The Right to Understand

Written by Nathan Tracey · England and Wales

Content note: This article discusses childhood violence, sexual abuse and traumatic experiences, without describing individual offences in detail.

The evidence establishes a narrower problem than the opening proposition might suggest. Children are not always communicated with directly about criminal cases, and information is not always provided in a form or at a time they can use. What the evidence does not establish is how often a child who was given case information later reaches adulthood without understanding what happened. That retrospective gap is the policy problem this article argues should be tested, not a prevalence finding.

The Ministry of Justice’s 2026 consultation on a new Victims’ Code says children do not routinely receive the information, guidance and support they need and are often not directly communicated with about the criminal justice process. The Children’s Commissioner for England’s 2024 report, drawing on police transcripts, police data and work with ten victims and survivors of sexual harm in childhood, describes a justice journey that can be long, slow and confusing and says children are not always prepared for what the process will involve. Neither source tells us what those children will understand at 28, 48 or 68. They do establish the immediate communication problem from which the retrospective question follows.

The national routes identified for this article do not provide a general cross-agency service for an adult who later wants to reconstruct and understand their childhood case. The Victims’ Code gives victims important rights to information and explanation while a case is moving through the system. Data protection law allows a person to request their own police information. Specialist charities can provide emotional support. The available routes do not, in combination, guarantee lawful access, a reliable chronology, a plain-language explanation and support before and after disclosure.

The author proposes that this gap could be addressed through a Right to Understand. It should not promise unrestricted access, a fresh investigation, recovered memories or the elusive idea of “closure”. It should offer something more precise: a safe opportunity for an adult to understand what surviving official records show about a serious crime or other state-mediated traumatic event they experienced as a child, what public bodies did, what outcome followed and what can no longer be known.

The evidence supports testing such a pathway. It also warns against doing it badly.

Being informed is not the same as being able to use the information

The present Victims’ Code begins with a right “to be able to understand and to be understood”. It requires simple, accessible language and allows support from a person of the victim’s choice. It also gives victims rights to updates about an investigation, reasons for some decisions, information about hearings and an explanation of the sentence. Children, victims of sexual offences and victims of other serious crimes can qualify for Enhanced Rights.

These are sound principles. They do not, by themselves, show that information delivered during a live case was understood by a child at the time or will remain understood years later. The current evidence supports the first concern more strongly than the second.

The Ministry of Justice’s 2026 consultation on a new Victims’ Code says children do not routinely receive the information, guidance and support they need, that children are often not directly communicated with about the criminal justice process, and that a child’s capacity to understand develops over time. Its proposed framework would require more direct engagement with child victims, adjusted for age, maturity and understanding, rather than routing communication mainly through adults around them.

The Children’s Commissioner for England’s 2024 report provides a concrete example of the problem. It combines analysis of police transcripts and police data with the experiences of ten victims and survivors of sexual harm in childhood. The report describes the route through justice as long, slow and confusing, and records young people describing failures to prepare them for the process and to identify or understand their needs. It is not longitudinal research into adult understanding, but it shows why a record that says “information provided” cannot safely be treated as evidence that a child understood the case.

That leaves the retrospective question open rather than answered. What should happen when an adult later realises that important decisions were made about a defining event in their childhood, but they cannot reconstruct from what they were told what the police established, whether they were believed, why the case ended or what the court decided?

This is particularly important where the child was in care. Several institutions may have held different parts of the story. Police records may show the investigation. The Crown Prosecution Service may hold the charging decision. Court records may show pleas, verdicts and sentence. A local authority file may explain who was told, what safeguarding action followed and why placements changed. Health or education records may contain other fragments. No single subject access request is designed to join them together.

