Year: 2019
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: This was an invited presentation delivered to the England and Wales Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, in April 2019. England and Wales do not have a legislative mandatory reporting duty to report child sexual abuse, and the presentation was requested to provide information about the nature of such laws, and their impact in lived experience. The first part of the presentation provides a general background to mandatory reporting laws for child sexual abuse. It explains the nature, origin and purpose of mandatory reporting laws, and situates them as one part of a child protection system, commonly adopted by countries worldwide. It discusses rationales for introducing a mandatory reporting law for child sexual abuse, and distinguishes duties under a mandatory reporting law from other duties to report child sexual abuse in law and policy. It then contrasts mandatory reporting laws for sexual abuse only, with reporting laws for other types of maltreatment (physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and exposure to domestic violence). Important points are made about systemic responses to reports, and measures of effectiveness. The second part of the presentation discusses the impact of mandatory reporting laws for child sexual abuse in Australia, a country whose various jurisdictions have each enacted mandatory reporting laws for child sexual abuse, at different points in time. It provides major results of five different empirical studies into mandatory reporting laws for child sexual abuse at national and state levels, with these studies having been led by the author (citations of the published studies are provided). The studies’ findings provide insights into five important questions. First, what happens before and after introducing a mandatory reporting law for child sexual abuse, regarding numbers and outcomes of reports, investigated reports, and substantiated reports? Second, what are the long-term trends in numbers and outcomes of reports of child sexual abuse where mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse is introduced? Third, what is the difference in numbers and outcomes of reports of child sexual abuse in two comparable jurisdictions, where only one has a mandatory reporting law? Fourth, how do reports of child sexual abuse differ from reports of other kinds of abuse and neglect? Fifth, how do reports of child sexual abuse differ from reports of other kinds of abuse and neglect over time? Outcomes of all five studies indicate a mandatory reporting law for child sexual abuse will have significant positive effects on case identification and child protection, without causing intolerable systems burden.
Author: Ben Mathews
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2953674534