In the light of the recent HMIC investigation into the police handling of the Savile case, the NSPCC and The Telegraph co-hosted an early morning debate last week, attended by us, to explore what lessons can and should be learned from it, and how they can inform the future direction of child protection in the UK.
Chaired by Lord Black of Brentwood, panel members included Claire Perry MP, Dr Linda Papadopoulos, Peter Watt and Matthew Taylor.
As the debate progressed it was clear that the consensus pointed to the inherent danger in getting fixated on high-profile cases like Savile, when the majority of abuse occurs in home environments and is carried out by people within and close to affected families. With the advent of the social Internet, it is important not to restrict the perception of child abuse as purely contact abuse, when many young people are being targeted online and encouraged to share images of themselves or undress on webcam. It’s also imperative that the media feeding frenzies that cases like Savile engender are not allowed to eclipse the numerous hidden cases of abuse that continue on a daily basis.
Dr. Linda Papadopoulos explained that serial abusers like Jimmy Savile in positions of fame and power – where children were magnetically drawn to him and parents wanted his recognition – monopolise on their reputations and know that any disclosure from the abused would either never materialise due to shame and fear, or be classed as offensive defamatory nonsense and brushed under the carpet.
Even though the Savile case has highlighted major shortcomings in policing and exposed the existence of an insular culture within media companies where the talent can be unwittingly protected by stardom itself – the reluctance of victims to report abuse makes it very likely that similar cases could surface again in the future.
The emotional and psychological damage inflicted on abuse victims is so deep-seated that improving the reporting mechanisms is only part of the battle. There is a need for a more comprehensive approach, where education, prevention and protection are the key areas of focus for children, parents, schools, authorities and institutions. It’s crucial that people are responding quickly and ensuring that we are treating victims of abuse holistically and completing a course of rehabilitative treatment, rather than simply being satisfied that the perpetrator has been duly punished.
Media corporations and social media providers have a responsibility to build the right kind of platforms to protect our children, as current technologies are clearly not working efficiently enough. As Claire Perry pointed out, raising the profile of corporate social responsibility and reducing the amount of pointless ideological debates that go nowhere, is the key to shifting the focus toward the practicalities of how we protect our children online.
By increasing the impact and spread of public campaigns and making the prevention of child sex abuse as high profile as other Governmental safety initiatives, it will not only raise the profile of the cause, but also go some way to removing the still prevalent taboos associated with it.
As Esther Rantzen, founder of ChildLine highlighted, we need to examine our current legal system where abused children are subjected to cross-examination in the court-room and unsurprisingly wrong-footed by a barrister’s rhetoric, causing abusers to walk free in many cases. It’s clear that cross-examination should be pre-recorded in a supportive environment and replayed in court, so already damaged children are not subjected to this nerve-wracking public humiliation and justice is more likely to be done.
Considering both the lack of reporting and the inattention given to the few complaints that surfaced in Savile’s lifetime, it may seem logical to espouse the enforcement of a legal obligation for individuals to report disclosures from children, but Esther Rantzen went on to say that the reality of this route – counter-intuitive though it is – could serve to undermine the established confidential counselling service that ChildLine provides. If trusted channels like this were to be compromised by legislation, children could no longer be listened to without the fear of intervention, and would return to the world of fear and impotent isolation that existed before.
It’s apparent that the huge scale and time span of Savile’s crimes have raised many questions and prompted charities, authorities and media organisations to bring the plight of both children and adult survivors of abuse to the forefront of the public consciousness once again. In a world where the role of media seems to be to exaggerate reports and chase false accusations, we should be striving to prevent the ongoing sexualisation of children, educating parents and care-givers about the dangers which children face in the online world and considering the employment of qualified chaperones to protect both children and other individuals with regular access to children. By extension, if the provision of therapeutic support and reporting channels are made more accessible to adult survivors of abuse, the authorities can be better equipped to ensure that perpetrators of historical abuse are brought to book and prevented from continuing to harm others – unlike Savile.
Tempero on Google+
