ARTICLE · 20 NOVEMBER 2007

Does Child Abuse cause Crime?

Abney Garsden Mcdonald

Explore more from Abney Garsden Mcdonald

People with previous criminal convictions are invariably precluded from making claims for Criminal Injuries Compensation on the grounds that active criminals who take from the system should not be allowed to profit from it.

United KingdomGovernment, Public Sector

Peter Garsden

Does Child Abuse cause Crime?

The National Fire Service were very concerned to discover, that a large proportion of those who commit arson in this country were the former victims of child abuse; so much so that they asked the organisation I helped found in 1998 – Association of Child Abuse Lawyers, for special training.

Many convicted paedophiles were abused in childhood, but there are no statistics to suggest that abuse in childhood leads to sex offending in later life.

These bland statistics, however, belie the subtlety of the subject as I will go on to illustrate.

People with previous criminal convictions are invariably precluded from making claims for Criminal Injuries Compensation on the grounds that active criminals who take from the system should not be allowed to profit from it. Daily Mail readers no doubt sympathise with this view. I get very angry, however, when the same rule is used to deny compensation to the victims of child abuse when it can be

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