The Crime Survey for England and Wales is a comprehensive research tool, which is conducted face-to-face.
It has been carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) since 1981.
Alongside data collated by the police, the annual survey measures crime by directly asking members of the public about their experiences – and whether or not incidents were reported.
The purpose of the survey is to collect an accurate, broad-ranging perspective of crime to better inform the way the government makes decisions on policies around crime and justice.
Now, for the first time in history, the Crime Survey for England and Wales is to include a section asking respondents about abuse they may have experienced as children.
The most recent survey included a module dedicated to questions on whether or not respondents had experienced physical, sexual or emotional abuse as children.
Around 35,000 adults (defined as those over 16 years old) and 3,000 children (aged 10-15 years old) took part in the survey but only the adults were asked the questions in the new module.
The fact that the latest cohort of participants were asked this specific selection of questions could be perceived as a reaction to the large number of historical child abuse claims that have entered the public consciousness in recent years.
With the government also pledging that £100 million will be spent on an inquiry into the vast number of accusations of child abuse that have been levied at various high-profile and respected institutions, including local councils, schools and churches.
The new Crime Survey module however, will also ask participants to include details about their relationship to their abuser and their age when the abuse took place.
The survey will also seek to understand whether abuse took place at home, in school, in leisure environments, or in other social settings.
Christine Sands Head of the Child Abuse Department at Jordans solicitors confirms: “The specialist team here at Jordans has dealt with Historic Child abuse cases since the early 1990’s.
“The number of adult victims who contact my team about the historical child abuse they experienced many years ago has steadily increased over the years.
“It is clear that changing public perceptions and a consensus that such abuse happened in this country, I believe, has made it a little easier for those victims of such abuse to talk to solicitors like ourselves and the police for the first time knowing their complaints will be taken seriously.
“Now the Goddard Inquiry into sexual abuse is well underway we expect this trend to continue and it should be of no surprise that the ONS now wish to include such a significant statistic in their Official crime survey.”
The survey’s findings will be released in the summer and although the data will not be included in overall crime figures, it will offer an illuminating snapshot of historical abuse of children.
Amends have also been made to how the information gathered by the survey is processed and communicated.
The way the survey measures and records repeat victimisation (where an individual experiences the same crime a number of times over a 12-month period) and the various weights of severity afforded to different types of crime are areas that have been reconsidered.
At this point it remains to be seen whether the new version of the Crime Survey will dramatically alter our perception of the frequency of childhood abuse.
We can only wait until this rich source of data is published later in the year to gain that new insight.
