‘More training needed’ to help abused Plymouth children

A charity says more can be done to protect children sexually abused by family members after a Plymouth couple were jailed for abusing their daughter.

The father was jailed for 10 years and the girl’s mother for three for years of abuse which happened despite social workers investigating seven times.

The city’s head of children’s services said it was a “horrific case”, but added the department had changed since.

The NSPCC said there were encouraging improvements but more work was needed.

The girl, now a teenager, was made to have sex with her father and have pornographic pictures taken with her mother.

Physical chastisement

Plymouth Crown Court heard that the girl’s family was known to social services before she was born and workers from the children’s department were called out seven times between her birth in 1994 and 2002.

Social workers closed their files on her when she was eight because they were satisfied her parents understood the limits of physical chastisement after complaints that she had been hit.

The father, 43, was jailed for 10 years after admitting sexual activity with a child, four offences of causing a child to engage in sexual activity, two of making and two of distributing indecent images.

The girl’s mother, 39, admitted two counts of inciting a child to engage in sex acts, child cruelty, and making an indecent image. She was jailed for three years.

‘Massive strides’

Bronwen Lacey, director of Services for Children and Young People at the city council, said that, although it was a “horrific case”, it had happened in the 1990s.

She added that the council had made “massive strides in the standard of children’s social care and safeguarding” since then.

Jon Brown, from the NSPCC, said there had been improvements in the city, but more training was still needed.

He said: “We need to do more in terms of resourcing and training for social workers in terms of their understanding of sexually abusive behaviour, of how sexual abuse particularly within families can come about, and how it’s perpetuated.

“Also, importantly, we need to do more in the provision of post-abuse therapeutic services for children who have been abused.”