree of success. The failure of these cases
has been both systemic and cultural. Rules and guidelines existed
which were not followed. People employed as public servants appeared
to lack human compassion when dealing with victims. Children have
only one chance at childhood. For too long, victims of child sexual
exploitation have been deprived of that childhood without society
challenging their abusers. Such a situation must never happen
again. (Paragraph 18)
Children's Social Care
4. We
note the work taking place on the issue of children in residential
care. We recommend that the Government implement its action plan
for improvements in residential care by January 2014. (Paragraph
21)
5. All local authority
Directors of Children's Social Care should ensure that their staff
view troubled children who have been exploited as victims rather
than collaborators in their own abuse. Assumptions about 'consent'
must be challenged—it should be the fundamental, working
assumption of all frontline staff working with children and young
people that sexual relations between an adult and a child under
the legal age of consent are non-consensual, unlawful and wrong.
Directors of Childrens Social care must ensure that they have
received adequate training on the issue of child sexual exploitation.
They must also take full responsibility for the failure of their
department if it does not protect vulnerable children, no matter
what they knew. It is their personal responsibility to find out
what is taking place in their department. (Paragraph 22)
6. All frontline council
workers, even those who do not work directly with children and
young people, ought to be trained to recognise the signs of localised
grooming and the indicators of child sexual exploitation, and
should know how to report anything that might give them cause
to believe that a child is at risk. Local authority staff, or
contractors working on the authority's behalf, have a significant
presence in public places where children and young people congregate—park
wardens, staff at sports centres and libraries, environmental
health officers and taxi and minicab licensing officers are all
likely to notice children hanging out when they would normally
be expected to be in school, and could act as a valuable early-warning
system for behaviour which indicates a problem. Councils should
also set up employee hotlines where anything suspicious can be
reported. (Paragraph 23)
7. We recommend that
all local authorities ensure that there are clear lines of dialogue
between their children's social care departments and their licensing
boards. As part of their scrutiny role, Local Safeguarding Children's
Boards should monitor the relationship between children's social
care departments and licensing boards and ensure that any recommendations
made to the licensing board are acted upon. Local authorities
must make greater use of licensing to tackle the issue of grooming.
(Paragraph 24)
8. We recommend that
the forthcoming statutory guidance on children who run away or
go missing from home or care should require local authorities
to conduct return interviews, delivered by an independent professional
a child or young person is comfortable speaking with, to all children
who run away or go missing from home or care, within 72 hours
of a missing incident. (Paragraph 26)
Scrutiny of Children's Social Care departments
9. Local
Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) must collect data in a standard
format so that it can be shared between them. Given the historic
difficulty of LSCBs collecting comparable data, we recommend either
that Boards form a network to ensure uniformity and promulgate
best practice or, if that fails, the Government identify an appropriate
body to produce central guidance. (Paragraph 32)
10. Every Local Safeguarding
Children's Board should publish an annual report on the work of
the child sexual exploitation team, using the data collected to
assess the scale and nature of child sexual exploitation within
the local area. Such a report ought to include data on the number
of: complaints; investigations; prosecutions; convictions: and,
police officers social workers and other specialist support workers
working on child sexual exploitation. A child sexual exploitation
co-ordinator ought to be nominated for every LSCB and they should
ensure that the report on the work of the child sexual exploitation
team is published in a standard format across the different LSCB
areas in order to make comparison of local authority areas easy
for the public and to assist Ofsted as part of the multi-agency
inspection of services for children which they are planning to
implement. (Paragraph 33)
11. The role of a
Local Safeguarding Children's Board is to scrutinise the effectiveness
of its members, not protect them from criticism. We recommend
that the Government give the victim or their family, or an independent
third party, the right of redaction of serious case reviews, rather
than the Local Safeguarding Children's Board. We also recommend
that Serious Case Reviews are published in full, subject to delay
where it may compromise an ongoing investigation. (Paragraph
37)
Rochdale and Rotherham
12. Prevention
and early intervention in cases of children at risk of sexual
exploitation is essential rather than trying to resolve the situation
once the exploitation has started. We recommend that all local
authorities ensure that there is sufficient funding for prevention
within the budget of any multi-agency team tasked with tackling
child sexual exploitation. We also believe that it is important
for Local Safeguarding Children's Boards to consider how they
will approach the sensitive issue of raising awareness of child
sexual exploitation risks among Year 6 and Year 7 students, as
abusers are targeting that age group. The Government can assist
in this by gathering together in one easily accessible location
best practice resources. (Paragraph 52)
13. Both Rochdale
and Rotherham Councils were inexcusably slow to realise that the
widespread, organised sexual abuse of children, many of them in
the care of the local authority, was taking place on their doorstep.
