Taking the Government to High Court over Child Protection Failures with our Groundbreaking Judicial Review
On 10th and 11th November, The Maggie Oliver Foundation will take the Government to the High Court over its failure to implement key recommendations made by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).
This judicial review is one of the most significant pieces of national advocacy work we have ever undertaken.
At its heart is a simple question:
What is the point of public inquiries identifying failures and making recommendations if those recommendations are not implemented?
Why are we taking legal action?
IICSA spent seven years investigating how institutions across England and Wales failed to protect children from sexual abuse.
More than 7,000 victims and survivors contributed evidence. The Inquiry cost more than £200 million and produced 20 recommendations designed to better protect children in the future.
Yet four years later, most of its key recommendations remain unimplemented.
These include:
- collecting essential core data about child sexual abuse and exploitation, including information about the ethnicity of perpetrators and victims;
- ending the use of pain-inducing restraint techniques on children in custody; and
- improving access to justice for children in care.
We believe these recommendations matter because they have the potential to improve how children are protected, how abuse is identified and how institutions respond when children are at risk.
Why does this matter now?
Since IICSA published its recommendations in 2022, an estimated 2 million children have been sexually abused.
That figure is based on the estimate cited by IICSA itself that around 500,000 children are sexually abused every year, an estimate the Inquiry described as "conservative".
Behind that number are real children, real families and lives changed forever.
For us, this is the human reality behind the legal arguments.
Recommendations intended to protect children cannot simply be left on a shelf.
What has happened so far?
On 5 March 2026, the High Court granted The Maggie Oliver Foundation permission to proceed to a full judicial review.
In doing so, Mr Justice Kimblin described the case as a "paradigm example of public interest litigation."
The Court agreed that we should be permitted to pursue our argument that repeated assurances from senior ministers across successive governments about implementing IICSA's recommendations created a legitimate expectation that those commitments would be honoured.
The Court also agreed that there is an arguable case that the Government's failure to prohibit pain-inducing restraint techniques on children in custody is unlawful and that key aspects of our challenge deserve full consideration at a substantive hearing.
The full hearing will take place on 10th and 11th November at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
Why this matters beyond IICSA
This judicial review is about far more than a single inquiry.
At the same time as our legal challenge progresses, the new £65 million Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs has recently began its work which will continue for three years.
The Maggie Oliver Foundation is engaging constructively with that Inquiry. We want survivors to be heard. We want institutional failures to be exposed. We want those responsible for decisions that allowed children to be harmed to be held to account.
But we are also asking an important question:
What happens afterwards?
Survivors take part in inquiries because they hope that by sharing what happened to them, other children will be better protected.
That hope must be honoured.
We cannot continue asking survivors to revisit their trauma, producing reports and recommendations, only for promised reforms to stall or disappear once public attention moves elsewhere.
Why the Foundation is involved
Everything we do starts with survivors.
Through our frontline work, we continue to see the consequences of child sexual abuse and exploitation every day.
As a former detective, Maggie witnessed many of these failures first-hand more than twenty years ago.
Today, our team continues to see survivors facing remarkably similar challenges.
That is why we believe this case matters.
This is not about politics.
It is about accountability.
It is about protecting children.
And it is about ensuring that when governments promise to act to make children safer, those promises mean something.
What happens next?
The judicial review hearing will take place on 10th and 11th November.
We will continue to share updates as the case progresses.
If you would like to follow developments, please keep an eye on our website and social media channels over the coming weeks.
