Child abuse and adult abuse can happen anywhere, including in your own home by someone you trust. Perpetrators tend to look for circumstances where they may be able to abuse their target without getting caught – or where they have access to a high number of people that they can abuse.
This means there are some places where abuse is more likely to happen, simply because it’s more favourable to the criminals who engage in this behaviour. So, where does abuse occur most often? Below is a short outline of some of the places where perpetrators are most prolific:
Schools should be a safe place where children can learn, develop and blossom. We have helped make claims against different individuals who abused children in schools, including fellow pupils.
Children in care are some of the most vulnerable in society. We have acted on behalf of children abused in care homes and gained compensation as well as admissions of liability by the organisations that ran the homes.
The Scouts should be a fun, adventurous, skill-building activity group. Instead, some Scout leaders have used their position to abuse the children under their care. We have brought and won more claims against the Scout Association than any other firm in the UK.
The Army Cadets, the Air Cadets and the Sea Cadets are all places where children go to build their self-confidence, life skills and future prospects. We can help bring a claim against individuals who abuse children in the Cadets, or against the Ministry of Defence for failing in their responsibilities to protect such children.
We should be able to trust our religious leaders, but some members of the clergy use their position and standing in society to abuse children. We have helped many survivors of such abuse secure compensation, treatment and closure.
Coaches, trainers, talent scouts and other individuals can take advantage of their position and abuse children in a sports environment, including in the football industry. We have successfully helped clients win compensation claims against the individual(s) and organisation(s) responsible.
Adult abuse takes many forms, including physical and sexual abuse, financial abuse, emotional abuse, neglect and exploitation. It can happen anywhere, to any adult, but perpetrators may target vulnerable adults more frequently. We can help win cases against the individual(s) responsible and secure compensation and admissions of responsibility.
The police are here to protect the public from crime as well as supporting victims and witnesses of crime. For the most part, police officers uphold justice and are people we can trust. However, there are officers who abuse their standing given to them by their job and uniform.
Children who are detained in institutions are particularly at risk of abuse due to the imbalance of power between them and those members of staff paid to look after and care for them. We can help bring a claim against institutions where staff abuse their positions of trust and exploit vulnerable children.
In June 2021, John James Hewitt was finally brought to justice having abused children since the 1980s. He was jailed for 24 years in respect…
In April 2021 I contributed to a BBC News article shedding light on the endemic problem of serving police officers abusing women and escaping disciplining…
I previously wrote a blog about the Welsh athletes who had spoken out about the harassment they had received whilst training during lockdown. As a…
After a 12-week trial, a jury at Portsmouth Crown Court has found Choirmaster and school teacher Mark Burgess guilty of 48 counts of abuse. The…
Want to talk to one of our experienced lawyers? We can call when it suits you for a no-obligation, strictly confidential chat.
Your browser is out of date. Please update your browser.
This site (and many others) provides a limited experience on unsupported browsers and not all functionality will work correctly or look its best.
