Local authorities and their partners face a legal requirement to report child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSA) under hefty proposals outlined by an independent inquiry.
Mandatory reporting by ‘those involved in regulated activity' or a ‘position of trust' - with potential criminal sanctions for failure - is one of three major recommendations within the final report the £180m Independent Inquiry into Chid Sexual Abuse (IICSA) published on Thursday.
The IICSA team has also called for the creation of a national Child Protection Authority (CPA) in England and Wales, and a national redress scheme for survivors of sexual abuse ‘who have been let down by state and non-state institutions' - funded by national and local government.
If adopted by the government, the cost of implementing the report's recommendations could run into hundreds of millions of pounds - including significant bills for councils, children's services departments, care homes, schools, criminal justice bodies and welfare teams.
The seven-year IICSA inquiry, chaired by Professor Alexis Jay, author of a critical 2014 report into CSA in Rotherham, states that ‘urgent action' is needed to ‘ensure children are better protected from sexual abuse'.
Professor Jay's final report - based on 18 separate investigations - sets out the ‘devastating scale' of CSA, ‘both past and present' and the ‘horrifying picture' of cover-ups, inaction and failures across many institutions, including councils, with child protection duties.
‘Child sexual abuse has been hidden from public view for decades and it remains under-reported and under-identified to this day. Children have been subject to the most vile and painful acts, threatened, beaten and humiliated with institutions often choosing to prioritise their personal and institutional reputations above the welfare of those they were duty bound to protect,' the report states.
IICSA's team investigated allegations of historical and current abuse within many local authority areas - including Lambeth LBC, Rochdale and Nottingham. They found significant failings at local authority level and across partner organisations such as care homes and schools.
Professor Jay said: ‘[The extent of CSA] cannot be underestimated; the sexual abuse of children is an epidemic that leaves tens of thousands of victims in its poisonous wake and some will never recover. As a society, we simply cannot file it away and consider it a historical aberration when so much of what we learned suggests it is an ever-growing problem.'
The 461-page final report makes twenty powerful recommendations, many of which could impact directly on councils and local services. Failures of local leadership, accountability and deference feature heavily - and the personal experiences of 6,200 CSA survivors, which formed part of the inquiry's ‘Truth Project', have informed Prof Jay's proposals.
IICSA recommends:
- Mandatory reporting of CSA
- A single core CSA data set across social care and criminal justice
- Registration of care staff in children's homes and offenders' institutions
- A Child Protection Authority for England and Wales
- A cabinet minister for children
- Public awareness campaigns
- Bans on ‘pain compliance techniques' used at some custodial institutions
- An amended Children Act 1989 limiting councils' ‘parental responsibility' role
- Enhanced local and national use of the DBS scheme
- Removal of time limits on compensations claims against public bodies
- A national scheme offering specialist support to CSA victims and survivors
- New duties on public bodies to retain records of CSA-related activity
- A national redress scheme funded by central and local government
