‘Can we claim we are a safer, happier place?’
As Children in Need marks its 40th year, Dame Esther Rantzen says the young need us more than ever
Forty years after the first Children in Need telethon, the names of murdered children toll like mourning bells: Victoria Climbié, Daniel Pelka, Baby P. These are the stories we cannot bear to read. Stories of secret, avoidable suffering we humans inflicted upon our own young. What kind of animal are we?
Even today, neglect and domestic violence is far more prevalent than many realise – a problem that has reared its head this year, with children imprisoned in violent or addictive households under the coronavirus restrictions. Calls to Childline from children reporting domestic violence rose by 50 per cent during lockdown.
Yet alongside such stories are tales of compassion and generosity, as the British public donate vast sums of money each year – a total of £1,493,556,399 to Children in Need alone since it began in 1980, and more to other charities that protect and support vulnerable children. And it is impossible to calculate the countless hours spent by professionals and volunteers dedicating heart and soul to putting children’s lives back together, enabling them to overcome pain and fulfil their potential.
Looking back at that first Children in Need in 1980, so much has changed. I remember the early films in the programme mainly featured children with disabilities, or who needed toys or playgrounds or other practical help. Abuse was hardly mentioned. And yet we now know that neglect was destroying many children’s lives, that sexual abuse was rife in children’s homes, in schools, in churches and in families. Nobody spoke of it, so few children ever dared ask for help.
I remember being told by a charity worker in the Eighties: “Even if they do talk about it, children aren’t believed. These cases never come to court. The only evidence a jury will believe is the dead body of a child.”
Not that the juries were to blame.
Back then, they were routinely warned by judges that it was “ridiculous” to rely upon the word of a child. I met a high court judge who described the way a teenage girl had been cross examined. She had d accused her stepfather of sexual ual abuse, and his defence lawyer in n turn had accused her of promiscuity, y, shaming her until she broke down in n tears in the witness box. The judge thought ought she had been caught out in a lie. . Her social worker thought she had been destroyed by the abuse she suffered ffered in court.
But that snapshot of a crying child was the only glimpse pse the judge ever saw of her.
Children told me that the experience of giving ing evidence was so shaming and frightening, they would say anything ng to escape. One boy y said that speaking g in court, face to face ace with his abuser, with the abuser’s family in the courtroom, had been worse than the original abuse.
In 1990, I had to o give evidence myself, when teachers in a boarding school for boys, Crookham am Court School in Newbury, ry, were tried for sexually abusing their pupils. One of the co-founders of the e school, Roy Cotton, had left eft to become a priest in n the Church of England, d, where he blithely sexually abused boys for years. That’s Life! ife! had exposed the school, ol, then owned by a millionaire naire paedophile who employed mployed at least three abusive e teachers.
I was called to give evidence, and crossssexamined. I explained ined to the jury what asking children to give evidence in open court felt like. “I am a married woman,” I said, “and nd I’m an adult. Everything my husband and I do together is legal. But if you asked sked me exactly what we did last night, I would find it embarrassing and humiliating. What has happened to these children is illegal, painful and shaming to remember. How difficult must it be for them to talk about in this public place?”
The teachers were convicted – the climate was changing. Survivors were speaking out, at last. Childline had been launched in 1986, giving them a lifeline, a safe way to speak about their suffering. Over the next 10 years, the
BBC created a series of campaigning documentaries, under the title Childwatch. Over and over again we heard from survivors. “I was never afraid of going home from school in the dark alone, alone,” o one woman told us, “of being raped o or mugged, because I knew what wa was waiting for me at home was far worse than that.”
In 1999, Ch Cherie Blair QC chaired a Childline conf conference, “Hearing Children’s Voi Voices”, and invited her friend Hillary Rodham Clinton to be our keynote s speaker. The conference was intended for lawyers who still did not realise the desperate need for reform. Speak Speakers from Israel and Norway expla explained how, in their jurisdictions jurisdictions, children were interview interviewed by experts outside the courtroo courtroom, to limit the ordeal. Grad Gradually, some of the barriers to justic justice were taken down. The sex offe offenders register was created in 1997. Juries are no longer warned to disbelieve childre children. Video links and screens began to be used in courtrooms to prot protect child witnesses from having to confront their abusers while th they describe what has occurr occurred. I have seen a skilful police interview with a tw two-year-old toddler d described by the Court of A Appeal as convincing ev evidence, and so it was. A n nine-year-old friend of mine gave evidence via a video link which resulted in the conviction of a neig neighbour who had abused her an and her sister for years. That child b believes, rightly, that she was able to protect generations more ch children from his abuse. But st still, these tragic cases happen. The deaths of Climbié, Pelka an and Baby P show how devious murderous abusers can be, and how overloaded and overwo overworked some social workers can bec become.
Fac Facts emerge slowly. Jimmy Savile had a hero’s funeral in 2012 2012, his crimes only revealed aft after his death. Churches are on only now recognising how man many children have suffered in thei their care. And there are other, still hidden, forms of abuse – and children are very often the unnoticed victims. The coronavirus has impris imprisoned these children. At Childlin Childline, we know, for some, school was their only safe haven – and w when the schools were shut, th they were confined to their homes homes, with no escape. A report
Few children ever dared ask for help
this week showed how, in lockdown, potty-trained children regressed back into nappies, while others forgot how to use a knife and fork.
Meanwhile, the lockdown in our universities has intensified the stress and anxiety in young people’s lives. We may be on the brink of a vaccine against the virus, but what protection will there be for these young people who have suffered mentally and emotionally?
The last 40 years have been a time of real progress in child protection – we have at least learnt to listen to children, in our courts, and in society. But given the impact of technology, the proliferation of pornography, of sexting, of county lines and grooming, can we claim we are a safer, happier place for children to grow up in?
If the virus has given us time to reassess our lives, this is surely something we must reflect upon: the fact that our children still need us more than ever.