What I genuinely don't understand is why, when it is clear that various adults knew abuse was going on and chose not to go to the police, those adults are not being prosecuted. Isn't there already a law about being an accessory during and/or after the fact?That's a very good question and deserves a full answer.
As a general principle of English law, it's not a crime to fail to report a crime. The exceptions are few and narrowly drawn. One exception is that under the Proceeds Of Crime Act 2002, financial institutions and their lawyers have a statutory obligation to report suspicions of money laundering or bribery to the authorities.
But there is no equivalent legal duty to report child abuse. That means that you could be the headmaster of a school, actually witness one of your staff raping one of your pupils in the school changing rooms, but you will have no legal duty to report anything about it to anyone.
To be an accessory, you need to do more than just not report it. You would need to do something more active, such as giving misleading answers to the police if they ask. But if the police don't ask, you have no obligation to tell them that there are questions they ought to be asking.
Elly goes on to say:
The numerous cases at St benedict's, plus the numerous cases in many other Catholic schools and institutions, makes one thing abundantly clear: many Catholics are willing to stand by while children are abused. Prosecution is probably the only language such morally devoid people are going to understand.And I agree entirely. About 80% of countries worldwide have a "mandatory reporting" law applicable to child abuse. Britain is unusual in not having such a law. These last few years I have spent a fair bit of time campaigning for mandatory reporting in support of the organisation Mandate Now. They have produced detailed proposals for such a law in England and Wales and have provided those proposals to IICSA for their consideration.
Elly, I hope you (and others) will lend your vocal support to the introduction of mandatory reporting of reasonable suspicions of child abuse in Britain.
Astonishing...that there is not a mandatory reporting law for child abuse.......with all the cases in recent years it is also surprising that this has not been brought up before, perhaps in
ReplyDeleteparliament.
I think it would be very worthwhile although may need to be handled with some care. The cases of St. Benedicts and others are truly appalling but it would not be helpful it the pendulum swung so far the other way that adults were simply frightened to be around children for fear or being suspected of abuse.
Those who want to make malicious accusations can do so, even though it is already illegal. So there's nothing about mandatory reporting that would make that any worse.
DeleteBut in fact false accusations are fairly rare, at least in comparsion to the number of true but unreported cases.
If reporting becomes the norm, and reports get investigated, people will move on if investigation shows there's nothing in it. The present situation where even an unfounded allegation is through to be "no smoke without fire" arises from the fact that reporting is relatively rare at the moment.
BR67, why would an adult behaving perfectly appropriately around children be suspected of abuse? Can you give some examples of when that has actually happened?. . .Joanathan will know the details but I THINK that mandatory reporting has indeed been brought up in Parliament before now. I think it was proposed as a Private Member's Bill and, unfortunately, such bills often don't get treated with the seriousness they deserve. Parliament needs to be far more pro-active about mandatory reporting. . .Thank you for your response to my query, Jonathan, and for all your work on this. I'll be continuing to lobby about this issue.
ReplyDeleteMy main point was that there should be mandatory reporting....and currently isn't.
DeleteA friend who is a school teacher told me she
will not even put her arm around a small child who has fallen over and hurt themselves in the playground now for fear
or being accused of behaving inappropriately, hence my comment.......
I don't have any examples, no, only her comments.