"Tens of Thousands" Historical Child Abuse Cases

Sky News
January 1, 2015

http://news.sky.com/story/1400757/tens-of-thousands-historical-child-abuse-cases

[with video]

The number of historical claims of sexual abuse against children is likely to reach "tens of thousands", an MP has warned.

Labour backbencher John Mann told Sky News there would be too many cases for the state to cope with - and is calling for a national institute to help victims.

It comes after many survivors called for the Government to scrap its current inquiry into paedophile activity and replace it with a more powerful body.

The wide-ranging probe was sparked by claims of paedophiles operating in Westminster in the 1980s, and is still mired in controversy.

Two chairwomen - former judge Baroness Butler-Sloss and ex-lord mayor of London Fiona Woolf - have already had to stand aside over their establishment links.

MPs and high-profile figures allegedly abused children on a London estate

Mr Mann, the MP for Bassetlaw, said the Government needed victims' confidence, and the state "cannot cope" with the number of people coming forward to report abuse.

"We are talking at this volume of people across the country - not thousands, but tens of thousands in every part of the country," he told Sky News.\

"As an example in Nottinghamshire, every single children's home has been affected with allegations, people coming forward, of abuse - sexual and violent - when they were children."

He added: "And the state, by which I mean social services, mental health services, the police, cannot cope with the volume of people coming forward.

"I've seen that just with my own constituents, who have come forward via me to those services.

"They cannot cope at the moment, and we're only just at the beginning of people coming forward.

"As we saw when [Jimmy] Savile was outed for what he'd done, over 500 people then came forward as victims, and people are still coming forward.

"This is absolutely huge, and the resources and people needed to deal with it are not in place at the moment."

In December, Mr Mann handed a dossier of evidence to Scotland Yard, claiming two whistleblowers who had information about MPs' alleged involvement in a paedophile ring may have been murdered.

He said the evidence related to the suspicious deaths of two men - a former Lambeth council official named Bulick Forsythe and a caretaker whose name he did not disclose.

Police were already aware of the potential link between one of the deaths and the child sex abuse ring, which involved "highly influential" politicians during the 1970s and 1980s, Mr Mann said.