Deputy commissioner slams failure to address sex offending by boys

Sue Berelowitz told a group of MPs that there is little or no work being done with young male offenders to address their sexual offending or attitudes to women.

Giving evidence to the parliamentary joint committee on human rights today, Berelowitz said: “I was in a secure children’s home a few weeks ago, where six out of the 16 young people were in for serious sexual offences. No work was being done with these boys on their sexual offending, and I find the same wherever I go.”

Berelowitz, who is leading work on sexual offending by young people for the Children’s Commissioner for England’s Office, said she visits secure estate facilities every month, and has raised her concerns about the lack of sexual offending education with the Youth Justice Board.

She told the committee, which is undertaking an inquiry into violence against women and girls, that the attitudes boys in some communities have to girls and women need to be addressed.

“Many of these lads in secure facilities are assaulting their partners while in the community,” she said. “It may not be the reason why they are in custody, but no work is being done on their attitudes to females.

“Many of these boys are in gangs, and research from the University of Bedfordshire shows young people in these neighbourhoods are carrying out serious crimes against females.

“There needs to be concerted programmes in our prisons to address these attitudes.”

Professor Liz Kelly, co-chair of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, also told the committee that work to address sexual violence among young people and adults had stagnated since the 1980s.

“I feel like we have gone back to a situation where we have said to sexual offenders ‘we don’t think you can change’,” she told the committee.

Professor Kelly said an example of this was that a specialist domestic violence education programme for prisoners had recently been stopped to be replaced by a generic anti-violence initiative.

She added: “We have never invested properly in work with perpetrators – we don’t think they can change so we don’t demand that.”