Prosecute professionals who stay silent on child abuse claims – Starmer
"This article is more than 11 years old""Prosecute professionals who stay silent on child abuse claims – Keir StarmerFormer director of public prosecutions calls for change in law to prevent more victims slipping through netJosh HallidayMon 4 Nov 2013 00.01 GMTTeachers and health workers should be prosecuted for failing to alert the police to allegations of child abuse, according to the former director of public prosecutions, who is calling for an overhaul of the law to prevent more victims from slipping through the net.Keir Starmer QC, who left his role as Britain's top prosecutor last week, becomes the most senior official to call for the introduction of mandatory reporting following a string of high-profile cases, including the Jimmy Savile scandal, in which victims of the TV and radio star were repeatedly failed by the social care system.In an interview with BBC1's Panorama programme to be aired on Monday, Starmer says: "I think the time has come to change the law and close a gap that's been there for a very long time. I think there should be a mandatory reporting provision."Starmer says Britain should be brought into step with countries such as the US, Canada and Australia, where it is a criminal offence for care professionals not to report child abuse allegations to the authorities."The problem is, if you haven't got a central provision requiring people to report, then all you can do is fall back on other provisions that aren't really designed for that purpose and that usually means they run into difficulties. What you really need is a clear, direct law that everybody understands," he says.His intervention comes a year after it was revealed that Savile, who died in 2011, had abused hundreds of victims at schools, hospitals and BBC premises over five decades.Savile was never apprehended, despite high-level concerns over his behaviour and complaints to police and care workers."https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/nov/04/child-abuse-keir-starmer-prosecute-professionals
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