6.2 Million Child Abuse Victims in England and Wales – Statistics

While the majority of the time TV soaps involve themselves in storylines that are wacky or outlandish, they also have the ability to draw people’s attention towards more serious and relevant issues.

Long-running TV soap Emmerdale is no different and is currently the process of going through a child abuse storyline. In this, a character called Arthur takes out the grief of losing his father on a young child known to him, beating him and rending him unconscious. He then proceeds to lie about the culprit in an attempt to get away with it.

This story is still developing and so the conclusion is yet to come to light but it is extremely important that more focus is drawn to the issue of child abuse, especially in the current climate.

One in five adults aged between 16 and 59 years old have experienced some form of child abuse in England and Wales – that’s an estimated 6.2million people. More than half of these adults who experienced abuse as a minor also experienced domestic abuse (sexual assault, non-sexual abuse or stalking by a partner/family member) as an adult.

More than 4,000 survivors shared their stories with the Truth Project in England and Wales in an attempt to highlight the consequences of child abuse, this can be viewed here. It is an incredibly hard read and the accounts of the individuals contain details which may be upsetting to some readers – the bravery of the survivors involved to come forward should not be understated.

Krista, whose mother was an alcoholic and chose to take her drunk rages out on her daughter, stated that “I’ve come a long way since being that isolated little girl, and have built a successful life for myself, with children of my own. But that girl is still there, just beneath the surface…When you look at the impact that abuse can have on children, it isn’t just for a few years, it’s a life sentence.”

Figures obtained from Crime Survey for England and Wales, Office for National Statistics for the year ending 2016 (above) showed an increased likelihood that survivors of child abuse would experience domestic abuse after the age of 16.

Child abuse in the news

Unfortunately, the stories regarding abuse against children are more prevalent than ever. In Limerick, a young boy, believed to be just 11-years old, was found dead following a “fatal assault” A man in his 20s currently remains in custody following the discovery but it has left the community in shock.

Former housemaster David Lowe received an increased sentence this month to following him pleading guilty to two further counts of indecent assault towards pupils. Lowe, 66, was initially jailed for 10 years in 2015 after being found guilty of multiple counts of sexually assaulting pupils. He was found to have abused boys, then aged 8 and 10, as part of a series of attacks between 1970 and 1990 at Westminster Cathedral Choir School in London.

Lowe is not the only one to have received a sentence for historic child sexual abuse in the past month. Six men were sentenced to a combined total of 55 years in prison after they were convicted for a catalogue of serious sexual offences, including 10 counts of rape and one count of rape of a girl under the age of 13, committed against three different victims.

The abuse happened in the Huddersfield area while the victims were children between 2005 and 2008. The six defendants, Banaris Hussain, Umar Zaman, Samuel Fikru and three others who can not be named for legal reasons, were found guilty after a six-week trial at Leeds Crown Court on October 24^th.

Police are also currently investigating alleged abuse at Jack and Jill nursery school in Torquay. In July, a male worker was arrested after an alleged sexual assault on a child and 100 parents from the nursery received a letter from the police stating that this was an isolated incident. Now, 4 months later, police have informed the parents that, after studying 250 hours of CCTV footage, many other potential victims had been identified.

Ofsted has now revoked the nursery’s operating license, but this has understandingly caused outrage with the parents of potential victims involved. One parent said many of them are “obviously really really angry…We thought the July incident had been sorted out. Then we got a text [in October] saying [the nursery] had been told to close.”

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