Abuse calls to ChildLine soar by 50% in three yearsCharity urges support for £50m campaign to develop serviceBy Hilary Duncanson
Published: 09/02/2009(source: http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1068245?UserKey=)
The number of children contacting a helpline service about sexual abuse has gone up by nearly 50% in
three years. ChildLine in Scotland counselled 2,849 youngsters last year, more than at any other time in the service’s
18 year history.The figure is up 49% on the numbers in 2004-05, when 1,908 children got in touch with the helpline saying they were victims of sexual abuse. Of those spoken to last year, 127
children were aged seven or under.Children’s charity the NSPCC, which provides ChildLine, said the statistics show there was a growing demand for the “vital” help it offered and a clear need to expand the service.
The charity is urging people to support its Child’s Voice Appeal – a three-year UK-wide campaign to raise £50million to develop the ChildLine service and the NSPCC’s helpline for adults concerned about a child.
Elaine Chalmers, head of ChildLine in Scotland, said: “Every day, ChildLine receives dozens of harrowing calls about sexual abuse from children, some of whom are very young indeed.
“Children phone to talk in confidence about suffering different kinds of sexual abuse, the vast majority of the abusers being people they know, either within their families or the wider family circle.
“They dare not speak about it, or ask for help, for fear of the consequences. Many of them have been threatened or intimidated into silence.”
She added that awareness campaigns and child sex abuse storylines on TV programmes like the BBC soap EastEnders encouraged children to speak out.
“As a result, more children now understand what sexual abuse is and are increasingly willing to turn to ChildLine for help,” she said.
“More ChildLine counsellors over the last few years has also meant more children helped and this is reflected in these latest figures.”
Across the UK, the service counselled 13,237 children for sexual abuse last year – a 53% increase over three years.
ChildLine said it was only able to answer two-thirds of the 2.3million calls it gets every year from across the country.
To fund the expansion of the three ChildLine bases in Scotland, the charity said it needs to raise £8.6million through the Child’s Voice Appeal.
Esther Rantzen, the service’s founder and president, said: “There are many children whose cries for help cannot be answered because ChildLine simply does not have enough resources to answer every call.
“Our nightmare is the child who plucks up the courage to ring, fails to get through, and never dares try again.”
She said the service saves young lives and urgently needed to be expanded “so that every child’s cry for help can be answered”