Victims of child exploitation and grooming will have their child prostitution convictions disregarded after years of “appalling injustice”.
New measures announced by the government this week will see victims who were convicted or cautioned as children for loitering and soliciting for prostitution offences automatically have these disregarded and pardoned.
Announcing the scheme, the Home Office acknowledged that “instead of being supported as victims”, those affected were “criminalised for actions that occurred under duress, fear and coercion”.
“In many such cases, the true criminals — the adults who exploited them — escaped prosecution, while the victims were left with the stain of permanent criminal records,” the Home Office said.
It added the measures, expected to help hundreds of people, would remove the “lasting psychological burden, social stigma and barriers to employment and other freedoms these historic convictions have caused”.
The scheme will apply to people who were convicted for such offences when they were under 18, before the concept of child prostitution was abolished from legislation in 2015.
Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, Jess Phillips said: “These amendments send a clear message: we will not allow failures of the past to define the futures of those who were let down by the system in so many ways.
“Victims and survivors of child sexual exploitation deserve nothing but compassion and support, not a criminal record. Today, we are taking decisive action to put that right.”
The new measures included in the Crime and Policing Bill were in response to a recommendation by Baroness Casey in her recent review of child sexual exploitation and grooming gangs.
The change to automatically disregard the historic convictions will mean victims and survivors will no longer need to request it.
Gabrielle Shaw, Chief Executive of the National Association of People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC) said they welcomed the government’s step to “restoring justice”.
“Our own research, drawn from over 46,000 interactions with victims, tells us that both recognition of the abuse and being believed are integral to how survivors themselves define a positive justice outcome,” she said.
“The decision to disregard and pardon these convictions is a significant step towards building a justice system that can offer better, more survivor-centred outcomes.”
The Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ) said the move was an “important step”, but said the government should go further by decriminalising the offence of loitering or soliciting altogether, and extend the scheme to convictions and cautions received by those aged 18 and over.
The charity said: “Many women with historical convictions for soliciting and loitering first entered street prostitution as children when they were made to sell sex by pimps and other exploiting adults.
“Their abuse and exploitation didn’t end when they reached the age of 18, yet the women we have supported and acted for in litigation, continue to suffer the consequences of having a criminal record arising from grave criminal acts done to them by adult men who were rarely punished.”
Harriet Wistrich, CEO for CWJ, said: “This is a first important step to correcting the scandalous treatment by the criminal justice system of children who were victims of adult rapists, but those children didn’t suddenly become free to choose when they reached the age of 18.
“We call on the government to extend the disregards and pardons scheme to all of those with historical convictions for soliciting and loitering now.”
The charity said Tonia Antoniazzi MP earlier tabled amendments in the same bill that would have done this, and that the same amendments are now to be tabled in the House of Lords by Baroness Helena Kennedy KC.
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