Background

Despite increased institutional safeguards and regularly updated statutory guidance that stresses safeguarding is ‘everybody's responsibility’, children continue to be sexually abused in institutional contexts in England and Wales. There also remains a lack of contemporary knowledge about institutions' responses to concerns about [risk of] CSA.

Objective

Reviewing Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) discretionary-decision case files, as a detailed source of information about CSA in institutions occurring in the last 5 years, the aim of this paper was to understand what institutions knew about CSA and inappropriate behaviours that indicated children could be at risk of harm prior to formal disclosures to the DBS and how institutions did, or did not, respond to this knowledge.

Participants and setting

Cases involved 32 male and 11 female barred persons and 19 male and 51 female sexually abused children.

Method

Thematic analysis was applied to 43 files where decisions were made by the DBS to add individuals to the Children's Barred list (which prevents them by law from working with children) between 2017 and 2020.

Results

In 79% of cases there was some level of awareness of concerns relating to inappropriate behaviour or CSA, through rumours and gossip, concerns about professionalism, and observed changes in the behaviour of subsequently barred individuals or victims. There was wide variation in the degree to which institutions responded. In a small number of cases action was taken promptly; however, this was not typical.

Conclusions

Institutions and professionals failed in their duty of care by not taking any action at all, or responding slowly in ways that did not prevent CSA.

中文翻译：

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英格兰和威尔士机构环境中儿童性虐待的当代案例分析

背景

尽管增加了制度保障并定期更新强调保障是“每个人的责任”的法定指南，但英格兰和威尔士的儿童继续在制度环境中受到性虐待。对于机构对 CSA [风险] 的担忧的反应，也仍然缺乏当代知识。

客观的

审查披露和限制服务 (DBS) 酌情决定案例文件，作为过去 5 年发生的机构中有关 CSA 的详细信息来源，本文的目的是了解机构对 CSA 的了解以及表明儿童的不当行为在正式向星展银行披露之前可能会面临损害风险，以及机构如何回应或未回应这些知识。

参与者和设置

案件涉及 32 名男性和 11 名女性被禁止的人以及 19 名男性和 51 名女性被性虐待的儿童。

方法

对 2017 年至 2020 年期间星展银行决定将个人添加到儿童禁止名单（法律禁止他们与儿童一起工作）的 43 个文件进行了主题分析。

结果

在 79% 的案例中，通过谣言和八卦、对专业精神的担忧以及随后被禁止的个人或受害者的行为变化观察到，对与不当行为或 CSA 相关的担忧有一定程度的认识。各机构的反应程度存在很大差异。在少数情况下，迅速采取了行动；然而，这并不典型。

结论

机构和专业人士完全没有采取任何行动，或者以无法阻止 CSA 的方式缓慢响应，从而未能履行其注意义务。