History
In the years prior to the scandal, levels of reported child abuse in the Cleveland area were consistent with those of other parts of the United Kingdom. [1] However, in 1987, during the period of February to July, many children living in Cleveland were removed from their homes by social service agencies and diagnosed as sexually abused. [2] The 121 diagnoses were made by two paediatricians at a Middlesbrough hospital, Marietta Higgs and Geoffrey Wyatt, using reflex anal dilation for diagnosis (later discredited). [2] When there were not enough foster homes in which to place the allegedly abused children, social services began to house the children in a ward at the local hospital. [1]
Later, the test being used to establish child abuse was contested by the area police surgeon, and cooperation between the social workers, police and hospital doctors involved in diagnosis began to disintegrate. [1] There was public concern regarding the practices being used by the local social service agency, such as the removal of children from their homes in the middle of the night. [1] In May 1987, parents marched from the hospital where their children were being held to the local newspaper. The resulting media coverage caused the social service agency's practices to receive public scrutiny and criticism. [1] Controversy increased when Mr Justice Hollis ruled that 19 of 20 children who had been made wards of the court should be returned to their parents due to the weakness of the medical evidence.
The Butler-Sloss report was commissioned by the Secretary of State for Social Services in July 1987 and published in 1988. [2] The report was led by Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss and it concluded that most of the diagnoses were incorrect. [2] Ninety-four of the 121 children were returned to their homes. [2] [3] An editorial in The Lancet concluded: "The kindest description of Dr Marietta Higgs and Dr Geoffrey Wyatt would be to say that they were naive, but naivety should not number among a consultant paediatrician's characteristics. By their bull-headed approach, Dr Higgs and Dr Wyatt ... have set back the cause they sought to promote". [4] In July 1988, six MPs tabled a House of Commons motion for charges of indecent assault and conspiracy to be brought against Higgs and Wyatt. [4]
On 14 October 1991, the Children Act 1989 was implemented in full as a result of the Cleveland child abuse scandal and other child related events that preceded it. [5] [1]
In 1997, a controversial television documentary, The Death of Childhood, claimed that "independent experts under the guidance of the Department of Health later found that at least 70 per cent of the diagnoses" were correct. [6] [7] According to the documentary, two years after the scandal a number of children were again referred to social services and determined to be at risk for child abuse. [7]
In February 2007, Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, who was the regional medical officer at the time of the scandal, said of the original diagnoses: "The techniques that have been used have not been reliable and it does look as if some mistakes have been made". [8] A few days later, two of the children who had been the focus of the scandal asked the Middlesbrough police for an investigation of their 1987 experience.
The Satanic panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse starting in the United States in the 1980s, spreading throughout many parts of the world by the late 1990s, and persisting today. The panic originated in 1980 with the publication of Michelle Remembers, a book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient, Michelle Smith, which used the discredited practice of recovered-memory therapy to make sweeping lurid claims about satanic ritual abuse involving Smith. The allegations, which arose afterward throughout much of the United States, involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. In its most extreme form, allegations involve a conspiracy of a global Satanic cult that includes the wealthy and elite in which children are abducted or bred for human sacrifices, pornography, and prostitution.
Sir Stuart Bell was a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Middlesbrough from the 1983 general election until his death in 2012. He was known as the longest serving Second Church Estates Commissioner, serving in this role during the entire period of Labour government from 1997–2010.
Middlesbrough is a town in the Middlesbrough unitary authority borough of North Yorkshire, England. The town lies near the mouth of the River Tees and north of the North York Moors National Park. The built-up area had a population of 148,215 at the 2021 UK census. It is the largest town of the wider Teesside area, which had a population of 376,633 in 2011.
The McMartin preschool trial was a day care sexual abuse case in the 1980s, prosecuted by the Los Angeles District Attorney, Ira Reiner. Members of the McMartin family, who operated a preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, were charged with hundreds of acts of sexual abuse of children in their care. Accusations were made in 1983, with arrests and the pretrial investigation taking place from 1984 to 1987 and trials running from 1987 to 1990. The case lasted seven years but resulted in no convictions, and all charges were dropped in 1990. By the case's end, it had become the longest and most expensive series of criminal trials in American history. The case was part of day-care sex-abuse hysteria, a moral panic over alleged Satanic ritual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Ann Elizabeth Oldfield Butler-Sloss, Baroness Butler-Sloss, GBE, PC, is a retired English judge. She was the first female Lord Justice of Appeal and was the highest-ranking female judge in the United Kingdom until 2004, when Baroness Hale was appointed to the House of Lords. Until June 2007, she chaired the inquests into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Fayed. She stood down from that task with effect from that date, and the inquest was conducted by Lord Justice Scott Baker.
