IICSA Publishes Its Report On Child Protection In Religious Organisations & Settings

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has now published its report on ‘child protection in religious organisations and settings’.

The report supplements IICSA’s previous investigations into the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. The Inquiry obtained evidence from 38 religious organisations in England and Wales, which have a dominant influence on the lives of millions of children. These included:

• The Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses;
• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints;
• The Council of African and Afro-Caribbean Churches UK;
• Muslim Council of Britain;
• The Federation of Synagogues;
• The Methodist Church in Great Britain;
• The Network of Buddhist Organisations;
• The Shree Hindu Temple and Community Centre;
• The Quakers;
• The Salvation Army; and
• The United Reform Church.

The investigation found that there are significant barriers in many religious organisations and settings to the reporting of child sexual abuse allegations. Such barriers include victim-blaming, shame and honour, abuse of power by religious leaders, gender disparity, mistrust of external agencies and pressure on victims to ‘forgive’ their abusers and to justify failures by leaders to take appropriate action.

The Inquiry heard evidence that many religious organisations and settings do not have adequate safeguarding policies in place or fail to follow them. Many do not consistently undertake DBS checks of those who have contact with children or provide child protection training to their staff and volunteers.

Report recommendations

The report makes two recommendations:

1. That all religious organisations should have a child protection policy and supporting procedures and
2. That the Government should legislate to amend the definition of full-time education to bring any setting that is the pupil’s primary place of education within the scope of a registered school and provide Ofsted with sufficient powers to examine the quality of child protection when undertaking inspections of suspected unregistered schools.