Decca Aitkenhead

Smartphones and adolescent mental health have dominated the national headlines and conversation all year, but Decca stole the show with a masterclass in agenda-setting public service journalism. Her experiment gripped readers all over the world, was debated on radio shows from London to New Zealand, and is one of the Sunday Times Magazine’s best read stories all year, avidly shared and discussed by parents and schools. Unlike other articles about modest digital detoxes, Decca’s addressed all of the issues involved in the complex story of teens and smartphones; the importance of a peer group, boys’ and girls’ different relationship with social media, the culture of “safetyism”, and the role parents play. Brilliantly executed, beautifully told, her feature dramatized these issues, and inspired the Sunday Times to partner with SmartphoneFreeChildhood to launch an ongoing campaign.

Her feature about a troubled teen facility in Jamaica was another masterclass in investigative journalism and superb story telling. The controversial troubled teen industry is notoriously impenetrable to the press, but Decca deployed tenacity and courage to expose jaw dropping institutional abuse in a facility. Persuading frightened American teenagers, shamed parents, a wary Jamaican community, fearful former facility employees and media shy officials to talk required immense tact, charm, patience – and produced stunning revelations. This complex story spanned continents and decades, featured LA celebrities and Ethiopian orphans, and presented a legal minefield, but was expertly crafted by Decca into a perfectly paced page-turner. Paris Hilton shared it with her millions of followers, the media in Kentucky picked it up, and the state’s former Governor continues to be challenged about his son’s hitherto secret exile and abandonment in Jamaica.

Sibling Sexual Abuse is the most common form of child abuse within the family – yet no newspaper had ever covered it. After Decca happened upon data revealing its astonishing prevalence, she spent six months interviewing victims, experts and a perpetrator, exhaustively researching this shocking untold story. The most taboo of all family secrets, SSA is an emotionally and legally fraught issue that one no-one finds easy to talk about it, but Decca earned the trust of all her interviewees, even a teenage boy who had raped his sister, to produce a ground breaking feature now used by SSA charities and campaigners to educate children’s services.

All three features demonstrate an exceptional range of journalistic skills – an eye for an incredible story, perseverance, masterful storytelling and peerless writing.