This is due in large part to a woeful lack of professional curiosity
or indifference, from the council Chief Executive who claims to
have known nothing about the problem during his first decade in
post, to the Director of Children's Services who saw prosecution
of sex offenders as a desirable but ancillary goal, through the
Local Safeguarding Children's Board which tried to suppress criticisms
in a Serious Case Review, to the individual practitioners who,
in a chilling confirmation of the abusers' blackmail and threats,
dismissed the victims—children as young as 12—as 'prostitutes'.
That it took so long for anybody, at any level from the Chief
Executive downward, to look at reports of young girls with multiple,
middle-aged 'boyfriends', hanging around takeaways, drinking and
taking drugs, and to think that it might be worth investigating
further, is shocking. Because of the widespread publicity, not
least due to the investigative journalism of Andrew Norfolk in
The Times and the subsequent public outrage, both local authorities
now recognise the nature and extent of localised grooming, and
have made improvements to the way that they deal with children
and young people who are at risk of sexual exploitation. However,
it is clear that senior leadership in both Rochdale and Rotherham
councils failed in their duty of care towards these girls. We
are surprised that, with child sexual exploitation remaining a
problem in Rotherham, the council was considered to have made
sufficient progress to have its notice to improve lifted by the
Department for Education in 2011. (Paragraph 55)
14. When victims such
as Emma Jackson approached the authorities for help, many were
treated in an appalling manner. Even reports by frontline health
workers were ignored. It is no excuse for Rochdale and Rotherham
managers to say they had no knowledge of what was taking place,
as they are ultimately responsible and must be held accountable
for the appalling consequences of their lack of curiosity. Early
retirement or resignation for other reasons should not allow them
to evade responsibility and they must be held to account. In particular,
we are deeply shocked by Roger Ellis' receiving £76,798.20
in redundancy payout. He should be required to repay it. Despite
improvements in their response to child sexual exploitation, we
remain concerned by the actions of both councils. Rotherham in
particular has failed to secure any prosecutions since 2010 and
we are doubtful about whether the child sexual exploitation training
and working group meetings are actually taking place. We therefore
recommend that further Ofsted reviews take place for Rotherham
over the next two years to ensure that the changes they are implementing
are not just cosmetic. The first should take place by December
2013. At least one Ofsted review in respect of Rochdale would
also be appropriate. (Paragraph 56)
The Criminal Justice System
15. We
welcome the plans put forward by the Director of Public Prosecution
and Association of Chief Police Officers to improve the response
of the criminal justice system to child sexual exploitation. Their
implementation ought to be a priority and should be monitored
and supported by the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office.
We recommend that both departments report quarterly on progress
to the working group on child sexual exploitation set up by the
Department for Education. The focus on this issue must not be
lost in the transition of police standards and guidelines from
ACPO to the College of Policing. (Paragraph 67)
16. We would also
like to commend the work of the Director for Public Prosecution,
Keir Starmer QC and the Chief Crown Prosecutor for the North West,
Nazir Afzal OBE. Unlike many other official agencies implicated
in this issue, the Crown Prosecution Service has readily admitted
that victims had been let down by them and have attempted both
to discover the cause of this systematic failure and to improve
the way things are done so as to avoid a repetition of such events.
Mr Starmer has striven to improve the treatment of victims of
sexual assault within the criminal justice system throughout his
term as Director of Public Prosecution and, when he leaves the
Crown Prosecution Service this year, he will be missed. His response
should provide a model to the other agencies involved in tackling
localised grooming. (Paragraph 68)
17. Given that the
issue around child sexual exploitation appears to be that people
in positions of responsibility were failing to listen the victims,
we are surprised by Shaun Wright's reluctance to engage with victims.
Considering the lack of prosecutions for offences relating to
child sexual exploitation in South Yorkshire, despite evidence
that it is still occurring, we suggest Mr Wright may wish to take
more of an interest in the victims then he has done previously.