The evidence comes from people opening their own files

Direct research on adults receiving a supported explanation of a childhood criminal case is limited. That should be stated plainly. The sources reviewed for this article did not identify an evaluated national programme combining cross-agency records, a reliable chronology, explanation and continuing support. The strongest relevant evidence comes from adult care leavers and survivors of child sexual abuse accessing records about their childhoods.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse concluded that records can help victims and survivors understand decisions about their care, the circumstances in which abuse occurred and why it was allowed to continue. It also found that defensive responses, procedural obstacles, poor communication and unexplained redactions could deepen a person’s sense of having been failed or covered up. Reading records could bring back traumatic memories and cause distress. IICSA therefore recommended clear access procedures, long retention periods and trained staff who understood the long-term impact of child sexual abuse and engaged with applicants with empathy.

The Information Commissioner’s Office has since produced unusually relevant evidence. Its 2024 survey on access to care records was not a representative population survey; respondents had chosen to share experiences and many had encountered difficulties. It should not be used to estimate how every care-experienced person will feel. It does, however, show the failure modes clearly. Among the respondents covered by the ICO’s analysis, 71% reported poor communication, 69% said the process took longer than expected, 59% said the records did not provide enough information and 87% were left with questions or concerns. The ICO’s published analysis records repeated demands for a chronology, clearer explanations of redaction, preparation for distressing material, a named contact and follow-up support.

Those findings led to the ICO’s Better Records Together standards. They distinguish legal duties from good practice, but encourage organisations to explain what records may contain, warn about gaps and lost material, offer choices about timing and format, provide a named contact and signpost counselling, advocacy or peer support. That is very close to the operating model a Right to Understand would need.

Qualitative research gives the necessary caution. Victoria Hoyle and colleagues’ participatory study, Recordkeeping and the life-long memory and identity needs of care-experienced children and young people, found positive and negative effects. Some participants used records to understand why they entered care, reduce self-blame, recover parts of their identity and place childhood events into a more coherent account. Others described depression, anxiety, anger, time away from work, relationship strain, harmful drinking and renewed trauma after opening their files. A record could be valuable and painful at the same time. Its meaning could also change as the reader grew older.

Explanation is not treatment

It would be easy to overstate what understanding can achieve. A factual chronology is not therapy. An explanatory meeting should not be sold as healing, and an applicant should never be pressed to read material because a professional thinks it will help.

There is good evidence for properly delivered trauma-focused psychological treatment. That is a different intervention, undertaken for a clinical purpose by trained practitioners over time. NICE expressly says psychologically focused debriefing should not be offered to prevent or treat post-traumatic stress disorder. The warning matters here. A one-off meeting in which an official recounts traumatic material is not made therapeutic by calling it trauma-informed.

Nor should a case guide try to fill gaps in memory. Research on trauma narratives finds an association between post-traumatic stress symptoms and disorganised recollection, but it does not justify completing a survivor’s story for them. A 2024 meta-analysis by Brewin and Field is explicit that filling memory gaps is not the rationale of trauma-focused treatment. Official records may add facts or correct a misunderstanding, but they may also contain errors, untested allegations, outdated professional judgements and the perspective of an institution rather than the whole truth.

The objective should therefore be informed agency. The adult chooses the questions, whether to proceed, what format to receive, whether to pause and who, if anyone, sits beside them. The guide explains the record without directing the person’s emotional response to it.

What exists now is a collection of partial routes

There are ways to obtain parts of the answer. The routes reviewed below remain limited by purpose, eligibility, time or the records held by one organisation.

The Victims’ Code requires timely updates and explanations during an investigation and prosecution. Right 9 requires the outcome and, following conviction, an explanation of the sentence. These rights matter, but compliance with an information duty is not evidence, on its own, that a particular child understood the significance of the information.

Under section 45 of the Data Protection Act 2018, a person can ask a police force for personal data being processed for law-enforcement purposes. The ICO explains that a force must make a reasonable and proportionate search and supply the person’s information unless a restriction applies. It need not create a transcript or a new explanatory document. Access can be restricted where necessary to protect an investigation, criminal proceedings, public security or the rights and freedoms of others. Third-party information is an obvious issue in a child-abuse or family case. The result can lawfully be a partial, heavily redacted set of documents rather than an intelligible account.

