The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Children’s charity tells kids to speak up to end abuse
ChildLine to visit primary schools
Children’s charity the NSPCChas launched anew campaign that it hopes will lead to a “massive reduction” in child abuse.
Thescheme, calledNowI Know, is centred around preventative action and seeking to help children before “terrible and lasting” damage is done.
The initiative aims for ChildLine to visit every primary school across the UK once every twoyears to talk to children about abuse, how to protect themselves and where to get help if they need it.
The organisation’s new chief executive officer Peter Wanless said that people “do not want to tolerate child abuse”, and that lessons were to be learned from Jimmy Savile’s crimes.
He said: “We no longer need to convince them of the suffering it leads to, or the costs to future lives – Jimmy Savile’s crimes are one shocking illustration of the consequences when people do not speak up and are not heard.
“We must inspire everyone to believe that such horrors can be prevented and that they can help.
“Protection after the event, vital as it is, can’t attack the root causes of the problem.
“By helping children understand and identify abuseinanageappropriate way, we can encourage them to speak out earlier andprotect themselvesand others.
“We want children to be
“Such horrors can be prevented”
able to say ‘Now I Know’ - and not, ‘ I wish I had known’. We want everyone to play their partby looking out for children.”
The charity said on average, at least two children in every primary classroom will have suffered some form of abuse or neglect.
But ChildLine, a service provided by the NSPCC, said the majority of children who contact its helpline are aged over 11 and often talk about abuse that happened months or even years earlier.
The ChildLine Schools Service, which is delivered by trained volunteers and provided free to primary schools, aims to help children aged between nine and11 tounderstandabuse. The service has so far visited 270,895 children in 3,956 schools.
Mr Wanless added: “Through Now I Know we are responding to the vital shift to prevention that will enable us to empower children to prevent abuse from happening.”