**27. A different approach to investigation**

Successful intervention with Group B victims, who include silenced adults as well as children, requires someone who will advocate on their behalf, with the primary goal of providing safety as a route to disclosure. The child protection system should be re-orientated to accept the responsibility for asking children and young people about abuse, and for actively reaching out to help and support those who cannot easily tell. The agencies who are vital at the later stages of a protective intervention, i.e. the legal system and the courts, need to understand and accept this reality.

The present legal system is inherently unsuitable for these often very emotive and difficult cases. Because the courts have relatively little experience of Group B children, they would need to traverse a considerable learning curve. How should the present investigative framework change to accommodate these realities? What kind of legal system could really acknowledge and accommodate these complexities? In the end the court is the ultimate arbiter of child protection, and unless the legal system supports this process of change, and accepts the hard-won knowledge and expertise of professionals, we will still fall at the last hurdle: making a case in court.

#### **28. Conclusion**

We are left with more questions than answers and there is a need to progress the debate. Yet the insights from research and from survivors will not be heeded unless society as a whole is willing to believe and empower them. Since the problem is presenting on an ever increasing scale to the point of overload, it must be owned by everyone to avoid yet another cycle of discovery followed by suppression. The core way forward for a problem that is endemic in society can only be a change in social and cultural power structures and attitudes towards women and children, as discussed by Campbell [2].

A key question is how watershed moments in the stages of recognition of child abuse can be held in public and professional awareness long enough for real cultural and organisational change to replace the failures of the past. The emphasis has always been on containment via legal and procedural solutions, and blaming of individuals which is of short term value only and of little help to the survivors. Over time, the detailed history gets lost, sometimes including the documentary evidence. Failures to heed warnings, to learn from past cases and to listen to the victims are repeated. What is needed is a concerted and well-funded effort at public and professional education, training and the development of trauma-aware and traumaspecific services. That all of this is possible is shown by the work undertaken alongside the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Australia [44]. Who will find the courage and provide the political will that Nelson [28] rightly argues is necessary for this kind of action in the UK?
