Expert calls for Home Office to lose powers but councils say they are struggling to cope
The UK’s independent anti-slavery commissioner has called for decision-making on child trafficking cases to be taken away from the Home Office.
Sara Thornton told the Independent that local authorities should take over the powers because they are better placed to provide subsequent support for the child.
Continue reading...Gemma Watts, 21, faces jail after pleading guilty to seven sexual assault and grooming charges
A woman posed as a teenage boy to sexually assault up to 50 girls as young as 14 after grooming them online, police have revealed.
Gemma Watts, 21, travelled the country by train to meet the youngsters, who believed they were in a relationship with a boy close to their own age.
Continue reading...Brutal winter, poor healthcare and limited food raises fears for welfare of infant, born to Sydney woman Rayan Hamdoush
An Australian woman has given birth to a baby boy in the al-Hawl camp in Syria, prompting revived calls for Australia to rescue 67 nationals still held in the camp.
Rayan Hamdoush, 24, from western Sydney, was pregnant when she entered al-Hawl. She gave birth to the boy on 30 November. The boy’s father, Samer Hajj Obeid, also from Sydney, is missing.
Continue reading...Discrimination against girls is still entrenched in the laws of many African countries. Shocking examples are easy to find
I love my job, but it can be pretty depressing. I’ve spent the past year researching and writing the first-ever continental report of the routine, blatant discrimination suffered by African girls.
The fact that girls and women are treated as inferior citizens is hardly news, except that this report reveals the extent to which gender discrimination is frequently state-sanctioned – embedded into the laws, policies and practices of many African nations. We’re talking about legal, institutional discrimination with its roots in a deeply gendered and patriarchal society. We are also talking about the denial of respect for the dignity of the African girl.
Continue reading...South Korean-based site accepted digital currency for access to videos, with victims rescued in US, UK and Spain
Hundreds of people have been arrested in a worldwide operation over a South Korea-based dark web child sexual abuse site that sold videos for digital cash.
Officials from the United States, Britain and South Korea described the network as one of the largest operations they had encountered to date.
Continue reading...I’m walking through the security cordon that leads into Kadhimiyah, one of Shia Islam’s holiest sites. I’m in a queue, along with dozens of pilgrims who have come from all over the world to pay their respects to the shrine of Imam Kadhim. At the gate, a female security guard pats me down and looks into my handbag, a reminder that the story I’m reporting on here isn’t going to be easy.
As I walk around the market stalls surrounding the shrine, I notice the many “marriage offices” dotted around the mosque, which are licensed to perform Sharia marriages. I’d received tips that some clerics here were performing short-term mutaa [pleasure] marriages, a practice – illegal under Iraqi law – whereby a men can pay for a temporary wife, with the officiating cleric receiving a cut.
Continue reading...Ola Salem discusses the divorce case of Princess Haya, who fled to London. Why do royal women keep trying to escape the emirate? Plus John Marsden on the growing trend of toxic parenting
Over the summer, Princess Haya, the estranged wife of the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, asked an English court for a forced marriage protection order relating to their children and a non-molestation order after the breakdown of their marriage.
The Guardian reporter Haroon Siddique describes the court scene to Rachel Humphreys, while the journalist Ola Salem discusses previous attempts by two other princesses to flee the Dubai royal family, and looks at why this case is so significant for women in the emirate.
Carl Beech and the Metropolitan police’s investigation have done a great disservice to all victims of this terrible crime (Report, 27 July). There are many problems concerning the investigation of historical child sex abuse. The gathering of facts can be almost impossible as the passage of time may have erased any evidence, and what does survive needs properly resourced and trained officers to bring it to court. I wonder if the taboo and heinousness of this subject conspire to for ever hold it in an investigative system lacking in rigour, ingenuity and the will to make change.
I also see that Beech claimed criminal injury compensation to the tune of £22,000. How was this possible? There is something seriously wrong when conviction rates are this low and innocent people have their lives shattered. Is it not time we admitted that this crime needs specialist units who are well trained and resourced, so that when a child or adult makes the brave decision to report, they can be supported by a system they can trust, and see justice done.
Sara Newman
Groombridge, East Sussex
Aid worker Peter Dalglish, 62, sentenced for abusing two boys, aged 12 and 14
A former United Nations official has been jailed for sexually abusing children in Nepal after a trial that underscored the country’s growing appeal for foreign paedophiles.
Peter John Dalglish, 62, a high-profile humanitarian worker from Canada, was sentenced on Monday to two separate terms of nine years and seven years after being convicted last month.
Continue reading...Police’s top child protection officer says fines would be ‘drop in the ocean’ to tech firms
A public boycott of social media may be the only way to force companies to protect children from abuse, the country’s leading child protection police officer has said.
Simon Bailey, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on child protection, said tech companies had abdicated their duty to safeguard children and were only paying attention due to fear of reputational damage.
