Every thirty-two minutes a child in the UK is raped. That’s forty-five children a day or over 16,512 children each year. That’s 15 children per major town across the UK. And this figure accounts only for instances of rape reported to the police.
Rape is only one dimension of sexual crimes committed against children. The Childhood Sexual Abuse Centre reports that 84,687 cases of child sex abuse were recorded by police across England and Wales in the year 2023-24. This includes 7,365 instances of ‘grooming offences.’
Concern for the safety of children has re-emerged in public discourse following the publication earlier this year of new statistics about the ‘grooming gangs’—or ‘child rape gangs’—scandal. This is the first time this class of crime has attracted serious public attention since the Catholic Church confessed to their child sex abuse scandal in 2021. In both instances, however, the abuse and sexual exploitation of these children had been known by authorities since the 1980s. Childhood rape and sexual abuse do not make headlines, and even when acknowledged, it rarely spurs action to protect other children from becoming future victims.
It is not because these crimes are infrequent or there is a lack of appetite for lurid horror stories. The headlines are full of such stories every day. It is because there is a lack of appetite for these kinds of stories when they are present and ongoing, and when they could be happening on one’s own doorstep. This is one reason the Labour Party has been resisting commissioning a public inquiry into child sexual abuse (CSA) which is grooming gang-specific: these gangs operate in a great number of their own political strongholds.
Whilst political inconvenience can account for some reticence among police and government authorities, it does not account for the public’s own reluctance to discuss CSA. In the last week alone, national headlines disclosed several hideous crimes perpetrated against young girls in the UK:
The Daily Mail published, ‘Pakistani asylum seeker appears in court accused of raping eight-year-old girl and subjecting her to multiple sex attacks’ and ‘Two Afghan asylum seekers have been charged over the alleged rape of a 12-year-old girl in quiet Warwickshire town.’ The Sun published an article titled ‘Iranian national who raped girl, 13, is jailed for just 7-years’ and The Times reports ‘Police ‘cover-up’ of Afghan asylum seekers accused of raping girl aged 12.’
Other than a handful of demonstrations outside publicly funded migrant hotels, these headlines have inspired little action or public outcry. The minority that has campaigned outside hotels like the Bell Hotel in Epping in the last two weeks has been labelled ‘far-right’ and ‘racist’ by counter-protests and political commentators.
The accusation levelled by the Left against those on the Right protesting mass immigration is that they “did not care about child abuse victims until the perpetrators were immigrants.”
It is not an unfair assessment to say that those on the Left who counter-protest the Right have greater concern for innocent migrants than innocent children. The cry “not all migrants” insists that ‘bad migrants’ must be tolerated to ensure no ‘good migrant’ is turned away from the West. This burden of child rape and molestation is one which ‘society’ at large is willing to tolerate for the sake of other things. If one reads this accusation and thinks, ‘That’s a bit steep’ or ‘sweeping’ or ‘unjust’, I might say that one has not been paying enough attention to slogans like, “Shut up for the sake of diversity,” and headlines that read, “Amid class prejudice and sensitivities over race, Rochdale’s abused girls were failed.”
It is one thing to recognise there is a problem—as the Right has—and another to recognise that behind every statistic is a delicate young life that was savaged by an older life for the sake of a few minutes of carnal enjoyment. Being unable to imagine this is not a virtue—it’s a moral failure of which almost everyone is guilty.
“Raped at twelve years old.” No-one knows what that means, in practice, except those to whom it has happened. To some extent, I do not think this is a crime with which the public can empathise: there is a difference between saying, “Poor you!” and forcing oneself to become informed of the facts and attempting to recreate the horror in one’s mind.
It is not a crime which one can will the imagination to recreate with any vividness—it is both traumatising and taboo. There have been various depictions of rape and sexual assault in BBC and ITV dramas over the years—including “Three Girls,” based on the Rotherham ‘grooming gangs.’ But these fictional dramas tend to depict adult women and cannot hope to offer an adequate insight into the impact it has upon a child.
