Correction: The account given below represents a widely-held understanding of what happened in Cleveland. However Beatrix Campbell's 2023 book 'Secrets and Silence' contains new information drawn from official records now publicly available to clarify the truth about 'Cleveland' itself, and about the harm to children of its legacy through the period since then.[1]
The Cleveland child abuse scandal is a wave of suspected child sexual abuse cases in 1987 in Cleveland, England, many of which were later discredited.
In that year, a large number of child sexual abuse allegations followed the use of a new and controversial diagnostic test by paediatricians at the Middlesbrough Hospital. A total of 121 children were removed from their parents as a result. In 1988, the Butler-Sloss Inquiry into the cases concluded that most of the diagnoses were incorrect; 94 of the children were subsequently returned and the two paediatricians involved were criticized. In 1991, the Children Act was implemented, in part as a result of the scandal and the ensuing report. In 1997, a controversial TV documentary suggested that the majority of the diagnoses were in fact correct, and that a number of the children had again been determined to be at risk of abuse.
- ^ Beatrix Campbell, Secrets and Silence - Uncovering the Legacy of the Cleveland Child Sexual Abuse Case, 2023, Bristol: Policy Press.