Why we can't let John Swinney take two years to act on child sexual abuse

It may come as a surprise to Elon Musk, but most women don’t look to him for insights into the scourge of male sexual violence against women and girls. A patriarch who built a compound for three of his ‘baby mothers’, who has fathered 12 children and who worships at the feet of Donald Trump – successfully sued for sexual abuse in a New York civil court – is not an ally, he is part of the problem.

But his crazed and crazy utterings on X/Twitter in recent days have put the sexual abuse and exploitation of children and young women firmly at the top of the political agenda. No politician can now turn a blind eye to rape gangs, as happened all too often in the past when justice was traded for community cohesion.

No politician can ignore the survivors who call for urgent action to tackle this most heinous of crimes. No politician can ignore experts who, after careful consideration, have come up with recommendations for change. But a cautious politician, lacking courage and conviction, may be tempted to kick the issue down the road for a couple of years as he ‘considers’ what to do next.

John Swinney needs to show much more urgency in tackling child sexual abuse in Scotland (Picture: Michael Boyd) | Getty Images

Mandatory reporting

This is exactly what John Swinney did on Thursday, when asked by fellow SNP MSP Fulton MacGregor if he would consider the mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse in light of the UK Government’s decision to introduce it in England and Wales in the spring. “What further consideration has the Scottish Government given to adopting that approach in Scotland?” the backbencher asked.

MacGregor knows what he is talking about. He is chair of Holyrood’s cross-party group on adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Only recently, he chaired a discussion in parliament on mandatory reporting. As he told his boss, “there is now a strong coalition of support for that measure from a broad range of survivor agencies and, crucially, from survivors themselves in Scotland”.

He might have added that the woman who is one of the UK’s leading experts on child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE) supports mandatory reporting. Professor Alexis Jay’s CV is impeccable. She was the Scottish Government’s chief social work advisor, and she is the independent chair of the Centre for Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection (Celcis).

Children’s minister Natalie Don-Innes proudly evoked her name in parliament only a few days earlier when she revealed that Professor Jay was a member of a “national strategic group” whose job was to consider what was needed to better protect children.

A straightforward legal change

Professor Jay led the 2014 local inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, which found that at least 1,400 underage girls, some as young as 11, had been abused between 1997 and 2013 by gangs of men, predominantly British-Muslim Pakistanis. She went on to chair the national Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), which reported in 2022.

There is no one more qualified in Scotland, or indeed across the UK, to advise on the best ways to tackle abuse. No one. And mandatory reporting – where people working with children have a duty to report any abuse they have witnessed or were told about – was the single biggest reform she recommended in her 2022 IICSA report. A straightforward change in the law which, if it saved only one child from the horror of gang rape or incest, would be worthwhile.

But on Thursday, John Swinney missed the chance to do the right thing. In the mealy-mouthed language of a long-in-the-tooth politician who knows how to say something without doing anything, he told MacGregor – and every survivor of abuse – that his government is “considering the United Kingdom Government’s proposed planned approach” and that it will “consider all relevant recommendations that come out of the independent Scottish child abuse inquiry…”

No hint of urgency

In other words, mandatory reporting is unlikely to be on the Scottish statute book any time soon. And given it is improbable that Scotland’s child abuse inquiry will report before 2026 at the earliest, there is every chance there will be no changes to the law before the next Holyrood election.

No doubt the spin doctors who helped craft Swinney’s non-answer congratulated each other for their cleverness, but it is their cynicism that grates. There wasn’t a hint of urgency in Swinney’s reply, simply the carefully worded response of a political bureaucrat, ticking off another item on his to-do list.

Meanwhile, as the First Minister was preparing his script, only 50 miles away in Glasgow’s High Court, a Romanian grooming gang was found guilty of the organised rape and exploitation of ten vulnerable women in Dundee.

For good or bad, Musk has made the political weather this past week. Child sexual abuse and exploitation have emerged from the shadows to become a topic discussed over the dinner table. Politicians, across the UK and from all parties, have been forced to confront their failings. But Musk is no hero.

Hiding in plain sight

Women’s rights campaigners and survivors of abuse have been shouting about sexual violence for decades, but the brutal truth was too hard to bear for most people. Society still struggles to come to terms with the grotesque sexual violence that lies beneath the surface of everyday life. But it is there, hiding in plain sight.

On Thursday, Swinney had the chance to make amends, to show that he and his government had listened not only to the experts, but more importantly to the survivors of the abuse. All he had to say was that his government would introduce mandatory reporting at the earliest opportunity, before the end of this parliamentary year.

Instead, he chose to prevaricate. Whether that is because he didn’t want to be seen slavishly following the Home Office’s example, or he wants the recommendation to come from the Scottish inquiry, is irrelevant. When courage called, he wasn’t listening.