Historicizing 'historical child sexual abuse' cases: social, political and criminal justice contexts

The historical sexual abuse of children has become a central focal point of political, social and legal concern. On 7 July 2014 Home Secretary Theresa May announced a public inquiry into how complaints of sexual abuse have been dealt with by public bodies over the last 40 years; the inquiry will produce an interim report by May 2015, with a full report to follow at a later stage. A 10-week investigation has also been launched into allegations relating to Whitehall politicians. These announcements follow the NHS and Department of Health Investigations into Matters Relating to Jimmy Savile (published on 26 June 2014); a second report is due in 2015. The enquiries will hear important evidence from witnesses and examine files associated with the bodies under scrutiny. As yet, however, our knowledge of the broader history of sexual abuse in the twentieth century is extremely partial, with some incidents well charted and others ignored. A full understanding of the wider historical circumstances that have shaped social, legal and political responses to child sexual abuse (or their lack) is urgently needed to provide missing information to contextualise and complement these public inquiries.

This research project will carry out rapid deck-based research, using very significant sets of online sources that are already available in digital form, but whose potential for research into the history of child sexual abuse has not been realised. It will cover four significant areas:

1. We will construct quantitative profiles of the extent of the reporting and convictions of sexual offences from 1918 to 1990, making use of the published Criminal Justice Statistics for England and Wales.

2. We will carry out a qualitative longitudinal study of the role of the national and local newspaper press in reporting cases of child sexual abuse, and in shaping social attitudes towards young people and sexuality in the period 1918-1990. The newspaper press was a crucial arena through which public opinion was shaped and shifting moralities were discussed and debated for much of the twentieth century. Whilst the press cannot be viewed as an unproblematic barometer of opinion, it provides historians with an important lens through which to access a range of viewpoints and to chart dominant tropes and narratives. A survey of the newspaper press also enables us to access reports of the decisions that were made in the court-room and thus to further explain the trends for reporting and conviction that analysis of the criminal justice statistics reveal.

3. We will examine the shifting viewpoints of key professional groups, including social workers and lawyers, by undertaking a survey of publications associated with these occupational groups.

4. We will begin a mapping of organisations, bodies and associations who have commented on and campaigned around issues relating to children and sexuality across the broad period 1918-1990. This initial mapping will involve research into the availability of archival and manuscripts sources (including those held in the National Archives and local repositories) and will form the basis of a further funding application.

Our time-table is designed to coincide with the undertaking of the public enquiries and the preparation of the further report relating to the NHS and Department of Health Investigations. We will run seminars/workshops for civil servants, lawyers and other professionals involved in these investigations, and make our findings available in a free and easily accessible format as briefings on the History & Policy website. Thus our project will provide essential knowledge to shape discussion, debate, and inform the final public inquiry reports.

The project will inform and contextualise the public enquiries that are currently taking place into the extent of historical child sexual abuse cases committed by celebrity and other figures who abused their authority and power. Research findings will be of immediate use to lawyers, civil servants and other policy makers associated with the enquiry teams who work in the field. The project is also designed to enable journalists and other commentators to interpret the enquiry reports by providing broader historical understanding, accessibly presented, of the social attitudes and responses of the criminal justice system during the period under investigation.

The project will involve a key partnership between the investigators and History & Policy (http://www.historyandpolicy.org/), a network of historians which facilitates the use of historical research by policy-makers and media.

Through History & Policy we will engage with the following targeted groups of users in the following specific ways.

1. In October 2012 the Secretary of State for Health asked Kate Lampard QC to provide independent oversight of the NHS and Department of Health investigations into Jimmy Savile's relationships with NHS organisations and his activities on their premises. The oversight team commissioned H&P to organise a discussion event at King's College, London, on 7 May 2013, with presentations from eight historians including the current project team. Lampard commented in her assurance report of June 2014 that 'the event provided the investigation teams with valuable understanding of the historical context for Savile's associations with NHS organisations and his offending on their premises'. We will build on these existing links to make our research findings available to the oversight team as further briefings.

2. We will liaise with senior civil servants at the Home Office to enable effective take-up of findings in relation to the public inquiries, through workshops and briefings; we will also submit written evidence to the public inquiries.

3. We will publish our findings as briefing reports on the H&P website in early May 2015 and use social media to facilitate media take-up.

4. We will publish a feature spread in an accessible public history periodical such as History Today to disseminate the research to wider audiences.