‘When I got back to the ward I told the nurse what Jimmy had done. I was very shaken. She just called me a “silly girl” and said “do you know how much he does for our hospital?” After that I never told anyone else’
– One of Jimmy Savile’s victims in a legal testimony
As the true extent of Jimmy Savile’s decades of horrific abuse became clear many asked: ‘Why did people stay quiet when he was still alive?’
The answer to that is simple – they did not.
What struck the legal team working so closely with those victims – most still bearing the mental scares of Savile’s assaults – was how time and again reports of abuse were ignored.
And as the culture slowly shifted and more people came forward with their stories the scandal grew deeper. Not only did senior figures in hospitals facilitate Savile’s crimes but similar things had happened with a host of other abusers in schools, care homes, churches and sports clubs.
Those people who held a professional duty of care too often chose to keep the abuse quiet for fear of reputational damage or loss of income. This must never happen again.
But now, as the law stands there remains no criminal sanction on those who chose to turn a blind-eye. In the places where our children should be safest there are still opportunities for paedophiles to hide in plain sight. Those in charge can still cover up abuse without fear of a knock on the door from the police.
The idea is simple: to require within criminal law people working with children within regulated activities who know about, suspect or have reasonable grounds for suspicion of the abuse of children to report it to the Local Authority Designated Officer. But it needs teeth – being found guilty of not doing so is akin to aiding and abetting a child abuser and should carry a jail term.
Already in Australia, Washington DC and parts of Scandinavia there is a mandatory reporting law. And it has proved successful – but not because a flood of headteachers, doctors and care home managers have filled the courts. The measure of the effectiveness of the legislation is in the fact that there have been very few prosecutions. People are reporting. They understand, without any shadow of doubt, what their duty is. There is no option.
For a long time there was very little will in Westminster for these proposals. Even with the newspapers crammed with eerie pictures of a grinning Savile wheeling helpless children down dark corridors in their hospital beds, mandatory reporting was deemed unworkable. But it is not. It is a vital safeguard to protect those who need it the most.
Now the victims – those once forgotten people who for so long thought they would never be heard – have found their voice. And parliament is finally listening.
We are hopeful that when Keir Starmer’s Victims’ Taskforce reports back in the autumn a recommendation to make mandatory reporting within regulated institutions (schools, hospitals, care homes) is included. Ed Miliband has already called the proposal ‘sensible’ and by supporting it now he can prove Labour is determined never to let the mistakes of the past come back and haunt Britain again.
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Richard Porritt is policy executive at Slater & Gordon Lawyers
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Photo: Beacon