Child sexual exploitation in Wales

1. Child sexual exploitation in Wales Jan Coles: Abertaf Sophie Hallett: Cardiff University Emma James: Barnardo’s Seraf Service

2. What is CSE? • “Child sexual exploitation is the coercion or manipulation of children and young people into taking part in sexual activities. It is a form of sexual abuse involving an exchange of some form of payment which can include money, mobile phones and other items, drugs, alcohol, a place to stay, ‘protection’ or affection. The vulnerability of the young person and the grooming process employed by perpetrators renders them powerless to recognise the exploitative nature of relationships and unable to give informed consent” (2009: All Wales Protocol: All Wales Child Protection Procedures)

3. What we know about CSE Jan Coles: Director Abertaf

4. CSE Vulnerability Factors • Emotional neglect • Physical abuse • Sexual abuse • Breakdown of family relationships • Family history of mental health difficulties • Family history of domestic abuse • Family history of substance misuse • Unsuitable accommodation • Lack of positive relationship with a nurturing, protective adult • Isolation

5. CSE Significant Risk Indicators • Periods of missing overnight or longer • Older boyfriend/relationship with controlling adult • Physical injury without plausible explanation, physical/emotional abuse/control • Entering/leaving vehicles driven by unknown adults • Frequenting areas known for sex work

6. CSE Risk Indicators • Staying out late • Multiple callers • Use of mobile phone/internet that causes concern • Expressions of despair • Exclusion from school • Disclosure of sexual/physical assault followed by withdrawal of allegation • STI's, pregnancy, termination of pregnancy • Peers involved in sexual exploitation • Drugs/alcohol misuse • Living independently and failing to keep in touch

7. You Don't Need to be an Expert • Believe what a young person tells you • Listen to what they have to say • Prioritise what they want support with • Understand why they're doing what they do

8. CSE Vulnerability Factors Trauma • Pre-birth/birth trauma • Early separation from mother • Frequent moves • Neglect • Abuse • Inconsistencies in caring • Emotional neglect • Physical abuse • Sexual abuse • Breakdown of family relationships • Family history of mental health difficulties • Family history of domestic abuse • Family history of substance misuse • Unsuitable accommodation • Lack of positive relationship with a nurturing, protective adult • Isolation

9. Disorganised Attachment • Child's experience of the parent as frightening, incapable of protecting, source of danger • Behaviour considered disconnected/ bizarre • Lacks coherent reasoning behind behaviour • Simultaneously seeks closeness to and distance from care-giver • Continues to have unmet nurturing needs

10. What you can do • Get your approach right and engage the young person • Assess risk effectively using SERAF • Refer to children's services using the evidence gathered with SERAF in line with the protocol • Seek advice from Seraf Service

11. That's not the end of your role • Respond to what young people communicate to you • Challenge their perceptions • Use the very many tools available in your direct work with YP • 'Hidden' DVD and direct work pack, 'What's Happening Frankie?', 'Thistle' Blaenau Gwent DVD, 'BWISE2 sexual exploitation', 'My Dangerous Loverboy' • Don't give up

12. CHILD SEXUAL EXPLOITATION IN SOUTH EAST WALES: Problems and solutions from the perspectives of young people and professionals Sophie Hallett Supervisors: Prof. Andy Pithouse and Dr. Tom Hall project reference: SCS08-002

13. What do young people think about all this?

14. It’s to do with young people’s issues and needs • Nathan: it’s probably like that brick in the wall type thing you know the more ISSUES there are the more vulnerable you are and the easier it is to put a hole in it, and everything is collapsing and, I think, that’s kind of what is happening here because where she is getting hooked on things and where she is feeling lonely, she is kind of like taking anything, I kind of like get it when it says they say she’s doing it to get attention, and I think part of it IS TRUE, in the fact that she is doing it to get attention, but it she’s doing it for...NOT, ooh look at me I’m a bad-ass, it’s more of a, it’s like a cry for help that she needs, something, and people are just putting her to the side a bit, which makes it worse, and then I think she’s in the cycle of it because she then gets less, self-esteem and, then she’s starting to do things because problem after problem after problem is starting to build up, so yeh ....WHY?

