A new report made after the investigation in Great Britain revealed a large number of cases of sexual violence against children, related to religions. This independent investigation found that some religious communities did not even have a child protection policy in place. The inquiry examined a large amount of evidence related to the 38 religious organizations present in England and Wales, with figures given in the investigation of the known prevalence of child sexual abuse unlikely to reflect the full picture.
The report reveals that organizational and cultural barriers to reporting child sexual abuse in religious organizations and settings are numerous, diverse, and difficult to overcome. These include blaming victims, the absence of discussion about sex and sexuality, and discouraging external reporting, thus prioritizing the organization’s reputation over the needs of victims of sexual abuse.
One-quarter of millions of children in England and Wales attend some form of religious education, through further education or extracurricular activities. There are no adequate data on the number of institutions, the exact number of children or persons running these activities.
The report makes two recommendations:
(i) that all religious organizations should have child protection policies and support procedures; i
(ii) that the government should enact a law to change the definition of full-time education to bring any environment that maintains a primary school into a registered school, and give Ofsted sufficient authority to examine the quality of child protection when inspecting suspicious unregistered schools.
You can read and download the full report here.