Splintered Lives - Barnardo's

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chapter
7
Public records, research and other evidence
The Council of Europe (1991) note the paucity of reliable data on sexual exploitation and
Michael Hames commented: "We don't actually know how many children are being
abused in any category of crime",
As with all forms of child abuse some evidence on reported cases does exist, but a key
problem here is that where sexual exploitation is known about from the outset they
tend to be dealt with only by the police. Thus most of these cases never appear in child
protection/child abuse figures compiled by yearly by the Department of Health. Bernard
Gallagher, researcher on an ESRC funded survey of organised abuse, confirmed this:
their detailed surveys of police and social work case files in eight areas revealed limited
evidence of sexual exploitation, but it was made clear formally and informally that such
cases remained with serious crime, or vice, and rarely involved child protection teams.
We have been able to pull together some evidence on reported cases, but view this as
both limited and inadequate.
In England and Wales 22 cases involving child pornography were prosecuted in 1985,24
convictions resulted (including cases begun in 1984); in 1986 10 prosecutions, 11
convictions were recorded (ICCB, 1988). This suggests that where cases are prosecuted
they are usually successful, probably because they invariably involve 'material
evidence' in the form of photographs/films/videos and presumably more recently
computer discs, and possession of child pornography is now itself an offence.
Evidence is also collated of prostitution offenses, usually resulting a caution, where the
person concerned is under 16, they were:
Year Number of offenses
1984 32
1985 44
1986 37
1987 27
During the same period (1984-7) 2400 offenses involving 17-20 year odds were
recorded.
More recent figures compiled by The Children's Society (1994, re-calculated for this
report below in Tables One to Three) reveal that in 1991 five of 19 police authorities
accounted for nearly three quarters of cautions of girls under 16: Cleveland, Manchester,
Metropolitan, West Yorkshire, West Midlands. Whilst this could simply be the outcome
of large urban areas being particular foci for young runaways, the figures do show both