15. It’s a way of coping: • Hannah: I think this one here with Cara who is in foster care, I think she IS feeling lonely and I think she just wants friends, because no one is really listening to her and I think that’s why she is going out, doing that sort of stuff • Sophie: so you think it’s because she’s lonely and that’s why • Hannah: yeh. That’s what I would think if I knew her. If I stopped to think I would be worried about her you know. Because anyone could take advantage of that

16. ‘Digging a hole’ • DANNY: I think yeh sometimes young people aren’t in control it’s drinking and stuff. Sometimes people aren’t in control when they think they are. With drinking definitely • INTERVIEWER: Do you mean drinking can mean you don’t have control? • DANNY: Yeh well I don’t anyway (laughs) you know, you wake up in someone’s house and think oh my god where am I how the heck did I get here you know... you can just be too confident and think oh WHATEVER, nothing is going to happen to me you know... like I’d never walk down a back alley when I’m not drunk but when I’m drunk it’s just, you know, just you do. I’ve woken up and been in really dangerous situations like been taken down to (place name) and stuff.

17. ‘Downwards spiral’ • Katie: me and my friend we were out and wanted a bag and there was a drought in the area that’s like you know say if there’s been a drug raid up in Liverpool or something it means there’s less around and that’s what we call a drought. And I was with her and she was like oh I’ll phone (name) I didn’t even know who he was you know. We thought oh yeh we’ll go round and we’ll just use these guys and get drugs off them. We thought we were in control of it all. Na. We went round to their flat and I never left. ....WHY?

18. NATHAN: it doesn’t just happen… it happens because either things just aren’t addressed people are less able to fend for themselves and they don’t get the help they need, for whatever reason, and are put into difficult positions and sometimes it DOES take them there and if, people were there to help them in the first place then they wouldn’t, then this wouldn’t happen

19. What is sexual exploitation?Nathan: um in a nutshell, it’s explaining the fact that it’s basically...taking advantage of someone’s circumstances whether it’s they’re emotionally damaged because of their family or whatever, or because of their sexuality and they can’t express it or, whether it’s uh, you know they’re in dire need of money or whatever and just taking advantage in a sexual way uh, using (coughs) uh their weaknesses to get, uh, not favour cos that makes it sound like it’s good but uh, um...yeh sexual outcome

20. Exploitative relationships and situations: not saying no • Leah: I don’t know I think it’s relationships and stuff you know you feel under pressure to do things for them and stuff you know • Danny: and then you can’t say no can you. Because you’ve taken their drink and they just think you’re drunk so they do it anyway. • Nathan: because they don’t think they deserve anything better...so they just lower and lower and lower their, standards um, do you know how many people I’ve heard say oh well no one will like me no one will, uh yeh they just beat themselves up about it, continuously, uh... it means then that anyone who kind of like SHOWS something that goes against that they’re kind of like, uh they grab on to that hope, uh and that desire it means that they are SO vulnerable to anything happening to them

21. Grooming • Claire: they are basically brainwashing you to get you to like them for what they are pretending to be, and, you end up having intimate conversations and end up getting even more intimate and then you end up doing stuff that you don’t want to do • Sophie: and what do you think makes young people at risk, what kind of things • Claire: it’s easier for the predator to attack young people, because they don’t realise their being brainwashed and with the compliments they are getting they feel, more self-esteem and then something bad happens • Sophie: so if I was saying to a young person or an adult, I’d be saying look, you need to watch out about older people taking advantage of younger people? • Claire: yep and making them do things that they didn’t really, understand or don’t know what’s happening and they’ve got no one to talk to and they just hide themselves away

22. Exploitative relationships • Katie: yeh like exactly. He looked after me. He gave me everything, Everything I didn’t have you know. I was safe there. When he knew that he changed. He was like oh come on now you’ve got to start pulling your weight, you know help him out. Nothing comes for free. • Sophie: how long was it before he changed? • Katie: 5 months • Sophie: like quite a long time then? • Katie: no like it’s 5 months you know. In 5 months he got me selling myself on the streets. I would have done anything for him. He would like make me go out and get money for my drugs. He would smoke gear in-front of me like and let me sit there clucking. I would have to go out and pay for it for me. And that’s not just it. He would get the drugs for him off his mates and not paid for them and so I’d have to go out onto the streets to get the money for HIS drugs then. He would make me do anything, he even tried to get me to steal off my mum but I never did that. Even if it meant taking a beating he never got me to do that and that’s one thing I know. He used to beat me up all the time.

