Written by Professor Nadia Wager, Centre for Applied Psychological Science, Crime and Conflict Theme and Alexandra Myers, PhD Student, University of Huddersfield
Child sexual abuse (CSA) consists of a range of offences including; physical contact with a child (sexual touching, making them touch the perpetrator, penetration), and non-contact in-person offences (e.g. making them watch sexual acts or engage with pornography) and online offences including grooming with the intention of meeting the child for sexual purposes, or inciting the child to engage in sexual conversations, to send naked or sexualised images of themselves or to live-stream sexual acts, and image-related offences (e.g. the searching for, downloading, sharing or creating images of CSA). Recent definitions highlight that CSA can be perpetrated by males and females, adults, youths and peers, who may be related to, acquainted with, or strangers to, the child.
In contrast to child physical abuse in England and Wales, the prevalence of CSA has failed to decline at an equivalent rate. Indeed, there are increased opportunities for, and ways of committing CSA, which have largely arisen due to advancements in online communications. The exact prevalence of CSA is unknown. However, estimates drawn from UK victimisation surveys suggest that between 10% and 24% of women have experienced CSA. Females are between two and four times more likely to be targeted by perpetrators than are males.
Convictions for CSA are rare. Many cases drop from the criminal justice system at the investigation stage due to the police assigning ‘no-further-action’ to the cases. Explanations for this include the delay in reporting and the consequent lack of corroborating evidence, the perception that children (or their families) are unlikely to want to pursue a prosecution, and that the children will be incredible court witnesses. Therefore, many perpetrators remain at liberty to reoffend against other children and the victims are left to carry the burden.
Consequently, an alternative and more timely way of responding to CSA has arisen in the form of disruption tools and strategies. Whereas, prosecution responds to events in the past, it is argued that disruption focuses on the current behaviours and circumstances of the offender to make it harder for them to commit crime (Tilley, 2009). Whereas the police are primarily involved in activities that lead to prosecuting offenders, disruption relies on multiagency involvement and partnership working.
There are two fundamental types of disruption. A) Using legal powers to impose formal sanctions on the offenders (e.g. the current use of criminal and civil prohibitive orders). B) Using extra-legal tactics that seek to disable or disrupt any criminal activity in the present (e.g. through the enforcement of other relatively minor offences, or a ensuring a visible police presence in crime hotspots). Additionally, there are indirect disruption-supportive measures, including; hotel information requests, automatic number plate recognition, incident, person, vehicle and location database flagging and involving non-offending parent/guardian support.
There is a sense that disruption measures may offer a relatively quick and cost-effective way of tackling offenders and safeguarding victims, and in some instances may assist in building stronger cases to enable successful prosecutions.
Several reports document the range of disruption tools, whereas our scoping review aimed to explore how these tools have been employed, and to determine whether their efficacy had been assessed. Thus, determining whether the commitment to disruption initiatives in response to CSA, both in time and resources, is justified.
This review used Arksey and O’Malley’s (2002) framework for conducting a scoping review. A diverse range of electronic academic databases, web-pages of key child protection or CSA prevention organisations, policy and practice guidelines, etc. were searched to identify the relevant information. The initial searches were completed by March 2019 and subsequent searches were rerun until November 2019 in total generating over 100 sources.
Key Findings:
References in the literature to the disruption of CSA related exclusively to child sexual exploitation (CSE) rather than CSA more broadly. This likely arose due to several factors:
The impetus to recognise and respond to CSE arose following several serious case reviews relating to the perceived failure of statutory services to respond to group-perpetrated CSE.
While Child Protection Services are the key agent in the response to CSA, their remit is restricted to abuse committed by family members or caregivers. Thus, they have limited responsibility for responding to CSE which is more typically committed by acquaintances or strangers, who often pose as boyfriends. Thus, the protection of CSE victims has rested primarily with the police who recognise the difficulty in prosecuting these cases.
The notion of disruption coincided with the emergence of intelligence-led policing which focused on organised crime and was thus aligned with group-perpetrated CSE.
Definitions of disruption stipulated that the offenders’ activities and social networks are targeted by disruption efforts, yet in the context of CSA, many measures impacted primarily on the lifestyles and routines of the victims. Thus, they were operating as safeguarding tools rather than tackling the perpetrators’ ability to offend. The focus on victims’ behaviours may have inadvertently problematised the victims and encouraged victim-blaming. Additionally, whilst such tactics might protect known children at risk of victimization, they will fail to protect other children.
Breaches of issued criminal and civil orders can theoretically lead to arrest and prosecution. However, despite figures showing the number of orders issued, there was little evidence of monitoring the subjects’ compliance with the orders. Additionally, there was no significant examination of the extent to which breaches of orders led to successful prosecutions, or whether the issuance of orders positively impacted on the offenders’ behaviours or the outcomes for children. Assessment of the utility of these disruption measures was hampered by the systemic issues in data recording practices and systems, including the multitude of incompatible internal data management systems.
Indeed, the efficacy and utility of the other disruption strategies likewise remained unassessed, this is despite the Home Office’s expressed commitment in 2017 to create an evidence-base to identify potential gaps in utility and understanding of these measures.
Disruption was conceptualised in the literature as a proactive strategy to prevent perpetrators from abusing children. However, the findings from an exercise mapping the point during the commission of CSA that disruption strategies are likely to be employed suggests that many of the disruption tools were being used reactively once a child has already been abused.
Conclusions
By 2020 the state of play the use of disruption against CSA in England and Wales was of being innovation and rich, but evidence poor. That is, there was a wealth of creativity and activity dedicated to efforts to disrupt CSE offenders, but these strategies were rarely monitored or rigorously evaluated for their effectiveness. Relatedly, the range of disruption strategies is so vast that it is potentially overwhelming to navigate for those tasked with the deployment of such strategies.
Reference
Wager, N. & Myers, A. (2019). Disruption of Child Sexual Abuse: A Scoping Review. A Report produced for the Centre of Expertise on child sexual abuse. Please request a copy from author