My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 246, which I have agreed should be grouped with Amendment 243, although the two matters are somewhat different, in the interest of trying to save a bit of time. I am afraid that, because both require considerable explanation, I shall have to move from my usual policy of making very short speeches, so I hope that the Committee will bear with me. As the Committee knows, the noble Lord, Lord Laming, reported on the sad death of Victoria Climbié, but he cannot be here this afternoon. He has kindly allowed me to say that he supports this amendment.
Amendment 243 amends Section 1 the Children and Young Persons Act 1933—“Cruelty to persons under sixteen”—to clarify that to communicate to a child, or anyone connected to the child, that the child is possessed by evil spirits or is a witch amounts to cruelty and therefore contravenes the Act. The Act sets out several specific offences, although it does not mention the word “cruelty” in the text. For example, it says that if anyone who has responsibility for a child,
“wilfully assaults, ill-treats, neglects, abandons, or exposes him, or causes … any mental derangement … that person shall be guilty of a misdemeanour”.
So far, so good, you might think, but there is a group of children who have been treated most cruelly, even killed, as a result of people telling them and others that they are possessed by evil spirits or have supernatural harmful powers. Currently, it appears that the law does not accept that to cause a child such terrible mental trauma is cruel and against the 1933 Act. It also appears that it is not accepted that telling other people that the child is possessed is against the law, even though doing so often causes superstitious third parties to ill treat and even kill the child.
This amendment is very carefully worded. It does not make it an offence to believe that the child is possessed. It does not make it an offence to go away privately and pray or try to exorcise the spirit that you believe is present in the child. It just makes it an offence to traumatise the child by telling him or to pass on your belief to other people in the knowledge that it might cause them to harm the child.
The first part of the amendment would delete the words,
“has responsibility for a child or young person”.
It is not clear why this limitation was ever in there because cruelty to children does not change its nature depending on whether you have responsibility for them or not. Why should a neighbour or a lodger escape prosecution when a babysitter does not? In relation to witch branding, we must remove these words because they would allow a pastor or the sexual partner of a relative to escape, too, even though such people do perpetrate abuse, as was the case in the murders of Kristy Bamu and Victoria Climbié.
The second part of the amendment clarifies the meaning of “ill-treats” in order specifically to include the communication by word or action of a belief that the child is possessed by evils spirits or malign powers, either to the child or someone connected to him. Please note that, although these children are often referred to as witches, the word “witch” does not appear in the amendment in order not to catch the benign type of witch, commonly known as white witches, or the fantasy that is often played out at Halloween. The intention of the amendment is to outlaw not harmless practices but a proven and serious form of child abuse.
Branding a child as a witch is an incitement to hatred and an attack on the integrity of the child. Once a child is called “a witch” or “possessed”, he or she is stripped of his or her innocence and considered as a perpetrator of evil acts, instilling fear and providing a moral ground for others to ill treat the child. Those who believe in the exorcist rite of “beating the devil out of the child” are then given leeway to do so. While parents and guardians can either be prosecuted for harming a child or appropriate social work interventions can be made under civil law, a faith leader, neighbour or member of the family’s friends and community who triggered the process of abuse by accusing or “validating” the accusation against a child cannot be brought to account under child cruelty offences.
I have been encouraged to lay this amendment by the charity AFRUCA, which was established in the wake of the Victoria Climbié tragedy. Victoria’s killers justified their abuse by their belief that she was a witch. Since then, the work of AFRUCA has shown the need
for clarification of the law. For more than 11 years they have made efforts to raise awareness in the community and among the public about the plight of these children, but all that work was not enough to prevent the terrible death of Kristy Bamu in December 2010 and other abuses linked to witchcraft accusations. Kristy died with 135 injuries inflicted on his body.
Various consultations carried out in the community by AFRUCA showed that the overwhelming majority of those who took part believe that a law would go a long way to stop the harmful behaviour of rogue faith leaders. The branding of children as witches is not a long-standing cultural tradition either in the UK or overseas. It is a relatively recent phenomenon, in part arising from a deliberate exploitation of families for monetary gain or heightened social status by unscrupulous individuals calling themselves faith leaders.
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This change in the law would inform social workers and others that such allegations amount to emotional abuse and are not part of any culture or religion and therefore should not be respected as such. AFRUCA’s letter to the right reverend Timothy Thornton, the Bishop of Truro, makes its intentions clear. It said:
“AFRUCA is not seeking to criminalise a belief in the existence of evil spirits, or a belief that an evil spirit could inhabit a child. While we do not personally hold such beliefs, we respect others’ rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and to freedom of expression. However, such rights must be exercised without violating the child’s right to protection from significant harm. Presumably the aim of any exorcism is to remove the evil spirit without causing irremediable harm to the child, the innocent receptacle, yet telling the child that he or she possesses evil powers causes injury that lasts long after the spirit has been removed”.