23. People taking advantage • Katie: They’d know you were an addict and they’d say oh come on its late I might be the last one you’re going to get tonight and then you’ll have the money, or they’d say if you do this I’ll give you more money at the end, and then they’d change the money you know the cost and use the drugs as bait and you’d end up doing it for them. • Nathan: sometimes people can want to escape the issues that comes with their family so it can sometimes lead people to, like sleep with people so they can have somewhere else to stay other than at home, yeh, just um yeh um avoiavoition is it avoition • Sophie: Um, do you mean avoidance? • Nathan: AVOIDANCE yeh it’s an avoidance issue... generally they are just trying to (.) get away from other issues that they have um, generally around their home

24. What does this mean for how we work with young people?

25. Prevention and intervention • Nathan: try and work on the issues that make them vulnerable to it, and then as they become as their life becomes a bit more stable, um hopefully they should be able to withdraw from, what is making turn towards that. Um... yeh and just showing them, what’s happening and trying to explain it as well, keep them in the know, keep them from being too blurred by their own issues and things

26. HOW shouldWE HELP?‘just talking’ (?)Co-producing support

27. How shouldwe help? • Co-producing support • Mutually ‘seeing’ and understanding: • ‘Really taking the time to find out what’s going on’ • Letting them know what you think about it – helping them to listen to themselves • Collaborating - ‘a little bit of give and take’ • producing the talk together – listening and talking • When to meet, what you do, informing and information • ‘Not just doing the job’ • ‘Having a laugh’, Remember this is their life... • Protection versus empowerment – when to intervene and when not to

28. Protection vs empowerment? • Katie: you can’t be helped unless you want to help yourself. Like with me they were all there they all wanted to help me but I didn’t want to be helped. Social services helped me loads really because they put me in a secure unit and if they didn’t do what they did I would probably be dead. • Sophie: ok so do you think then that people should just butt in and try and help? • Katie: yeh definitely because putting me in secure was the the only way they could get me off drugs really • Sophie: What do you think about secure units? • Katie: it was alright, it was nice. It was hard for me though because I was detoxing most of the time I was there which was hard you know but it was a good thing really because if I had been on the outside doing it I wouldn’t have lasted 2 minutes, it was only because I was where I was that I could do it

29. Hot chocolate and coffee? A little bit of give and take... • NATHAN: um.... I don’t know um.... yeh one of my support workers who would always like take me for coffee and I’d have hot chocolate and they’d have coffee and it was kind of like, of like a safe environment for me. Somewhere where I felt less, stressed and they kind of, we would work on issues but it was more like, we’d talk about an issue, and then maybe when we had done that we would move onto something else, and just things like that really. I liked the way that, you know it wasn’t too bogged down and horribly serious

30. Barnardo’s Seraf ServiceCSE in Practice

31. Are we getting it right at a grass roots level?

32. Prosecutions in Wales Sex predator lured girls on web A two-and-a-half year police investigation into Wayne Baker began in June 2007 when a mother contacted social services after finding inappropriate photographs of her teenage daughter. Police crackdown on predatory crime 12:50pm Monday 16th January 2012

33. Current Trends and Causes The Reality of Child Sexual Exploitation in Wales

34. Unheard & Forgotten

35. The Road to Recovery

36. Never Underestimate Yourself

37. Direct work with children and young people Educate to protect work in schools Group work with young people at risk Mentoring Programmes for Local Authority Professionals working directly with young people at risk of or involved in CSE Training and awareness raising Consultation and advice to Professionals Support in completion of SERAF Risk Assessment and implementation of the All Wales Protocol and Guidance SERAF resource packs Seraf Service

38. Cardiff Office Emma James (Children’s Service Manager) 46 Marlborough Road Roath Cardiff CF23 5BX Telephone: 029 2049 1743 Email: emma.james@barnardos.org.uk hannah.denman@barnardos.org.uk Web: www.barnardos.org.uk/serafservice Seraf Contact Details

39. Thank you

40. Contact details: Sophie Hallett – Cardiff University: Tel: 07952034471 email: halletts1@cardiff.ac.uk Jan Coles – Director, Abertaf Tel: 07595229774 email: jan.coles@abertaf.org Emma James – Children’s Services Manager, Barnardo’s Cymru Serafservice: Tel: 029 2049 1743 email: emma.james@barnardos.org.uk