51³Ô¹ÏÍø

Sir John O'Brien interview; ENGLAND: INT Sir John O'Brien (Secretary to Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse) interview via internet SOT (part 1 of 2)Can we get an idea of the scale of the number of people this has and will affect?- Certainly many hundreds of thousands- One subset is the number of kids affected by education carried out by these organizations that's quarter of a million- Many hundreds of thousands can be said off the back of thatReport found limited protection for children in religious organisations, on that point what else did the report find?- There's no real safeguarding policy in many of these organisations- If you have a policy people know what to expect- This is shocking because recent evidence show no real basic policies exist- Barriers to reporting that are particular to religion- Religious leaders are held up as people to be revered and trusted, which makes it harder to report- Senior leaders are often male which makes it difficult for female victims to report that abuse- Religious leaders are seen to be trusted and that they should be forgiven rather than reporting their abuse- This is used to protect the organisation and prevent child sexual abuse being properly investigatedWhat do the government need to do now to tackle this?- The panel's second recommendation is that the nature of these places mean they aren't covered by the OFSTED inspection regime- Legislation covering this needs to change, these types of educational establishments need to be covered by OFSTED- This would mean OFSTED could go inspect and ensure things like standards are in place in education and safeguarding- That would make it much harder for abuse to happen and easier to deal with when it does