We must not overreact to the latest child abuse case in Sheffield
Dear Nick Clegg,
In the chamber of comedy that was PMQs yesterday, it was you who took time to draw attention to the terrible plight of two sisters in Sheffield whose father was given 25 life sentences on Tuesday for raping and abusing them over a period of thirty years. As with the case of Baby P, I find it impossible to imagine the horrors that these sisters went through. Needless to say the reaction from all political parties and media outlets has been filled with anger and disgust. The question now is what lessons do we learn?
The death of Baby P led to an enquiry into how the abuse continued for so long without anything significant being done about it. I’m sure you were glad to hear that this matter was going to be investigated further and the Sheffield abuse case will also now be reviewed. My concern among all the media attention and dramatic statements in the House of Commons is that I never seem to hear anything about solutions. I suspect that Baby P and the sisters in Sheffield will stick in people’s minds for some time, given the appalling details of each case, yet I can’t shake the feeling that something is horribly wrong with a system that has failed by allowing abuse of these proportions to go unchallenged (although not undetected) for so long. After Baby P died, it emerged that numerous incidents of suspected abuse were recorded but nothing was done. In the Sheffield case, the police and education and health authorities had suspicions as far back as the late 1970s without any decisive action being taken. Lincolnshire police also investigated allegations of abuse in 1997 after being contacted by the girls’ brother, but no action was taken. Repeated hospital visits also failed to raise suspicions. I find it hard to understand how girls could receive genetic counselling because 19 pregnancies from the father’s abuse resulted in miscarriages or serious developmental abnormalities, and such abnormalities had to be caused by the genetic similarity between the mother and the father of the children. How could this have happened without raising the social services alarm?
There is no point me commenting on the specifics of this case, or indeed any other serious incident of child abuse. Probably the only thing I can say with certainty is that there is no point wildly throwing accusations at people, even when such cases come to light. Personally I don’t accept this whole ’social workers always spend their time doing paperwork so child abuse goes undetected’ rubbish. Nevertheless, there are certain barriers that they face in carrying out their duties which the media sometimes forget. On one occasion, when the younger sister in the Sheffield case was asked outright if her father was the father of her child, her denials were accepted without further question. Easy as it is to criticise this in hindsight, it must have been difficult to challenge at the time. The (lack of) communication between local authorities is a generally accepted failure of local government and unfortunately social services is always hit hard. The father in the Sheffield case made a point of repeatedly moving house, making any abuse reported to schools (which it was on several occasions) impossible to track. Medical records show evidence of abuse from very early childhood, including heavy bruising all over the sisters’ bodies. Police were involved shortly afterwards when her younger sister was admitted to hospital with a broken arm. Claims from the wider family that she had been thrown across the room by her father were apparently disregarded. Police were contacted again when the older girl, aged 10, arrived several times at school in Sheffield with serious bruising and clearly hungry. Again, there were no consequences. In another incident, the older girl crayoned a picture of monsters in her bedroom, which caused suspicion among teachers, but she was transferred by her father to another school shortly afterwards.
Ed Balls’ response to the Baby P case was to expand the totally ineffective top-down Children’s Trust Boards across the UK, which is clearly going to make little difference. However, I wonder what solutions those on the Right (particularly anti-state libertarians) have to offer instead. Perhaps the Liberal Democrats will be able to propose a more sensible approach to all this madness, seeing as you tend to be stronger at a local level. The Local Government Association yesterday called for the establishment of a central national database of at-risk families, and much as I detest centralised solutions to problems I can see where they are coming from. It seems that abusive parents are seldom tracked and doing background checks on new children at school does not appear to be the norm. Are schools taking enough responsibility? Are social workers the only people worthy of blame in the Sheffield case? Do the police have enough power? Are hospital staff doing enough to protect children? I don’t know about you but I’m left with more questions than answers. The calls from the Right for a smaller state, less government interference and more independence for public services have always inspired me, but I am left wondering how this can be reconciled with protecting children for these horrors in future.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
“I find it hard to understand how girls could receive genetic counselling because 19 pregnancies from the father’s abuse resulted in miscarriages or serious developmental abnormalities, and such abnormalities had to be caused by the genetic similarity between the mother and the father of the children. How could this have happened without raising the social services alarm?”
Perhaps they are so used to seeing it in, err, ‘other communities’ they forgot for a second that this was a white, English family with no tradition of cousin marriage…?
Perhaps, but when you get to 19 pregnancies in the same family with the same problem I would have hoped (to no avail, it seems) that somebody would have raised an eyebrow.
We are all, without reference to political persuasion, deeply shocked by this case & that of baby P. We can only ask what we as individuals could or would have done to stop such acts of barbarity.
I would make three points but stress I admit to having no answer to such evil acts: -
1. Bigger & better databases and social services are no answer. They merely try to enhance the power of the state and by definition reduce the responsibility of the community. It intrigues me that it is always the “system” which is at fault, never the individual. If anyone is disciplined they are always the most junior operatives, never the most senior. Their very existence reflects the fact that there is something wrong with the society they are trying to protect.
2. In the case of baby P the state funded the whole vile operation – the mother was able to provide a home not only for her several children but lovers & friends & their families too. Why can’t individuals be made to carry the responsibilities for their own actions?
