The pope has written a letter in response to all this business about child abuse by Irish Catholic churchmen. It starts off by waffling on about how Irish Catholics have had a hard time over the centuries but there have been some outstanding chaps in that period too. He continuous with bits aimed at the people who

Police, teachers and councils are failing to protect tens of thousands of children who run away from home every year and face drug abuse or sexual exploitation on the streets, Church of England bishops have warned.

The Conservatives last night moved to embarrass Ed Balls, the children's secretary, over the fallout from the Baby P scandal by pledging to publish for the first time a serious case review into the death of a child under social services care. The action, announced by Tim Loughton, the shadow children's minister, sets a precedent for serious case reviews into child abuse, which are tradit...

Ed Balls, the children's secretary, yesterday ducked the key issue of whether child protection services were adequately funded, as he gave the government's response to the Baby P abuse scandal. Although he committed £58m to plans for recruiting more top-quality social workers in England, Balls did not respond to a proposal that child protection should get a ring-fenced budget that ...

A letter in today's Telegraph: Sir - We seem to want to take comfort in the belief that child abuse was just as common in the past. Child abuse to the death is many times more common where the mother was not married to the father and the present boyfriend is not the child's father. Those household arrangements are many times more common than in the past. We need not depend on theory. The...

Within hours of taking office, the new archbishop of Westminster caused a storm with his remarks on child abuse. Now he has a little advice for beleaguered MPs It takes a lot of nerve to pass judgment on somebody else's moral crisis when you know you are about to face one of your own, but Vincent Nichols is that kind of man. The new spiritual leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales has...

I have today made a public appeal to the Leader of Lincolnshire County Council to show some political leadership in making public the findings of a review following a case of child abuse which resulted in a mother being sent to jail.

Patrick Vessey over at the LPUK blog discusses a letter in today's Telegraph: Sir - We seem to want to take comfort in the belief that child abuse was just as common in the past. Child abuse to the death is many times more common where the mother was not married to the father and the present boyfriend is not the child's father. Those household arrangements are many times more common than in the pa...

Writing over on Up Pompeii, Gandalf rightly takes Islam to task over its (ab)use of people with learning difficulties in arranged marriages. The callous use of people with learning disabilities or who are physically disabled by the religion of peace followers is child abuse, I say child abuse because people with a learning disability very often have the IQ of a child, the chronological age is not ...

The number of child sex abuse websites in Europe has soared and the violence shown has become more extreme, the European commission and Europol, the European police agency, warned yesterday. Jacques Barrot, EU commissioner for freedom, justice and security said Europe was facing "an extremely dramatic situation" after the number of child abuse websites increased fourfold between 2004 and 2007. At ...