Protecting Rural Young People from Sexual Abuse and Exploitation

This chapter explores an important issue for rural child protection: sexual abuse of children and young people, both within their families and beyond them. It first considers risks and problems for rural and remote areas, especially in comparison with urban settings. It contends that difficulties are greater in rural and remote areas and that these outweigh the benefits. At a minimum, young people’s access to safety and support should be as good as in urban areas. Yet that in itself is a limited ambition if children still remain under-protected from sexual crime in every kind of area. We should rather, I believe, aim for excellence and innovation wherever we work. Secondly, this chapter proposes ways in which the challenges and problems described can be addressed, and the inherent strengths of rural and remote areas harnessed and increased. The neighbourhood mapping for children’s safety schema of Sarah Nelson and Norma Baldwin, the contextual safeguarding principles pioneered by Carlene Firmin, and existing best practice against child sexual exploitation, ‘county lines’ and domestic abuse can all play valuable parts. Fundamentally, provision cannot be based on current known demand, but rather on need established through proactive investigation.