Child protection campaigner. Brought to public attention the abuse scandal at Ealing Abbey & St Benedict's School
Oct 31, 2022 • 107 tweets • 20 min read
#IICSA@InquiryCSA produced its final report on October 20th. It ran to several hundred pages. It has already slipped out of the news before anyone has had a chance to properly read and digest it. But here is a thread about the twenty recommendations it makes.
While I'm deeply disappointed in the limp recommendation about mandatory reporting (about which I've previously tweeted), there are some good things in the report.
A quick thread on mandatory reporting, why it's needed, how to do it right and why @inquiryCSA has got it wrong
Child sex abuse is a vile crime, so vile that nobody wants to believe anybody else guilty of it.
It's so vile that everyone fondly imagines they would instantly report suspicions if that situation were ever to arise.
Oct 20, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
It really is very hard to understand the #IICSA thinking on mandatory reporting. Other countries already have it so there is a model to work from.
The inquiry received high-quality quantitative academic evidence that mandatory reporting works, notably from Prof Ben Mathews of Queensland University of Technology. They even went to the trouble of flying him from Australia to give evidence in person.
Oct 20, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
This is a bitterly disappointing outcome to the #IICSA public inquiry. After all the years of hearings, for the inquiry to recommend such a limp and inadequate version of mandatory reporting is inexplicable.
The mandatory reporting proposal only addresses situations that rarely occur.
The first is someone actually witnessing an incident of child sexual abuse. It's almost always a private act with no witnesses. So making it mandatory to report this makes almost no difference.
Mar 18, 2022 • 48 tweets • 8 min read
Some have suggested that the issues around Ampleforth college are trivial - failed inspection because of a leaky tap. I'm sure those pushing that line are fully aware of its untruth, but those who read it might be taken in. So here is a brief history of Safeguarding at Ampleforth
IICSA (The Independent Inquiry Into Child Sex Abuse held hearings into Ampleforth and Downside in late 2017. Their report published the following year ran to 223 pages. It included the following in the executive summary.
