Secrets and Silence: Uncovering the Legacy of the Cleveland Child Sexual Abuse Case

Three decades ago doctors in Cleveland, a county in the northeast of England, identified a sexual abuse scandal that provoked a nationwide scandal in the United Kingdom. Pediatricians uncovered evidence of abuse in 121 children, but official investigations led to the majority of the charges being dismissed, with children returned to their families and the public reassured that there was no widespread abuse problem. In this revelatory book, Beatrix Campbell proves that the government inquiry that followed the scandal was a cover-up. Within days of its opening, experts had confirmed that 75% of the diagnoses had been correct, but ministers never revealed those findings to Parliament or the public. Instead, they discredited the doctors and social workers involved in a dangerous attempt to minimize scrutiny and criticism. The legacy of the Cleveland scandal lives today, even as the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse is underway. It began an era of skepticism and blame in child protection policy that put children’s safety at risk, then and now.