Skip to main content

Cleveland 20 years on

The question being asked is whether or not things have got better since the scandal of false diagnoses of sexual abuse in 1987 in Cleveland. 121 children were removed from their families because of false claims.

It is important to recognise that this was not good for the children concerned. A "false positive" for child abuse is in itself abusive of the child. It causes emotional trauma and insecurity. Given the limits as to numbers of foster carers available children can even be placed in risky situations.

The question is whether the situation has improved since then. Because of the secrecy it is much harder to monitor the situation overall. However, it seems quite clear on the evidence that I have that generally things have deteriorated.

Comments

Peter Mc said…
A relative taught in Cleveland at the time. The false allegations had another undesirable side effect: there were cases where children were definitely being abused but social services would not act because of the fallout from the Higgs affair.
John Hemming said…
It demonstrates the problems when decisions are made without proper evidence.

Opinions are not facts.

Popular posts from this blog

NHS reorganisation No 3,493,233

Followers of my blog will have seen the NHS question about how many reorganisations have we had. We've yet another. The number of PCTs (Primary Care Trusts) nationally is to halve. This means merging East and North. (and then probably HoB and south). It would be nice if people would stick with one structure. There is a quotation ( Which sadly does not appear to be a true quotation ) We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization. But has to have been originated by someone. The web link shown goes through the derivation which appears to be more linked to an anonymous British Soldier WW2 than any Roman or Greek General called by a name perming 2 out of (Gaius, Galus, Petronius and Arbiter). From the...