News

By: Jonathan West 

Ampleforth and Downside Abbeys are Benedictine monasteries, each with a boarding school attached. Last November and December the IICSA heard harrowing testimony from former pupils of both schools, describing both physical and sexual abuse that they suffered. The dates ranged from the 1950s to the 2000s.

But more sickening even than the accounts of the abuse was the way in which we learned that it was covered up. When one monk, Richard White, was found to have abused, rather than report it, the Abbot of Downside checked with the school solicitor to see if he had to report it. The reply (legally quite correct) was no. White’s crimes weren’t discovered for another 20 years, when the police stumbled across details in school records while conducting an unrelated investigation into abuse by another monk. White was sentenced to five years. (more…)

In an Update Statement published on 27  November 2015, the chair of the Inquiry made the following statement.

Alongside these twelve investigations that form the first phase of the Public Hearings Project, we plan to hold a series of expert hearings into questions of public policy which will feed into the recommendations we make. We propose to start, in the first half of 2016, with an expert hearing into the risks and benefits of mandatory reporting. We will also hold a hearing to explore the balance which must be struck between encouraging the reporting of child sexual abuse and protecting the rights of the accused.

Today a letter has been sent by five lawyers acting for Core Participant abusees, to Professor Jay Chair setting out why this vitally important ‘seminar’ is needed at the earliest opportunity:

The letter is here in full 

That about sums it up, its excellent.

The Lawyers :  Richard Scorer (Slater Gordon); Kim Harrison (Slater Gordon), David Greenwood (Switalskis) David Enright (Howe & Co), Alan Collins (Hugh James)

Mandate Now response to Government Mandatory Reporting consultation outcome:

‘Reporting and Acting on Child Abuse and Neglect: ’

The Government’s decision to reject mandatory reporting in institutional settings in favour of the current discretionary reporting system has little to do with transforming the culture of child protection in Regulated Activities and everything to do Government thinking it is minimising cost.  Government’s key objective is to deliver the smallest possible increase in child protection referrals from professionals in schools, healthcare, sports, scouts, faith groups and similar, to the Local Authority for independent triage assessment. (more…)

Mandate Now has reviewed the Church of England’s safeguarding policy document ‘Protecting All God’s Children’ 4^th Edition (2010) and its recently replaced Chapter 7 under the new heading – ‘Responding to, assessing and managing safeguarding concerns or allegations against church officers’. The content is a thicket of inconsistent discretionary ‘guidance’ which carries with it the risk of confusion, mistake and non-compliance.

Our review is available here.

Mandate Now is a pressure group that leads the agenda for the introduction of law that requires staff who have responsibility for children, and vulnerable adults, in Regulated Activities[1] to report known and suspected abuse to the Local Authority. We have reviewed policies for other Regulated Activities and organisations including The Football Association,  Stoke Mandeville (Lampard Review), and the BBC (Dame Janet Smith Review). (more…)

Data is critically important for assessing a project’s direction of travel, effectiveness, achievements, scope for improvement and much else besides.

Mandate Now decided to look at the work of the The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Australia and compare data from it to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales.

Mandate Now provides no commentary to accompany the data.

The .pdf can be downloaded here

We hope you find this useful.

The consultation clock finally stopped when Government foot draggers released the pre-designed outcome to the consultation on 5/3/18.

Government retains a white knuckle grip on the failing status quo.

The Government acceded to a public consultation on Mandatory Reporting on 28.10.14. 

Children are being avoidably left in abusive settings as empirical research clearly reveals, because Government is out of step with the majority of countries on all four continents.

The article below by Julie Bindel preceded Andrew Norfolk’s reporting on organised child sexual exploitation of girls by men of Pakistani muslim origin in northern cities, by sometime (MN understand’s Andrew Norfolk’s first article was in 2012). Coinciding with the broadcast of  the three part drama Three Girls Ms Bindel explained some of the immense challenges she faced trying to place her article.  The same fate could have befallen Andrew Norfolk but for the sustained editorial support for Norfolk’s investigative reporting which had such a profound impact. By default, people find more reasons to walk away from child sexual abuse than stay. An abusee, well acquainted with the hopelessly inadequate statutory framework and the dynamics of abuse, can clear a roomful of politicians in SW1 faster than a Chubb fire alarm. The subject is considered a political swamp.

Note – clicking on any of the images below takes to you full article in an album on Google Photos which makes it far easier to read. 

Preventing and responding to Child Sexual Abuse: Learning about best practice from overseas (Lorraine Radford et al., 2017)

At the outset it is worth reminding ourselves of the reason the Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse was established.

• To consider the extent to which State and non-State institutions have failed in their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation;
• To consider the extent to which those failings have since been addressed;
• To identify further action needed to address any failings identified;
• To consider the steps which it is necessary for State and non-State institutions to take in order to protect children from such abuse in future; and
• To publish a report with recommendations.

(more…)

The Home Office consultation ‘Reporting and Acting on Child Abuse’ was secured on 28th October 2014 as a result of Amendment 43 tabled by Baroness Walmsley (LibDem) during the passage of the Serious Crimes Bill.

Sometime before the Bill arrived in the Lords, Mandate Now had been advised by an individual close to our pressure group that the Church of England was fully subscribed to mandatory reporting in Regulated Activities. News reached us that the Lord Bishop of Durham Paul Butler, who at the time was Chair of the Church’s National Safeguarding Panel and Lead Bishop for Safeguarding in the Church of England, intended supporting Baroness Walmsley’s amendment not least because Justin Welby was in agreement. Here was a ‘Regulated Activity’ acknowledging that without law, no one can place reliance on child protection in any Regulated Activity because  policies are grounded on nothing more than a hope that someone will have the courage to do the ‘right thing.’ It’s an arrangement designed to fail. We said so in the statement that opened our submission to the Consultation dated 6/10/16 : (more…)

Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson’s – ‘Duty of Care in Sport’ report is published today.

A key paragraph is on p.20 under  in ‘Theme 5’- safeguarding.

Mandatory reporting

It should be recognised that organisations that work with children and vulnerable adults can attract individuals who will seek to exploit and abuse them – there is a need for continual vigilance. The government should therefore consider extending a Duty to Report to all sports organisations. This would mean that if a person knows, or has suspicion of, any abuse taking place, they must report it to the relevant body for action to be taken.

You can download it here.

(more…)