Has sexual abuse really declined- orthe will to tackle it?

BASPCAN, GLASGOW 12/11/14BASPCAN, GLASGOW 12/11/14

Progress & Challenges in prevention of CSA

Has child sexual abuse really declined – or the will to tackle

it?

Sarah Nelson, CRFR, University of Edinburgh

Has sexual abuse really declined?Has sexual abuse really declined?

Neither denying reality of improvements made, nor that CSA can be considerably reduced. Firmly believe it can. Otherwise would not continue to work and campaign in this field. No interest in crying wolf, in continuing being depressed, nor in maintaining a “child abuse industry” (the claim of backlash proponents!)


Also acknowledge likely real decline in certain settings: e.g.

• Systematic, organised or opportunistic crime by abusers seeking work with children in institutions & community orgs. (backgd checks, references, safer policies & envirs.)

• (Admittedly disproportionate) modern fears of letting children outside alone still protects some: in my research, many men and women abused outside family in community, running errands, walking to school alone, etc.

Has sexual abuse really declined?Has sexual abuse really declined? BUT I argue:

• Problems in research suggesting general reduction in CSA;

• Optimism understates powerful effects of backlash;• Experience of practitioners & trainers that professional priority has declined: “cycles of discovery & suppression”, plus ideologically-based policy changes;

• Spotlight investigations always reveal much more CSA than was known previously;

• We can reduce CSA, but prevention projects must each be in discrete settings & evaluated over 5-10 yrs.


Big concern: that assumption of real decline will lead to even fewer resources for tackling CSA.

This hasn’t happened re. statistical reductions in teen pregnancy & youth crime?....But these topics always have high political/public priority & invoke political opportunism, in contrast to CSA - they face no backlash movt. – nor are they topics people find hard to discuss, nor to think about.


Problems with research on decline

• Using “substantiated” cases with a crime like CSA. Meta-analysis of 200+ international studies 1980 - 2008 revealed prevalence of self-report sexual assault 30 times higher than authority-reported prevalence (Stoltenborgh et al. 2011).•CSE in Rochdale & Rotherham not even defined or investigated as sexual abuse - let alone substantiated.•Methodological problems with some recall surveys, with YP & when conducted at home - no confidentiality


Exact effects of backlash on professionals was admitted as hard to test, in the research suggesting real decline. One hypothesis re. the continuing increase in cases, then continuing decline: that between late 70s & early 1990s, CSA was being uncovered ever more effectively. But backlash grew at this time to impede progress in protecting children, a retreat which has continued, one key reason for decline in official figures.


The increase till early 90s occurred because child & adult survivors were being listened to open-mindedly, seriously, for first time - accounts no longer just dismissed as fantasy, incestuous desires for parent, fabrication or mental illness. This gradually allowed more shameful or secretive forms to be heard once familial abuse acknowledged. Thus organised or ritual abuse by groups and paedophile rings; abuse of boys, abuse by women, by high ranking in society, in institutions, by clerics, abuses of indigenous peoples etc.

Has sexual abuse really declined?Has sexual abuse really declined? These discoveries all v. threatening to abusers, produced backlash in response. CSA already heavily defended:

Traditional: It’s an oedipal fantasy• It’s a way of life in that subculture• It reflects a caring relationship• She’s that sort of young woman, you know• Sexually precocious children are to blame• Frigid collusive mothers are to blame• The whole dysfunctional family is to blame• Most were being discredited, then along came……..

Has sexual abuse really declined?Has sexual abuse really declined?• It’s mad paediatricians: to discredit child prot. doctors, & physical signs in children

• It’s a satanic panic: to discredit sadistic organised abuse, social workers & abuse victims

• It’s false memory syndrome: to discredit therapists, feminists & adult survivors

• It’s greedy compensation syndrome: to discredit survivors of abuse in care

• It’s parental alienation syndrome: to discredit abused children’s protective mothers

• She’s making a life choice (at 12): to discredit teenage victims of CSE…


Most media strongly supported accused parents, promoted FMS, ridiculed “satanic panic” – this increased pressure.Some intimidating effects on profs.:Lost jobs, sued, forbidden from working with abused children, police investigations closed down, vicarious trauma, stress sickness, media vilification, permanent grief at failure to protect the children they remember.“Self censorship” from then on became very noticeable among social workers, psychiatrists & psychologists, teachers: “we’re not allowed to ask that” /can of worms/“it might be false memory”


Who benefited from retreat or discredit?

•Ritual abuse example: police investigations at time closed; police reports vanished (Carole Mallard ex.); profs. largely intimidated from inquiring since.•Phys signs example: Butler-Sloss didn’t condemn RAD sign, said abnormal & suspicious; 75 pc + of Higgs & Wyatt diagnoses later vindicated. But credibility of physical signs, especially in young children who can’t speak, v. undermined since. Intimidating attacks on leading paediatricians, Meadow, Southall, San Lazaro.


Profs. further nervous at response to legitimate criticism of poor practice, e.g. in children’s interviewing or in precipitate removal into care. Did new legislation, guidance, policies make it easier or harder to protect children?•Interviews now with strangers in unnatural settings•Ever-narrower professionalisation of CP excluded communities & vol. sector•Were Children Acts “charter for abusive parents”? (Speight & Wynne 2000) Harder to remove children even when needed; shift in burden of proof for care orders.