This inability to imagine what it is like for victims and survivors is a not insubstantial part of the reason why the police, MPs, and communities have turned their back on children who reveal their abuse to grown-ups. An inability to imagine what one is being told leads to incredulity towards the speaker. The burden of trying to empathise with a child who has experienced molestation or rape can be diminished if the story told by a child does not make immediate ‘sense.’ Children are known to be unreliable witnesses. Once that child becomes an adolescent, the burden of empathising evaporates almost entirely because the child is considered more self-governing and autonomous—more responsible for what they do and what happens to them.
The perception attached to teenage girls when it comes to flirtation and sex is that they are rather more knowing and intentional than testosterone-fuelled impulsive teenage boys. Whilst society’s stated moral stance is that a person is never to blame for being raped, the belief revealed in the treatment of victims by police, media and the UK legal system is that the victim often has a role to play in their own assault.
If she did not ‘lead her attacker on,’ then she was at least ‘silly’ enough to let herself get drunk, hang out with older men, or take drugs that impaired her ability to consent. This is not conjecture but the revealed mindset of police forces across the UK. In 2015, the Police and Crime Commissioner of South Yorkshire told BBC Radio 4 that,
I think we saw these girls not as victims but as troublesome young people out of control and willing participants. We saw it as child prostitution rather than child abuse, and I think that was broadly accepted and that’s why it all went wrong.
Whilst these authorities have since apologised for their rejection of victims, the statistics are clear: sexual abuse, sexual assault, and rape are not adverse experiences from which children ‘bounce back’. The CSEGG Inquiry reported that “eighty-five per cent of the sexually exploited children who were interviewed had either self-harmed or attempted suicide” as a result of their exploitation. 75% of child victims and survivors demonstrate significant symptoms of PTSD, with 57% suffering major depression and 58% suffering separation anxiety disorder.
It’s no surprise that a majority of CSA victims also demonstrate a marked difficulty in attracting and maintaining stable romantic relationships as they grow. Individuals will often undervalue their body and physical intimacy and engage in ‘high-risk’ sexual behaviour. Or the inverse occurs, where victims wrestle with a general fear of connection and intimacy and an avoidance of sexual contact.
The impact of childhood sexual abuse does not limit itself to mental vulnerability and dysfunctional sexual relationships. This kind of abuse seeps into and corrodes every aspect of daily life and stretches deep into adulthood.
CSA survivors are 2-4 times more likely to abuse substances in an attempt to cope with negative emotions and physical symptoms. They are less likely to attend university and are less likely to graduate if they do win a place on a course. Survivors are less likely to have a ‘skilled’ job and are 14% more likely to be unemployed than the general population, making them less likely to own a vehicle, stocks, and a home.
CSA survivors are three times more likely to be out of work due to sickness and disability. People with a history of CSA have a greater number of doctor and hospital contacts—20% higher than those who have not experienced CSA. As a result, survivors earn on average a staggering 6000 GBP less per annum than their peers.
If each of these figures were not devastating enough on their own, almost half of survivors can expect to experience an attack or sexual abuse again in life.
Some will read these figures as an assertion that victims and survivors of childhood sexual abuse do not overcome. This is not the case. But ‘normality’ is bloody difficult to achieve, and, for the majority of CSA survivors, it is an ongoing battle. It is projected that one in three survivors will demonstrate moderate to good mental health and functioning in adulthood. However, 50% will wrestle with ongoing mental health or social challenges, and 20% report “severe, chronic difficulties” across multiple domains of life. The notion, therefore, that the impact of these events on victims is short-lived, surmountable, limited, or unimportant is a dangerous lie society continues to tell itself.
Another dangerous lie is that childhood sexual abuse is uncommon. It is believed that one in ten people in the UK are survivors of child sexual abuse—15% of girls and 5% of boys. Someone you know and love lives with this lifelong burden, whether or not they have disclosed their previous abuse to you. Whilst around 70-80% of victims will appear ‘functional’ in casual day-to-day interactions, the burden of their abuse is there and is also a source of pain for their loved ones and a scourge upon society overall.
To this end, I do not care what brings attention to the issue of CSA. If it is the rapes by immigrants that capture the public imagination and help them understand the impact of CSA on victims, then so be it. Since this crime is being perpetrated at a disproportionate rate by individuals within this demographic, it is not a bad place to start when attempting to tackle the issue. It is not important how society gets started on confronting this type of crime, but how they go about putting an end to it—wherever it is happening and to whomever it is happening.