Reflex anal dilation (RAD) is the reflexive dilation of the human anus to a diameter greater than two centimeters in response to the parting of the buttocks or anal stimulation, such as brushing with a medical instrument. RAD was theorized to be a clinical marker associated with anal sexual assault in children, and has been associated with other signs of sexual assault but also appears in children with severe chronic constipation and those subject to invasive medical treatments of the anus. The finding of RAD alone is not considered indicative of sexual abuse, and a normative sample of children not suspected of having been sexually abused found that 49 per cent of children showed anal dilation either continuously or intermittently, though the dilation exceeded 20 mm in only 1.2 per cent of cases.
Dame Janet Hilary Smith,, styled The Rt Hon. Lady Justice Smith, is an English barrister and former High Court Judge and President of the Council of The Inns of Court. She was the judge who prepared The Shipman Inquiry and the Dame Janet Smith Review,.
The term "phantom social workers" arose in the United Kingdom and United States following sporadic reports to police and media about people claiming to be social workers and attempting to abduct children from their parents. Police investigations into these reports failed to find any substantial evidence or locate any suspects.
A false allegation of child sexual abuse is an accusation against one or more individuals claiming that they committed child sexual abuse when no abuse has been committed by the accused. Such accusations can be brought by the alleged victim, or by another person on the alleged victim’s behalf. Studies on the rate of recorded child abuse allegations in the 1990s suggested that the overall rate of false accusations at that time was approximately 10%.
A Child Abuse Investigation Team/Unit (CAIT) is a unit within a police force in the United Kingdom, responsible for investigating offences relating to minors.
Institutional abuse is the maltreatment of a person from a system of power. This can range from acts similar to home-based child abuse, such as neglect, physical and sexual abuse, and hunger, to the effects of assistance programs working below acceptable service standards, or relying on harsh or unfair ways to modify behavior. Institutional abuse occurs within emergency care facilities such as foster homes, group homes, kinship care homes, and pre-adoptive homes. Children who are placed in this type of out of home care are typically in the custody of the state. The maltreatment is usually caused by an employee of the facility.
It emerged in late 2012 that Jimmy Savile, a British media personality who had died the previous year, had sexually abused many people throughout his life, mostly children but some as old as 75, and mostly female. He had been well known in the United Kingdom for his eccentric image and was generally respected for his charitable work, which associated him with the British monarchy and other individuals of personal power.
Mark Page is a former English radio presenter, former Middlesbrough Football Club stadium announcer and convicted child sex offender. Between 1983 and 1987, he was the presenter of the BBC Radio 1 early weekend Breakfast Show.
Child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom has been reported in the country throughout its history. In about 90% of cases the abuser is a person known to the child. However, cases during the second half of the twentieth century, involving religious institutions, schools, popular entertainers, politicians, military personnel, and other officials, have been revealed and widely publicised since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Child sexual abuse rings in numerous towns and cities across the UK have also drawn considerable attention.
A dossier on paedophiles allegedly associated with the British government was assembled by the British Member of Parliament Geoffrey Dickens, who handed it to the then-Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, in 1984. The whereabouts of the dossier is unknown, along with other files on organised child abuse that had been held by the Home Office.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in England and Wales was an inquiry examining how the country's institutions handled their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse. It was announced by the British Home Secretary, Theresa May, on 7 July 2014. It published its 19th and final report on 20 October 2022.
Several allegations of child sexual abuse have been made against clergy, members of religious orders and lay members of the Anglican Communion for events dating as far back as the 1960s. In many cases, these allegations have resulted in investigations, trials, and convictions.
Hendrika Bestebreurtje Cantwell is a German-born American retired physician, professor emerita of pediatrics at the University of Colorado Denver, advocate for abused and neglected children, and parenting educator. She was one of the first physicians in the United States to work for a child protection agency, serving with the Denver Department of Social Services from 1975 to 1989. Her work there brought her in contact with an estimated 30,000 cases of suspected child abuse and she testified as an expert witness in thousands of court cases. An author of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and teaching manuals on the detection and treatment of child abuse, she has also conducted workshops and training programs for professionals throughout Colorado. She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1990.
Jane Margery Wynne FRCP was an English community paediatrician. An authority on child abuse and handicap, she lectured at the University of Leeds and ran courses teaching paediatricians to identify signs of abuse.
