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<\/picture>Lockdown was supposed to make us all safer and save lives. But for some vulnerable young people the opposite has been true.<\/p>\n
Sajid Javid, the former chancellor, warned last month that isolation was creating a \u201cperfect storm<\/a>\u201d for child sexual abuse. With most pupils not back at school before September, children are spending more time online, putting them at greater risk of being targeted by strangers through social media, apps and gaming. And, although lockdown is easing, children now face the long summer holidays with few adults outside the family to spot if something is going seriously wrong.<\/p>\n At the moment, data on child sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse during lockdown is not yet clear. We know from recent National Crime Agency<\/a> (NCA) figures that at least 300,000 people in the UK pose a risk of committing physical or online child abuse, more than double the 140,000 reported last year. And NCA figures shared exclusively with the Guardian show that during each of the 13 weeks of lockdown, around 350 cases of online child sexual abuse were passed to police, a 10% increase on the same period last year.<\/p>\n \u201cOur pursuit of high-risk online offenders has been unrelenting during lockdown,\u201d says Charles Yates, the NCA\u2019s deputy director. But these figures could be the tip of the iceberg. \u201cThe full scale will only be revealed once children return to schools and have more access to trusted adults, and the tech industry brings back human moderators [who check their platforms for illegal content],\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Even then, it may take some time. Andy Burrows, head of child safety online policy at NSPCC, warns that it may not be until 2021 that we will know the full impact. \u201cWhat we\u2019re likely to see here is a long tail of disclosures [in autumn].\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Internet Watch Foundation<\/a> (IWF), a charity that reports and removes online child abuse, revealed<\/a> in May that during lockdown, three major internet companies logged 8.8m hits to child sexual abuse imagery from the UK alone.<\/p>\n Susie Hargreaves, chief executive at the IWF, warns of an \u201cexponential rise in self-generated content, where children on their phones and laptops have clearly been coerced and groomed into sharing graphic sexual images of themselves, without realising these are being recorded and shared\u201d. She adds: \u201cClearly, the more vulnerable the child is, the more likely they are to be tricked and coerced.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps nowhere are vulnerable children more likely to be found in greater numbers than in England and Wales\u2019s 2,360 children homes.<\/p>\n One west London home for girls at risk of sexual exploitation has been pioneering a system to keep its residents safe \u2013 although it has found it harder to enforce amid lockdown, particularly as new guidance around \u201cstaying alert\u201d has blurred the rules.<\/p>\n On arrival at the home, which is run by the charity St Christopher\u2019s Fellowship<\/a>, the girls\u2019 phones are removed and they are then returned as a reward for safe behaviour. They also get a fob key to leave the house, which \u2013 crucially \u2013 can be deactivated by staff.<\/p>\n If staff are worried about a girl\u2019s behaviour, that it might make her unsafe outside, then the fob is deactivated \u2013 for anything from 10 minutes to up to three days.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s about being attentive to their patterns,\u201d explains Laverne Cole, regional manager at St Christopher\u2019s. \u201cThey might be unsettled or perhaps they\u2019re still dressed when everyone else is in pyjamas. Their mood dips or they become excitable. We say, \u2018We\u2019re worried about your safety, let\u2019s do something inside today\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Cole, the system, which in 2015 won funding under the Department for Education\u2019s Social Care Innovation Programme<\/a>, has resulted in far fewer girls going missing, and the DfE\u2019s evaluation of the project notes \u201ca decline in incidents involving actual or potential harm to self or others over the course of the intervention\u201d.<\/p>\n But this model, which rewards good behaviour indoors with the freedom to go outside, has been fundamentally undermined by lockdown. Some girls thought lockdown was imposed by the home, rather than the government, Cole explains.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had one young person who found that really hard and went to great lengths to contact the police about her human rights.\u201d The police, she says, helped to \u201creinforce the message that this isn\u2019t coming from us and we\u2019re not doing anything unlawful\u201d.<\/p>\n The incident shows how children\u2019s homes, which already strike a delicate balance around their residents\u2019 liberty, faced losing young people\u2019s trust when trying to enforce lockdown. It\u2019s a balance set to become even more complicated, as experts warn of a \u201csummer of rave\u201d and parties<\/a> amid the government\u2019s lack of clarity about when socially starved young people can meet up.<\/p>\n Cole says her home\u2019s approach imposes a restriction of liberty, in line with the Children\u2019s Homes Regulations guide<\/a>. These state that \u201cthere may be circumstances where a child can be prevented from leaving a home [\u2026] to meet someone who is sexually exploiting them\u201d. In contrast, a deprivation of liberty is against the law without a special court order.<\/p>\n But not all children\u2019s homes were able to keep residents safe inside during the height of the pandemic. At a privately run care home in East Anglia, staff could not prevent a 13- and a 14-year-old girl from being abducted by men in their 20s who had contacted the girls through social media. \u201cOften the girls don\u2019t perceive it as harm,\u2019 says John Anderson, the owner of the children\u2019s home. \u201cThe abusers can be seductive and so in a child\u2019s mind it becomes very confusing.\u201d<\/p>\n During lockdown, a taxi appeared outside the home and the girls got in. Anderson immediately confronted the driver. \u201cI asked him not to take them as, legally, it was child abduction, but he didn\u2019t listen. We rang the police and photographed the taxi driver, then followed him.\u201d<\/p>\n The police eventually rescued the girls and arrested the men. The situation sounds chillingly familiar: the 2014 independent inquiry into Rotherham child abuse <\/a>from 1997 to 2013 noted taxi drivers were a \u201ccommon thread\u201d across cases.<\/p>\n Ex-chancellor Sajid Javid, who has launched an inquiry into child sexual abuse and exploitation.<\/span> Photograph: Peter Summers\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A pressing issue is the lack of secure placements, says Anderson. With only 15 secure homes in the country but demand for them rising, open residential homes like his are increasingly being asked to take in young people who need higher staff ratios and more restrictive measures. It\u2019s another pressure on the system that\u2019s been exacerbated by coronavirus, but which will not go away as lockdown begins to ease. Anderson eventually found the highest-risk girl a secure solo placement with a three-to-one staff ratio.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/9c3982974ccc48f20773f7e72d73a2e47dd92966\/0_11_3500_2100\/master\/3500.jpg?width=460&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=ee65ce7f8f79d9bc9cb94640d1a79e24\")
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