I have been grappling with the latest meandering thoughts on how a Conservative government can best enlarge the state sector and provide employment for all those annoying lefties….

It is called the “Health Working Group Report on Child Sexual Exploitation“. It is an object lesson in moving the goal posts and enlarging empires. Ostensibly an entirely reasonable reaction to the scandals of Rochdale and Oxford Social Services ‘assuming’ that girls under their care were displaying life style choices when engaging in sexual contact with dark skinned foreigners. Men even.

It starts by detailing the modern definition of a ‘child’ as being a person under the age of 18 years. Then it moves the goal posts even further by declaring that ‘child’ sexual exploitation includes Barnardo’s definition of ‘peer exploitation’ – those embarrassing occasions when NO adults were present and you all stood in a circle behind the bike sheds engaging in mutual relief of teen-age hormones…..before arriving at the breathless conclusion that there must be two million paedophiles in our national population, or maybe its only 650,000 – either that or Operation Yewtree will be making wild allegations for many years to come. (It will be interesting to see which version the media plump for….)

Research by the National Society for Prevention of Cruelty against Children (NSPCC) put it in the range of 5 to 16 per cent of children under 16 years old. That is between 650,000 and 2 million children.

Despite quoting this authoritative statistics from an impeccable source (sic), in fairness, the report does then say:

“It is difficult to obtain a reliable estimate of the prevalence of child sexual abuse”. Or:

“We have some evidence and estimates of the prevalence of sexual abuse from NSPCC research and the CSEGG Inquiry has produced some sexual exploitation prevalence estimates. These estimates are not likely to be very accurate.”

That doesn’t stop them from coming up with a reliable estimate of the combined public sector forces that must be marshalled to combat this unquantified hazard stalking our population! What is of interest is that even the NSPCC quietly accept that:

“The average age of children experiencing sexual exploitation is 15 years old”.

Average eh? So some, by definition must be awfully close to the new guideline of 18? And some will be experiencing ‘peer exploitation’? The popular definition of a predatory paedophile being an elderly ‘Uncle’ with bad breath preying on the winsome five-year old of the NSPCC ads is taking some beating here.

It is one of the curious facts of the linguistic gymnastics engaged by the moral campaigners that stalk our shores, busily grooming us, that ‘children’ being innocents, are rarely divided by gender – other than being told that many, who grow up to be the classic – male – predatory abuser, do so because of childhood abuse, the so called ‘cycle of abuse’. Female sexual abusers are hidden from our prying eyes more successfully than Victorian piano legs.

(We shan’t mention the 83 women currently in prison for rape, gross indecency or other sexual offences with children). (A link worth following in your coffee break – full marks to Philip Davies for a robust retort to feminist waffle).

Yet:

Of the 2,409 children identified via the CSEGG Inquiry’s call for evidence, 72 per cent were girls and 9 per cent were boys, where gender was disclosed.

If abuse begets abuse, as we are told, logically we should be far more concerned about the 72% of girls. Except that they disappear in adulthood into that great heaving morass of victimhood, whilst the tiny percentage of male children abused develop bulging eyes and bad breath before gaining employment as a disc jockey.

The report tells us that classic indications of child sexual exploitation include: being on the missing list from care homes or schools and ‘dysfunctional parenting’. Yet time and again the report identifies the fact that ‘professionals’ (health, teaching and social services) are the ones that fail to understand the meaning of ‘consent’ to illegal sexual activity and fail to take action.

It makes you wonder why the NSPCC and other ‘child protection activists’ are so keen to promote the idea of bulging eyed paedophiles preying on young children, when the bulk of the problem appears to be state employees following their ideology regarding life style choices and ignoring the fact that 15 year old aren’t supposed to be engaging in illegal sexual activity.

To support appropriate local prioritisation, commissioning and local ‘health scrutiny’, health and wellbeing boards (HWBs) should ensure that the local joint strategic needs assessment (JSNA) and the joint health and wellbeing strategy (JHWS), reflect the impact of different forms of violence and abuse, including child sexual exploitation; the JSNA being informed by evidence from a range of local sources, including the local safeguarding children board and the community safety partnership.

The Department of Health, the Royal College of Nursing and other nursing professional bodies should promote the role of school nurses in recognising, addressing and coordinating the response to child sexual exploitation.

Public Health England should seek to tackle child sexual exploitation through Directors of Public Health and their central role in the local health and care system.

The NHS Safeguarding Leads at national, regional and local level should work to promote a better health response for victims of child sexual exploitation. This could include use of the annual assurance process.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) and Ofsted inspections should scrutinise the health contribution to the local response to child sexual abuse and exploitation.

I see lots of new committees being formed to ‘share best practice’ – a host of meetings attended – but I see no evidence at all of social workers and other ‘care home’ workers being retrained to act like responsible parents, nor being given the powers to enable them to do so.

Their back ground ideology says that they should take into care the hormonally challenged 15 year old whose Father has just taken a strap to them for attempting to go out at midnight in a skirt half way up their waist – ‘cruel ignorant tyrant’; but then their ‘powers to restrain’ don’t allow them to do anything other than smile indulgently when she does the same thing in the care home.

Apparently they need to consult further to discover the full extent of the consequences of this and what to do about it…..