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:
“A man’s interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full; so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“We all cry out that the world is corrupt,—and I fear too justly,—but we never reflect, what we have to thank for it, and that it is our open countenance of vice, which gives the lye to our private censures of it, which is its chief protection and encouragement.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)