Carol Barnridge campaigns for justice for the thousands of survivors of historic sexual abuse in Scotland
Five years ago myself and a dozen other female survivors of childhood sexual abuse took a petition to the Scottish Parliament. It called for more resources and tighter legislation to allow sexual abuse cases to come to court. It also called for an inquiry into historic cases where abuse had taken place in care homes.
Fast forward to 2015 and progress has been slow. Last year the Scottish Government announced an inquiry would take place within a year. While this was the news we’d all been waiting for, the process is already being mired with legal arguments and challenges.
Officially the inquiry launched at the beginning of this month but it's still at the early stages and not yet taking evidence. I myself am a product of Scotland’s care system and a survivor of sexual abuse. Of the people I was in care with, I don’t know many who weren’t abused. The public don’t understand how deep rooted and prevalent institutionalised sexual abuse was in the 1960s and 1970s. Part of our campaign is to throw these abuses into the open.
As a survivor of abuse you stand alone – the experiences remain your own no matter how much support you have. It never leaves you.
It just depends how an individual is able to cope and how they structure their lives to deal with it. Some say I’m very strong but I find it every bit as difficult to cope as every other survivor of sexual abuse. It’s more that I am driven by an overwhelming sense of justice.
If it wasn’t for campaigners this inquiry would never have come about. It has been helped along by the explosion of historic abuse cases in the news. It’s been a snowball effect and while it has encouraged more people to come forward it, doesn’t mean these cases are easier to prosecute.
Prosecutions in sexual abuse cases remain notoriously difficult. In terms of historic cases there is often no solid evidence – there is no DNA, no fingerprints, no scene of the crime reports. All that it comes down to is you against someone else.
And if that someone else is well connected, well-educated and enjoys a certain level of status, it can be practically impossible. That’s why the vast majority of cases don’t come to court.
Third sector groups in Scotland play a crucial role in helping survivors. Charities like Open Secret and the Moira Anderson Foundation are lifesavers but they need to be resourced better.
The problem is that support is patchy across Scotland. If you live in the central region you’re more likely to get decent support, but the further north or south you travel then it’s very much a lottery.
That’s what we need to see change, we want uniform support for survivors, for victims, in every Scottish local authority area.
That’s a line we won’t compromise on and it is a point we’ll be strongly pressing home to the inquiry.
The most important aspect of this issue is that we can’t allow momentum to stall. The rise in cases coming to court and the heightened awareness of historic sexual abuse are to be welcomed.
But it has to be remembered this should not be out of the ordinary: our justice system has prevented people coming forward and only now do more feel confident enough to do so.
Abuse will never define a survivor. The most important message is that life goes on. We need to keep encouraging more people to come forward though so that the perpetrators can be brought to justice no matter when the crime took place or how old they now are.
