Child Abuse Must Not Be Silenced

By Nick Garbutt
News Letter
September 4, 2014

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/child-abuse-must-not-be-silenced-1-6278315

The sickening stories emerging from the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry in Banbridge this week bring shame and infamy on the perpetrators of grotesque crimes against children.

Let’s be absolutely clear about this: the export of unwanted children to Australia was a form of ethnic cleansing which echoed the transportation of criminals to that continent in the previous century.

The cruelty involved and the pain and suffering that resulted from it is almost beyond comprehension – especially when you consider that those responsible for inflicting it included religious orders and respected charities.

Some of the witnesses have found that even giving evidence to the inquiry is deeply painful and traumatic and have complained that they have not had sufficient help and support to get them through the ordeal.

Let us hope that their courage in coming forward is not in vain and that justice is ultimately done.

And let us also remember that the abuse and neglect of children is not just something that happened in the past, it is also happening today.

In Rotherham in Yorkshire organised gangs preyed for many years on vulnerable young girls abusing them and exploiting them in vile and unspeakable fashion.

Yet despite the mounting evidence, the authorities, including social services and the police, ignored and even appeared to suppress the problem. This was apparently because the gang members were of Asian origin and it was feared that rigorous investigation and prosecutions would damage race relations.

What a desperate scandal this is: that bizarre and entirely misplaced notions of political correctness should rank as more important to a police force than children’s rights!

And sadly the problems go deeper than that because many of the Yorkshire children shared the same background as the poor mites who were dispatched on boats to Australia – they were in care.

This also, surely had an impact on the inaction of the authorities.

You get the strong sense that the powers that be did not treat them the same as children from a “normal” background, perhaps because they did not think their evidence would be believed, perhaps because they somehow don’t count and don’t matter.

So this casual disregard for the rights and interests of vulnerable young people is a present reality: and it is not confined to Yorkshire.

Witness the extraordinary difficulties encountered when anyone has attempted to properly investigate the alleged child abuse ring that supposedly involved Westminster politicians and other members of the establishment.

Will we ever find out what really happened? Will there be prosecutions?

Again the alleged victims were mainly children in care – abused because they were tucked away out of sight and had no means of defending themselves or alerting the authorities – even when some of them managed to complain they were not believed.

And what of Kincora? Will there ever be a full and proper investigation about what exactly happened in that sinister-looking building in east Belfast? Will the victims receive justice and will the full facts ever come out? Will perpetrators be named, shamed, and those still living prosecuted? Or is this just too uncomfortable, too unsettling and “against the national interest”.

And if it is, what sort of a state are we living in where young peoples’ lives are so expendable that we turn a blind eye to perverted abuse because we are uncomfortable about what we might uncover if we dig deeply enough?