Family courts failing victims of child sexual abuse

The family justice system is among the institutions which have failed children sexually abused by relatives, according to a national review of cases where minors have suffered serious harm despite the involvement of safeguarding professionals.

Unlike the police or criminal justice system, which were also criticised in the review, family courts exist solely to protect children. Instead, the case analysis showed that some had been removed from their mothers and court-ordered into the hands of convicted child sex abusers.

The panel’s report, published on Tuesday, analysed 136 serious cases of familial sex abuse. It found over 75 per cent of the children abused were under the age of 12.

“We think there has been a diminution of attention paid to and understanding of this specific type of abuse,” Annie Hudson, chair of the National Safeguarding Review Panel, told Tortoise. 

The report is uncompromising about faults in the family justice system, stating “it appeared that [family] courts had at times failed to understand the risks they knew about. At other times, there had been inadequate investigation of the history of those concerned.”

Out of 10 cases where the family court had been involved prior to child sex abuse taking place:

• Four involved children being removed from their mother and placed in the care of a father with a conviction for child sex abuse. In one case, the father had been convicted of sexually abusing an underage child in care whom he went on to get pregnant. He was cautioned and put on the sex offenders register. She stayed with him and another baby was born. The father eventually sought and gained sole residency of both children and excluded the vulnerable mother entirely from their lives. The family court was not apprised of his previous conviction which, it seemed, had become “vague and unclear” in local safeguarding practitioners’ minds. He went on to sexually abuse the girls over several years. 
• In another case, concerns raised by a mother who believed her ex-partner was sexually abusing their child were dismissed on the basis that these were ‘malicious’ as she was contesting custody in the family court.
• Some children were abused in kinship care arrangements, including one where a family court had made a special guardianship order and in another, where a family assistance order was made. 

The Panel urged the President of the Family Division and CAFCASS (the Child and Family Court Advisory and Support Service) to improve decision making when children at risk of being sexually abused by a family member sought the protection of the family justice system.

Hudson emphasised that failures identified by the Review were evident across all institutions. She called on the government to create a national strategic plan to address the gaps, instigate urgent training for professionals, and ensure that robust leadership and accountability were put in place to keep the spotlight focused on the harms caused by child sex abuse within families.