Public sentiment reveals a complex landscape of pain and trauma related to child-on-child sexual abuse, with many individuals sharing personal experiences of shame and guilt. There is a strong call for more awareness, education, and supportive environments for both victims and perpetrators to discuss their experiences openly. The comments reflect a desire for healing and validation, emphasizing the need for societal change and understanding.

Mental health professionals

Educational institutions

Policy makers

Thank you for the update. I hope that this plays out with as little stress to you and your kids as possible. Best wishes

Snickerty

Best of luck OP. I hope it goes as well as it can do.

Denty632

I do think it's wild that SS are saying it's up to you to sort supervised contact if he pursues it. It should be on him to push for this if he wants it, including arranging and paying for a contact centre and someone to supervise that is acceptable to you and SS. This shouldn't create any work for you at all, other than bringing the children to the agreed place.

tiggergirluk76

[deleted]

1 - no, social care did not offer (and would not/could not) to help you fulfil the court order because they can’t supervise him with them 50% of the time, they’d be offering like a couple of hours a week max. So it’s the bail conditions prevent the court order from being fulfilled - that is not your fault or your responsibility. You turning down social care supervision is a separate matter and reasonably your choice to make under the circumstances. 

It is your ex who cannot fulfil his part of the order - he cannot be available to have contact/care of the children because he is legally prevented from doing so by the bail conditions. 

2 - honestly it’s hard to say, but think months rather than weeks in most cases

3 - yes, though for this kind of investigation it’s very unlikely that they would change them to allow unsupervised contact with minors. 

4 - it’s normal to hear this through social care rather than the police. Police notify social care who then get in touch with you. 

Other - one day this will be resolved and it may be resolved in a way which means your ex can have 50/50 with the kids again as per the existing order but you may have reason to not want that given the concerns. You should get legal advice from a family law solicitor NOW about what to do if that day arrives, so that you are prepared to act appropriately.

robot_worgen

1 - this is something to speak to a family law specialist about. You clearly have quantifiable concerns. 

2 - these things take as long as they take unfortunately. Different situations vary wildly so it's impossible to predict. 

3 - bail conditions can be changed or lifted. If this is a child sex offence then I'd expect the bail conditions won't change. 

4 - the police have a duty to update social work about the circumstances. They might not know your identity. They also can't tell folk about specifics on cases where they aren't directly involved in the crime.

PuritanicalGoat

What exactly did the social worker say? It is highly odd that they offered supervision as they are usually massively overstretched. 

In short, you are responsible for keeping your children safe. If their dad wants contact, he would need to go through the Courts if you are declining. 

You are erring on the side of caution, which is completely acceptable under the circumstances. 

I doubt any court would offer any sort of sanction for a breach in these circumstances. 

Are the children now subject to social care assessment/involvement? If so, then let them progress the assessment and/or plan.

wordshavenomeanings

You wouldn’t be breaching the court order as the order doesn’t state supervised contact. The father would need to file for a variation of the order with the court, not you. Social services cannot override a court order, they can only advise.

Given there is an ongoing police investigation which relates to probably the most extreme of child safeguarding issues a court would not reprimand you for refusing what is essentially a suggestion by social services. But I would seek legal advice from the lawyer that dealt with the original court order. As it stands the father is not guilty of any crime, just being investigated, which makes this a bit of a grey area. The court very well may rule that supervised contact is in the best interests of the children until the police investigation is concluded.

Don’t refuse *all* contact, make it clear in writing to either social services or the father directly that given the allegations and bail conditions that you will accept indirect contact in the interim such as letters or emails - this will show the court (if it gets there) you are safeguarding your children but also, still, promoting a relationship.

The bail conditions are very, very unlikely to change.

od1nsrav3n

Give the offence and his odd behaviour the best form of contact is probably via letter or email to you that you can pass on to the children as appropriate. As this is different from the order in place I think you will need to take advice on whether you need to apply to the court for a variation.

EldritchCleavage

Just to be clear - did you decline social service's supervised access because you aren't planning to allow any access or because you plan to supervise yourself/have someone you know do it?

zbornakingthestone

1. Given that supervised access has been offered and I have turned that down, is this a breach of a court order and am I putting myself at risk of legal repercussions? (I know that his bail conditions take priority, but the offer of supervised contact is what's throwing me off)

This would not be a breach however I would strongly advise to contact a family solicitor in order to have the court order amended. 

2. How long is the investigation likely to take?

Many months, most likely over a year, it is very dependent on a number of different factors, 

3. Can bail conditions be changed while the investigation takes place?

Yes but again it greatly depends on what the actual charges are. 

