Incomplete Information Is No Excuse

11th June 2025 (Evening)

What continues to disturb me is that the Early Years setting didn’t even have the full picture when our daughter made her disclosure. They never asked for more context, never followed up with questions, never even came to us for clarity. They treated her words like they were irrelevant, yet those words were only one piece of a much larger and more worrying puzzle — one they chose not to see.

Her disclosure didn’t stand alone. There were repeated UTIs. There was unexplained rectal bleeding. There were distressing behavioural changes. We even had a disclosure under Sarah's Law about him. But to them, she was just a child saying something they could dismiss. That dismissal wasn’t just a poor judgment call — it was a total failure to safeguard a vulnerable child.

And what makes it worse is that they didn’t report because it was “difficult” — because of personal friendships. That, in itself, is the clearest indication that their priorities were all wrong. They didn’t even try to understand the bigger picture because doing so would have forced them to act — and acting would have meant confronting uncomfortable truths about people they cared about.

But safeguarding isn’t about comfort. It’s about responsibility.

I need to know who knew. Who else was told what what my daughter said? Who has spent the last 18 months watching us be pushed out, while silently holding that knowledge? Who else decided it wasn’t their job to speak up? Because if you knew a child had said something that might have been a cry for help — and you chose silence — then you played a part in this failure, too.

The committee may not have known. But they should have. That was part of their duty. And if the Leader didn’t inform them, then she failed in more ways than one. If she did inform them, and they looked the other way — then they failed us, too.

I’ve been made to feel like I’m the problem — like I’m overreacting or making something out of nothing. But what I’m asking is simple: that a child’s voice is taken seriously, and that those in positions of power stop hiding behind excuses like “we didn’t know the whole story.”

Because they could have known. They should have asked. Especially as they already knew our daughter wasn't allowed any further contact with the individual of concern after we received the disclosure about him under Sarah's Law. But the truth is, they didn’t want to know. And that’s on them.