National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
Baroness Louise Casey has thankfully pulled no punches in her recent report into group based sexual abuse and exploitation of children. The full report can be seen here, in which she exposes many of the failures that both Maggie and The Maggie Oliver Foundation have been very vocally shouting about for the past 13 years. In particular about mandatory recording of ethnicity of offenders, about the criminalisation of children, and about the deliberate failures and neglect of the public bodies whose duty it is to protect children.
We were pleased when Baroness Casey contacted Maggie in February and asked to meet her in Manchester. They spent over 2 hours together discussing many of the issues concerned, and Baroness Casey subsequently recontacted Maggie and asked her to gather together a few survivors who would be willing to share their stories. We were pleased to be able to help with this and consequently we invited 10 survivors from around the UK to Manchester. Baroness Casey and her team met us all there, and those conversations form a central part of this report.
We are very grateful to Baroness Casey for honestly reflecting their voices, and we are also very proud to have been acknowledged very publicly by Baroness Casey in the Executive Summary at the beginning of this report, for the work we do.
As we always say though, the devil is always in the detail, and so much will now depend on who will lead this, what are the terms of reference, what is the timescale - and perhaps just as importantly, will the eventual recommendations sit on a shelf gathering dust as in previous statutory enquiries!
