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Child abuse, the family and society

A major social problem

Megan's law

More resources needed

JEAN THORPE, a national executive committee member
of Britain's largest public services union, UNISON
(writing in a personal capacity), explains that
the issue of child abuse is a social problem which
cannot be tackled by simplistic populist slogans.

BY 'NAMING AND SHAMING' convicted child sex offenders,
the tabloid newspaper, the News of the World, unleashed
another spate of vigilante attacks against suspected
abusers. Universally condemned by child protection
agencies, the probation service, and other organisations
working with sex offenders, they have been forced
to back down. But not before innocent people were
physically attacked and forced to flee their homes.
In a similar outbreak three years ago a 14-year-old
girl was burnt alive when her home was firebombed
by vigilantes who wrongly thought it was occupied
by a sex offender.

This time some of the worst incidents have taken place
on the Paulsgrove estate, a socially deprived area
on the outskirts of Portsmouth. Local residents
have more than enough reasons to feel abandoned and
let down by the politicians and the 'powers that be'.
The idea that their estate has become a 'dumping ground'
for child sex offenders and that their children aren't
safe, has fuelled existing discontent. This culminated
in disorganised and dangerous nightly protests,
directed against 'suspected' paedophiles. As a
result five innocent families have been forced to
leave the estate.

Such activities can force offenders to move from
estate to estate, town to town and, eventually, to
drive them underground. Agencies monitoring them
can lose contact, making them far more dangerous.
One sex offender out on licence in the south-east
of England, went missing from his home, an opened
copy of the News of the World left on his kitchen table.

Understandably, parents worry that their children
could be at risk from child sex offenders. High profile,
tragic cases like the abduction and murder of eight-year
old Sarah Payne, heighten those fears. But by focusing
on particular sex offenders the media convey the
impression that ending the sexual abuse of children
is about dealing with a layer of 'predatory paedophiles'.
This gives a very misleading impression about what
is really going on in society. Between five and nine
children are abducted and killed every year, 10%
of all child homicide victims. A child is 15 times
more likely to be killed by a parent than an unknown
paedophile. One child dies on average every two to
three days at the hands of a family member.

There are currently around 110,000 convicted child
sex offenders, yet the National Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) and the police estimate
that there could be as many as 1.1 million sex offenders
in Britain today. This figure is based on research
which suggests that only one-in-ten child sex offenders
is convicted, taking into account abuse which is
not reported, or which does not result in a conviction.

This huge figure is borne out by 'prevalence studies'
(surveys which ask people whether they were the victims
of sexual abuse as children). Studies in Britain,
the USA, Switzerland, Germany and Australia consistently
report that around 20% of women and 8% of men were sexually
abused as children.

Child sexual abuse is very easy to commit, and very
easy to get away with. Children may be too frightened
to tell anyone - all kinds of threats may have been
made alongside the abuse. Younger children, though
often traumatised and confused by the abuse, may
for a while not realise this doesn't happen to every
child. Children may have no-one to tell whom they
can trust, or they may try to tell and not be believed.

Often, like adult victims of sexual assault, there
may be no evidence but a child's word. Even where cases
get to court, they can be torn apart by defence lawyers.
In one case, a man was accused of raping a 13-year-old
with learning difficulties. In cross-examination
in court the man's lawyer began by asking the girl
to count backwards from 20, and to spell various words.
She became confused and made mistakes. The man was
acquitted.

A major social problem

MOST ABUSERS WORK alone and are well known to their
victim. The NSPCC found that 70% were closely related
to their victim, and that this included female abusers.
Eighty per cent of abuse takes place in the child's
home or the home of an abuser who is known to them.

There is also clear evidence of organised paedophile
rings, including those trading internationally
in child pornography. The NSPCC estimate there are
at least 240 active paedophile rings in Britain,
including some that are operating from inside prisons.
Marcel Verloesen recently unearthed evidence of
a large international child pornography network
that has been trading via the Internet.

Paedophile rings have in certain instances deliberately
infiltrated local authority care services and secured
leading positions within the social work profession.
Peter Righton, before his conviction, had lectured
in social work and went on to become Director of Education
at the National Institute of Social Work, a position
from which he could have potentially influenced
government policy. Keith Laverick, who worked at
Greystone Heath School in the 1960s, systematically
abused boys there. He went on to run the Guardian Ad
Litem panel for Cambridgeshire county council,
which provided independent social workers to represent
children's interests in court cases. This post would
have given him access to the files of abused children.
There are at present 80 separate investigations
into abuse in children's homes being undertaken
by 32 police authorities.

The extent of child sexual abuse, within the family
and the public care system, shows this problem cannot
be tackled simply by actions against a layer of convicted
paedophiles. It is a major social problem. That does
not negate appropriate action being taken to protect
individual children and keep the most dangerous
paedophiles in custody. But the biggest risks to
children are from people they know well - people within
their family who are supposed to be caring for them.

