On Sunday last, as part of its ongoing UK Child Abuse Inquiry series, the Guardian newspaper published the chilling account of celebrated English judge Lord Patrick Devlin’s insidious and horrific sexual, physical and psychological abuse of his daughter Clare, which began before she was seven years old in the 1940s and continued for well over a decade.
A man of letters, Baron Devlin, who died in 1992, was a Stonyhurst alum and had initially leaned towards the priesthood, but turned to law after about a year at Christ College Cambridge. Not born a member of the British peerage, he was knighted in his 40s and had a very successful career which included serving as a Lord Justice of Appeal and a Law Lord, a judge on the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organisation, chairman of the UK Press Council and High Steward of Cambridge University. Well published, Baron Devlin was quoted, revered and deferred to in legal circles. He was also a sadistic paedophile. Unfortunately, he got away with it.
In the article, Clare Devlin, now 81, revealed that she had appealed for help to Roman Catholic Cardinal John Heenan, then an archbishop, who was at the time a regular visitor to their home. Instead of helping her, she said, the priest had told her that it could be much worse, and added, “better you than a mistress”. When her father died, she had written to her mother detailing the abuse. Her mother’s response was that she must have “tempted him”.
She never spoke of it again until after Donald Trump was elected president of the US in 2016. According to the Guardian, it was “Trump’s insouciant sexism that provoked her to make a statement about Cardinal Heenan’s inaction to the confidential Truth Project launched by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse”.
This horrific story would be heinous even if Clare Devlin were the only child who ever experienced abuse, sadly, she was one of millions and counting. One would like to imagine that Lord Devlin was an aberration, but the signs everywhere point to him being just one of the millions of monsters children will face in life, unless there is significant change in the way societies operate. Statistics received and compiled by the United Nations found that annually, around one billion children are affected by physical, sexual and psychological violence. That figure is not the final one because not all countries have national data on violence against children; it is estimated that 17% of countries do not compile data.
According to last year’s inaugural Global Status Report on Preventing Violence Against Children, which was published by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, UNESCO, and the UN Special Representative for ending Violence against Children, along with the End of Violence Partnership, while nearly all countries (88 percent) have laws in place to protect minors, less than half (47 percent) strongly enforce them.
However, this is a misnomer as these laws, as solid as they often are, do not protect children from violence. What they do, in fact, is offer legal redress after the acts of violence are committed, but not all abused children receive justice. There are those who never reveal their pain, others who are not believed when they speak up, or are urged to say nothing so as not to upset family, or relationship dynamics. Enacting and enforcing laws also cannot ensure that the evidence is properly handled and presented in such a way that a jury arrives at a guilty verdict.
Even when justice is applied — that is, the perpetrator is arrested, charged, tried and sentenced — is it sufficient? When weighed against the child’s loss of innocence and the often lifelong trauma many experience, is a prison sentence enough? Perhaps one should ask the children who are abused, or the adults who suffered abuse as children and go on to live tormented lives.
What of those who are forced to forever live with the tangible evidence of their assault? As recently as March this year, the Guyana Police Force said it was investigating two separate cases where girls under the age of 16, were found to be pregnant after they were raped. There have been many other similar cases over the years, including instances where girls have been forced into marrying their rapists.
Several countries that claim to have zero tolerance against child abuse, still allow child marriages. The United States is a case in point. It was only last week Thursday, July 22, that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation, which will take effect in about a month, raising the age of consent for marriage in that state to 18. Gov Cuomo had signed a similar law in 2017, which had raised the age of consent from 14 to 18, but there was a caveat which still allowed 17 year olds to get married once they had parental and judicial consent.
USA Today, which reported on the new legislation, noted that New York was the sixth state in the country to ban child marriages. The others are Rhode Island, Delaware, Minnesota, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Citing a study, the report said there were nearly 300,000 legal marriages involving individuals under 18 in the USA between 2000 and 2018. And though many of them were either 16 or 17 years old, there were instances where the child was as young as ten; most of the marriages were to adult men an average of four years older.
In a joint statement issued on July 23, the heads of 49 international organisations and institutions called on leaders in government, the private sector, faith communities, multilateral organisations, civil society and sports bodies to implement six actions aimed at ending violence against children.
The statement noted, as had been said before, that the restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic, while necessary, had made millions more children vulnerable to violence in their homes and communities. Pointing out that there is a compelling moral imperative and economic case for action to end violence against children, the signatories have proposed banning all forms of violence against children by 2030; equipping parents and caregivers to keep children safe; making the internet, and schools safe for children; protecting children from violence in humanitarian settings and for there to be more investment in children’s well-being that is spent better.
What is critical, of course, is preventing violence against children in the first instance, which will stop the cycle, allowing them to grow up and become well-adjusted adults who can contribute meaningfully to the development of their countries.
