Courtesy or crime? How child sexual exploitation became overlooked and endemic in the UK

By Margaret Jervis, legal and social researcher

When did the runaway train of girls being sexually exploited under the noses of the preventive and protective authorities begin, and why?

Dial back to the 1980s, and the core of the social paralysis can be identified.

It began with a mother launching a High Court case against her local health authority that ended up with a groundbreaking ruling in the House of Lords, the Supreme Court of the era, affecting social licence and protection for generations.  

Mrs Victoria Gillick was the litigant. She was a mother of 10 children, five of whom were girls. Her challenge was the legality of official ‘custom and practice’ in the NHS in providing contraceptive and abortion services to girls under the age of 16 without parental knowledge or consent.

As was made clear by the courts, Mrs Gillick’s case was one of principle – her children were not implicated in receiving such services. But the fact that she had children who might be affected by the policy gave her standing as a litigant.

The policy she challenged was embodied in a 1980 Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) circular clarifying guidance on confidential birth control services for girls under 16. Under the law, elective medical treatment for children under 16 was subject to parental consent. It was standard, for instance, for parents to have to consent to their children being vaccinated.

However, the sexual revolution of the 1960s coupled with the contraceptive pill and the legalising of abortion had allowed for a change in sexual behaviour – casual sex outside marriage, the one-night stand, promiscuity – all lifestyle choices without penalty.

The new era of sexual freedom for women had trickled down to more girls under 16. It was never the case that no girls had sex under 16; the ‘gymslip’ mum was a family crisis of old, often hidden by seclusion, adoption and adult relatives taking on parental duties and ‘identity’. But by the 70s it looked like the trickle of ‘accidents’ could turn into a flood if measures were not taken to allow preventative services to children as available to adults. In short, it seemed a social imperative to prevent a societal disaster through discriminatory policies.

But there was a problem. The legal age of consent to sexual intercourse by girls was 16. If a boy or man had intercourse with a girl under 16 knowingly, they committed a criminal offence. This was not necessarily classified as rape, which carried more onerous criminal penalties. Between the ages of 13 and under 16, ‘consent’ was a viable defence against rape, but not underage sex, a paradoxical rule which persists today in some form. It was relevant to charging decisions, no doubt as a recognition of actual social mores.

Note that underage girls having sex willingly did not face criminal penalties (though they might be subject to social intervention by being placed in care), but in order to obtain medical contraceptive and abortion services, in law, they needed parental consent.

No doubt there were some progressive practical parents who accepted the fact of their daughters having sex and were willing to provide consent. It was the ‘responsible option’ by parents and child – the 15 year old in a stable family with the girl in a happy steady relationship. But for the most part, the girls were acting outside or in opposition to parental approval, so a requirement for parental consent would be a deterrent to seeking medical contraception and thus the social intention of providing the service was thwarted.

So, as early as 1974, Family Planning Clinics were provided with government guidance allowing for confidential services for children. The 1980 guidance was a clarification as to the advisability of seeking parental consent, with the caveat that it could be waived in ‘exceptional’ circumstances, the decision being a clinical one for the medics.

The legal argument of Mrs Gillick was straightforward. The local health authority was acting illegally in following this guidance by abduring parental consent for medical services and placing the medics at risk of a criminal offence of aiding and abetting a crime (namely sexual intercourse by a male with a girl under 16).

In 1983 she lost the case, but this judgment was overturned by the Court of Appeal. The conundrum of respective rights and responsibilities in opposition remained. Thus in 1985, the case was subject to clarification as to the law by five law lords in the House of Lords.

By this time Victoria Gillick had become a national figure. For some she was a heroine of parental and societal conservatism, but for the greater part of the media, and certainly social work and medical establishment, she was a figure of hate – a privileged, posh catholic mother, out of touch with the realities of modern life, who wanted to foist her ‘bigoted’ opinions on the populous to their detriment.

When the House of Lords considered the case, it became an international cause celebre attracting global media attention.

There was argument about ‘welfare of the child’ interests; ‘sliding scales’; the rights and duties of parents, which included ‘care and control’. The risk of opening up a hornet’s nest of sexual exploitation was hardly touched upon. In fact it was suggested that the real threat posed by non-confidentiality was from the parents themselves, especially fathers who might be raping their daughters!

