Child abuse
Sir: Are we to accept Charles Moore's assertion (Diary, 2 May) that because reports of child sexual abuse have tripled in one year, this means only that reporting has tripled? Can it be true that there has been no increase at all? Does common sense allow it?
The NSPCC found that half of its re- ported cases involved step-fathers and live-in boyfriends'. As one third of all marriages currently end in divorce, a crude multiplication would suggest that emotion- al pressures in broken homes are six times more likely to lead to sexual abuse than are conventional family relationships. Could this mean that the reporting is biased by a factor of six? Again common sense sug- gests not.
Natural revulsion at Rantzen-style media hype must not blur our perception. When it gets easier for fathers to desert their families, when the gratification of the individual supplants the well-being of fami- ly as the unit of society, when children are treated as disposable and purchasable com- modities, it is asking too much to expect those same children not to be physically, emotionally and sexually abused.
In other words, the society which en- courages easy divorce and abortion, which tolerates homosexuality and in vitro ferti- lisation, which enjoys sit-coms about frac- tured relationships, must expect increasing child abuse, rape and violent crime. To complain that only the reporting is increas- ing indicates an uncharacteristic donning of blinkers. The common sense view, that people without parameters go off in all directions, taking their frustrations out on the weakest, is mightily borne out by the tragic increase in child abuse.
Stephen Green
181 WeMeld Road, Streatham, London SW16
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