(Paragraph 72)
18. We have heard
evidence that South Yorkshire Police Force have previously let
down victims of localised grooming and child sexual exploitation—as
a result, we would expect the force be striving to redeem their
reputation. We do not believe that differences in the number of
offenders could explain why Lancashire has 100 prosecutions a
year whereas South Yorkshire has none. Such a postcode lottery
is unacceptable. We believe it is the responsibility of the Chief
Constable to ensure that investigations lead to prosecutions.
(Paragraph 74)
19. We note that South
Yorkshire has recently increased the number of officers working
on localised grooming with funding for ten new officers announced.
We expect that with this, alongside the many changes introduced
in police forces across the country, we will see an improvement
in the recording and prosecution of incidents of child sexual
exploitation We recommend that all police forces ensure that their
IT systems are able to identify these incidents and whether multiple
perpetrators have been involved. This information can be used
to improve the chance of conviction and to help map the scale
and extent of child sexual exploitation nationally. We also recommend
that the College of Policing work with CEOP to formalise the sharing
of best practice, including the use of surveillance and alternative
legislation to prosecute perpetrators. We will revisit this issue
in a year's time to examine whether the prosecution of such crimes
has improved. (Paragraph 75)
20. The evaluation
of the work of police forces in the area of child sexual exploitation
is difficult because of the range of charges which can be brought
in these cases. We recommend that police forces be required to
notify the child sexual exploitation co-ordinator of the Local
Safeguarding Children's Board as to how many cases they have investigated
linked child sexual exploitation; how many have been prosecuted
and how many of those prosecutions were successful to be published
as part of their annual report. We also recommend that CEOP use
the reports by child sexual exploitation co-ordinators to monitor
the performance of all police forces and, if necessary, implement
an action plan for improvement where forces are failing to perform.
(Paragraph 76)
Identifying vulnerable victims and ensuring they
have access to support
21. The
Association of Chief Police Officers' Child Sexual Exploitation
Action Plan recommends that forces identify support services to
provide care to victims and their extended families "for
the duration of their criminal justice journey and beyond".
We welcome this proposal, and recommend that all victims of child
sexual exploitation be offered the services of an Independent
Sexual Violence Advisor prior to their Achieving Best Evidence
interview. The ISVA should be trained in court processes and,
wherever possible, the victim should be supported by the same
individual throughout the process. (Paragraph 82)
22. We recommend that
the new national policy and guidance for police and the Crown
Prosecution Service which will be drawn up by the College of Policing
include a checklist of support services which a victim of child
sexual exploitation ought to be offered following the decision
to prosecute the case. This checklist ought to include, at the
very least, pre-trial therapy, a pre-Court familiarisation visit
and a chance to meet the prosecuting barrister. The Independent
Sexual Violence Advocate assigned to the case ought to be present
when these support services are offered to the victim. (Paragraph
83)
Court processes
23. We
are at a loss to understand why the Ministry of Justice, fourteen
years after the Act was passed, has still failed to implement
this measure. If the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, with his
unrivalled experience, can find no reasonable legal obstacle to
the immediate implementation of Pigot 2 then there can be no justifiable
argument for continuing to subject highly vulnerable victims to
cross examination in court given the highly publicised risks this
clearly carries. Pigot 2 represents the will of Parliament and
it is for the Ministry of Justice to implement this measure in
a timely manner. We recommend they implement Pigot 2 by January
2014. (Paragraph 85)
24. We are pleased
to see that the Government and the Crown Prosecution Service are
supportive of the use of special measures in child sexual exploitation
trials. The work of the CPS and the advocates' gateway toolkits
are both steps in the right direction. However, the description
provided to us of the failure of special measures to be implemented
correctly is a cause for concern and roundtables are unlikely
to resolve that. If the issue proves to be recurring throughout
the court system we recommend that each court have a named individual
with the responsibility for ensuring that special measures are
being implemented appropriately whether that require training
for staff or investment in technical equipment. (Paragraph 88)
25. The experience
of reliving incidents of sexual exploitation in a court is inevitably
harrowing for witnesses. We are clear that reforms are necessary
to ensure that victims of this appalling crime are able to give
clear and effective evidence in court. We are acutely aware that
any such reforms must align with the defendant's right to test
the evidence against them in a fair trial. However, where witnesses
become overwhelmed and intimidated giving evidence, and are unable
to give a clear account, that is not in the interests of justice
for victim or defendant. We believe that at the moment, the balance
is skewed too strongly in favour of protecting the defendant's
rights as opposed to the very vulnerable witnesses in cases of
child sexual exploitation. For that reason we recommend immediate
implementation of Pigot 2, as discussed above, by January 2014.
