Tag Archives: Disclosure

‘I believe you’: 3 difficult words

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It has been said that one of the most powerful things that you can say to an adult survivor of nonrecent child abuse is ‘I believe you’.

Why is this so difficult for people? Because in my experience it is almost impossible for people to say, at least people that haven’t experienced it for themselves. On disclosing nonrecent abuse I have been met with everything from ‘Well I don’t disbelieve you’ through a silent, confused look to ‘You must have dreamt it’ and I wont even go into the ‘well all teenage boys are up for it’ type responses!

So why is it so difficult for people?

It maybe that my experience of childhood abuse happened in the home, by a parent. This is something that while making up forty plus percent of abuse cases is something that go against deeply held and engrained beliefs. The belief that family is safe, that parents are loving and that because the vast majority of cases reported on are ‘stranger’ abusers then if it does happen in the family then it must be very very rare indeed.

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Posted in Life as a Survivor

After Reporting Non-Recent Abuse: A Personal Journey Pt 4

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No Further Action: The impact of being told that there isn’t enough evidence to peruse the case.

Research suggests that something like only 5% of reports of historical abuse ever make it to court and then a conviction rate of around 50% means that when reporting historic abuse to the police you really do need to set your expectations correspondingly low.
I knew this when I went to the police and reported what had happened to me. I knew that given the time that had passed, the lack of corroborating evidence and my limited memory the chances of my report going anywhere were exceedingly low. I had, I believed prepared my self for the inevitable.

 
I told myself that getting a prosecution wasn’t the main reason for disclosing, which in truth it wasn’t. I repeatedly told myself, before and after the disclosure that nothing would come of it and not to expect anything other than to be heard. This was about me formally acknowledging to myself and the world the truth of what had been done to me and the impact it had had. It wasn’t about vengeance, justice, retribution or even preventing further abuse taking place.

 
The police them selves never made any promises or raised expectations. The promised to take my disclosure seriously and to investigate fully but did say hat the nature of non recent abuse and my case in particular made the investigation, and obtaining sufficient evidence, difficult.

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Posted in Life as a Survivor, Police

After Reporting Non-Recent Abuse: A Personal Journey Pt2

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One of the most difficult thing for an adult survivor of Childhood abuse to do is disclose what happened to him as a child, and the impact it has had on his life.

So having recently made that step to not only disclose but to make the formal complaint I want to share the journey.

Today I continue the Journey with you sharing some updates and considering the response of Avon & Somerset Constabulary to being requested to engage with me to further the investigation.

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Posted in Life as a Survivor, Police

Historic / non-recent Child Abuse Investigations. The case for a safety critical system

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What is a safety critical system

A life-critical system or more commonly a safety-critical system is a system whose failure or malfunction may result in one (or more) of the following outcomes: death or serious injury to people. loss or severe damage to equipment/property.

But a more intuitive explanation may be

with the consequences of failure .If the failure of a system could lead to consequences that are determined to be unacceptable, then the system is safety-critical. In essence, a system is safety-critical when we depend on it for our well being. [1]

So does an investigation by the police constitute a safety critical system?

Despite it being rather counter intuitive, how can an investigation into a report of a crime that may have happened 10, 20 or more years ago, be safety critical and does it fit the into a reasonable definition of a system anyhow.
I would argue that yes it does meet both of these requirements.

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After Reporting Non-Recent Abuse: A Personal Journey Pt1

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One of the most difficult thing for an adult survivor of Childhood abuse to do is disclose what happened to him as a child, and the impact it has had on his life.

Often this first disclosure is to a friend, a medical professional or partner. Going to the Police and making a ‘formal complaint’ is another thing altogether. This is particularly true when the survivor had good reasons for believing that there is little or no chance of the abuser being brought ‘to book’ and a ‘good’ ending to the experience.

So having recently made that step to not only disclose but to make the formal complaint I want to share the journey.

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Posted in Life as a Survivor

Why I Reported Non-Recent Abuse to the Police

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While there is a lot of talk, and I hope action, around detecting abuse so that it can be stopped and the child given help and protection there is less understanding of why adults don’t report abuse to the police once they are adults.

Some recent statistics from the British Crime survey suggest that the top reasons adults don’t disclose, and make formal complaints to the police, is embarrassment and thinking that they either wouldn’t be believed and / or that the police wouldn’t do anything about it. [1]

These reasons are certainly high on my list but there are others that are as difficult for me to deal with.

Possibly top is fear. Fear that my abuser, a family member, will react negatively to it and punish me. Even though I have no contact with the person, know that there is nothing left that they can do to hurt me and they already know I have talked to Social Services about it that fear is still there.

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Somerset: Policy on Disclosing Identity of a Survivor

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Somerset Council has now responded to my request for details on their policy regarding disclosing the identity of adult survivors of child abuse.

Interestingly while they do not  have a specific policy they do note that they have to work under the Care Act 2014 and Care and Support Statutory Guidance 2016, the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 and the Data Protection
Act 1998.

This is an interesting repose, acknowledging as it does that there is some legal requirements on them even if they are not specificity related to adult survivors of child abuse.

The general policy was described as

We take the decision to disclose the identity of people who disclose historic

 

sexual abuse
very seriously. This would not be a decision that Somerset County Council

 

takes in isolation;
we would work with relevant partner organisations to decide what

 

information should be
disclosed, to whom and by whom. The information disclosed depends on the nature of the criminal investigation and is dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

One concern I have is that when asked what support & protection was be provided should a disclosure take place the response didn’t seem to acknowledge the needs of the survivor concentrating on the risk to any investigation

The decision to disclose the ‘complainant’s’ details to the alleged abuser will be
fully risk assessed as part of a multi-agency strategy discussion to ascertain the parameters
of this disclosure and the impact it could have on an investigation.

You can read the full response in this PDF  somerset-foi-disclosure

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Posted in Freedom Of Information