3. There is an interesting comparison to be made between the way the Austrian’s have handled the Fritzle case – openly – & our system of secret family courts. The Austrians seem to be excising the wound – very painfully – whereas we in Britain are not able to face and understand the full horror of what happened. I would like to see a much more open debate about the principles under which the family courts operate. Which then takes you back to baby P – what right has the mother got to have a new, secret, identity at vast public expense?
I see from the Daily Mail that we funded the lifestyle of the Sheffield rapist too….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/index.html
…so we knew enough to warrant paying him then!
And there was me thinking I couldn’t be more angry and sickened by what happened.
Well, it was a given he didn’t have a job. How else would he have found the time…?
And Labour wonder why this country is falling to pieces – could it be anything to do with the no-strings-attached-you-can-claim-for-abusing-your-daughters welfare culture?
Smaller government does not necessarily mean less of this sort of service. It’s always been a question of priorities.
But doesn’t smaller government restrict the possibility of a national register for at-risk children?
I’m not saying that I think a national register is definitely the right move, but don’t those who preach for a smaller (or essentially non-existent) state have to admit that their principles could leave a lot more children open to abuse if evil parents start shuffling around the country?
I wonder how long it will be before Jacqui Smith says that the solution to these scandals is . . . ID Cards.
Not sure even she could crowbar in another ‘Everyone wants ID cards’ con on this occasion. Besides, an ID card might have made it even easier for this scumbag to collect his benefits.
“I wonder what solutions those on the Right (particularly anti-state libertarians) have to offer instead”.
I’m a market-anarchist (a kind of libertarian) and I’m pleased to say I haven’t got a solution. Like all humans I’m not clever enough to be able to make plans for things as complex as human societies. Instead I’ve noticed a way of finding good solutions and good plans then optimising and spreading them. It’s called free markets. It works a bit like evolution in that poor quality and inefficient goods and services experience selection pressures against them.
We are currently engaging in quite serious, expensive and intrusive centralised, planned, state efforts to suppress these kinds of awful human acts and failing. I think we are failing quite miserably in fact. Do you think that by turning up the dial of state planning and action a few notches we’ll will do much better? Has this approach ever worked? That would be a big fat no. Not even for easy things like food production or making good cars.
State provision of “free” services has an effect rather like the so called “dumping” of subsidised foreign goods works, driving out other perhaps better solutions. Some of the better solution driven out are the natural, organic responses and mechanisms of families, friends, neighbours, communities and so on. It’s possible to contemplate a wide range of alternative responses (a Private Defence Agency might rescue the child as good advertising practice, or vigilantes may do the job or the daughters would have easier access to firearms or the NSPCC may have an armed unit or whatever). The essential point is really that there might be very many possible modes of response and that the unsuccessful ones would be selected against over time in a free market. It’s not about specifying the actual machinery that saves the child, but the machinery that gives rise to the child saving machinery.
As it is I can’t even buy a gun to shoot this c—.
Campbell’s back and the ’story’s’ ludicrous …
There’s been strong opposition from child welfare professionals to Nulabor’s proposed data base for children … Nulabor loathes any opposition and any voice other than it’s own; it’s use of the media for spin and manipulation is without bounds or constraint.
Sorry but I don’t buy the free market argument when it comes to social services.
By definition, social services would no longer exist if the government withdrew its support for vulnerable people. Yes, free markets encourage innovation but markets also have winners and losers – would you really be happy with ‘losers’ when it comes to child abuse? More importantly, changing from what we have to a completely free market would cause a massive disruption and could let thousands of children fall off the social services map.
I am totally opposed to a national database for every child, but isn’t there a good argument for having one just for at-risk children?
“but markets also have winners and losers – would you really be happy with ‘losers’ when it comes to child abuse?”
Yes. I want the bad, stupid, inefficient solutions to child abuse to “loose” and be abandoned. Currently such solutions (such as the application of bureaucracy) receive state subsidy and drive out better alternatives such as strong, local communities, charity and direct individual action.
“More importantly, changing from what we have to a completely free market would cause a massive disruption and could let thousands of children fall off the social services map.”
Just as the welfare state took time, effort, intelligence and compassion to put in place so it would to remove it. At the end of a decade or two there would be no state social services departments to even have a map. I would expect there to be a much wealthier, much freer and more responsible set of individuals and families, interwoven in stronger, richer more empowered communities and a much more diverse range of service providing agencies (schools ‘n hospitals) than we have now. Or we can fiddle at the margins with the appalling crap we have now and leave it a bit longer before facing up to the fact that the welfare state doesn’t work.
As much as a libertarian believes in decentralisation, I think the one role of government we do agree on is that of protection and basic living conditions.
It seems to me from what you say that this could have been halted ages ago had there been greater communication between counties and boroughs. This does not have to mean more government, just better communication systems and movement of information.
Many of us do not like to feel “followed” by hidden eyes, but certainly the case of children – whose abuse comes from their only point of reference – is different to that of individual adults.
I also wonder at the medical services in all of this (as in the Baby P case, where I read the doctor who failed to diagnose a broken spine -!- is being suspended… most of us would be out in a flash for much much less than that). Certainly there is a huge gap in the service provided for something like this to go unnoticed.
Can you get better movement of information and coordination without some kind of national database, I wonder…..
Unfortunately, some extreme libertarians think that even protection and upholding basic living conditions is not the role of government – so I’m glad that you see where I’m coming from!