Child Protection
The case coincided with several other cases in the United Kingdom which highlighted possible problems with the efficiency of child protection services. The whole country was said by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to be appalled at the crime and the many chances there may have been for the abuse — which continued for 28 years — to be stopped.
The father was said by his sister-in-law to have been motivated in part by wanting to keep for himself the money paid to him by the state in child support for the numerous children. There were said to have been 150 opportunities for authorities to notice what was happening. For several months the girls tried to pay their father to stop raping them by giving him £100 a month. They gave him whisky, hoping his drinking would lead to his death. They had called ChildLine, but were not reassured that their children would not be taken from them, which their father had said would happen, so they ended the call.
Read more about this topic: Sheffield Incest Case
Famous quotes containing the words child and/or protection:
“Parents do not give up their children to strangers lightly. They wait in uncertain anticipation for an expression of awareness and interest in their children that is as genuine as their own. They are subject to ambivalent feelings of trust and competitiveness toward a teacher their child loves and to feelings of resentment and anger when their child suffers at her hands. They place high hopes in their children and struggle with themselves to cope with their children’s failures.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“Innocence does not find near so much protection as guilt.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)