Every agency involved in the UK system that is supposed to prevent and stop sexual exploitation of children has failed, and abuses continue despite recent criminal trials, a parliamentary committee says
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Police, social services and prosecutors in the UK are still failing child victims of sexual exploitation, despite a series of high-profile criminal cases, a report said this week.
Children are being sexually exploited in every part of the country, parliament’s Home Affairs Committee said, dismissing the common assumption that this is happening mainly in northern regions.
"Despite recent criminal cases laying bare the appalling cost paid by victims for past catastrophic multi-agency failures, we believe that there are still places in the UK where victims of child sexual exploitation are being failed by statutory agencies,” the MPs’ report said.
"The police, social services and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) must all bear responsibility for the way in which vulnerable children have been left unprotected by the system."
MPs began collating evidence on child grooming after events in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, led to the conviction last year of nine men in a case of sexual exploitation of young girls that shocked the country,
Other recent high-profile cases include that of Rotherham, a town in south Yorkshire, where “organised groups of men, most of them of Pakistani origin, were able to groom, pimp and traffic girls across the country with virtual impunity.” The Times newspaper, which uncovered the scandal, reported last year.
Although some evidence received by MPs suggested the existence of a pattern consisting of men of Pakistani heritage targeting young white women, "there is no simple link between race and child sexual exploitation," the report said. “It is a vile crime which is perpetrated by a small number of individuals, and abhorred by the vast majority, from every ethnic group.”
The committee pointed at Rochdale and Rotherham as examples of councils that failed to understand the gravity of the issue and said that a “culture change” was needed among those involved in preventing and stopping child exploitation. Social services, for example, need to start considering the exploited children as victims, not accomplices in the crime.
“The failure of these cases has been both systemic and cultural,” the report said. “Rules and guidelines existed which were not followed (and) people employed as public servants appeared to lack human compassion when dealing with victims.”
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