The enduring scandal of the sexual abuse of children
“The government is committed to doing everything in its power to prevent the horrors of child sexual abuse, providing the national and local leadership required to tackle offending, protect children from harm, and support victims and survivors.” Tackling child sexual abuse: progress update, UK government, April 2025
In April 2025, the government released a progress update on tackling the sexual abuse of children. But controversy over its belated response to recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) took me back to investigations some 35 years ago, into the organised sexual abuse of children in the South West.
It began when I was alerted to the fact that a Bristol supply teacher had admitted taking dubious pictures of children while working at a London school. I began to look into his background while at the same time warning the authorities. He had been photographing pupils who were being taken home by two other teachers for ‘rehearsals’.
When those colleagues were confronted about their inappropriate behaviour, the two men drove to the Savernake Forest, where they took their own lives. If that was shocking enough, the subsequent revelations in South Bristol were even more horrific.
Stories we couldn’t tell
In order to protect the children, journalists may not report the details of court proceedings in incest cases. This understandable precaution can have unintended consequences, as I learnt from a local children’s charity. I was unaware that a woman and her partner had been sentenced to lengthy jail terms for the sexual abuse and trafficking of her two daughters.
She had worked at a local crèche, and so had access to vulnerable children, while her partner ran youth activities at a church club, where he, too, could identify potential victims. As reporting of their conviction and sentencing was restricted, the local community remained unaware of the scale and nature of their depravity and the risk they posed to other children.
Neither the police nor Social Services were willing to discuss the other cases we began to uncover over the course of what became a two-year investigation for HTV’s award-winning current affairs series, West Eye View.
Trust and betrayal
We learnt that children at a local secondary school were being taken to nearby flats where they were being abused by a number of adults. Some of these children had since left school and I was able to talk with them. Now addicted to drugs or booze, they would be considered unreliable witnesses in court, but their separate accounts rang true.
The ‘grooming’ involved being befriended by teachers who bought them drinks at pubs on the airport road. They would then be invited to flats, sometimes during school hours, where sex acts took place.
As if to prevent them seeking help from the authorities, the children claimed to have been told that police officers and social workers were among those taking part – an effective way of destroying their trust in authorities who should have been there to help them.
Our investigations revealed that a key person in these events was a secondary school teacher who had access to the children’s welfare files and was thus able to identify potential victims. When allegations about him came to light, he killed himself.
Sinister video warnings
In the course of our enquiries we came across allegations that a senior member of staff at one school had even engaged his own daughter in this organised abuse. We were told that coded signals were left for her to meet people in Broadmead at certain times on certain days, for example.
Victims described being shown disturbing videos, including footage of young children being killed, to frighten them into silence. A body was said to have been buried in Thornbury, or in the woods near Failand. Some years later, a woodsman on Lord Wraxall’s nearby Tyntesfield estate was convicted of offences against children. He had made videos of his abuse but destroyed them before his arrest.
We sought to discuss our findings with Bristol City Council. They agreed to an off-camera interview, but only if a representative of their insurance company was also present.
Silenced by liability
When the time came to broadcast, HTV’s legal advisers recommended we mention only one deceased perpetrator by name; they were nervous about making allegations against the living. Their caution was understandable: HTV, along with The Observer, Independent on Sunday, and Private Eye, had previously been sued successfully for libel by police inspector Gordon Anglesea after suggesting he was a paedophile. Years later, in 2016, Anglesea, now a retired chief superintendent, would be convicted on charges of historical sexual abuse of young boys, and sentenced to 12 years in jail.
The resultant truncated film was to be followed by a live studio discussion including the police and social worker David Niven. Avon and Somerset police warned the TV company that HTV would be held responsible for any attacks on schools – a move some interpreted as a veiled attempt to block the broadcast altogether. The police did mount patrols around South Bristol that evening, but in the event, no incidents occurred.
The limits of justice
Shocked at their lack of engagement with our work, I arranged to meet police officers dealing with crimes against children and shared our findings. They claimed to already know 80% of the information we had uncovered. Their apparent inaction, they said, was so as not to jeopardise ongoing investigations.
They also made two telling admissions: first, that it can take many years for an abused child to feel ready and confident enough to give evidence in court; and second, that where children have been so damaged that they might be deemed unreliable witnesses, there may be no point in pursuing a prosecution at all.
In the years since, I have seen cases come to court that link back to evidence we discovered about organised networks across the South West. Only a few years ago, I was called on for advice when sensational media coverage was anticipated over a series of court cases that had uncovered a grooming gang targeting young girls in the Bristol area.
As a result of my ongoing research into these issues, in 1997, the journalism ethics charity PressWise (later MediaWise) of which I was director, organised the Child Exploitation and the Media Forum in London with David Niven. Overseen by Elizabeth Lawson KC, then Chair of the Family Law Bar Association, the forum was the UK’s response to the 1996 World Congress Against the Commercial Exploitation of Children.
Lawson heard from more than 20 witnesses, including survivors of abuse, parents of a murdered child, investigative journalists, lawyers, social workers, photographers, and regulators. She produced 12 recommendations on how the sexual abuse of children could be better recorded, monitored, and reported.
Global advocacy, domestic dithering
One major, albeit long-delayed, outcome has been that journalists have been given greater access to family law courts, thanks in no small part to the efforts of campaigning journalist Louise Tickle.
The forum also shaped my later work with the International Federation of Journalists and UNICEF. At MediaWise, we have developed guidelines and training on media and children’s rights, which have since been delivered across the world.
Meanwhile the UK government and police are still struggling to come to terms with the devastating evidence that paedophilia remains widespread, now further bolstered by the Internet, and that inadequate funding for properly supervised care facilities, monitoring and protection measures continues to place vulnerable young people at risk.
Despite decades of revelations and reforms, the UK’s response remains fragmented, and vulnerable children continue to fall through the cracks. Until prevention systems are put in place, and victims are listened to with the seriousness they deserve, children will remain at risk – not only from predators, some within their family networks, but also from a society unwilling to confront those predators.