We have been deeply concerned by some of the examples of language
used in court that stereotypes child sexual exploitation victims.
We acknowledge the difficulties facing the judiciary as they have
to strike the balance between removing potential juror prejudice
about child sexual exploitation victims and their need not to
stray beyond bounds and provide grounds for appeal. However, we
conclude that child sexual exploitation offences are an area on
which further specific guidance and training of the judiciary
would be appropriate, in particular the question of whether cross-examination
of complainants by all defence counsel in cases with multiple
defendants should be controlled and if so, how. This should include
consideration of allocation of issues between counsel, and the
imposition of time limits. We invite the Lord Chief Justice to
consider recommending to the Judicial College that this training
be developed and provided, and will write to him accordingly.
We recommend that the Ministry of Justice provide funding for
any work that the Lord Chief Justice and Judicial College decide
to undertake. We invite the Bar Standards Board and Solicitors
Regulation Authority to work with the Judicial College and Ministry
of Justice to develop and provide similar training for barristers
and solicitor advocates. In addition, we recommend the Ministry
of Justice provide guidance on the use of expert witnesses in
child sexual exploitation cases who can at least assist by educating
juries about some of the apparent behavioural anomalies associated
with child sexual exploitation. (Paragraph 93)
26. We also recommend
that the Ministry of Justice introduce specialist courts (similar
to the domestic violence courts currently in existence) for child
sexual abuse or sexual offences as a whole. We do not mean that
new buildings or new bureaucracies should be created, merely that
in each region, one court room should be designated as the preferred
court for the most serious child sexual exploitation cases. This
court room should be selected on the basis that it has the most
up to date technology and appropriate access and waiting facilities.
For each region a team of specialist child sexual exploitation
judges, prosecutors, police, witness support and ushers should
be identified, trained and linked into the local Multi Agency
Safeguarding Hub and Local Safeguarding Children's Board teams.
We believe that at the moment there are training initiatives in
the police, CPS, judiciary and so on. There is a lot of will at
the top of these organisations and that is to be commended but
there is still inconsistent application on the ground. Victims
do not experience the will at the top of the organisation, they
experience the reality on the ground. In order to ensure that
the most serious cases are guaranteed the most experienced whole
court team delivering the best practice, we believe specialist
whole court teams in court rooms equipped with the necessary technology
are the answer. We will write to the Ministry of Justice requesting
periodic updates on this piece of work and will revisit the
issue in eighteen months time. (Paragraph 94)
Health and Education
27. We
accept that there is a level of commitment within Government to
ensuring that health professionals are aware of the issue of child
sexual exploitation and a desire to identify victims through their
interactions with health professionals. We recommend that the
Government ensure that the details of all children up to the age
of 16 who present at Accident and Emergency Departments are entered
on the Child Protection - Information System rather than just
those of younger children. (Paragraph 98)
28. We recommend that
all frontline health professionals be given training on the warning
signs of child sexual exploitation and that representatives from
both primary and secondary care within any local multi-agency
team set up to combat child sexual exploitation. We also recommend
that, given the importance of sexually transmitted diseases as
a marker for child sexual exploitation, sexual health services
give consideration as to how such information might be shared
across the region in order to better identify children at risk.
(Paragraph 99)
29. We welcome the
increase in funding to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.
