By Lucy Hayton
On November the 7th, 2024, in a speech made to the British Society of Paediatric Radiologists, the President of the Family Division, Rt Hon Sir Andrew McFarlane, said:
“I suspect that those in the audience, like me, had understood that what had happened in Cleveland arose from misdiagnosis by the two paediatricians. In that regard a recent book by journalist Beatrix Campbell, ‘Secrets and Silence’ may be of interest. All these years later, with the ability to inspect previously confidential documents in the National Archive, the book explains that most of the children were probably the victims of sexual abuse, and therefore the diagnosis by medical professionals was likely to be correct. The book reveals a lack of transparency which has had lasting impacts. As a result, there has been a continuing false belief that the Cleveland children did not experience sexual abuse and that the crisis was the result of over-zealous and incompetent practice.”
The President is referring to what is commonly termed the “Cleveland scandal” of the 1980s, and his comments will be widely welcomed by victim-survivors of child sexual abuse and those who have concerns about the response to child sexual abuse allegations in family court proceedings.
But what is the “Cleveland scandal,” and why is it relevant to family court? For those interested in learning more, I recommend reading Beatrix Campbell’s book mentioned by the President, Secrets and Silence: Uncovering the Legacy of the Cleveland Child Sexual Abuse Case. Campbell charts the journey of this scandal and dives into the archives to uncover what was shared and, most importantly, what was withheld from the public about this well-known event in child protection history.
Campbell explains how, in 1986, and for the first time, the Government specified in it’s guidance “Working Together for the Protection of Children” that child sexual abuse was a safeguarding matter professionals in local authorities, health authorities, police forces and voluntary organisations must consider. The following year, two paediatric doctors in Middlesborough Hospital diagnosed 121 children as having experienced child sexual abuse. These children were removed from their homes and placed in foster care.
Following the removal of the children, a campaign was mounted by some of the children’s parents, which was supported by Stuart Bell, the local MP. The campaigners claimed that the doctors were “provoking hysteria” and that the children must be returned. The resulting media coverage led the Government to commission an inquiry led by Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss. The final 1988 Cleveland Report did not make any findings about whether the children were, or were not, sexually abused. Instead, the report focused on the conduct of the professionals involved, and the political discussion of the report honed in on how the majority of the children ‘returned home,’ which seemed to suggest that, because the children had been returned, the allegations were false. Campbell also documents how the inquiry leaned on the evidence of a questionable “false memory” expert. What the final Cleveland Report did not mention is that an independent medical assessment found that in 80% of the cases, the diagnosis of child sexual abuse was considered to be correct. This fact was never shared with parliament and has only been uncovered through Beatrix Campbell’s archival work.
This omission has resulted in the wrong “lessons” of Cleveland being learnt and etched into institutional memory. The accepted discourse is that Cleveland underscored why professionals must be cautious when identifying sexual abuse. One of the institutions which still refers to these lessons is the family court, as can be seen in multiple published judgments. For example in AS v TH (False Allegations of Abuse) (Rev 1) [2016] EWHC 532 (11 March 2016) [32] the judge states:
“The Report of the Inquiry into Child Abuse in Cleveland 1987 (hereafter the Cleveland Report) contains a plethora of salient and important guidance with respect to cases involving allegations of sexual abuse.”
The judge goes on to criticise the professionals involved in the case for using the term “disclosure” which the judge states has been “deprecated since the Cleveland report” [33] for implying that the allegations are true.
Other references to the Cleveland Report can be found in Re P (Sexual abuse: Finding of Fact Hearing) [2019] EWFC 27 (01 May 2019) [1240] and W (Children), Re (Rev 2) [2010] UKSC 12 (03 March 2010) [10] all suggesting that judges and child protection professionals must utilise the Cleveland Report to ensure they take a cautious approach to child sexual abuse allegations.
Since 1988, and the publication of this report, there has been far more in-depth research and institutional learning on child sexual abuse, including the work being undertaken by the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse. Where a parent (or parents) are the alleged abuser(s) in sexual abuse cases, family courts are highly likely to be involved and indeed reach conclusions before the outcome any criminal investigation which are notoriously slow. It is therefore critical that all professionals working in this arena are provided with the most up-to-date evidence and research to support them in identifying the risks and impacts of sexual abuse and make high-quality decisions about safeguarding and contact.
Perhaps the most notable archive of evidence on this issue, which institutions can now benefit from, comes from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), which lasted for seven years and spoke to over 6,000 adult victim-survivors about their childhood experiences, including survivors abused by their own parents. The numerous IICSA reports and many survivor testimonies hold very important lessons for institutions that have a responsibility for safeguarding children. Unfortunately, these lessons are not being disseminated with the urgency survivors had hoped, and the implementation of the IICSA recommendations by the Government remains uncertain.
Whilst there is so much that remains to be done to secure the legacy of IICSA, for now we can hope that the President’s comments signal the beginning of some un-learning of the “lessons” of the Cleveland scandal for family court judges and professionals. Perhaps the same professionals may also be afforded new learning on the scale, harms and common features of childhood sexual abuse grounded in the latest research and the lived experience of survivors themselves.