Contribution
My Lords, I thank the Minister and her officials for the helpful meetings between Committee and Report and for the correspondence. I have retabled my amendment from Committee, which would place restrictions on parental responsibility, as Amendment 1, and signed Amendments 2 and 3 from the noble Lord, Lord Meston, which I support. I listened very carefully to the Minister and was grateful to be able to discuss the matter with her. We thank the Government for recognising that there must be a clear position on when those convicted of child sex abuse lose their parental rights. It has been iniquitous that parental rights have trumped the safeguarding of children, even when the person with parental rights has been convicted of child sexual abuse.
However, we are not convinced that this is strong enough and Amendment 1 includes all convicted of child sexual abuse. This is not about the punishment of the offender; it is about protecting all children. The organisation We Stand told us that research from the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse shows that natural parents are the highest offending group in intra-familial child sex abuse, which accounts for two-thirds of offences. As a result, children of convicted child sex offenders are at the most risk.
Any non-abusing or protective parent has a legal duty to protect their child from any child sex offender and at any level of offending. Too many have to fight the family court’s assumption about the rights of a parent, even one who is a convicted child sex abuse offender. Everything is stacked against the protective parent, with little or no legal aid to fight to protect their children and no right to know where the offender is, which also means court papers cannot be served to them. They have no right to the rehabilitation or risk assessments of the offender. That is also extraordinary: how can they comment on them or ask for assessments to be made?
Contrast that with the offender, who has the right to make multiple applications to vary or overturn protective orders and to make repeated requests for contact with the children. This is especially problematic in households where there has also been coercive control and domestic abuse, as repeated requests continue the abuse, but the family courts have too often seen it only through the eyes of the offending parent trying to assert their rights. Judges and other authorities, such as social services and Cafcass, are forced into a legislative anomaly: they must balance potential harm to a child from a convicted sex abuser parent with legislation stating that both parents’ involvement in the child’s life further supports the welfare of that child. This leads to inconsistent outcomes.
Even if the presumption is repealed, this fundamental belief is still enshrined in the introduction and guidance to the Children Act 1989’s key principles. Children of a child sexual abusing parent are often at greater risk than other children, who are automatically protected by criminal restrictions, such as sexual harm prevention orders and registration requirements.
On a technical point, the serious sexual offences listed in new Schedule ZA1 to the Children Act 1989 include both indecent imagery offences and contact offences. Imagery offences have a minimum sentence of a community order; this means we could well argue that serious offences under Clause 3 could be triggered at any sentencing threshold. However, the majority of sentences for indecent imagery tend to fall between three months and a year, while sentencing guidelines for contact offences start at a minimum of one year. Those convicted of these offences would be excluded from the Government’s proposal in Clause 3.
Surely, for safeguarding reasons, now is the time to change the legal responsibility, with the offending parent having to prove why they are safe to exercise parental responsibility, through rehabilitation courses and, of course, assessment by professionals. The position of the court must surely start with the assumption of the protection of the child, not the rights of the offender parent. I beg to move.