Child sexual exploitation is extremely to damaging to a young
person's mental health and may result in a young person being
unable to be a functioning member of society. It is therefore
in the financial, as well as the wider, interests of society that
the pain and trauma experienced by victims is recognised and dealt
with as soon as possible. We recommend that the Government publish
the report and recommendations of the health working group on
child sexual exploitation and a timetable for the implementation
of all the recommendations it has accepted. (Paragraph 100)
30. Teachers are more
likely to see victims on a regular basis than almost any other
professional. They will notice recurrent or prolonged absences
and significant changes in behaviour. They are therefore key in
identifying children at risk at an early stage and, by raising
concerns at an early stage, being able to potentially stop the
grooming process before the sexual exploitation has begun. We
have asked the Minister to look, once again, at the relationship
between schools and local authorities in regards to highlighting
concerns about missing children. We recommend that the Government
ensure that all teachers are provided with the list of warning
signs for child sexual exploitation and the contact details of
a named individual within the local authority that they can contact
with any concerns. We again recommend that schools should be reminded
annually of their statutory responsibilities in this matter by
the Secretary of State. (Paragraph 104)
Voluntary sector
31. The
voluntary sector plays a vital role in identifying child sexual
exploitation and supporting victims through investigations, prosecutions
and beyond. We recommend that the Government ensure that where
voluntary organisations are effectively supporting official agencies
in tackling child sexual exploitation, there are resources made
available to continue the partnership. This is especially important
in terms of funding for voluntary sector organisations which work
with young people at risk. We earlier highlighted the importance
of prevention and early intervention and we take this opportunity
to recommend that resources be allocated to ensure that this vital
work takes place. (Paragraph 107)
The Issue of Race
32. There
is no simple link between race and child sexual exploitation.
It is a vile crime which is perpetrated by a small number of individuals,
and abhorred by the vast majority, from every ethnic group. However,
evidence presented to us suggests that there is a model of localised
grooming of Pakistani-heritage men targeting young White girls.
This must be acknowledged by official agencies, who we were concerned
to hear in some areas of particular community tension, had reportedly
been slow to draw attention to the issue for fear of affecting
community cohesion. The condemnation from those communities of
this vile crime should demonstrate that there is no excuse for
tip-toeing around this issue. It is important that police, social
workers and others be able to raise their concerns freely, without
fear of being labelled racist. The communities that these offenders
come from must also play their part and do much more to acknowledge,
report and tackle the issue. In particular community leaders and
Imams have a vital role to play. We welcome the establishment
of the Rochdale community forum and we recommend that multi-agency
safeguarding hubs carry out outreach work in order to connect
with forums such as this and all communities. In essence, the
responsibility of all agencies, particularly social services,
the police, and schools, is to protect those at risk from grooming
and sexual exploitation and help to bring to justice those responsible,
totally regardless of race or background, or indeed any other
factor. To do otherwise leads to what occurred, or in fact didn't
occur, for far too long at Rotherham and Rochdale, and quite
likely other places as well. (Paragraph 120)
33. We caution against
focusing just on one particular model of child sexual exploitation.
We have heard evidence that models vary within and between different
types of child sexual exploitation. For example, the majority
of child sexual exploitation conducted online is by White perpetrators.
Authorities should not be blinkered by one formula which will
blind them to other patterns of abuse taking place. Stereotyping
offenders as all coming from a particular background is as likely
to perpetuate the problem as is a refusal to acknowledge that
a particular group of offenders share a common ethnicity. (Paragraph
121)
34. Every child, whatever
community they come from, must feel able to report abuse. In order
to do so, they need a justice system that they can have confidence
in and communities to give them absolute support. We are concerned
by reports that ethnic minority children are less likely to be
identified as victims of child sexual exploitation. Statutory
agencies must ensure that they are able to support children of
all races and tackle abuse by offenders of all races. (Paragraph
122)
Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hubs
35.
We recommend that each Local Children's Safeguarding Board be
required to set up a Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub which would
house representatives from social care, local police, health professionals,
education, youth offending teams and voluntary organisations.
Each MASH ought to be linked to one of the Crown Prosecution Service
specialist co-ordinators for child sexual assault cases so that
advice regarding any potential prosecutions can be sought early
on if required. The police and the CPS should also produce guidance
on data sharing via the MASH. Where there is one or more significant
minority community within the area, each MASH team ought also
to have a community liaison who can develop a trusted relationship
with that community in order to ensure that officials are working
with the community to combat all models of child sexual exploitation.
(Paragraph 127)
Legislation
36. We
recommend that the Government commission work to examine the feasibility
of introducing a statutory duty to co-operate and share information
to tackle child sexual exploitation. We also recommend that the
Government examine the Florida Protection of Vulnerable Persons
Act passed in 2012 in order to ascertain whether the mandatory
reporting of child abuse could, and should, be implemented in
England and Wales. (Paragraph 130)
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