Response to story on abuse at deaf school in America

There was a rather sad reminder last week that deaf children are more likely to be abused, when news broke of a school in America where 200 deaf children had been abused over two decades from the 1950s.

Reading the papers, it was hard to tell what was most distressing. The seemingly woeful lack of action taken by those in charge at the Catholic Church when the allegations came to light and a continuing attitude which comes across, in my view, as not particularly apologetic.

Or the fact that deaf children and people had been trying to speak out about these allegations for years and had been effectively ignored. In the end, the abuser died before he could be brought to justice.

The hope is that something like that could never happen again. Yet research by the University of Manchester earlier in the year shows that most local authorities in England are pretty poor in their social care and child protection arrangements for deaf children. NDCS is calling on all Local Safeguarding Children’s Boards to conduct a review of their local child protection arrangements.

PS Just a reminder that the views expressed in this blog are mine only.

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