The economic and social cost of contact child sexual abuse

By Freddie Radakin, Angie Scholes, Kien Soloman, Constance Thomas-Lacroix, Alex Davies.

This report provides an estimate of the financial and non-financial (monetised) costs relating to all children who began to experience contact sexual abuse, or who continued to experience contact sexual abuse, in England and Wales in the year ending 31st March 2019. This is estimated to be at least £10.1 billion (in 2018/19 prices). This estimate includes the costs of this cohort being victimised in previous and future years, in addition to lifetime consequences as a result of experiencing child sexual abuse (CSA). It should be noted that due to the way some costs are incurred over a victim’s lifetime this cannot be used as an annual or an in-year cost.

There are a few important things to note about this cost:

• it is mostly a ‘non-financial’ cost – that is, not all costs are directly paid by one organisation to another; some costs use notional (non-market) values which represent estimated harm in monetary terms[footnote 1]

• the estimate represents the historic and future costs associated with victims of abuse who were identified during the year ending 31st March 2019

• this estimate cannot be used as an annual cost (for example, completing an equivalent exercise for the year ending 31st March 2020 and adding these costs together would lead to double counting)

• this estimate does not include the costs associated with online and non-contact sexual abuse

London: Home Office, 2021.