{"id":10245,"date":"2018-12-07T13:02:13","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T13:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/?p=10245"},"modified":"2018-12-07T13:02:13","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T13:02:13","slug":"victim-is-suing-her-former-school-for-failing-to-spot-signs-of-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/victim-is-suing-her-former-school-for-failing-to-spot-signs-of-abuse\/","title":{"rendered":"Victim is suing her former school for failing to spot signs of abuse&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A woman whose abusive stepfather made her pregnant as a teenager is suing her former school over failing to spot signs.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_10246\" style=\"width: 638px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-10246\" class=\"wp-image-10246 \" src=\"http:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/12\/h-3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"628\" height=\"334\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/12\/h-3.png 1082w, https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/12\/h-3-300x160.png 300w, https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/12\/h-3-768x409.png 768w, https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/12\/h-3-1024x545.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/12\/h-3-624x332.png 624w, https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/12\/h-3-750x399.png 750w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 628px) 100vw, 628px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-10246\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">GOOGLE<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Kim Fawcett\u2019s stepfather was jailed for six years in 2004 after being convicted of indecent assault, sexual intercourse with a girl under 16 and another sexual assault charge at Chester Crown Court. He only served two years of his sentence<\/p>\n<p>Human right lawyer Ms Fawcett said\u00a0Ellesmere College in Shropshire failed to &#8220;keep me safe&#8221; and she now has plans to take it to the High Court. A review by the college said there is nothing to support her claim. She has even set up a Survivors of Abuse and Sexual Violence in Bristol, the group is now supporting more than 400 men and women struggling with the effects of abuse.<\/p>\n<p>Ms Fawcett said the school had &#8220;explicit knowledge&#8221; she had received from her stepfather and knew about the self-harming she carried out; the school failed to contact social services. Ms Fawcett said if social services were aware the abuse could have stopped in 2002 instead of 2003.<\/p>\n<p>In that year, she was raped, contracted a sexually-transmitted infection and became pregnant by Robert Stuart McClelland \u2013 who told her to have an abortion.<\/p>\n<p>Ms Fawcett said: &#8221; \u201cI just wanted them to say sorry for failing me. I feel so let down as that young girl.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf that had happened then I wouldn\u2019t have done any of this. It is regrettable the matter has made it to this stage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey were aware of the text messages, absences and concerns, and over self-harming, but no referrals were made to social services regarding McClelland.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf they did, the abuse would have stopped. I just wanted them to say sorry for failing me. I feel absolutely determined that this should never happen again.<\/p>\n<p>She initially wrote to the school in 2017 informally outlining her claims.<\/p>\n<p>The college&#8217;s head master, Brendan Wignall, said \u201cThe school was completely unaware of what had been happening to her, but gave her its full support once the matter came to light.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are very sorry she feels the school let her down but having conducted a thorough review of our files we can genuinely find nothing to support her claim, and therefore have no option but to resist it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A woman whose abusive stepfather made her pregnant as a teenager is suing her former school over failing to spot signs. Kim Fawcett\u2019s stepfather was jailed for six years in 2004 after being convicted of indecent assault, sexual intercourse with a girl under 16 and another sexual assault charge at Chester Crown Court. He only&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[281,272,336,337],"class_list":["post-10245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uk-news","tag-abuse","tag-school","tag-suing","tag-victim"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10247,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10245\/revisions\/10247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}