Child sex abuse: Failure to report crimes to be made illegalon April 2, 2023 at 10:10 am

People who work with children in England will be legally required to report child sexual abuse or face prosecution under government plans.

The move – which is subject to a consultation – was recommended last year by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).

The home secretary told the BBC she wanted to correct one of the “biggest national scandals”.

Suella Braverman is expected to set out more details in the coming days.

In its final report last October, the IICSA called the scale of abuse in England and Wales “horrific and deeply disturbing”.

Around 7,000 victims of abuse provided testimonies to the seven-year inquiry, which was set up in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.

It recommended prosecutions for anyone working with children who failed to report indications of sexual abuse.

Ms Braverman told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show that in towns around the country, “vulnerable white girls living in troubled circumstances have been abused, drugged, raped, and exploited” by networks of gangs of rapists, which she said were “overwhelmingly” made up of British-Pakistani males.

“Some councillors, senior politicians, in Labour-run areas over a period of years absolutely failed to take action because of cultural sensitivities, not wanting to come across as racist, not wanting to call out people along ethnic lines.

“The authorities aware of these problems have turned a blind eye and roundly failed to take the right action,” she said.

She said she was just being honest – but Labour’s Tracy Brabin, mayor of West Yorkshire, called it a “dog whistle”.

Labour’s shadow levelling-up secretary Lisa Nandy said that in the cases of Rochdale and Rotherham, “the reports were clear there were politicians and officers who didn’t report sometimes for fear of political correctness”.

But she said: “The home secretary is an absolute joke to talk about turning a wilful blind eye, near complicit silence, and lack of action. She’s basically describing herself.”

Ms Nandy said the number of convictions for child sexual exploitation had halved in the last four years. “People are waiting nearly two years on average just to get to court… there’s no excuse for any more delays and inaction,” she said.

She said she had been calling for mandatory reporting for 20 years, and further criticised the government for consulting on its plans before adopting them. Ms Braverman “needs to come forward with actual measures to keep children safe in this country”, Ms Nandy said.

In an article written for the Mail on Sunday, Ms Braverman said she had “committed to introduce mandatory reporting across the whole of England”.

She referred to widespread abuse which plagued Rotherham for years – and wrote that crimes like abuse “create such a burning sense of injustice among the public” if they went unpunished.

The “overwhelming majority” of safeguarding professionals, such as teachers and social workers, saw it as their “duty” to report signs of such offences, Ms Braverman wrote.

But she said ministers had to take a tougher approach, to make sure that those who failed in their responsibilities faced the “full force of the law”.

She promised Prime Minister Rishi Sunak would set out further measures on Monday.

The NSPCC said the plan to legally compel people to report abuse was a “step in the right direction”, but that more work was needed in order to improve the understanding of who was at risk.

It also said there needed to be an “overhaul” of support for those already suffering the consequences of abuse.

The shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said Labour had called for such a policy for a decade and that ministers needed to set a timetable for when it would be implemented.

The Liberal Democrats welcomed the move, but said the government must now clear the record backlog of cases in courts.