The CPS Victims’ Right to Review scheme can provide a review and fuller explanation of qualifying decisions not to prosecute or to stop a case. It is primarily a challenge to a specified prosecution decision rather than a service for reconstructing an entire childhood case. Requests are normally expected quickly; the CPS says requests made more than three months after the decision are accepted only in exceptional circumstances.

A further retrospective route is the Child Sexual Abuse Review Panel, a joint CPS and National Police Chiefs’ Council scheme. It can reconsider certain child-sexual-abuse cases in which police or prosecutors decided to take no further action. Since 1 April 2025, it can also consider eligible post-June 2013 cases that have not already received a Victims’ Right to Review. This is important, but its purpose is review and possible reinvestigation; it does not cover violent offences generally or provide a cross-agency record-and-explanation service for every adult survivor.

Specialist support also exists. Sexual assault referral centres, independent sexual violence advisers, Rape Crisis centres, NAPAC and other services can support adults affected by non-recent abuse. They are not normally the holders of police, prosecution or court records and cannot authoritatively explain why a criminal justice decision was made.

IICSA’s recommendation on retention and access was a significant step. An April 2025 government progress update committed to regulations directing the ICO to produce a code on retaining personal data relating to child sexual abuse. As at 4 August 2026, the sources reviewed for this article did not identify published implementing regulations or a completed child-sexual-abuse-specific code. The ICO’s subsequent care-record work has improved the practical standard. Even taken together with existing review schemes, these developments do not establish the cross-agency service proposed here.

Care and adoption show what a better model looks like

Care records reveal both the need and the danger. The ICO now expects accessible information about the process, candid warnings about missing material, explanations of redaction, choices about delivery and signposting to support. Yet many adult care leavers still rely on a subject access request, and the local authority explaining the file may be the institution the person distrusts. Independent advocacy matters for that reason.

Adoption provides a stronger legal analogy. An adopted adult can obtain specified information through a regulated framework rather than relying entirely on ordinary data-protection access. Section 60 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 applies to post-commencement adoptions, while separate rules govern earlier cases. Official guidance states that adults adopted before 12 November 1975 who do not know their birth details must attend a counselling session with an approved adoption adviser before receiving that information. Regulated intermediary services can assist with tracing and contact. Family Procedure Rule 14.18 also permits an adopted adult to obtain specified adoption documents, with protected information removed.

The adoption system is not a template to copy without criticism. A regulated framework does not guarantee that disclosure will be complete or emotionally easy. A mandatory counselling requirement also risks becoming paternalistic if it is treated as a test of readiness rather than preparation for the applicant’s benefit. Its importance is conceptual: Parliament has already accepted that information about childhood identity may become significant in adulthood, that disclosure may require a specialist intermediary and that third-party privacy can be protected without reducing the applicant to an ordinary data requester.

The same principle should apply where the state holds the only coherent record of a serious crime committed against a child. The fact that the record is divided between police, prosecutors, courts and children’s services is an administrative problem. It should not become the survivor’s permanent burden.

A right that offers understanding, not certainty

A workable Right to Understand should begin with adults who were victims of reported serious violence, sexual offences, kidnapping, exploitation or comparable traumatic crime before the age of 18. It should not depend on a conviction, a complaint about the original investigation or evidence that the applicant is psychologically unwell. A later phase could test how the same principle applies to traumatic state decisions in care, adoption and other childhood settings where no crime was recorded.

The safeguards are part of the right

A central objection is the possibility of causing harm or unfairly disclosing information about somebody else. A credible proposal has to treat that as a design requirement rather than a reason to do nothing.

Third-party privacy, legal professional privilege, court restrictions, witness safety and the fairness of any live or possible proceedings must remain protected. Records should be reviewed by somebody who understands both information law and the case. Redaction should be no broader than necessary, and the applicant should receive a useful explanation of why categories of material were withheld. Where a summary can convey the relevant fact without identifying another person, that option should be considered.