4. why am I only learning this through Social Services?  Why have the police not contacted me?

If your husband is not living with you then they will leave it with Social Services.

GhostRiders

I’ve worked with family legal aid files since 2013 (not as a lawyer but in an administrative capacity).

His bail conditions only prevent him from having unsupervised contact, so technically he could pursue supervised contact. If he applies to enforce contact then the court might direct contact to take place at a contact centre, but given the nature of the ongoing investigation I don’t think this is a given. Supervision by a third party such as a grandparent might also be considered.

Legal aid is only available for child arrangements proceedings if you have evidence of being the victim of domestic abuse, but certainly ask for an appointment with a legal aid solicitor to check. Otherwise you could represent yourself at court, which is very common these days.

The police investigation will probably take months because they’ll need to conduct forensic analysis of devices and the consider whether a prosecution is justified. Bail conditions could be changed while the investigation is ongoing.

Hope that helps &amp; good luck:)

fizzy-good

remeber innocent until proved guilty and false allegations do often happen. until he is convicted he is still only suspected

Unfair-Owl-5204

There is no “statute of limitations” in this country. 

There are some offences that have to be charged within certain timescales, but this isn’t one of them. 

The “3 years after you turn 18” rule applies to personal injury claims, not criminal prosecutions.

They may be referring to the time limits for prosecution of common assault - that is an assault that does not meet the charging criteria for actual bodily harm.

The time limit is essentially 6 months but can be 12 months in certain circumstances, however if that is the case the police are not considering the correct offences , if that is the case they should be looking at the offences and incidence of neglect under the children’s act and not as common assaults. 

see if you can clarify with them what the ‘statute of limitations’ they are referring to and if it is the 6 months for summary offences then ask if they have considered it as a case of neglect rather than individual assaults. 

Alternatively if you have significant trauma from constant low level assaults you could make a complaint on the basis of a more significant assault that has inflicted lasting psychological damage that would meet the definition of actual bodily harm and prevent the summary only offences being statue bared

I’m not saying this will work but they are  tactics that experienced child abuse investigators would use to overcome the time scale problems

Rat-Soup-Eating-MF

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still waiting for the government, councils, ofcom, media outlets.. ANYONE

to actually define what consitutes "adult content"

because i wouldn't consider r/cider "adult content" but lo and behold...

(shameful minor spelling mistake edit)

agerestrictedcontent

The OSA is a joke, all it did was ban the mainstream sites, which now means that anyone looking for porn now has to trawl the fetish and weirdo sites, meaning that kids are now just gonna be exposed to the more extreme shit

Apprehensive-Fly977

Who could have possibly imagined that this would have happened. If only numerous sources had warned that this would be the result.

Substantial-Newt7809

It is. But the government is putting out statistics lying about it because they cannot track VPNs, saying it is actually lower. Disgusting.

DepressiveVortex

In my experience the most effective group at protecting and moderating content for kids are their parents, not the government.

StoicBloke

I read the article, and the headline is not what it first appears to be talking about:

&gt;"more children in the United Kingdom say they’ve been exposed to pornography online before the age of 18 than in 2023, when the Online Safety Act was introduced"

&gt;"“The protections for children under the Online Safety Act, which came into force on July 25th, could not have come soon enough,” said de Souza."

Basically, this article is saying that the new age-gating stuff is a good thing and should help stop the epidemic of children being shown porn everywhere.

I'm guessing the "introduced in 2023" part is when the politicians started talking about it.

Els236

Clickbait trash as the restrictions only just went into effect, these stats are not related to OSA.

Beginning-Seat5221

It's been in effect for a month. Yeah the 11 year olds of today will still have seen porn in their lifetime? Stupid article.

MrOneil_

Not to mention that you don’t even need a VPN, a simple proxy website is enough to get around the ban haha. 

Old men trying to censor the internet will never learn. 

Academic-Key2

Read this carefully, though. The OSA came into force in 2023, and the study covers the period after that. However, regulations under the OSA which actually require action - age verification - came into force last month. The data was collected over a period during which the law was on the books but in practice nothing had changed.

I'm not saying the rules are good, or work well, or will solve the problem in any way, but this is very misleading reporting.

