By The Alliance for Youth Justice

The briefing, funded by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, examines what happens as exploited children turn 18, exploring how responses across safeguarding and criminal justice fail to keep pace with ongoing risk and harm. It sets out principles and practical steps to ensure protection continues into young adulthood and to prevent the unjust criminalisation of victims.

While awareness of CCE has grown, responses for children remain inconsistent and are too often led by punishment. At 18, those weaknesses are magnified. Support frequently falls away, thresholds for help rise, and young adults are more likely to be treated as perpetrators than recognised as victims. As parliament considers the Crime and Policing Bill’s new offence of child criminal exploitation (CCE), there is a critical opportunity to improve the response for victims – but a growing risk that exploited young adults will be prosecuted as perpetrators.

The briefing is informed by an evidence review and consultation with professionals, legal practitioners, academics, civil servants, and sector experts and identifies several urgent issues:

By The  European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights = FRA

This paper sets out some of the key challenges and concrete solutions in the implementation and enjoyment of victims’ rights that have emerged from FRA’s research over the past decade on how victims of crime have accessed their rights in practice across the EU. The findings are intended to inform and support the work of key stakeholders with respect to the revised Victims’ Rights Directive and related legislative files that address various victims’ rights. Those include the Directive on combatting violence against women and domestic violence, the Directive on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protection of its victims, the Directive on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography, the Directive on combatting terrorism, and the Compensation Directive.

Based on existing FRA data, the paper brings together key findings from FRA’s quantitative and qualitative research on victims of crime relating to three areas:

• Reporting crime

• Protection from secondary victimisation

• Victim support services.

The paper highlights challenges and solutions in each of these areas, drawing directly from FRA’s published work.

Empirical evidence concerning victims’ enjoyment of their rights in practice, and the challenges they face, emerges from data that FRA has gathered using a variety of methodologies; namely:

1. Large-scale quantitative surveys collecting data from tens of thousands of victims (based on interviews in person or carried out online; some surveys covering all EU Member States and others a selection of countries); and

2. In-depth qualitative research that involves the testimony of victims but also practitioners who deal directly with victims within the criminal justice system (e.g. police, prosecutors, judges, lawyers, victim support services).

See list of relevant FRA publications at the end of this section.

The solutions outlined in this paper, drawn from existing FRA findings, are based on practices in various EU Member States that have proven to be effective in responding to the practical needs of victims and to improving their ability to access their rights. These findings can assist the EU institutions and Member States in identifying actions that could be taken in these three areas to guarantee the rights, support and protection of victims of crime.

Vienna: European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, FRA, 2024. 39p.