Nus Ghani, MP for Wealden, has finished chairing a cross-party inquiry with Barnardo’s to tackle child sexual abuse and to prevent children from sexually abusing other children. The inquiry has produced a report, titled ‘Now I know it was wrong’, which provides policy guidelines on how to approach sexual abuse by children and how to support victims and survivors of sexual abuse.
In the forward to the report, Nus writes:
This report addresses a subject which is both deeply serious and yet little understood. Harmful sexual behaviour in children is not a new phenomenon. But it’s easy to see how it has stayed under the radar. It’s only recently that as a society we’ve started to address the horrific crime of child sexual exploitation head on. No-one wants to think about children being sexually abused. Too often adults have turned a blind eye, and children have been silenced by fear and shame. Abuse by adults is taboo, but abuse by children is doubly taboo. What do we call a child who sexually abuses their sibling, or school friend? Are they a mini sex-offender or a child in desperate need of help?
For 150 years, Barnardo’s motto has been “believe in children”. All children, whatever their circumstances, deserve the chance to forge a positive future. For children displaying harmful sexual behaviour, this must start with access to high quality, specialist support. Writing children off is never the right decision. It doesn’t help the child. It doesn’t work for society. We know that children who sexual abuse others are more likely to go on to commit sexual and non-sexual crimes as adults, and are less likely to get good qualifications and become financially independent. But we also know that with the right support, children can address the causes of their harmful behaviour and go on to thrive.
So if we are serious about preventing sexual offences and helping all children achieve the best possible outcomes as adults, we must urgently improve how we support children with harmful sexual behaviour. Harmful sexual behaviour covers a wide spectrum, and whilst at the extreme end only a small number of children will be at risk, we now live in an age where children sharing sexual images online and through ‘sexting’ has become ubiquitous. Technology also means that children are being exposed to ever more extreme pornography at an ever earlier age, which can distort the way they come to understand relationships. It is hardly surprising that more children are at risk not only of becoming a victim of sexual abuse, but also inadvertently finding themselves labelled a ‘perpetrator’. For all these reasons, We believe that this is the time for action. National Government must take the lead, but to tackle this issue effectively everyone involved in children’s welfare must work together, and extra emphasis must be placed on the role of parental responsibility (including corporate parents), particularly where the law is broken and when harm is caused. We would also like to thank everyone who contributed to this inquiry: the MPs and Peers who sat on the panel, the experts who gave evidence, especially the young people, and the secretariat at Barnardo’s - Ditte Heede, Debbie Moss and Jonathan Rallings.
The report can be viewed here.