• Ideological changes reduced protective focus

• Messages from Research 1995: shift from focus on “chdn at risk” to “chdn in need” & family support

• Decline in joint police/social work investigation (some joint teams coming back now)

• Goal to reduce numbers on CP registers or care protection plans, not identify more abuse & address it

• Focus on deprived or “troubled”(troubling!) families - but CSA happens across all social groups.

CSA moral panic backlash?CSA moral panic backlash?

• Throughout UK, fall in CSA registrations/CP plans has coexisted with growth - often a considerable growth- in those for physical abuse, emotional abuse & neglect. This suggests not genuine declines or growth but changed policy decisions, & altered professional priorities. In England 1994, CSA was 26 % of registrations. In 1998, 21%. In 2013, 4.7% of CP plans. Overall UK 2013, 5%.

Has sexual abuse really declined?Has sexual abuse really declined?Very many people in my field concerned about drop in CSA priority in recent years; we find most basic of training being requested; senior SWs making such comments as:

•“We’ve been told it’s yesterday’s issue”•“It’s bottom of our list of priorities- we’re told to concentrate on drugs”•“Since Baby Peter it’s all physical abuse and neglect in the youngest kids, older kids get left to look after selves”•“I’m embarrassed to tell you this – fear is, if we asked the question, we’d have to do something about it”


• At a big children’s panel conference in 2014 in Glasgow, few members recalled any referrals related to CSA and longstanding panel members said these referrals had greatly declined. A training organiser for Scottish ChPs subsequently revealed they didn’t have specific training for CSA or CSE and was dubious about taking on any. Yet in Scotland children’s panels are crucial for identifying risks & influences of CSA, since young people frequently come before them with acting-out behaviours, school truancy, substance misuse etc common in reactions to CSA trauma.


One of biggest flaws in decline research is that in common with other crimes which are largely concealed and under-reported:

Tackling CSA effectively would result in

growth of known cases, not decline. Prevalence would then appear to increase. Indeed any Govt. targets for reduction of CSA would need to build in expectation of increase in identified cases in first years of all prevention projs., before true decline could happen.

Has sexual abuse really declined?Has sexual abuse really declined? Under-reporting & concealment: whenever “spotlight” investigations of CSA or CSE are done, they always reveal far more than was known about beforehand.

Some examples of spotlight investigations: • Sex rings in S Leeds 1984 found 10 rings &175 victims in one district alone, due to active energetic police unit;

• Medomsley detention centre Co Durham: after Neville Husband conviction, police investigation uncovered paedophile ring with up to 500 male victims (2014).


Examples of “spotlight” investigations cont.:

• NAPAC got eightfold increase in calls from adults after Savile, about both historic & current CSA cases;

• Alexis Jay report: 1400 young victims of CSE in Rotherham over 16 years. CSE is a form of CSA: now that this acknowledged, prevalence will grow;

• Following this scandal, taking CSE seriously police investigations in Manchester 2013-14 uncovered 105 crimes and 242 suspects.


Spotlights on online abuse images:

•6-mth police investigation a/c UK 2013-14 – arrested 660 online sex offenders including doctors, social workers, police, teachers - only 39 previously known to auths. Is this field revealing actual scale of sexual interest in chdn?•Police now seize 2.5 - 4 million images in one collection. Internet Watch Fndn. research 2010: 80 pc of children in images appeared under 10. CEOP report continuing increase in extreme, sadistic images, also of v. young children, babies & toddlers


New technologies:

These bring home that some forms of CSA likely to have increased. DF right to warn against too-easy assumptions of harm to teenagers, but surely still 3 causes for concerned attention? Increased demand for victims for images & real-time abuse; ease with which new technologies enable abusive sexual behaviour; & effects on the wider population of boys and young men, of freely-available violent, degrading & sadistic pornography, in relation to their sexual behaviour with girls & young women.

Has sexual abuse really declined?Has sexual abuse really declined?Encouraging signs of greater policy priority & commitment: but will reveal more, not less CSA

•Deep shock at ignoring of CSE victims’ suffering is precipitating belated police action across UK, including effective use of e.g. trafficking legislation•Shock at failure to speak out re Savile & other abusers is triggering Inquiries, including into cover-ups (…we live in hope!!)•Reopening of closed-down police & SW investigations, including into care home abuses across UK


What needs to happen•We will only get close to finding true prevalence, from which true decline can be judged, by assertive investigation, & by enabling chd & adult survs. to tell with less fear & shame.•Qualitative research needed into effects of backlash on key professions’ addressing of CSA; then action on results. New courage & awareness that backlash theories often rationalisations for crime must come from the top.•CSA must have the priority it merits from child prot. services: sexual, physical, emotional abuse & neglect should not be in competition, but according to need.


What needs to happen cont.

•We can’t judge decline, increase, or stasis of CSA as a whole. And the attempt makes it incredibly difficult to judge what is working and what isn’t. Have to evaluate projects in a range of fields & settings, with survivors, with perpetrators, professionals, communities; be prepared to evaluate for 5-10 years (short time in history of CSA!); then apply lessons from them elsewhere, then monitor.


A few examples to evaluate: Primary prevention: whole-community/ neighbourhood prevention of CSA; Respect projects (as savvy as poss about new technologies) with young men & women in secondary schools;Detection & Deterrence: Use of anti-trafficking legislation against CSE in agreed areas of UK;Secondary prevention: Programmes with convicted survivor-offenders (YP & adults) which reconnect them with their own trauma and address it .


...Think of your own…

Let 1000 ideas bloom!

Has sexual abuse really declined- orthe will to tackle it?

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