Child abuse and ethnicity

You asked

Please provide the following;

Statistics regarding the ethnicities of children who have reported to be victims of child abuse from 1997-2017, specifically the number of Pakistanis reporting abuse.

The most prevalent form of abuse among Pakistanis.

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

Unfortunately we do not hold time-series data on child abuse by ethnicity of victim. As we explain below, we can only provide some data collated in the year ending March 2016, from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW).

A new module of self-completion questions included in the CSEW (between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2016) asked adult respondents aged 16 to 59 whether they had experienced a range of abuse while a child. The questions were restricted to abuse carried out by an adult and included psychological, physical, and sexual abuse and also having witnessed domestic violence or abuse in the home.

As part of an article published by us, ‘Abuse during childhood: Findings from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, year ending March 2016’ (published here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/abuseduringchildhood/findingsfromtheyearendingmarch2016crimesurveyforenglandandwales), we have included a table with a breakdown of the proportion of adults stating they had experienced abuse as a child, by ethnicity. The relevant data can be accessed via the following link: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/abuseduringchildhoodappendixtables and appear in table A4a (an extract of which can be found in the attached downloads).

As the self-completion modules were only asked of respondents aged 16 to 59, the oldest respondents (those aged 59 at the time of interview) answered questions about their experience of abuse between 1956 and 1972 and the youngest (those aged 16 at the time of interview) between 1999 and 2015.

Child abuse questions are due to appear in the self-completion element of the CSEW from April 2018 until March 2019. The next available CSEW estimates are likely to be published in late 2019.

The police recorded crime series provides some information such as the number of sexual offences against children recorded by the police. Other types of abuse, are recorded as part of an aggregate category including offences against both adults and children, as a result we are currently unable to identify child victims. The Home Office currently provide us with aggregated offence numbers for police recorded crime; it is possible they may be of some assistance in providing more detailed breakdowns of sexual offences against children. Their email address is as follows: CrimeandPoliceStats@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

The Department for Education also provides information as part of its publication Characteristics of children in need. This includes numbers of referrals, assessments, and children who were the subject of a child projection plan, as well as information from the monitoring and evaluation of family intervention project. This only includes evidence of children in need that has come to the attention of authorities. However, it is possible they may also be able to assist with breakdowns of children in need by ethnicity. Enquiries to the Department for Education can be made via their website: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-education