It’s three years since the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) issued its concluding report and recommendations, in October 2022. Launched as a statutory inquiry a decade ago, this multi-faceted investigation into the systemic abuse of children in a vast array of state and non-state institutions – including children’s homes, prisons and religious organisations – found the harm inflicted on victims and survivors to be “incalculable”.  Almost 6,000 victims and survivors, aged 18 to 87 years, contributed to the Inquiry’s Truth Project research programme; for nearly 1 in 10, this was the first time they had told anyone of the abuse they suffered as a child.[i]

By Carolyne Willow, Barrister,  The Barrister Group

In January 2025, Labour’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper MP told parliament “Before Easter, the Government will lay out a clear timetable for taking forward the 20 recommendations of the final IICSA report”.[ii] Understandably, this was widely interpreted as government having accepted all 20 final recommendations (a great many others appeared in IICSA’s previous reports). The reality is not so clear-cut.

Starting with the Inquiry’s call for statutory child protection authorities in England and Wales, the Home Office’s April 2025 update promises a consultation “on a roadmap” for reformulating the existing statutory Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel in England (established in 2018 through the Children and Social Work Act 2017). A new Panel Chair has been appointed with an explicit remit to help steer this transition. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, introduced into the House of Commons in December 2024 and now in the Lords, is the obvious legislative mechanism for creating this body in England. But government timings mean this opportunity is likely to be lost.

IICSA first urged the legal prohibition of pain-inducing techniques in child prisons in February 2019. It described the state-authorised, deliberate infliction of pain by prison officers as a “form of child abuse” which subjugates children and makes them less likely to report sexual abuse. It found 1,070 allegations of sexual abuse in child prisons between 2009 and 2017, 54% of which concerned sexual assault or rape.[iii] The Inquiry’s recommendation for a ban was repeated in its final report and followed similar calls from anti-torture committees[iv], the UK’s four Children’s Commissioners[v]

[i] The report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, October 2022, Annex 4.

[ii] Debate on child sexual exploitation and abuse: House of Commons Hansard, 16 January 2025, volume 760, column 561.

^[iii] IICSA (2019) Sexual abuse of children in custodial institutions: 2009-2017 investigation report, pages vi and 30.

[iv] Memorandum by Thomas Hammarberg (2008) Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, para 53; European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (2009) Report to the government of the United Kingdom, para 107; and UN Committee Against Torture (2013) Concluding observations on the fifth periodic report of the United Kingdom, para 28.

[v] UK Children’s Commissioners (2015) Report of the UK Children’s Commissioners, page 46.