In 2022, Professor Alexis Jay, a child protection expert, completed a seven-year investigation into the sexual abuse of children in England and Wales. Her inquiry covered abuse in a range of institutions, including churches, schools, political parties, and children’s homes. The inquiry found that children had been abused both online and offline, by individuals and paedophile networks, including grooming gangs. The scale of the abuse was deemed to have created an “epidemic” that had left thousands of victims in its wake.
While Prof Jay’s inquiry could not result in criminal proceedings, it did have the power to make recommendations for change and monitor progress towards them. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) report featured 20 recommendations, and it fell to the Conservative government to implement them. However, since losing the 2020 general election, no progress has been made. The new Labour government has stated that it is working to address this.
One key recommendation of the IICSA report was the introduction of mandatory reporting for anyone in regulated jobs who became aware of abuse. The Conservatives had agreed with this but planned to punish those who failed to report abuse by merely banning them from working with children. The Labour government has pledged to introduce criminal sanctions for both covering up abuse and failing to report it.
The inquiry also recommended improvements to the data gathered on child abuse, creating a single core set of statistics covering victims and perpetrators’ age, sex, and ethnicity, as well as the places and factors associated with abuse. While some projects have been set up to improve data quality, statistics on the ethnicity of abusers remain hard to obtain. The government is working to improve accuracy and analysis.
Other recommendations included the establishment of a child protection authority, increased staff registration in children’s homes, and the extension of the vetting and barring list to those working with children overseas. While some measures are “in progress,” several recommendations remain outstanding.
While the Conservative government passed the Online Safety Act, which included some of the inquiry’s recommendations regarding online abuse, many elements of the proposed public awareness campaign and recommendations for changes to the criminal justice system have yet to be fully implemented. The inquiry’s call for a single redress scheme and national guarantee of specialist therapy for victims also remain outstanding
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