Revisiting 1980s Cleveland Child Abuse scandal

[CirrusCumulus]

Feminist campaigner Beatrix Campbell has written a new book (she's also previously written about the so-called Satanic Panic child abuse). She's going to speak about it under The Woman's Place banner. This is a difficult subject and what happened and why is very contested. Hopefully agencies have got better at protecting children. But these waves of abuse (Cleveland, Orkney) seem a bit of a historical aberration with lots of poor practice on all sides. Haven't read the book yet but interested especially in child protection perspectives on the impact of Cleveland. And from anyone who was around at the time from that area. I wonder how genuine abuse was dealt with in the aftermath.

womansplaceuk.org/event/a-womans-place-will-not-be-silent/

My memory was kids ripped from their parents as a result of bogus science, and no one was found to have done anything wrong in the end.

So nothing has really changed.

I also have a vague memory at the time that some children had been away from their parents so long the courts rules they shouldn't go back home. It was all very upsetting (I was a lot younger) and I skipped a lot of the details.

As usual Private Eye were on it from the start.

Thanks. I'll have to look up the Private Eye coverage.

I think Campbell's take is that the scale of the abuse was real, rather than that innocent families lost their children.

It all started with a paediatrician called Marietta Higgs examining kids bottoms when they came in to hospital for unrelated problems. Which in itself seems a bit wild. I think I've got it right though. I'm now deep into an internet binge. It's an incredible story

It was terrifying as a child growing up in the area with the spectre that we could be taken away from our normal, loving parents at any time.

@OceanicBoundlessness Was there an acknowledgement that some child abuse was real? Was it the way the authorities went about it that was wrong. Am really struggling to get my head around it. It was basically six months of intense activity.

I don't know. I'd have been somewhere around 9 and 11 and just recall seeing lots of news on it and it being a very real fear.
Certainly the way it was reported put the fear into everyone, both parents and children and I recall overhearing adult discussion even though it wasn't directly discussed with us.

Well the most obvious start would be wiki:

If you do the arithmetic, the number of children returned to parents is less than the number taken despite there being no convictions. This chimes with a quarter century old memory that some children were assessed as being too at risk of further trauma to go back to their families. And as we know family courts are completely secret and unchallengeable - certainly in the 80s or 90s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_child_abuse_scandal

@SerendipityJane Wikipedia is not always the most reliable resource esp for contentious issues. Case in point being the only resource cited in that entry's bibliography is Stuart Bell's book. He was the local MP and received a lot of criticism in the report in 1988 by Judge Butler-Schloss.

I was a very young teenager living in the next county to Cleveland when all this happened - I can honestly say that from my experience most people weren’t aware of child abuse. I disclosed CSA just prior to the Cleveland cases and people thought I was crazy as such things didn’t happen

@FlibbertyJibbet55 It seems to me to have gone from nobody realising it happened to completely the other extreme of it being seen everywhere.

From some reports I've just read, it sounds like the process - the two doctors being brusque, them not explaining what they were doing, taking the children from their homes, often in the middle of the night too, when they could have been with their family and the parent potentially doing the abusing removed from the home has also been criticised.
It sounds like a very complex situation.

If only I had mentioned it's a starting point.

Oh, I did.

@OceanicBoundlessness It's just mind-blowing. Some children were examined in the hospital and then kept in. They had to open additional paediatric beds to cope with the influx! I'm surprised they haven't made a TV thing about it (unless I've missed it?)

"anal dilation reflex"
It was taken as evidence of sexual abuse

rather than an entirely normal reaction by infants to having their mum clean their bums

see also kittens, puppies, monkeys and ALL OTHER non herbivores

@Talkinpeace That was the paediatrician's thing, I saw. Though they said they looked at other factors too (you'd hope so!). Some of the kids were really young. I feel so sceptical about it but the Campbell book takes the view that it was all real and justified.

@CirrusCumulus
I remember it well.
The evidence was non existent.
Some of the people involved are still on the US grift circuit with Andrew Wakefield.

Evidence based medicine is ESSENTIAL

I was at university at the time, one of my lecturers knew one of the professionals involved and his take was that it wasnt true

My understand (and I work in this field) was that it wasnt true but I dont know the details

Were there allegations from the children at the time?

There's an odd report of a whole school of children being brought in to be checked.
If this happened it was in itself abusive.
There's also a link to a story of a doc year old child trying to look after her baby brother in hospital

https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/1204607.cleveland-scandal-20-years/

@Talkinpeace I'm a bit surprised at Woman's Place promoting Campbell's book to be honest. A lot of people concluded it was not a proportionate response whatsoever.

@OceanicBoundlessness Thanks, I'll take a look. Honestly mind blown by what I've seen so far.

@soupfiend From what I can see it wasn't children making allegations. Many were very young. Most had come in to outpatients for asthma etc and for whatever reason were internally examined and then, boom. It was definitely driven by the paediatricians rather than social workers.

I think it worked both ways unfortunately.

many children were taken from innocent parents.

i know at least one child who was taken from the family who was being abused, but was then returned when the scandal hit. It went on for years after and the poor kid was just left there.

Cleveland was about VERY young children

the Hebrides case is the really sad one where a child's jokey comment resulted in multiple families being destroyed for ever

@Yogatoga1 That's awful. There definitely was some actual abuse but the almost industrial scale of cases during that short period must've meant that all agencies were stretched.

not cases
accusations

When you change a child's nappy, the anal sphincter relaxes to allow proper parental cleaning
that reflex was taken as a sign of abuse

The whole thing was conducted like the Salem witch trials. People were found guilty by association - " Oh, you let you neighbour into your house for a cup of tea did you ? She has had her kids removed for child abuse, so you must be an abuser too. We'll take your kids too ".