Abused Girl Makes Good Despite Failure Of Child Protective Services

BRITISH BARRISTER Constance Briscoe is a poster child for the meritocratic society. Daughter of Jamaican immigrants to Britain in the 1950s she went to college and became a barrister, a Queen’s Counsel, a level in the British legal hierarchy that poor old Rumpole of the Bailey could never quite rise to.

Only there is a little more to her story than that. One of six children, she was brutally abused by her mother, who did everything she could to abort her desire for education and advancement. The story is told by Briscoe in Ugly.

In an interview with Deirdre Fernand timed to coincide with the release of her book in Britain, Briscoe speaks in

measured, almost flat, tones recalling her troubled childhood. As she rehearses the violence, starvation and deprivation she endured, she could be reciting a shopping list...

When she asked her mother why she treated her so badly, she replied: “Oh, just the fact that you breathe...”

I thought all this child abuse was supposed to be a thing of the past, now that we have professional child protective services in every advanced nation. How could this abuse go on when there are squadrons of eager helping professionals organized into mighty bureaucratic armies intended precisely to seek out and put a stop to child abuse?

In the case of Constance Briscoe, she only got to escape from her mother when a teacher at her school informally took her in. For,

Eventually her mother attacked her so badly that her headmaster called her mother in. Briscoe refused to go back home with her but would not say why. A teacher, Miss K, agreed to take her in. Life proved sweet at Miss K’s flat in Streatham and her grades soared. She became prefect and captain of games.

And then she went on to university and qualified as a barrister. Now she is “Miss Recorder Briscoe”, a municipal judge.

Her son, now at university himself, could only get half way through her memoir.

But what should we do about this gross abuse? Can we say that the German bureaucratic method of credentialed experts has failed? Should we return to the Burkean “little platoons” of informal community to protect the least among us? What is to be done?

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

Comments:

Posted by: Shauna-sei Sinclair on 01/11/07 10:26am

I think that Constance briscoes fight to survive was extremly brave; consistant knowing that a young girl at her age had to go through this tourment, tourture at such a young age i was very touched and upset at the same time.

Posted by: Chris on 01/21/06 3:03am

Some cases will always slip through the net, particularly when Social Services departments remain underfunded and understaffed, but the truth is that cases like Constance's are far less likely to occur these days. For one thing, a child presenting itself at a Social Services department asking to be taken into care would be taken very seriously now.

Posted by: Chris on 01/21/06 3:02am

Of course what you fail to mention (or perhaps understand) is that the abuse Constance Briscoe suffered took place in the 1960's - well before the "bureaucratic method of credentialed experts" you suggest failed her was the norm. In fact the growth of state child protection has occurred BECAUSE cases like Constance's came to light. The "informal community" method, otherwise known as "sweeping problems under the carpet" tends only to ensure the continuation and perpetuation of abuse.

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