We’re Talking—But Still Missing What Survivors Endure
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Every thirty-two minutes a child in the UK is raped. That’s forty-five children a day or over 16,512 children each year. That’s 15 children per major town across the UK. And this figure accounts only for instances of rape reported to the police.
Rape is only one dimension of sexual crimes committed against children. The Childhood Sexual Abuse Centre reports that 84,687 cases of child sex abuse were recorded by police across England and Wales in the year 2023-24. This includes 7,365 instances of ‘grooming offences.’
Concern for the safety of children has re-emerged in public discourse following the publication earlier this year of new statistics about the ‘grooming gangs’—or ‘child rape gangs’—scandal. This is the first time this class of crime has attracted serious public attention since the Catholic Church confessed to their child sex abuse scandal in 2021. In both instances, however, the abuse and sexual exploitation of these children had been known by authorities since the 1980s. Childhood rape and sexual abuse do not make headlines, and even when acknowledged, it rarely spurs action to protect other children from becoming future victims.
It is not because these crimes are infrequent or there is a lack of appetite for lurid horror stories. The headlines are full of such stories every day. It is because there is a lack of appetite for these kinds of stories when they are present and ongoing, and when they could be happening on one’s own doorstep. This is one reason the Labour Party has been resisting commissioning a public inquiry into child sexual abuse (CSA) which is grooming gang-specific: these gangs operate in a great number of their own political strongholds.
Whilst political inconvenience can account for some reticence among police and government authorities, it does not account for the public’s own reluctance to discuss CSA. In the last week alone, national headlines disclosed several hideous crimes perpetrated against young girls in the UK:
The Daily Mail published, ‘Pakistani asylum seeker appears in court accused of raping eight-year-old girl and subjecting her to multiple sex attacks’ and ‘Two Afghan asylum seekers have been charged over the alleged rape of a 12-year-old girl in quiet Warwickshire town.’ The Sun published an article titled ‘Iranian national who raped girl, 13, is jailed for just 7-years’ and The Times reports ‘Police ‘cover-up’ of Afghan asylum seekers accused of raping girl aged 12.’
Other than a handful of demonstrations outside publicly funded migrant hotels, these headlines have inspired little action or public outcry. The minority that has campaigned outside hotels like the Bell Hotel in Epping in the last two weeks has been labelled ‘far-right’ and ‘racist’ by counter-protests and political commentators.
The accusation levelled by the Left against those on the Right protesting mass immigration is that they “did not care about child abuse victims until the perpetrators were immigrants.”
It is not an unfair assessment to say that those on the Left who counter-protest the Right have greater concern for innocent migrants than innocent children. The cry “not all migrants” insists that ‘bad migrants’ must be tolerated to ensure no ‘good migrant’ is turned away from the West. This burden of child rape and molestation is one which ‘society’ at large is willing to tolerate for the sake of other things. If one reads this accusation and thinks, ‘That’s a bit steep’ or ‘sweeping’ or ‘unjust’, I might say that one has not been paying enough attention to slogans like, “Shut up for the sake of diversity,” and headlines that read, “Amid class prejudice and sensitivities over race, Rochdale’s abused girls were failed.”
It is one thing to recognise there is a problem—as the Right has—and another to recognise that behind every statistic is a delicate young life that was savaged by an older life for the sake of a few minutes of carnal enjoyment. Being unable to imagine this is not a virtue—it’s a moral failure of which almost everyone is guilty.
“Raped at twelve years old.” No-one knows what that means, in practice, except those to whom it has happened. To some extent, I do not think this is a crime with which the public can empathise: there is a difference between saying, “Poor you!” and forcing oneself to become informed of the facts and attempting to recreate the horror in one’s mind.
It is not a crime which one can will the imagination to recreate with any vividness—it is both traumatising and taboo. There have been various depictions of rape and sexual assault in BBC and ITV dramas over the years—including “Three Girls,” based on the Rotherham ‘grooming gangs.’ But these fictional dramas tend to depict adult women and cannot hope to offer an adequate insight into the impact it has upon a child.
