Secrets and Silence

Activity: Participating in or organising an event typesParticipation in workshop, seminar, course

Description

Seminar by Beatrix Campbell on the Cleveland crisis. "I want to discuss with you a crisis of democracy, and of child safeguarding: the Cleveland child sexual abuse controversy. It was a defining moment in UK child protection politics when we were led to believe that paediatricians and social workers had wrongly identified signs of childhood rape. Scepticism infused the procedures and politics thereafter.

However, my research for Secrets and Silence, an update of the Cleveland crisis, found documents that reveal that we were misled, the National Archives reveal that we were misled. The government was made aware, the day before the Cleveland Inquiry Report was to be presented to Parliament, that independent experts has told the Department of Health the medical finding to be ‘correct in at least 80 per cent’ of the cases’, but it was decided that this would not be revealed because it could attract bids for extra resources.

When northern paediatricians revealed that the Cleveland Inquiry had been told that in more than 90 per cent of the cases the doctors had been correct, they were rebuked by the Department of Health.

This cover-up has framed child protection practice ever since – to the extent that, according to the Centre for Expertise in Child Sexual Abuse, child sexual abuse has virtually disappeared from child safeguarding training and practice."
Period19 Nov 2024
Event typeSeminar
LocationUnited KingdomShow on map
Degree of RecognitionNational