In mid-January 2016, Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron called for unaccompanied Syrian refugee children to be resettled in the UK. “Ignoring the desperation of these vulnerable children will only make it worse,” he said. What could possibly go wrong?
For many years, the UK column has reported on the national scandal of child protection in the UK. We have extensive experience working with victims of abuse, parents who have had their children illegally removed from them, and children sold on the adoption market, and have sought to understand the scale of child trafficking and child sexual exploitation.
I say “tried” because it is still impossible to get accurate figures on the number of children going missing each year in the UK. The UK government, police and child protection agencies simply do not collect the data. Why? In the age of “big data”?
Tim Farron Launched a campaign to get “unaccompanied” Syrian refugee children into the country's protection systemWe understood that while such children were in desperate need of help, the UK had a long history of forcing children in “care” into a life of sexual servitude.
So in January of 2016, I wrote to Mr. Fallon. I asked him if he would be happy to be in a position to bring these children. I asked him a very simple question: What would he himself do to ensure their safety once they got here? And I asked if he would personally ensure that the whereabouts of these children would be known until they turned 18.
Fallon's response was… silence.
On the same day that I wrote to Mr Fallon, we featured this issue in the UK Column News and I followed up with Blog Post on my Facebook PageIn both cases, it made clear the reasons for the UK column’s concerns.
And Tim Farron did nothing for Britain's missing children.
One might wonder which missing children they are referring to, as none are reported in the news, but in 2010 the Home Office estimated that around 140,000 children go missing in the UK each year.
Again, 140,000 children go missing in the UK every year.
Most children who go missing end up returning home or being found, but not all are found — in fact, no one knows how many simply “disappear.”
In 2012 the All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPG) for Runaway and Missing Children and Adults and the All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPG) for Care Leavers were established. The report was issued (pdf) It follows the Missing Children Inquiry, co-chaired by Anne Coffey MP, Chair of the APPG on Runaway and Missing Children and Adults, and the Earl of Listowel, Vice-Chair of the APPG on Children in Care and Foster Care. The first paragraph of the preamble says it all:
“There has been a scandal in England over children going missing from care homes, which has gone largely unnoticed until recent child sexual exploitation cases in Rochdale and elsewhere brought the issue into focus.”
According to the APPG report, there are 68,000 children in care in the UK. The report states that “local authorities responsible for the care of children are required to report annually to the Department for Education whether a child has run away from home for more than 24 hours.” Data from 2011 shows that 930 children were missing. Using this indicator of children missing for more than 24 hours, the police figures are suggest There are 17,000 cases and 5,000 children who go missing from care facilities each year.” (Emphasis added)
How many of these children will return home? How many will become victims of trafficking? The APPG report states: “There are also major issues with the quality of the data collected on trafficked children. The approximately 300 people recorded by CEOP between 2007 and 2010 are widely considered to be just the tip of the iceberg, and the investigation also identified a lack of robust and comprehensive data as a major obstacle to keeping these children safe.”
We've been looking at this problem for years, but what really gives us pause is the fact that no one knows. 140,000 children go missing every year, many of them out of care, and there's no good mechanism for recording whether any of them return safely.
This is the Britain to which Tim Farron wants to take thousands of “unaccompanied” children.
With this in mind, we felt it was important to put some pressure on Mr Fallon. We have asked UK Column News viewers to write to Mr Fallon with follow-up questions to my questions.
In both cases he did not respond.
The woman, Linda, continued to write letters. Between January 2016 and September 2016, she received no response from Mr Fallon, but he continued to campaign to bring these children to the UK.
Then, in early September, the news we had been waiting for arrived.Hundreds of refugee children have gone missing since arriving in the UK, raising fears they may be trafficked and abused.“
Linda wrote to Mr. Fallon again.
Fallon,
Are you hiding?
Could you please reply to my email?
So after nine months of patiently and politely asking Fallon simple questions, he finally replied.
He said he was “shocked” and added: “The Government must urgently review its processes to ensure children are not simply lost from care. When Parliament returns from recess on Monday I will formally ask the new Home Secretary for details of what concrete steps the Home Office is taking to a) ensure that unaccompanied refugee children arriving in the UK are monitored and kept safe by the relevant authorities, and b) to identify the whereabouts of the hundreds of refugee children who have gone missing in the UK over the last five years.”
According to Fallon, “the Government needs to urgently review its processes to ensure that children are not simply disappearing from care”. Yet he is well aware that the “Government” was fully aware of the situation in 2012 and yet, like him, did nothing. If the “Government” had not reviewed its processes at the time of the 2012 report, why would they do so now? This is a pretty clear example of “that's not my problem, Sir”.
“Rest assured,” he continued, “this remains a vitally important issue for my party and I and my colleagues in both Houses will continue to pressurise the Government to accept more refugees from Europe and ensure that they are safe when they arrive.”
So Fallon is trying to bring more unaccompanied children from Syria, knowing that they are not safe in our care system, knowing that children in our care system are routinely kidnapped and lured into a life of drugs and rape, and his actions since the beginning of the year have shown that his claims of ensuring their safety are false.
“We believe this response demonstrates that Tim Farron is not only unfit to lead a political party, but unfit to hold any public office. Indeed, we believe it is no exaggeration to say that Tim Farron is criminally complicit in child trafficking.”
When people who hold public office and are in a position to do something about this issue are informed that children being brought into this country will be forced into a life of sexual slavery, and they not only fail to do something to stop it, but continue to actively demand the same, they should be personally responsible for every drug overdose and rape.
“Unaccompanied” children have no one to look after them. They're easy prey, and Fallon knows it.
It is extremely difficult to see Fallon's actions as anything other than an endorsement of child trafficking and child sexual exploitation.
