Child Abuse and “false Accusations”

By A.Dean
AO Advocates
November 20, 2012

http://www.aoadvocates.co.uk/child-abuse-general/child-abuse-and-false-accusations/

The past month and a half has seen of the most significant periods of media coverage about child sexual abuse in the history of the UK. It has also, by extension, been one of the most harrowing months for survivors of sexual abuse who are still coming to terms with their experiences.

The Jimmy Savile scandal continues to grow in the number of alleged victims and lines of inquiry, even as the police have begun arresting living people who may have been involved in elements of the scandal. Meanwhile, investigations into abuse in north Wales, the reopening of old official inquiries, and potential connections to government officials have filled the newspapers.

This culminated recently with the wrongful implication on BBC Newsnight that a senior Tory politician, Lord McAlpine, had abused a child in a Welsh care home. The abused person, Steve Messham, later admitted to the Guardian that he mixed up the identity of his perpetrator. When actually shown a picture of Lord McAlpine, Messham affirmed that McAlpine was not the man who abused him, and apologised. But the ensuing firestorm, including the resignation of BBC General Director George Entwistle and the stepping aside of other senior staff, threatens to obscure that there really are a lot of survivors out there who have not yet told their stories. That doing so became messy in Meesham’s case should not, we hope, convince other survivors to stay quiet.

Mistaken accusations of sexual abuse do happen, just as they do with other sorts of crimes. But the recent BBC Newsnight scandal does not give credence to the argument that there is a growing threat from false accusations. These are extremely rare. Child sex abuse is not the kind of crime that people like to associate with. The opposite, in fact, is true: we see repeatedly how brutally hard most survivors of child abuse find even admitting the abuse to themselves, let alone to loved ones and then to the world. They typically feel terrible shame, as if it’s their fault, and bottle it up for decades – very often forever.

Abuse is far more pervasive than we are comfortable with admitting. The publicity surrounding Savile is helping convince survivors that if they disclose, someone will believe them, and help. One badly done news story should not derail this important progress.