CHILDREN caught up in crimes equivalent to the Rochdale grooming scandal must be treated as victims, not as criminals, the Bishop of Manchester, Dr David Walker, has said.
Dr Walker was speaking within the House of Lords in the course of the Committee Stage of the Victims and Prisoners Bill, on Wednesday of last week, in support of an amendment that sought to introduce a transparent definition of kid criminal exploitation. This would come with any child under the age of 18 who was “encouraged, expected or required to participate in any activity that constitutes a criminal offence”.
Dr Walker spoke of “the adultification of youngsters”, whereby “a baby is treated as a grown-up after they are caught up in wrongdoing. Moreover, we all know that within the absence of a robust countervailing pressure, that is disproportionately applied to black children. This has been a long-standing concern of many civil-society organisations focused on countering the exploitation of youngsters.”
He continued: “In my very own diocese of Manchester, we’re still reeling from the invention of the extent of grooming gangs exploiting children for sexual crimes, most notably — but, I doubt, exclusively — in Rochdale. If the youngsters caught up in these crimes had been seen by the authorities primarily as victims, and treated as such, I feel that the gangs would have been dropped at justice far sooner.”
The amendment was not moved.
Dr Walker also spoke in support of an amendment, which he sponsored, that sought to be certain that victims of crime were aware of, and signposted to, a full range of specialist services.
“It shouldn’t be adequate for a service to exist; the people it is supposed to support should comprehend it is there, and have the option to access it,” he said. The intention of the amendment was “to make it clear that responsibility for ensuring that victims can access services doesn’t lie with the potential service user”. Too many victims, he said, were “simply not aware of what they must have the option to search for for help — or they can not access that assist in a format that meets their needs”.
Victims of crime needed to be put “in a spot from where they will access the service”. Simply handing them a leaflet was not enough: “It requires enduring engagement by service providers until the message could be heard, and which may be some considerable time later.”
The Bishop of Gloucester, the Rt Revd Rachel Treweek, spoke in support of two amendments sponsored by the Bishop of Bristol, the Rt Revd Vivienne Faull, who was unable to be within the chamber. The amendment sought to be certain that victims of recent slavery, and their children, were included within the Bill’s definition of victim.
There was “an urgent need”, she said, to increase victims’ rights to children of recent slavery, who, research suggested, could number as many as 5000.
The amendments weren’t moved.
During a debate on persistent absenteeism in schools, on the identical day, Bishop Treweek asked the Government to “put in place a statutory mechanism to discover and support children with a parent in prison, as this might significantly reduce school absenteeism for those families”. The charity Children Heard and Seen, which works with children whose parents are in prison, reported that its support services improved attendance significantly.
The Roman Catholic charity Pact, which supports prisoners and their families, this week urged peers to support an amendment to the Victims and Prisoners Bill that will require the Justice Secretary to publish data annually about children who’ve a parent in prison.
“Estimates suggest that around 312,000 children are affected by this issue every 12 months, but accurate and accessible information is currently not collected,” a press release said. “There isn’t any statutory safety net or system for identifying children whose primary carer has been faraway from their child’s life to serve a jail sentence.”
If children who’ve a parent in prison weren’t supported, the charity said, they were “more more likely to suffer from problems later in life, including mental health problems, homelessness, and poverty”.
