Child Abuse Allegations (Police Resources) — House of Commons, 2015-10-30
Topic: Law and Crime
Helen Elizabeth Hayes (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful for the opportunity to bring before the House the important issue of the resourcing of police investigations into historical child sexual abuse The extent of child sexual abuse that has taken place over many decades in the UK has shocked our country to the core. The facts that have emerged following the death of Jimmy Savile have been on a horrific scale. They speak of a culture in which children’s voices were not heard or believed, and in which children’s dreadful experiences were not recognised: most significantly, a culture in which fundamental wrongs were occurring on a routine basis in some parts of our society, and in which those who sought to raise the issue were ignored or silenced. It is entirely appropriate that an independent national inquiry has been established under Justice Goddard to investigate the extent to which state and non-state institutions failed in their duty to protect children, to understand exactly what went on, and to enable very deep reflection on how a part of our society was able to depart so radically from anything that we could consider right and proper, and good and true We talk about historical abuse in order to distinguish it from abuse that is occurring now, but for survivors there is nothing historical about it. They live every single day with the consequences of the torture inflicted on them by their abusers. They also live with the consequences of psychological abuse, having been told that they do not matter, that they would not be believed and that the consequences of speaking out would be worse than living privately with the pain they carry My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) and I have met the Shirley Oaks Survivors Association. Shirley Oaks was a children’s home run by Lambeth Council. It was the largest children’s home in Europe. It is known that organised child abuse occurred at Shirley Oaks over many years, and there have been three successful prosecutions of abusers who operated there The Shirley Oaks Survivors Association has been established over the past 18 months, and it is striking that more than 200 people have come forward in that time to seek support and to bear witness to their experiences in local authority care. I pay tribute to the Shirley Oaks Survivors Association for its courage in speaking out, the support it is providing to a large number of survivors, and the painstaking investigatory work it is doing to uncover what happened at Shirley Oaks. I have listened first hand to some of the testimonies of former Shirley Oaks residents. It is both heartbreaking and sickening that vulnerable children—who were in the care of the state because they had already been let down in a multitude of other ways—were subjected to such devastating and damaging experiences The fact that the full and shocking scale of the trauma experienced by many residents of Shirley Oaks and of other children’s homes remained untold for so long is in itself a scandal, but it is clear that the wider acknowledgement of the prevalence of child sexual abuse is giving new confidence to survivors to come forward. It takes courage to disclose and speak out, and that process involves additional trauma. Reliving events that took place a long time ago can open the scars and make them raw wounds once again When a survivor has the courage to come forward to disclose painful past events and to make an allegation of abuse, it is vital that people have the resources and expertise, as well as the necessary time, to investigate with skill and care. That means giving time to police officers to travel to meet survivors in a place of their choosing. Many people who were abused at Shirley Oaks and at other children’s homes no longer live in the local area. People need the skills to engage sensitively and compassionately with survivors, to give them confidence that they will be listened to and taken seriously and that they will be believed. People also need the skills and the time to investigate historical events, to trawl through records and to investigate suspects rigorously and appropriately.