The recent rescue of 458 children and 138 adults from the Gran Familia refuge in the city of Zamora in the state of Michoacán is another grim illustration of the plight of many unprotected and vulnerable…
After days of heated debate over her appointment, Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss has stood down as the head of a major inquiry into allegations of historic child abuse. Criticism of her establishment…
So it begins: two inquiries, both with the blessing of home secretary Theresa May, have been charged with getting to the bottom of how horrific allegations of child abuse by the elite and powerful were…
The home secretary, Theresa May, has announced a major independent inquiry into claims that for decades, accusations and evidence of child abuse were dismissed, ignored and mishandled by many of Britain’s…
When entertainer Rolf Harris was convicted of 12 cases of indecent assault there was first shock from his many fans in Australia and overseas, then a sense of disbelief that a man who won the hearts of…
After a lengthy trial, a jury has found entertainer and TV presenter Rolf Harris guilty of 12 counts of indecent assault. On July 4 2014, he was sentenced to a custodial sentence of five years and nine…
The latest report on Jimmy Savile’s crimes in 28 NHS hospitals over the course of several decades have added more unspeakable allegations to the BBC DJ’s already unparalleled list of abuses. Among them…
Yet another horrific story of historic abuse has emerged in Ireland. In what has become a disturbing pattern, it was mostly the international media who reported that the remains of 796 children and babies…
Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard, but Harry had always been small and skinny for his age … [he] had a thin face, knobbly knees … and wore round glasses held together with a…
With the media once again full of stories of a celebrity facing accusations of committing historical child sexual abuse, it is important that we keep sight of the risks young people face today and of realistic…
When last we saw our fearless antihero, Don Draper, he was standing face-to-face with his crumbling, dilapidated childhood home. Surprisingly, his three children were by his side as he took these first…
It seems there is an emerging cross-party consensus on the need to change the criminal law on child neglect in this country. The most recent manifestation of this new consensus are new proposals to criminalise…
A newly proposed “Cinderella law” seeks to make parents’ “emotional abuse” of their children a criminal offence in England and Wales. Under it, parents who deliberately ignore children, subject them to…
Over the past few years, policy-makers, academics and practitioners have paid more and more attention to children who are trafficked into and within the UK. But while children are trafficked for various…
In the space of just over a year, two women in Greater Manchester have killed themselves because of their experiences as complainants in sexual offences cases. The challenge this poses to the criminal…
The blame game about child abuse in the Catholic Church continues. While the Vatican are to give due consideration to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s demand to remove offenders and hand them…
Last week, Woody Allen’s adopted daughter Dylan Farrow published an open letter in The New York Times accusing him of child sexual abuse. These allegations were first aired in the early 1990s in the context…
For the first time, children will soon be able to bring complaints of human rights violations to the United Nations. Although the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child has been in operation since…
The serious case review into the deaths of the six children who died in a house fire started by their parents Mick and Mairead Philpott has concluded that their deaths “could not have been predicted or…