Last night (6th January 2025), the Home Secretary (Rt Hon Yvette Cooper) announced that two of the 20 recommendations in the landmark 2022 Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) will be implemented. These recommendations are:
- A single set of core data accurately collected from agencies, relating to child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation.
- Mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse (with criminal and professional sanctions for professionals who fail to report).
This announcement follows very significant public and political discourse in recent days regarding child sexual exploitation, particularly relating to girls exploited by gangs in Oldham, as well as other areas where widespread organised rape and sexual abuse of girls has taken place.
The Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse estimates that, each year, half a million children experience some form of child rape and/or sexual abuse. Overwhelmingly, the victims of rape and sexual abuse are female and the perpetrators are male, with women and girls accounting for 91% of rape victims and 86% of other sexual offences, according to ONS data. Additionally, 91% of those prosecuted for sexual offences are adult males.
Rape Crisis England & Wales understands sexual violence and abuse, and all forms of violence against women and girls, as both a cause and consequence of inequalities between men and women. Rape culture simultaneously encourages and excuses the objectification, exploitation and sexualisation of women and girls, and blames them for the sexual violence they have faced, as well as their trauma.
It is imperative that those who rape and sexually abuse are held accountable, and that the attitudes, norms, and behaviours that facilitate and enable sexual violence are challenged and changed.
IICSA recommendation: core data
We welcome the government’s commitment to creating a core data set, which should help to provide a much clearer picture about who is doing what to whom, and what is happening for survivors of sexual violence and abuse on a local and regional level. Our hope is that such data will lead to:
- Improved safeguarding responses.
- Better and fairer commissioning.
- More effective interventions and responses to perpetrators (which reduce their opportunity to keep offending against women and girls, and to do so without consequence).
We have long called for robust and meaningful data that benefits survivors; rape and sexual can happen to anyone and we believe that data on the characteristics of victim-survivors will support better understanding and responses to their needs. We also hope to see improved knowledge and data on the factors which may make some children more vulnerable to experiencing child rape and sexual abuse (CRaSA)) and more likely to struggle with its long-term impact. It is critical that this includes intrafamilial CRaSA, which is largely ignored in discussion because of cultural taboos and social stigma.
IICSA recommendation: mandatory reporting
It continues to be of grave concern to Rape Crisis England & Wales and our member centres that professionals working within children and adult social care, health services and the criminal justice system continue to struggle to recognise CRaSA and do not respond appropriately to it when it has been reported to them. This is a systemic failing which means that the harms inflicted on some of the most marginalised and traumatised victims of sexual violence and abuse – girls – go unheard, unseen and so ultimately unchanged.
Mandatory reporting can only work if all professionals it is designed to hold responsible for reporting CRaSA are upskilled and trained effectively. This includes how to recognise and respond to child rape and sexual abuse, its short, medium, and long-term impact on girls and their families and communities, and how trust and safety can be maintained even when reporting is necessary.
Ciara Bergman, CEO of Rape Crisis England and Wales, says:
“Rape involves the destruction, negation and removal of consent from survivors. For any new policy or practice to avoid repeating that experience, it is imperative that any model of mandatory reporting is preceded by a meaningful multi-agency response to children and young people which doesn’t just include but centres their voices and needs. If mandatory reporting has the purpose of protecting children from rape and sexual abuse, then the existing weaknesses within the current statutory landscape must be urgently addressed."
One of IICSA’s remaining 18 final recommendations that must be prioritised is the introduction of a national guarantee that all victims and survivors of CRaSA should be offered specialist and accredited therapeutic support. We recently published our report A Real Safe Space which supports this recommendation, and calls on the government to action this, and the remaining recommendations made by IICSA.