NeverendingStory3339

Clickbait headline. The research shows that the children's exposure to adult content continued to increase over the last two years. This is BEFORE the new verfication requirements were introduced in July. The Online Safety act was inroduced in 2023 under the Tories. However, little was done to implement it until the new verfication requirements were introduced. If anything, this strengthens the argument that more stringent measures were necessary.

evolveandprosper

IHaveAutismToo

If you create a big red button and say “do not touch”
It will be pressed and stolen before you wire it in…

SnooFloofs1868

If you read the article it is pretty misleading. It says more children have had access to porn since the act was passed in 2023. While this is true the harms to children section didn't come into effect until this year. So we will need to wait for us to find out what effect it had.

code-garden

Bit misleading though it's not talking about the recent changes it's talking about since 2023.

parasoralophus

&gt; New research just published by Dame Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England, has found that exposure to pornography has increased since 2023, when rules to protect the public online were first introduced in the UK.

&gt; “The protections for children under the Online Safety Act, which came into force on July 25th, could not have come soon enough,” said de Souza.

&gt; “Now, we will see if they work. And there must be serious consequences for companies that fail to meet the high expectations I have of them.”

So, this is before any blocks were meaningfully put into place. The article is saying the issue was only getting worse and the research shows that the ramp up was justified. Reddit not beating the "not reading the article" allegations.

HouseOfWyrd

it was never about safeguarding children in the first place

PuroPigment

In contrast legalised cannabis in Amsterdam made it cringe and uncool with Dutch youth, with all the ageing foreign Vincent Vega types coming over as drug tourists.

TheSpacePopinjay

Wow it's almost as this entire thing is not for the kids but to lurk infrmation out of the public like a leech on its self righteousness. 

HOW ABOUT YOU USE PARENTAL CONTROL, it's there for a fucking reason you Muppets of a government

ShoeNo9050

So instead of browsing pornhub, which is basically YouTube at this point, kids are visiting sites hosted in places that don't follow laws or moderate content. Who would have thought his would happen...

spaceshipcommander

I feel this has got to do with children having access to the internet at younger and younger ages with no restrictions from adults, combined with the fact that seeing porn on social media front pages is pretty normal nowadays so you don’t need to look for it to find it. 

The OSA should circumvent this somewhat on social media as it shouldn’t be appearing in feeds anymore but obviously doesn’t address looking it up / workarounds

Jmielnik2002

I feel like a lot of this could have been avoided by just lowering the age a bit. If the age restriction had been for 15 or 16+ people wouldn't have complained as it would be targeting actual children and not people who are old enough to decide if they want to consume adult content. 

Whether the method and results would be helpful is another matter but with public support of the broad concept people would be up for the aims of the bill and amending it in the future to improve it.

Skulldo

It's talking about 2023 not this year . And the porn addicted adults on Reddit are running with it lol

shinobimega

Hobbitfeet1991

Teenagers can’t see tits online any more? Guess they’ll be looking for the real thing instead and, whoops, teenage pregnancy rates are suddenly increasing

CherryDoodles

PassingShot11

Kindlydestroyed1

I can see the intention (or at least what they are telling us is the intention) but the way they have gone about it just shows that they don’t understand the internet and how it works

Alarmed-Plum-2723

So nobody bothered reading the article then? This is the growth between the introduction of the act and the blocks coming into place showing just how urgently they were needed as the problem was getting worse and worse.

PeaNice9280

Also an increase in people's personal data being sold on the dark web through having to verify age through private companies. Whole thing is a scam.

Guardrail19

Specialist_Fox_1676

Hmm imagine making a crazy deal about poor parenting and lack of controls in the home, that introduced loads of kids to adult content because it's all people were talking about...

rob3rtisgod

Was discussing this with a few pals today. 4chan for example is still accessible, which has a whole array of porn… from relatively normal, to completely bizarre and outside of most societal “norms”. Sprinkled in between that? Gore, murder and other sketchy stuff. Like, literally on the same page. 

That being said, I saw some diabolical stuff as a young teenager in the early days of unfettered access to the internet… 

I don’t know what the answer to this is, really.

Oh-Its-Him-

how would they even know when it's inherently difficult to track, especially when now it's 18+, which nominally would mean people under 18 won't be able to have access at all, yet sites that can still be reached would be impossible to know if the person accessing is a child or not

Warm-Atmosphere-1565

And the government's lying about it. UK traffic to porn sites has basically halved, but to make up the deficit, connections via proxies, other countries (vpns) and alternate URLs/sister sites has actually increased the number.

MORE people in the UK are watching pornography AND explicit/violent content than EVER BEFORE. The government just enabled far more dangerous consumption that will ruin lives, and are lying, saying that their law is effective, so they can continue to worsen their surveillance because "well it's worked so far" even though it HASN'T WORKED

Bee_bzzzzzzzzz

This whole thing is a farce.

