Children who were groomed, sexually abused and then prosecuted for crimes, including prostitution, are still being failed, the author of a landmark report has said. Baroness Louise Casey, who led the national investigation into grooming gangs, called on the government last year to quash any convictions of victims who were criminalised when they should have been protected.
We really shouldn't have expected anything else of this failing government, should we?
"Everybody told me that I was this problem - that I was guilty and I had committed a crime," she said. Her criminal record of more than 40 prostitution convictions has prevented her from applying for jobs, going to college, travelling abroad and even volunteering at her children's school. Joanne and thousands of people like her are due to be pardoned for loitering or soliciting, following the new legislation. However, she said the law change does not go far enough.
She has soliciting convictions from when she was aged 18 and was still being trafficked. However, the change in the law does not recognise adult convictions, so those will remain.
They had to draw a line somewhere. And they chose to draw it here.
Baroness Casey said, one year on, the government had made "huge progress in many areas" but on the issue of quashing the convictions of child sexual exploitation victims, "they haven't gone far enough, quickly enough". She said she wanted to hold the government to account.
That's our job, the voters, and we do it by kicking the bastards out. Why don't you concentrate your fire on the people we have no recourse for, the unelected civil serpents who made the decisions?
Fiona said the government's decision to only remove convictions for child prostitution offences feels "like they're trying to wipe away the evidence of their mistakes and their incorrect labelling rather than actually trying to fix an issue".
It feels like it because that's always what they try to do.
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