To most people, the family appears to be a private,
personal institution, determined by their choice
of partner and the decision to have children. However,
the family is also a social institution. No matter
how individual households are formed, the family
is rooted within the economic and social relations
of class society. The family, moreover, has always
been seen by the ruling class as another means of maintaining
control over society. The father, traditionally
head of the household, has been seen as a figure of
authority. Hierarchical relations within the family
- between men and women, and between adults and children
- replicate wider class relations of violence and
power within capitalist society. Sexual abuse of
children - like abuse of women - is one extreme manifestation
of power relations within the family. Sexual abuse
is almost always fundamentally about power, albeit
with a sexual element.

Megan's law

THE FIGURE OF 1.1 million possible sex offenders
in Britain represents a social problem of major proportions.
However, for the ruling class to admit the scale of
the problem would mean admitting that the nuclear
family, for many children, is not the great institution
they would have us believe. It is not always the safe,
loving place that Margaret Thatcher described when
she asserted that the family 'is a nursery, a school,
a hospital, a leisure centre, a place of refuge and
a place of rest'.

To acknowledge the full extent of child sexual abuse
would mean exposing the real nature of the family
in capitalist society. The media concentration
on a small layer of paedophiles who have committed
the most horrific crimes against children serves
to disguise a much bigger social problem. The same
newspapers that whip-up a lynch-mob mentality against
paedophiles, feature topless models in school uniforms.

The publicity given to activities like 'outing'
paedophiles detracts from the real problem. Since
1997 the names of convicted sex offenders have been
placed on a national register. It is important that
agencies like social services can quickly access
information on convicted sex offenders who may be
living in a household with children. But given that
most sex offenders have not been convicted the register
can only monitor the whereabouts of a small layer
of offenders.

The News of the World is leading a campaign for the
register to be open and public as it is in most states
in the USA. There 'Megan's Law', as it has become known,
was introduced in 1994 following the abuse and murder
of a seven-year-old child by a sex offender living
nearby.

There is no evidence, however, to show that the register
has had any effect in reducing child sex offences.
On the contrary, in California before the law was
introduced, 27.3% of convicted abusers re-offended
within a year. After the law this increased to 29.3%.
A sweep of offenders in San Fernando county found
that only 80 out of 300 were still at the addresses
where they had registered. The compliance rate of
offenders registering in Britain is 97% compared
to 80% in the US. Moreover, vigilante attacks have
escalated in the US, with 30 serious assaults taking
place in Washington this year alone.

More resources needed

THE CRIME AND Disorder Act gave the police in England
and Wales powers to place further restrictions on
sex offenders after they have completed their sentence.
Now there are calls to introduce mandatory life sentences
for offenders committing a second serious sexual
offence. Such proposals raise the question of balancing
the civil liberties of an individual and the need
to protect children. Getting that balance right
is very difficult but what is clear is that cutbacks
in services to both offenders and children will increase
the dangers and risks. Virtually every local authority
has cut back children's services, be it the closure
of family centres, children's homes or social workers'
jobs. This has reduced the ability of social services
departments to protect children at risk. The ongoing
drive for the privatisation of council services,
including children's homes in some areas, means
these services being run for profit, instead of being
publicly accountable.

The probation and prison services have also suffered
serious cutbacks in recent years. This has meant
cutting back monitoring and treatment programmes
of offenders, in prison and in the community.

There is no real debate about services to children
and young people. Although some extra money has been
made available for education (largely targeted
at education action zones), there is no extra money
for children's social services. Virtually every
local authority will be making cuts in its next social
services budget.

Awareness of child sexual abuse has advanced beyond
recognition since the 1960s. Even as recently as
15 years ago, the government refused to acknowledge
such abuse existed on a significant scale. When Michelle
Elliott, an American doctor who runs the charity
Kidscape, asked the government in the early 1980s
to add child sexual abuse to the list of reasons for
children being placed on the 'At Risk' register,
the response was that the USA may have a problem but
that Britain did not have enough cases to justify
recognising it. Since then, developments in society
have enabled both children and women to speak out
more openly against abuse and violence.

However, with over one million people possibly having
committed sexual offences of varying degrees, this
is clearly a massive social problem. Not excluding
action on individual cases, a major campaign is needed
to change attitudes so that it is seen as totally unacceptable
to abuse or exploit children in any way.

But child sexual abuse will only diminish and be eradicated
with a fundamental change in the way society is organised.
Capitalism is built on exploitation, power and violence.
It warps and distorts human behaviour, leading to
all kinds of atrocities. Only in a socialist society
would the basis be laid for an entirely different
set of relationships, no longer based on power and
coercion and free from the exploitation and inequalities
so prevalent under the present system.

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