Edinburgh is playing host this week to a major international conference on child protection and wellbeing.
The event, hosted by the British Association for the Study and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (Baspcan), which opened yesterday and runs until Wednesday, will debate a series of contentious issues at a time when abuse is never far from the headlines.
Chief among them will be mandatory reporting. On the back of the Rotherham abuse scandal there have been calls for it to be a criminal offence to fail to report concerns about abuse. South of the border David Cameron has proposed a consultation on extending the offence of Wilful Neglect to help protect children from paedophiles. A petition on mandatory reporting is currently at the Scottish Parliament. The Baspcan event, which has registered more than 700 delegates, will debate the topic tomorrow.
Meanwhile this afternoon, Simon Bailey, chief constable of Norfolk Police will discuss key issues for policing child sexual abuse. His views are controversial - in December, he argued adults who view child porn should not be criminalised, but should instead be treated as if for a mental health condition on the NHS as most never engage in so-called 'contact abuse'. But his argument runs counter to the prevailing view of many working in social services, where viewing child porn is seen as equivalent to engaging in abuse, creating a market and demand which leads to crimes being committed against children.
In England, this concept reached a landmark in February, when paedophile Roger Lee was convicted after vigilantes set him up - posing as a 14 year old girl online, then confronting him on camera with evidence of his online activities, which they presented to police. There was no actual child involved, but Mr Lee was given a 30 month sentence for grooming.
Sue Berelowitz England's Deputy Children's Commissioner will be discussing the way some young girls abused in Rotherham and elsewhere have not seen themselves as victims, characterising sexual exploitation and manipulation by much older men as romance and seduction.
The Scottish Government's chief social work adviser Alan Baird will argue that Scotland has the most robust child inspection system in the UK, with a strong vision for the meeting the needs of vulnerable children.
The range of topics is vast, and the programme demonstrates instead just how seriously, if belatedly, the social epidemic of child abuse is now being taken, across the UK and internationally.
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