2 April: The government is proposing a new law that would make it mandatory for anyone who works with children in England to report any suspicions of child sexual abuse or risk being prosecuted. The proposal – which will be subject to a consultation – follows a recommendation made last year by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). The home secretary said she wanted to address one of the “biggest national scandals”.
More details are expected to be announced by Suella Braverman in the next few days. The IICSA published its final report last October, describing the extent of abuse in England and Wales as “horrific and deeply disturbing”.
It heard testimonies from about 7,000 victims of abuse during its seven-year investigation, which was set up after the Jimmy Savile scandal. It urged the government to introduce criminal sanctions for anyone working with children who failed to act on indications of sexual abuse. ‘Social ignorance’ Ms Braverman told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme that while the blame lay with the perpetrators for “committing heinous and vile acts of depravity” there was also “a social ignorance” among authorities.
“Silence has enabled this abuse we need to ensure a duty on those professionals that they can’t get away with inaction,” she said. She said that in towns across 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” composed 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 to safeguard these girls,” she said.”
“Labour’s Tracy Brabin, mayor of West Yorkshire, accused her of using a “dog whistle” – but she claimed she was only speaking the truth.
Lisa Nandy, Labour’s shadow levelling-up secretary, said that some politicians and officers in Rochdale and Rotherham did not report cases of abuse “sometimes for fear of political correctness”, as the reports revealed.
But she said: “The home secretary is a joke for saying that there was a wilful blind eye, near complicit silence, and lack of action. She is basically describing herself.”