Agenda item

4.1      Geeta Subramaniam-Mooney (Head of Crime Reduction and Supporting People) introduced the report; the following key points were noted:

• The Committee had previously received information about the approach being taken in Lewisham to reduce violence against women and girls.
• Following the update at the meeting in September, it had been agreed that the Committee would focus more closely on awareness raising and prevention work.
• Anecdotal evidence indicated that there had been an increase in the numbers of young women and girls who were actively involved in gang related activities.
• It was also clear that there were instances of grooming of young women and girls by men and boys for gang-related activities and sexual abuse.
• The majority of gang related activity involved men and boys as perpetrators or victims.
• Lewisham used the youth Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC) as the central means of supporting young victims.
• Information from the MARAC indicated that approximately a third of cases being dealt with involved child exploitation or sexual violence.
• The MARAC included representatives from more than 30 agencies, who were able to share information about potential victims.
• The MARAC approach helped to stop young people from becoming re-victimised by ensuring that agencies were aware of the risks faced by young victims.
• This approach to sharing information and ensuring that there were clear referral routes in place to enable a multi-agency response had been used in Lewisham for a number of years.
• The Jay report (into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham) had highlighted the importance of organisations sharing information about possible cases of abuse.
• Furthermore, it demonstrated the importance of acting on that information.
• Lewisham multi-agency safeguarding hub reviewed reports (called Merlins) from all organisations, in order to share information about victims and potential victims.
• Lewisham had initiated a project, which helped fund specially trained youth workers in A&E to support young victims. The project had now been adopted by the Mayor of London and NHS England in four major trauma centres in London.
• 18 months ago the Lewisham Multi-Agency Sexual Exploitation (MASE) forum had piloted an approach, (with a similar pilot working in Camden), to look at issues of sexual violence and exploitation in a strategic way.
• No prosecutions had been carried out in Lewisham for child sexual exploitation. This was for a number of reasons, including: the difficulty of taking cases through the court system; the danger posed to victims by the associates of perpetrators and the dysfunctional relationships between abusers and victims, in which victims were groomed to be in fear or to assume that violent and exploitative behaviour was normal.
• For victims of domestic violence, there were Independent Domestic Violence Advisers to support them through the court process but this was not the case for young victims.
• In cases where there is abuse in families, or through familiar connections, it could be difficult for young people to break these connections.
• Some work was taking place in schools, including work around healthy relationships. Lewisham had piloted schemes in the past to work with young victims and perpetrators.
• Professionals had to be equipped with the right skills to ask the right questions.
• Officers were concerned about the potential risk of online grooming, which it was clear, was a serious problem, to which there were very few answers.
• The Council would be using funding from the European Daphne project to conduct further work with young people about the risks of online exploitation.

4.2      Geeta Subramaniam-Mooney (Head of Crime Reduction and Supporting People) and Gary Connors (Crime Reduction Manger) responded to questions from Committee; the following key points were noted:

• Officers could not disclose exact figures about the number of young women and girls in the borough affected by gang-related violence as this information was retained by the Police.
• Because of the nature of violence against women and girls associated with gang-related activity, it was likely that there was a significant degree of underreporting.
• It was clear that there had to be an imperative on partners to be proactive and continue to prosecute perpetrators.
• Evidence from the evaluation of the borough’s healthier relationship project indicated that 80% of the participants did not identify examples of unacceptable behaviours between partners.
• It was often the case that people didn’t realise that they were victims until they encountered professionals or until something serious happened to them.
• For these reasons, it could be the case that people were unwilling to become involved in prosecutions.
• ‘Grooming’ was the most appropriate word to use in the majority dysfunctional relationships, in which there may be a cycle of violence and gift giving, as with other forms of domestic violence.
• Securing convictions could be difficult because of the precarious position of victims.
• Some young victims did not want to go through the court process.
• Girls might be living in the same neighbourhood as boys who had abused them.
• There might be community or family ties which meant that young women and girls would be at risk if they raised their concerns with the police.
• Victims did not always want to go through the courts process in order to achieve a conviction.
• There was a danger that even if a young women or girl took their case to court – it could collapse due to lack of evidence.
• Further thinking would be required about the court process in order to ensure that the potential for conviction was not limited.
• In the case of child exploitation, the most predominant victims were 14 year old girls.
• A mix of girls and women from different ethnicities were involved.
• Where specific instances of violence had been identified, work had been carried out to concentrate enforcement activities.
• Where issues were identified in specific schools, it was most frequently the case that there had been a particular catalyst to the increase in referrals, such as a visit from officers.
• All girls and young women were potentially at risk of grooming and inappropriate relationships, not just those young people known to be vulnerable.
• The information available suggested that there was a mixed picture in Lewisham, and that people from all classes could be victims.
• It was difficult to develop a clear demographic picture of exploitation and grooming because of the complex nature of the relationships involved and the levels of underreporting as well as low levels of conviction.
• The national findings about child sexual exploitation were still in the process of being gathered and analysed; this information would soon be available.
• The police work on tackling ‘county lines’ had provided a lot of information about how young people were being exploited.
• Young people could be particularly at risk because of their vulnerability.
• There were cases in which young people were entrapped by being asked to carry drugs or money – and then robbed by other people associated with the gang they were carrying for in order to indebt them and embroil them in further gang related activity.
• Some young men under the age of 18 had been involved in gang related grooming and violence. There had been cases of prolific young offenders grooming other young people with lures of money and status.
• The demographic profile of victims in other places was not necessarily a useful guide for profiling victims in Lewisham because of the different sets of circumstances in different places
• Prosecutions had been achieved in the Oxford, Rochdale and Rotherham cases.
• Lewisham had mentoring programmes for young men and a domestic violence programme for perpetrators of domestic violence.
• Unpicking issues in young people’s lives and family was important – targeted programmes existed to work with whole families.
• Officers needed to consider what further work could be done to support the male victims of sexual exploitation and violence. At present the majority of work was centred on young women and girls, but further consideration could be given to the grooming and exploitation of young gay men.
• It was clear that there was an issue with online grooming and exploitation, but it wasn’t clear what work should take place to stop this from happening.
• Work as on-going to achieve prosecutions in the recent county lines cases.
• Further information would be provided about the number of children who went missing from care.
• Young people in care were a vulnerable group but they should not be singled out as troublemakers or as the source of problems because this was not the case.

4.3      The Committee discussed the evidence and noted that, whilst there was clearly work taking place in Lewisham to raise awareness and prevent young women from becoming associated with gang violence, it was difficult to develop a clear picture of what was occurring, due to the lack of available data.

Resolved: to note the report, and to accept the information from officers for the review.