I can't visit r/ukguns without verifying (I've been shooting legally since I was 11 years old) but Reddit is serving me ads for penis pills, things kids definitely shouldn't be buying, when I'm not verified. I can visit the Discord for ViNovella Games (a seller of porn games) but I'm blocked from their Bugs channel so I can't report that spelling mistake in Episode 3. I can't send DMs on my social platform any more.

Papfox

It was never about the kids, they just use that to wave through draconian tracking for anyone that doesn't agree with their lapdog approach to war criminals.

johnlewisdesign

It’s because it wasn’t about protecting kids from adult content, even though that was the excuse used for it.

Stuspawton

Loads of whinging about the government banning r/xyz, but it’s not like Keir starmer is sat banning things willy nilly in Downing Street - Reddit decide what to restrict on Reddit. Complain to Reddit first.

SnooMarzipans2285

Bullshit I've been using the internet since 2006 and I have never accidentally clicked on porn. The only time you find porn is if you search for it.

importantmaps2

Scrap the OSA and make internet access outside heavily firewalled/filtered education and school for under 16s illegal. Ban smartphone sales to under 16s and any caught with a smartphone has it confiscated and destroyed / recycled. For home devices, it's a parental responsibility to set up parental controls via ISPs. Parents found breaking this law face extremely harsh penalties. Let's get parents parenting. Will this stop all kids accessing porn? Of course not. Will it stop some? Probably yes. Will it encroach on the privacy and personal freedoms of adults ? No.

Jensen1994

Is “banged up” still a thing? That’s the site me and my mate used to look at dodgy shit in the 90’s. Broth of man sticks in my head, look it up🤮

dantraxx

OSA is an abysmal piece of  legislating it fails to do what it was "Intended" to do and instead goes after information sharing that could be obtained from a library with no restrictions. 

We will eventually see non complaint sites slammed with fines and then blocked at the ISP level denying access to many sites considered "Adult Content" with little actual clarification around the meaning and it's application.

IntronD


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Firstly, sorry that this has happened, but from what I know, sexual offences against children and the number of offences, I would say the case has already been prioritised more than other cases. There isnt really anyone you can speak to, to force the case to come foward any quicker, a Judge has determined that this case is of course complex, a huge amount of material is going to involved, as well as taking into account that any evidence going to be given is going to have to be across multiple days, I would say 5 is fairly hopeful.

Secondly, your next route would be to contact the Officer In charge of the Case, or even witness protection (/the court its being heard at) and finding out why it has been delayed, but I suspect its because there are so many cases going on that this is the only time the court could find the ideal time to slot it in without having to go Miles and miles for a new court. 

If you can get intouch with the prosecution, or the OIC, it may be worth writing out a letter explaining the circumstances and that the evidence relies upon your Granddaughter, who having experinced these crimes, has attempted to committ suicide and that any delays, could mean that vital evidence is gone if she does kill herself and that it would be in the best interest of providing the best evidence at court, if the case was closer. Of course, a judge does not have to listen.

LazyWash

There is no way you can bring the trial forward, I’m sorry. 

This will already be a priority trial, but it’s still a trial with a defendant on bail. Depending where you are in the country, that could mean up to a 2 year delay. 

MPs and Police and Crime Commissioners are useless… but by all means contact them to emphasise the shocking state of the criminal justice system. 

In terms of your granddaughter, what special measures are they using at trial? I assume she provided a video interview, but did they pre-record the cross-examination too (s.28)? That may be something that helps in terms of her being able to move past one part of the process.

Never dealt with trial allocations but have dealt with courts for over a decade, unfortunately I don't know of a way to prioritise a crown court trial in these circumstances (setting aside any remand due to reoffending or new evidence), by their very nature some of the worst crimes are dealt with in the crown court and so thousands of others are in the same boat as you. I have heard recently that a crime occurring today would not be heard in crown until 2027. I appreciate that this is personal to you but to the courts system you are one of many who all will have an equally harrowing tale to tell. Raise it with the officer in your case to see if they can signpost to outside agencies otherwise it will be a wait, be prepared for 3 or 4 postponements. Sorry

James20985


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Indian-origin brothers have been sentenced for serious child sexual offences in the UK, highlighting ongoing issues of child safety and exploitation.

Child Sexual Offences in the UK

Why This Matters

Public Sentiment Summary

Highlighted Comments

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What the people want