I very much agree with this sensitive and respectful approach and my amendment reflects that. It would inform children and their families, and potential offenders, that this practice will not be tolerated. It would empower communities that are asking for this change.
Making allegations of possession or supernatural powers is a globally recognised harmful practice that is already outlawed in a number of African states, such as Nigeria, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa and Tanzania. It is similar to other harmful practices such as forced marriage, which was an issue that the UK Government at first thought could be challenged without creating a specific criminal offence but which now has been outlawed. In correspondence, the Minister, Edward Timpson MP, claims that if an expression of a belief causes a child significant harm, it is child abuse and already unlawful under civil and criminal legislation. The problem is that the Government refuse to confirm that such expressions of belief cause significant harm to children. If Ministers agree, it follows that the law should make it clear that such allegations are criminal offences under Section 1 of the 1933 Act. It would be very strange to say that all forms of injurious emotional abuse of children should be criminal except this one. If Ministers do not agree that children suffer long-lasting traumas from these allegations, I invite my noble friend to explain why not.
The Minister, Mr Timpson, claims that a majority of the National Working Group on Abuse Linked to Faith or Belief were not in favour of legislation “of this sort”. The reason why they objected was that you
cannot criminalise witch branding because of Halloween, white witches and so on, but my amendment is carefully worded to avoid this. He states that religious belief should not be criminalised. That is quite right but, as I explained, my new clause avoids that. The Government are concerned that making witch branding a criminal offence might “drive it underground” or make children and parents less likely to go to the authorities for help. This is a familiar argument, which was used in relation to FGM and forced marriage, but the truth is the reverse: until such practices are made unlawful, they continue to exist and victims continue not to seek help. The Government eventually accepted this in the cases of FGM and forced marriage. I hope that they will accept the same in the case of witch branding.
I turn briefly to Amendment 246. Its simple purpose is to extend to part-time schools the same protection for children against physical violence as exists in all full-time education establishments, in children’s homes and in local authority foster homes and early years provision. Physical violence such as smacking and caning was prohibited in all maintained schools in 1987 and, ever since, the prohibition has gradually been extended to other settings by various pieces of legislation. The Education and Skills Act 2008 amended the Education Act 1996 to extend the ban on corporal punishment to independent educational institutions—that is, part-time providers which are not schools. However, this latter provision has never been implemented.
The defence of reasonable punishment may be available to adults in circumstances where they are charged with common assault, having smacked a child while being in loco parentis. However, because of the failure to implement the measure in the 1996 Act, although teachers and other staff in schools cannot argue this defence, it is still available to adults in part-time settings such as supplementary schools, Sunday schools and madrassahs, private tutoring and leisure facilities for children, as well as by other adults to whom parents may entrust their children, such as close relatives, step-parents and partners.
Following concern expressed about allegations of physical punishment and abuse to children attending supplementary and part-time faith schools, the Labour Government commissioned Sir Roger Singleton to produce a report on the matter. It was published in March 2010 and is entitled Physical Punishment: Improving Consistency and Protection. He reports that during his consultations there was a significant view, including from Muslim leaders and within African Christian churches, that the protection of children against physical punishment should be extended to all forms of care, education and instruction outside the family. This was Sir Roger’s first and main recommendation. Unfortunately, however, his recommendation has never resulted in a change in the law or in implementation. The fact is that children are still being subjected to physical violence in the name of discipline in some of these settings. We need to make it absolutely clear that the will of Parliament is that children are not abused physically in any setting where their parents entrust them to a teacher, coach, religious leader or anyone supporting them.
In 2010, my honourable friend Annette Brooke MP and my right honourable friend David Laws MP laid an amendment to the Children, Schools and Families
Bill to implement the ban in all settings and I laid a similar amendment in your Lordships’ House. We argued that there was no justification for failing to protect children from physical punishment in part-time settings. All the children’s organisations and the vast majority of children themselves agree, as do many of the public. The Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board and the Muslim Parliament strongly support the prohibition of physical punishment in madrassahs. Similar opposition to physical punishment in the context of religious teaching and worship was expressed by Africans Unite Against Child Abuse, so there is a lot of support for equalising the protection of children wherever they are studying.
I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to tell me that the Government are at last willing to implement the ban in the Education and Skills Act 2008. Children deserve our protection. Violence is no way to enforce either learning or discipline and we need to make that absolutely clear. Working with communities is all very fine and welcome but there are still some places where the general disapproval of such behaviour is ignored and many parents are reluctant to stand up and complain because of the pressure from their fellow faith adherents and senior people in the faith. We need to support those parents and make it easier for them, since it has proved very difficult to stop this behaviour by any other strategy. I beg to move.