Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee 25 June 2025
I am grateful for your expression of empathy with the victims and the efforts that you have been making to progress changes.
On victims, you referred to the new statement of prosecution, which states that under the UNCRC the best interests of the reported child and of other children should be given primary consideration. We understand that there is no hierarchy of rights, but we have heard throughout our work in this area that young victims feel that their rights are brushed aside in favour of the rights of the reported child, for example on youth violence.
09:45I come back to the two examples that we heard. The first was at the LoveMilton community centre, where we heard from a young girl who was there with her parents, who was possibly not the most socially adept girl within her year group. She had been befriended by one of the people in her class and invited to meet at an external destination. When she got there, she found five to 10 people with phones who recorded the most horrendous explosion of violence on her, which left her very, very seriously injured—for a while there was some concern as to whether her life was at risk. The children were all 12 at the time; they were all young.
She no longer feels safe to leave the house for school—or, at the time, she did not—or to socialise for fear that what happened would happen again, and because it had all been recorded publicly. Her mother felt very much that although the police were incredibly supportive, they did not think that, ultimately, this would go anywhere.
There seemed to be a tremendous amount of support in place to try to have the individual who had committed the offence understand the nature of what they had done and understand how filming it had been deeply harmful, but that individual was still in the community and that individual’s parents were tormenting the girl’s family and saying, “There you go; there is nothing you can do about it”. That young girl felt that she was locked up at home with no education, no counselling and no social life.
How is the long-term impact on victims taken into account when determining what the appropriate justice route might be for reported children? In the consideration of an example such as that, who ultimately is representing the interests of that victim? Even insofar as those interests are represented, what weight is finally given to them in progressing these matters?