Author: Vasil Ivanov
Global Campus of Human Rights, University of Graz, Austria

Introduction:

To begin with, when one speaks about ‘behind closed doors’ what is meant is places and institutions that are ‘enclosed’ in nature. Such as the home, sports halls, hospitals, schools, etc. This article will firstly look at the intimate environment that child victimization occurs in, defined as victimization ‘behind closed doors’. For instance, according to UNICEF’s estimates, around 275 million children around the world are subjected to violence in their households.  

This article will also consider what types of offences and acts occur against children behind closed doors. Finally, it will critically analyze the reasons why the majority of child victimization in this environment is not reported to the police, even though there may be strong evidence.

Difficulty in peeping behind closed doors:

What frequently happens behind closed doors is that children become victimized, instead of feeling safe and protected[1]. Moreover, another approximately 40 million children under the age of 15 experience violence, neglect, and abuse in the social sectors of education, health, or even on the street[2]. The people the child spends their daily life with, such as teachers, coaches, doctors, peers, or even family members, commonly commit such acts.

The offence of child abuse constitutes an infliction of harm to a child by an adult or another child, which is intentional[3]. Furthermore, the abuse can be physical, sexual, or emotional. Due to the private nature of this crime, it is difficult to obtain concrete data on its prevalence, hence why there is a lack of such. The reasons behind the unwillingness of victims to report it will be explored in the next paragraphs.

Reporting of child abuse offences:

In the year ending March 2019, English and Welsh police authorities recorded 227,500 child abuse offences, according to official crime statistics[4]. An important fact to mention in this regard is that the police only record the number of offences, not the actual number of victims[5]. This has its advantages and disadvantages:

• On the one hand, only recording the number of offences can show if there is a pattern behind which groups of children are victimized the most frequently.
• By doing so, the social services and the police may concentrate their resources in the areas tactfully. They may focus on areas with the highest victimization rates to identify and consequently prosecute the perpetrators responsible for it.
• On the other hand, keeping a record of the number of offences only does not show us the exact prevalence of child abuse. This is because we would not be aware of the precise number of its victims. It also becomes difficult to ascertain whether offences prevail throughout all of England and Wales, or are concentrated in specific areas.
• As a consequence, the high number of recorded child abuse offences may be attributed to high repeat victimization, which may prevent authorities from allocating sufficient funds and resources to deal with this issue.

Number of victims behind closed doors:

The Crime Survey for England and Wales attempted to roughly estimate the level of victimization from child abuse in England and Wales. The method was to ask adults between 18 to 74 years whether they experienced any form of child abuse. For example, emotional, physical or sexual. Or whether they witnessed domestic violence or abuse at home, before they turned 16 years-old. It found that 1 in 5 people experience the aforementioned phenomena, which estimates approximately to 8.5 million people[6].

Furthermore, out of the 1 in 7 adults that had contacted the National Association for People Abused in Childhood’s (NAPAC’s) helpline, none of them had told anybody about the abuse they experienced when they were children[7]. Moreover, according to NSPCC’s records, a reputable organization working to prevent cruelty to children, out of the approximate 55,000 contacts made to the NSPCC’s helpline, three-quarters of them constituted abuse or neglect[8].

Nevertheless, it needs to be said that one of the limitations of this data may be that children are not always fully convinced of what abuse actually constitutes[9]. For this reason, their opinion on this may be based on perceptions only but not on widely agreed facts. As a result, one should not base their whole arguments on this topic on the aforementioned data. The reason is that people who participate in surveys in this field, or contact child helplines may not understand its nature completely.

Why children do not report such crimes:

It is no secret that the reporting rate for such offences behind closed doors is extremely low. In 2018, only 5-13 % of child victims of sexual abuse made a report to an adult or an institution that can ensure their protection, such as the police[10]. There are various reasons behind this:

• Many victims do not have faith in the police- the main mechanism that can put a halt to the abuse.
• Plenty of them think the abusive treatment towards them is a direct consequence of something they did in the past, or that they ‘deserved’ it. However, the things they often get punished for revolve around trivial matters, such as insulting a family member, accidental damage of a house item, or poor performance in school[11]. As the perpetrators tell them they should bear the consequences of their actions, it makes them feel responsible. Consequently, children take the blame.
• Unfortunately, after experiencing such types of communication so many times, it gets normalized for them. So much so, that children are often left unaware that they are subjected to a criminal offence. A striking fact is that only 26 % of the violent crime incidents which were reported by 11–15-year-olds were regarded as criminal offences by them.[12].
• Another reason behind the low reporting levels is that in many cases, the perpetrators are known to the victim- over 50 % of single-offender crimes against children are committed by someone close to the victim[13]. Since they share a lot of their daily life and since other family members or close family friends know the perpetrators in a different light, child victims may be concerned to speak out for fear of other people not believing them[14].
• Furthermore, child victims may not report a perpetrator due to their loyalty. A further reason behind this is that they made the realization that their life may start deteriorating in some ways if their perpetrator is caught, such as being blamed for it by family members, which may lead to a disruption of their whole family life, or them ending up in care[15].

Conclusion:

Child abuse may have severe consequences later in life. This can be seen by the fact that around 52 % of those who were subjected to abuse before they turned 16 experienced domestic abuse at a later stage in their life[16].

In comparison, only 13 % of those who did not experience abuse before the age of 16 years were subjected to abuse later on in their lives [17]. This shows that if the crime and its consequences are not timely addressed, abused children statistically face the risk of experiencing abuse again when they are adults.