Hansard

It is a privilege to open the debate, and I thank all the members who supported the motion and those who are here to listen to the debate tonight.

I also welcome to the gallery members of the cross-party group on adult survivors of child sexual abuse, and I thank them, Barnardo’s Scotland, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and Children 1st for the briefings that they have provided. I particularly thank Margaret Mitchell, who is the convener of the group, for the work that she has done over a significant period of time to keep its work going.

It is difficult to do justice to all the issues that are highlighted in the motion in the time that I have, so I urge members to attend the meeting directly after this debate to hear more about the concerns and challenges that the cross-party group has identified. This is an opportunity to recognise the importance of the cross-party group on adult survivors of child sexual abuse and its role in the creation of a national strategy for supporting survivors, and the establishment of SurvivorScotland. Today, the 10th anniversary of the strategy gives us the opportunity to thank all those who were involved at the time, particularly survivors and those who worked with them, including my friend, the former MSP Marilyn Livingstone, whose work as part of the group at that time was pivotal in ensuring that this important issue was being addressed.

In marking the anniversary, we also have the opportunity to address the concerns that are voiced by survivors, by the people who attend the group and by those who work with survivors, about the current effectiveness and the level and strategic direction of support and whether they match up to the ambitions of 10 years ago.

We have come a long way in dealing with a difficult issue. As a young woman in the 1970s, at the age my daughter is at now, I had little awareness of the nature of the suffering of child sexual abuse, of its prevalence, or of abuse within institutions—churches, schools and boarding schools—where adults in positions of trust chose to betray that trust, and within the homes of children by their own families.

The celebrities of my youth are men who now find that their crimes against children have been exposed. We are more aware now of that crime and there is more acknowledgement of it, but the test for us is whether there is more understanding of what we need to do to address it.

As a young secondary school teacher in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, my training did not refer to child sexual abuse. No guidance was given to me as a young woman about how to be aware of the possibility of abuse being suffered by children in my class. No information was given about how or why to raise concerns, and there was no information about how to treat children who were victims. As a young political activist, I was only beginning to learn and understand from the brave men and women who began to insist that their abuse should be acknowledged, that its devastating impact should be understood and, critically, that there should be understanding and recognition that that abuse was as much a matter for political debate and action as anything else is. That political change and the recognition that Government action at every level was required have developed over time.

There is more talk about the subject now and there is more acceptance of the fact that grave injustice continues, but we have to understand that we need to do more. The test is whether we continue to focus on needs. Survivors need more than acknowledgement: they need to be sure that we will address the consequences for them throughout their lives. Ten years ago, the strategy outlined the need to raise awareness, the need for increased awareness of the long-term consequences for physical and mental health, the importance of survivor support services in enhancing the health and wellbeing of survivors, and the need to develop training and skills for front-line workers.

It was also recognised that it was important to tackle and identify the level of abuse. Critically, we need to ensure that survivors are not just supported to address the medical consequences for them, but that there is an understanding of the wide and diverse range of needs that they have and the importance of those needs being addressed. We need more education, prevention and protection, and we need understanding of the importance of support services. The strategy also needs to be clear that it should offer justice and a clear recognition that child sexual abuse is a crime and that justice for survivors must be pursued.

The cross-party group is clear that all survivors should have support, and that abuse of power by the people who betrayed the trust that was placed in them in care homes, churches, boarding schools and other institutional settings should be placed firmly in the context of child abuse: 80 per cent of child sexual abuse happens within the home and within communities. The one thing that is consistent in child sexual abuse is not the setting but the brutalising powerlessness of the child and the impact on that child throughout his or her life. Those are not competing needs; they all deserve justice.

Many members from all around the chamber supported the establishment of the inquiry into historical child sexual abuse in institutional settings. The minister will be aware of the concerns of groups including white flowers Alba about the narrowness of the inquiry’s remit in excluding consideration of survivors who still suffer today but whose abuse happened too long ago to be investigated, and which may in some circumstances exclude the experience of one survivor but include that of another, even when the perpetrator is the same person, because the setting was different. I urge the minister to listen carefully to those concerns and to reflect on how we may address them in the remit.

I also urge the minister to resist narrowing the Government’s focus in respect of how it supports survivors. There are genuine concerns among people who are at the very heart of the issue about the direction of SurvivorScotland in defining the criteria for funding. This cannot just be about medical recovery; it must be on the journey through life that survivors are supported. Ten years ago, it was clear that it is not just about accessing health services—it is also about support services that have been developed in the voluntary sector that draw on the lived experiences of the people who know best what such abuse means. I ask the minister directly to confirm that he will examine the approach that is now manifesting itself as funding a medical model rather than the deeper and richer support that was identified.

In conclusion and in summary, I urge the Scottish Government to recognise the pervasive nature of child sexual abuse in our society, and the traumatising impacts that it has—and not just on a person’s health. I further urge the Scottish Government to review the remit of the historical abuse inquiry to ensure that it gives comfort to those who are looking to it for justice. I ask the Government to look again, to resist the model that is developing through SurvivorScotland, and to ensure that a rich development of resources is available.

Finally, I urge the minister, in reflecting on the past 10 years, now to instruct the development of a refreshed and renewed national strategy. If he does that, and recognises that the time has come to address the matter again, he will find that the cross-party group, all those who support survivors, survivors themselves, and the people in this chamber are ready to help to ensure that the strategy is fit for purpose.