Siblings exposed to explicit material showed sexualised behaviour from young age

Wednesday 06 June 2018

Jersey's Royal Court has heard how siblings who had been exposed to explicit material showed sexualised behaviour from as young as four.

One of the children, a little girl, started behaving in an "extreme manner" in school when she was just five, the Court heard during care proceedings for the siblings.

Previously, her older brothers had also apparently shown sexualised behaviour at school when they were four and seven. 

Their father gave unclear accounts of how it happened, but admitted that the children had seen some sexually explicit material. 

In their judgment, the Court noted: "He thought that although they had put the appropriate controls on the children’s iPads, the children had possibly been able to use Siri to call up [a game], which seems unlikely to us. It seems to us more likely that the father had been using or accessing sexually explicit material himself, and that the children either saw this or, as the father put it, 'They must have heard me talking adult stuff to my friends.'"

Pictured: The Royal Court heard proceedings about the children in November.

The family has been known to Children’s Services since 2001. The Court heard that four of the siblings had suffered "significant harm as a result of the care provided to them by their parents." The Health Minister said that all four of the older children had throughout their childhoods displayed “aggressive, sexualised and 'uncontained' behaviours as a result of being exposed to neglect, domestic violence, drug and alcohol misuse and inconsistent levels of basic care." 

Both the mother and the father recognised that all four older children had suffered significant harm. The mother said: “I do accept parenting of our eldest four children was not good enough. I struggled – I was on my own.” The father accepted that before March 2016, he and his wife had shouted at each other in the presence of the children, but that the situation had improved since then. He agreed that a psychologist had been right to say that a child "suffered insecurity in his or her relationship with his or her parents as a result of fighting between them", adding: “It’s terrible, it really is. I have to live with it."

The Court heard that the children witnessed several violent incidents between their parents. They also heard that the home conditions had been reported as "unhygienic, dirty, cluttered and at times unsafe for the family" by social workers and health visitors on a number of occasions. One of the children, once came into school and head lice fell from her head onto the table. "They were large, whereas typically they are small," the court judgment noted. "It was plain that they had been allowed to grow untreated for some time, which is symptomatic of neglect."

The Court described the mother as having an "avoidant personality" and lacking insight which prevented her from understanding what had gone wrong in the care of the first four children. Regarding the father, they noted his mental health was not good. "He has been diagnosed as having schizophrenia and from time to time has been on anti-psychotic depo-medication and also anti-depressive medication. He has been a long-term abuser of drugs and alcohol...and has been out of work..." 

While the father assured the Court there was no longer any possibility of exposing the children to adult content in terms of pornography, the Court said they were certainly not satisfied that it was the case. “Nor are we satisfied that there is no current concern about stress, anxiety or worry in the home, and we do not agree generally that there is evidence of sustained change,” they added.

Pictured: The Bailiff, Sir William Bailhache, sitting with Jurats Jeremy Ramsden and Sally Sparrow, decided the youngest child should be freed up for adoption in the future.

As a result, the Court made final care orders for the children. 

The toddler has also been placed under a care order with the possibility of being freed for adoption at a later date, which the Court said was in his best interests.

The oldest boys will both continue living at home. The Court suggested he receives some mentoring, not from social workers or the Children’s Services, but through the Probation Service as he previously found it helpful. As for his brother, the Court agreed for him to stay at home with the Minister keeping parental responsibility for him.