Survivors of Child Abuse

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[John Mann]

It has been letting down the hon. Lady’s constituents and mine alike. Three girls were repeatedly raped from age 5 onwards. There is no case to answer, because their statements taken at the time, when they were young kids, do not add up. The Crown Prosecution Service said, “Oh, there is nothing we can do. We will not win in court.” What support is there for them? I will tell you what support there is: me. That is who they come to. I will give them support, but what I need from the state and national and local government is properly resourced mental health services that do not, as they did to my constituent, send people away—she needed to be sedated for three days, having made a statement about the multiple rape and other violence—and say, “Come back in a month’s time.” That happened in Nottinghamshire this year to one of the victims. Mental health services are totally disjointed when it comes to support.

I am dealing with children’s social services, but some of these adults are in their 50s or 60s. They will not be going to children’s social services, so where is the support from adult social services? There is no system in place that gives them that. I have constituents who have been hung out to dry by the police and given no support. They were not even referred to the support agencies, having come and said, “We were raped as children.” What on earth is going on when we have no support systems in place?

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very powerful case on behalf of victims of child abuse. In Northern Ireland in the past year, 50 offenders have been arrested and questioned in relation to sexual abuse. Does he feel that the first thing that survivors of child abuse want to see is the culprits arrested, investigated and referred to the courts for sentencing? Do resources need to be made available for that to happen?

[John Mann]

The survivors want justice, and the only way they will get that is by being believed and by perpetrators being prosecuted. The Crown Prosecution Service cannot cope with the volume. It has hardly any cases compared with the cases that will go to it. For the Crown Prosecution Service in the east midlands, we are talking about a manifold increase just from the cases I am bringing. How on earth do we expect such places as Rotherham to deal with the numbers? The expertise to take the cases forward is there, but the resource is not. What is being said is, “We will put it on the long drift for years and years.” That is what has happened with the police. They are not even getting to some of the people who should be questioned as potential perpetrators, because they do not have the resource to do that.

I am not criticising Government spending; what they spend on this, that and the other is a separate debate. It is important that we all get our heads around what is needed. We are not talking about the Government announcing another £100 million or £200 million here or there; we are talking about a far bigger resource than that. In my constituency, I am personally dealing with 25 victims—25 survivors of child abuse. That is so far. There are loads and loads more out there, just in my constituency.

The Crown Prosecution Service and the police cannot handle the prosecutions, the mental health services cannot handle the support services for the victims and social services cannot handle virtually anything to do with them. They do not have the resource. If we are to get on top of this huge legacy, we need to define what I put to the Minister as a Roll-Royce service. What does that mean? A standard needs to be put in place so that when someone comes forward, there is a benchmark that defines what they are entitled to. It is an entitlement. This man was forced into slavery and went to the police, and the police and the social workers returned him and his sisters to the abusers not once, not twice, not three times, but more. He did the right thing, and he is entitled to a Rolls-Royce service. That can come in different forms. What is his major demand? One-to-one literacy lessons, because he finds it a bit hard to get on, being unable to read and write because he was not in school because he was forced to work in a foundry by some predatory paedophile abuser who was the foster carer over him—and that is what they were. Literacy is the most important thing for him.

There is no system in place that says, “You will get this. You are entitled to this.” What is he meant to do—go to the civil courts, as so many thousands have already done? That is not a sensible approach, given that lawyers will not even share information, and are telling people in Nottinghamshire not to come to me, the media or anyone else. They say, “Stick with us, we’ll get you a little bit of money.” How much is a life worth in Nottinghamshire? Eight grand a settlement. It is not good enough, and it is not going to be good enough in future.

Whether under this Government or the next Government, whoever is in power in the next Parliament, whoever the Minister is, from whichever party, I need to see defined an immediately available Rolls-Royce service. Whatever resource is needed, we will have to find it. This is not about me getting up and having a go at the Government; it is about Parliament taking responsibility. This is about saying that a huge amount of the available resources needs to be given and broken down into different areas.

I have been contacted by constituents and many others from all over the country who have survived abuse. They want prosecutions to proceed. They want the police to be able to investigate. They want mental health and other NHS facilities and services to be available. They want support from adult social services. They need that, and they need it as they come forward.

There is one final thing that they need. The Government have made their decisions about the independent panel and Goddard. We can learn a lot from abroad. They do this stuff better in Scandinavia and New Zealand. We should be stealing all their best practice for how we deal with things. Whoever is the Minister, and whoever sits on the Select Committees and all the rest, should get out there, steal their good ideas, bring them back and implement them here. But survivors need their own forum. They have called for a national institute for people abused in childhood. They need that, because then they can provide some of the support and guidance, and they can contribute to the definition of a Rolls-Royce service.

I cannot be dealing with more people attempting suicide, having come to me because the support services are not there. I do not give a damn which heads are going to roll. If those support services are not there, I will get rid of the people at the top, because it is not good enough for my constituents, who are no different from people anywhere else.

I need from the Government a clear undertaking that the resources and expertise will be there. If someone has survived this trauma and lived with it all their life, they have a right to and an expectation of support when they bravely come forward. That is what we as a society and we as a Parliament are going to have to give them. That is why this debate is not only timely, but critical. We need action within months, not years.