Continue reading...All Catholic priests and nuns will be required to report abuse and cover-ups by superiors
Pope Francis has issued a groundbreaking law requiring all Catholic priests and nuns around the world to report clergy sexual abuse and cover-ups by their superiors to church authorities, in a fresh effort to hold the Catholic hierarchy accountable for failing to protect their flocks.
The new edict provides whistleblower protections for anyone making a report and requires all dioceses to have a system in place to receive the claims confidentially. It outlines procedures for conducting preliminary investigations when the accused is a bishop, cardinal or religious superior.
Continue reading...Medical experts and victims say practice, deemed by perpetrators to protect girls from sexual harassment and rape, is child abuse
Comfort was nine when her older sister told her she was going to flatten her chest with a stone to prevent her breasts from developing too soon, telling her it was for her own good.
“She said it’s so that girls don’t get abused as children or as teenagers,” Comfort said.
Continue reading...Chair of inquiry ‘deeply disturbed’ by allegations from young offender institutions
Children in custody are still not safe from sexual abuse after more than 1,000 attacks were alleged from 2009 to 2017, a statutory inquiry has found.
Prof Alexis Jay, the chairwoman of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, said on Thursday she was deeply disturbed by what the inquiry found as it published a report that described the scale of alleged abuse in young offender institutions (YOIs) and secure training centres (STCs) as “shockingly high”.
Continue reading...Public doubt around verdict may deter victims from seeking justice, says head of child sexual abuse legal service
The head of a child sexual abuse legal service has slammed commentators who have publicly doubted the verdict in the George Pell trial, warning it sends an “incredibly damaging message to survivors”.
On Thursday Warren Strange, the executive officer of Knowmore legal service, told a parliamentary inquiry he expects the “unprecedented” publicity around the Pell case to drive a spike in claims but media commentary doubting the verdict may deter victims from seeking justice.
Continue reading...Sex education shake-up in secondary schools means learning about grooming, forced marriage and domestic abuse
The dangers of female genital mutilation will be taught to all secondary school pupils in England from 2020 as part of a bold shake-up of relationships and sex education.
New proposals will be presented to parliament on Monday which would see the curriculum reformed to include relationship education for primary age pupils and health education for pupils of all ages in state-funded schools. Secondary school pupils will also be taught about grooming, forced marriage and domestic abuse.
Continue reading...Cardinals around the world are joining the pope at a forum on tackling abuse. But only radical reform can solve the crisis
When the first meeting in the Vatican of cardinals from around the world to discuss clerical sexual abuse was announced, hopes were high among Catholics. Finally, it seemed, the courageous, mould-breaking Pope Francis was going to force through root-and-branch reforms to tackle the scandal that has done such damage to the reputation of the institution he leads.
Yet even before 180 cardinals assemble on Thursday in Rome for this unprecedented four-day summit, the chance of such prayers being answered is looking increasingly remote. The Vatican press office has been downplaying the event as simply an opportunity to remind senior clerics of the patchy efforts that global Catholicism has made this past quarter of a century to address the thousands upon thousands of cases of priests molesting, abusing and traumatising children in their care.
Continue reading...Home Office says ritual is child abuse and should be prosecuted under assault laws
The government has vowed to confront the practice of breast-ironing, calling it child abuse and saying the police should prosecute offenders under assault laws.
In a written parliamentary statement following Guardian revelations that the abusive practice was spreading in the UK, the Home Office said it was committed to challenging the cultural attitudes behind all “honour-based abuse”, but gave no indication it would legislate.
Continue reading...Leading QC Alex Carlile hopes to force wider scrutiny of the practice after Guardian revealed ‘dozens’ of girls subjected to abusive custom
A British peer is to table questions in parliament on the secretive practice of “breast-ironing”, after the Guardian revealed that the abusive intervention is spreading in the UK.
Alex Carlile, one of the UK’s leading QCs who is a former deputy high court judge and a member of the House of Lords, told the Guardian that he hoped to trigger a wider scrutiny of the practice in the UK.
Continue reading...Practice that aims to slow girls’ physical development is both ineffective and dangerous, say doctors
In a quiet suburban house on the outskirts of a city in northern England, Maureen* – a mother of two in her late 30s – sits cradling a large dark stone in the palm of her hand.
She had just been using it to crush spices for a family meal. But a few years ago, she was using it for a very different purpose.
Continue reading...Perpetrators consider it a traditional measure to stop unwanted male attention
An African practice of “ironing” a girl’s chest with a hot stone to delay breast formation is spreading in the UK, with anecdotal evidence of dozens of recent cases, a Guardian investigation has established.
Community workers in London, Yorkshire, Essex and the West Midlands have told the Guardian of cases in which pre-teen girls from the diaspora of several African countries are subjected to the painful, abusive and ultimately futile practice.
Continue reading...