The guide must not become a therapist, investigator or institutional defender. If the original force explains its own disputed conduct, applicants may reasonably suspect reputation management. Pilots should therefore test an independent or regionally commissioned case-guide model, with access to legal, clinical and records expertise and a route to challenge disclosure decisions.

Records themselves require caution. A police report may preserve a contemporaneous account, but it is not infallible. Older files may use blaming or discriminatory language. Some events were never recorded. Others may have been recorded inaccurately. A safe explanation names those limits. It does not quietly convert every sentence in an official file into fact.

Start with a pilot, but design it as a right

The author proposes a time-limited, multi-site national pilot rather than immediate rollout of a fully specified service. The Ministry of Justice and Home Office should commission independently evaluated sites involving police, CPS, HMCTS, relevant court authorities, victim services, local authorities, information-governance specialists and people with lived experience. Participation should be voluntary and should not affect any complaint, compensation claim or later investigation. Each partner should sign a protocol covering ownership, record access, deadlines, escalation and safeguarding before the first application is accepted.

The pilot protocol and outcome measures should be published in advance. Evaluation must examine more than applicant satisfaction. It should track access and completion rates; compliance with each deadline; applicant understanding of the recorded outcome and key decisions before and after the process; short-term distress and wellbeing at agreed follow-up points; safety incidents; the number of safeguarding or investigative issues created; time and cost; missing records; challenges to redaction; take-up of advocacy and support; and whether access is equitable for disabled people and minority groups. Positive, negative and inconclusive findings should all be published, with independent ethics and survivor oversight.

The pilot should also test scope. A right covering every upsetting childhood event would be difficult to define and could turn public bodies into arbiters of personal meaning. A right restricted to convicted offences would exclude people whose cases ended without charge or acquittal, even though their need to understand may remain substantial. The author’s proposed starting point is a reported serious crime against a child where a public authority created a substantial record, regardless of the final outcome.

The state cannot guarantee closure, recover a complete past or make an old record true. Nor should an administrative record that information was sent be treated as proof that a particular child understood the case for life. When public bodies hold the only surviving account of what happened, the adult should have more than a right to receive pages. The author proposes that they should have a safe and meaningful Right to Understand, and that the case for it should be tested rather than assumed.

If this article raises concerns for you

The NHS guide to help after rape and sexual assault lists confidential support, including sexual assault referral centres and the 24-hour Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Line for people aged 16 and over in England and Wales. NAPAC provides a national support service for adults affected by any form of childhood abuse.

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Principal sources

1. Victims and Prisoners Act 2024, Part 1, especially section 2.
2. Ministry of Justice, Code of Practice for Victims of Crime in England and Wales.
3. Ministry of Justice, A new Victims’ Code: consultation document (2026).
4. Children’s Commissioner for England, Children’s experiences as victims of crime (24 May 2024).
5. Data Protection Act 2018, Part 3, section 45, and ICO guidance on law-enforcement subject access.
6. Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Final Report, Part H.5, Access to records (2022).
7. Information Commissioner’s Office, Accessing care records and information rights: analysis of survey (June 2024) and Better Records Together standards (2025).
8. Hoyle, V., Shepherd, E., Lomas, E. and Flinn, A. (2020), Recordkeeping and the life-long memory and identity needs of care-experienced children and young people, Child & Family Social Work.
9. NICE guideline NG116: Post-traumatic stress disorder.
10. Adoption and Children Act 2002, section 60, Disclosure of Adoption Information (Post-Commencement Adoptions) Regulations 2005 and Adoption Information and Intermediary Services (Pre-Commencement Adoptions) Regulations 2005.
11. Crown Prosecution Service, Victims’ Right to Review Scheme and Child Sexual Abuse Review Panel.
12. Home Office, Tackling child sexual abuse: progress update (2025).
13. Brewin, C. R. and Field, A. P. (2024), Meta-analysis of the relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder and trauma memory.
14. GOV.UK, Adoption records.
15. Family Procedure Rules 2010, rule 14.18.
16. Data Protection Act 2018, section 53.
17. Information Commissioner’s Office, Restrictions on the right of access under Part 3.