Since our inception, we have been highlighting widespread systemic safeguarding failures in this country. The latest revelations about child sex abuse and grooming gangs have shocked but not surprised us. There must be a public inquiry into how lessons from past failures have not been learned and why effective safeguarding has been so disastrously dismantled
How have we got here?
Why is safeguarding so poorly understood, even by professionals? Why is it not prioritised? Time and again, those responsible have allowed it to be undermined by spurious allegations of racism, homophobia, and transphobia. Child protection must be non-political. It should not matter which party was or is in power—those who have failed to uphold safeguarding must be held accountable, regardless of their affiliations.
The pattern is painfully familiar: failures followed by claims of “lessons learned,” yet the same mistakes persist. The inability to recognise silencing tactics, a failure to identify institutional cowardice, and ongoing negligence have led to unimaginable harm to children.
We support the Home Secretary’s call for mandatory reporting. However, a commitment to mandatory reporting is worthless if professionals (and the public) are not educated to recognise abuse.
The way forward requires…
- A public, transparent inquiry.
- Improved safeguarding training for professionals.
- Clear recognition that under-18s are children and must be treated as such.
- Consequences for those in dereliction of duty.
- A public information campaign on what safeguarding means and how the public can help uphold it.
- Mandatory reporting
If there is to be any hope of justice, healing for the victims, and accountability for the perpetrators and their numerous enablers, effective safeguards need to be put in place to prevent, or at least lessen, safeguarding failures of this magnitude in the future.
On reflection…
When children are harmed on this scale, the whole community in which it happened must reflect. There now needs to be an open and honest national conversation about what has occurred and how it was allowed to continue for so long. This includes discussing how people were silenced with allegations of ‘racism’ without further allegations of racism. Prioritising ‘community cohesion’ or ‘race relations’ over the welfare of the most vulnerable children in the country was not a ‘noble aim,’ it was utterly sickening cowardice and corruption.
However, allegations of racism and the ethnicity of both victims and perpetrators are far from the only issues that led to this. The failure to recognise ALL under-18s as children and the protections that should bestow on them has featured heavily here as well as in other current child safeguarding failures. How ‘bodily autonomy,’ ‘children’s rights,’ and ‘consent’ have been misused to the detriment of children also needs to be openly and honestly discussed. This has been devastating to the most vulnerable—children in the ‘care’ of the state. Our current age of consent laws are inadequate and must be strengthened. They are also frequently misrepresented, even in school materials, and this must be corrected.
Time for a new Inquiry
We support the victims and whistleblowers in their assertion that previous inquiries have been insufficient and that there is a need for a comprehensive inquiry into the rape/grooming gangs which appear to stretch back to the 1960s. If Prime Minister Keir Starmer thinks that everyone concerned about this issue is ‘far right’ he has an insufficient understanding of safeguarding and is participating further in a cover-up.
Every single person who has tried to raise this issue over the past decades has been ignored. That includes the parents, social workers, teachers, the Sikh community, the Muslim community, feminists, UK Labour MPs, Conservative MPs, and most abhorrently the victims themselves.
Why we need good quality RSE
Victims have said that Relationships and Sex Education that helped them recognise grooming and signposted them to help would have been useful to them. Instead of providing future generations of children with the tools to recognise what was happening in their communities, RSE has been cynically exploited by ‘sex-positive educators’ who have flooded schools with inappropriate materials and website links that groom instead of help vulnerable children. This education has exposed them to inappropriate content and further sexualised them. The same tired silencing techniques of yelling ‘far right’ and making libellous allegations that people were trying to ‘ban sex education’ were deployed against whistleblowers of this further scandal.
A specific inquiry on rape gangs (held in public with statutory powers) is not the only #PublicInquiry needed. Other incredibly serious safeguarding failures are ongoing. We have failed as a society to protect children, especially the most vulnerable, and this must now be addressed.
We will not stop speaking out. Child safeguarding has failed systemically. Every political party shares the blame, along with every individual who has placed personal politics or ideology above the welfare of children. Thank you to those who have dared to speak out. The moral cowardice of those who remain silent must not be forgotten.