As Mrs Gillick herself recalled, there was a relentless drumbeat of dire warnings should parental rights or ‘control’ defeat the ‘best interests’ of the child:

“Every radio, television or newspaper article which attempted to ‘investigate’ the matter, drew upon the experience of doctors, sex councillors, gynaecologists and children, and paraded them before us, replete with all their grizzly tales of abortions, near deaths, incestuous pregnancies and suicides, maniacal fathers and feckless mothers, infections, cancers, infertility; the imposition of religious morality upon private sexual freedoms, and all the rest…”

The case was finely balanced, but on a split three-to-two decision the child’s right to qualified confidentiality won through. In each case, the decision to decide on confidentiality rested with the professionals – the medics – as a ‘clinical matter’ with the criterion dubbed ‘Gillick competence.’ Namely, when presented with the dilemma of a girl under the age of 16 seeking contraception or abortion services, the doctor should assess whether they had the social and intellectual maturity to make such a decision absent parental consent or knowledge. 

But ‘Gillick competence’ would have a much wider remit in the coming years. In tandem with the emergent ‘Children’s Rights’ movement, it became a byword for all official decisions concerning child welfare. And while it was thought, tentatively, that 13 might be the practical lower age limit of rational choice, there was no actual barrier in terms of age. Nor was the scrutiny envisaged strictly adhered to. In many instances across voluntary and statutory agencies, the welfare and rights argument became paramount in favour of the child.

This wider perspective was incorporated into the 1989 Children Act. The notion of ‘parental rights’ was effectively abandoned in favour of the paramountcy principle of the ‘best interests of the child’. Included in the measures were the obligations of local authorities to provide services to promote and support the needs of children and families. 

This included accommodation, which in the context of ‘Gillick competency’ meant that children could elect to be placed in permissive children’s homes without any court order, despite parental opposition.

At the same time, the powers of parents, foster carers and care staff to protect children from putting themselves ‘in harm’s way’ were curtailed. ‘Locking children up’ as it became termed, was outlawed other than in the most extreme circumstances under court or medical authority – that is in criminal custody or ‘secure units’ for mental or physical health. 

Thus the ‘empowerment’ of children translated into the ‘disempowerment’ of parents, social workers, teachers, police and the panoply of safeguarding services when dealing with progressively assertive children embracing a culture of sexual and social ‘freedom’.

As always, it was the most vulnerable children from broken or neglectful families that suffered the most. They often had a history of being in care and were more open to peer group persuasion to spend ‘fun’ evenings hanging out in parks with boys drinking and smoking joints rather than watching TV or doing homework. The older street culture of drug dealing and prostitution was also a lure – just ‘having fun with benefits’.  

Time and again, social workers and school counsellors tried to dissuade girls from a hedonistic lifestyle that would create risks and damage their lives. But there’s nothing more determined and foolhardier than a 14-year-old girl armed with her ‘rights’ and desire to do as her peers do in pursuit of pleasure.

Likewise, their ‘rights’ to confidentiality trumped concerns about welfare. Voluntary ‘street’ welfare agencies would refer girls to contraception and abortion services but not inquire further or disclose information to statutory services or parents. This extended to fears of sexual exploitation or even abuse. The aim was to keep the ‘client’ ‘onside’ – effectively precluding criminal investigation unless agreed to by the girls.

And so to grooming. While the ‘seduction of the innocent’ stereotype might take place, the general pattern was more mundane: teen girls getting sexually involved with delinquents, moving on to street prostitution, often looking much older than their years.

That a lot of the boys and men they got involved with – or lured by – were Pakistani in northern and midlands towns was largely due to  the ‘nighttime culture’ of takeaways and taxis in areas of towns and cities where the cultural minorities rubbed along with crime and prostitution. Some of these encounters were genuine romances and relationships, others less so, many were toxic. 

Many girls and young women became the victims of abuse. Rightly, they ask: why wasn’t I protected? Parents who tried to protect their children but were rebuffed say: why weren’t our concerns respected and acted on?

It may be down to Victoria Gillick, now in her late seventies, battle weary but not broken, to tell them why.