This inability to imagine what it is like for victims and survivors is a not insubstantial part of the reason why the police, MPs, and communities have turned their back on children who reveal their abuse to grown-ups. An inability to imagine what one is being told leads to incredulity towards the speaker. The burden of trying to empathise with a child who has experienced molestation or rape can be diminished if the story told by a child does not make immediate ‘sense.’ Children are known to be unreliable witnesses. Once that child becomes an adolescent, the burden of empathising evaporates almost entirely because the child is considered more self-governing and autonomous—more responsible for what they do and what happens to them.
The perception attached to teenage girls when it comes to flirtation and sex is that they are rather more knowing and intentional than testosterone-fuelled impulsive teenage boys. Whilst society’s stated moral stance is that a person is never to blame for being raped, the belief revealed in the treatment of victims by police, media and the UK legal system is that the victim often has a role to play in their own assault.
If she did not ‘lead her attacker on,’ then she was at least ‘silly’ enough to let herself get drunk, hang out with older men, or take drugs that impaired her ability to consent. This is not conjecture but the revealed mindset of police forces across the UK. In 2015, the Police and Crime Commissioner of South Yorkshire told BBC Radio 4 that,
Whilst these authorities have since apologised for their rejection of victims, the statistics are clear: sexual abuse, sexual assault, and rape are not adverse experiences from which children ‘bounce back’. The CSEGG Inquiry reported that “eighty-five per cent of the sexually exploited children who were interviewed had either self-harmed or attempted suicide” as a result of their exploitation. 75% of child victims and survivors demonstrate significant symptoms of PTSD, with 57% suffering major depression and 58% suffering separation anxiety disorder.
It’s no surprise that a majority of CSA victims also demonstrate a marked difficulty in attracting and maintaining stable romantic relationships as they grow. Individuals will often undervalue their body and physical intimacy and engage in ‘high-risk’ sexual behaviour. Or the inverse occurs, where victims wrestle with a general fear of connection and intimacy and an avoidance of sexual contact.
The impact of childhood sexual abuse does not limit itself to mental vulnerability and dysfunctional sexual relationships. This kind of abuse seeps into and corrodes every aspect of daily life and stretches deep into adulthood.
CSA survivors are 2-4 times more likely to abuse substances in an attempt to cope with negative emotions and physical symptoms. They are less likely to attend university and are less likely to graduate if they do win a place on a course. Survivors are less likely to have a ‘skilled’ job and are 14% more likely to be unemployed than the general population, making them less likely to own a vehicle, stocks, and a home.
CSA survivors are three times more likely to be out of work due to sickness and disability. People with a history of CSA have a greater number of doctor and hospital contacts—20% higher than those who have not experienced CSA. As a result, survivors earn on average a staggering 6000 GBP less per annum than their peers.
If each of these figures were not devastating enough on their own, almost half of survivors can expect to experience an attack or sexual abuse again in life.
Some will read these figures as an assertion that victims and survivors of childhood sexual abuse do not overcome. This is not the case. But ‘normality’ is bloody difficult to achieve, and, for the majority of CSA survivors, it is an ongoing battle. It is projected that one in three survivors will demonstrate moderate to good mental health and functioning in adulthood. However, 50% will wrestle with ongoing mental health or social challenges, and 20% report “severe, chronic difficulties” across multiple domains of life. The notion, therefore, that the impact of these events on victims is short-lived, surmountable, limited, or unimportant is a dangerous lie society continues to tell itself.
Another dangerous lie is that childhood sexual abuse is uncommon. It is believed that one in ten people in the UK are survivors of child sexual abuse—15% of girls and 5% of boys. Someone you know and love lives with this lifelong burden, whether or not they have disclosed their previous abuse to you. Whilst around 70-80% of victims will appear ‘functional’ in casual day-to-day interactions, the burden of their abuse is there and is also a source of pain for their loved ones and a scourge upon society overall.
To this end, I do not care what brings attention to the issue of CSA. If it is the rapes by immigrants that capture the public imagination and help them understand the impact of CSA on victims, then so be it. Since this crime is being perpetrated at a disproportionate rate by individuals within this demographic, it is not a bad place to start when attempting to tackle the issue. It is not important how society gets started on confronting this type of crime, but how they go about putting an end to it—wherever it is happening and to whomever it is happening.
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