Professor Simon Hackett

Simon is Associate Provost and Professor of Child Abuse and Neglect at Durham University, where he chairs the University Safeguarding Operations Group and is Vice Chair of the University Ethics Committee. Simon’s research relates largely to child maltreatment in its various forms and to professional responses designed to safeguard children’s welfare. He is particularly known for work in relation to child sexual abuse, including a recent randomised control trial of interventions for children who have been sexually abused, undertaken in collaboration with Professor John Carpenter of the University of Bristol. Simon’s research into children and young people who display harmful sexual behaviours is internationally known, including a study of long-term outcomes for children and young people between ten and twenty years after the initial identification of their sexually abusive behaviours.  He is first author of the NSPCC’s (2016) Operational framework for children and young people displaying harmful sexual behaviours, which is being widely adopted across the UK to help improve interagency responses to this issue.  He was part of the NICE Public Health Advisory Committee which has established the first UK national guidance on early interventions for children and young people presenting with harmful sexual behaviours. He has recently given evidence to the UK Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse on this topic. Simon is currently Chair of NOTA in the UK and Republic of Ireland and is past Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Sexual Aggression.  Simon’s practice base with children with harmful sexual behaviours extends back to the early 1990s when he was Programme Director of G-MAP, one of the UK’s longest established community-based intervention services.