13. Sexual exploitation often leads to children suffering one or more of the following:
Some of the effects may take time to manifest themselves after exposure to the abuse has ended.[2]
14. The complainants’ accounts and the evidence relating to the case study children demonstrated harmful impacts on children:
15. In November 2019, Parents Against Child Exploitation (Pace), a registered charity that supports parents in relation to child exploitation and campaigns to change policy and practice to support child victims, published a study of parents’ experiences of the children’s social care system when a child is sexually exploited.[11] It found that parents’ encounters with children’s social care led them to believe that these services were “ill-equipped” to deal with child sexual exploitation. Pace identified significant delays between parents reporting concerns and services responding (in one case up to two years). It reported that professionals often lacked understanding of child sexual exploitation, often minimising or dismissing the risks and harms faced by children. Interventions also tended to focus on either the exploited child or the parents, rather than the perpetrators. Parents frequently felt alone in managing the threats to their child.[12] Pace also noted that the child protection system is “largely based on younger children rather than teenaged children” and the assumption that “the neglect and abuse is within the family and not outside”. This may lead to opportunities for support being missed.[13]