Accompanying last weekends Home Affairs Committee report which
Betsy reported above was some interesting documentation.
One item is a 19th September letter to the Committee from David Crompton, South Yorkshire Chief Constable, setting out the proposed structure of the enquiry he is commissioning into these events. (Aspects of this letter were picked up by Yorkshire newspapers a couple of days ago).
Letter from David Crompton, Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police, to the Chair of the Committee, 19 September 2014
The National Crime Agency confirmed last week that it had agreed to lead the investigation and was "working to draw up detailed terms of reference".
NCA Press Release
Crompton's letter was written before that but sets out a proposed structure involving both the NCA and the IPCC.
Complaints about misconduct by Police Officers would be investigated by the IPCC.
It was confirmed this week that 14 people so far have been referred to the IPCC although they haven't yet begun their investigations.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-29742424
Crompton's idea was that the NCA would look into three areas :
- Criminal investigation into possible misconduct in public office by non-Police Officers (thus outside the remit of the IPCC). This would include Council officers and Councillors and he specifically includes Shaun Wright the former PCC and Council Cabinet member responsible for Child Services.
- Historic CSE cases (cold cases) - to identify victims, witnesses and offenders with a view to potential prosecutions.
- Oversight of those historic abuse cases currently being investigated by SYP as part of Operation Meadow (it's investigation into historic CSE). "It will not be possible for SYP to disengage from these investigations due to the level of engagement with victims".
Clearly there will be a link between the two parts of the investigation because it is almost inconceivable that the criminal investigation will not identify matters to be referred to the IPCC around police misconduct.
Obviously the structure he set out may have been refined in the discussions with the NCA but it gives an idea of the scope of what is proposed.
Another interesting document published by the Home Affairs Committee is one of the transcripts of the hearings about Rotherham they held on September 9th. As mentioned back in this thread the first session that day was a closed one with the researcher whose 2002 report was suppressed, Angie Heal who produced reports into drug dealing which highlighted the connection with CSE and Jayne Senior of the Risky Business project in Rotherham.
Some details of what they had said, about the threats made to the researcher by Police Officers and the circumstances in which her evidence was removed from the Risky Business offices, emerged in the questions asked in the subsequent open sessions. However the full transcript is now on line, setting out more details of these events and naming a number of names.
Transcript of the HAC sessions on September 9th
The whole thing is worth reading but this exchange about how victims of CSE who were pregnant or had given birth were removed from at risk files, seemingly in order to transfer focus onto the risks to their children stood out :
Q248 Nicola Blackwood: It is a very quick question. It is just to Ms Senior about the 2005 audit. It says in Professor Jay’s report that there was a decision made to remove the young girls who were pregnant or who had recently had children, from the at risk files. Why was that decision made?
Jayne Senior: I don’t know exactly. A lot of children were removed from registers and files. There is the minutes of one of the meetings where it says, “Referred to teenage pregnancy nurse. Remove from forum”. I don’t know.
(...)
Former Researcher: If I can offer something on that. What I encountered certainly was a shift of focus on to the baby, whether that be unborn or of a born child, and I certainly worked with one young woman throughout who was not seen as being at risk. There were constant references to this man being her ‘boyfriend’. He was invited to the antenatal meetings and so on; and then he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment for violent offences including witness and intimidation, and brutality. Subsequently her child was regarded as being at risk, and there were threats made to remove the child into the care system to protect the child from the same man who had targeted and abused this young woman since she was 13 years-old!
Jayne Senior: There is a referral in here for a young woman that was living independently at 16 with her baby and men were going to the house and taking other children, and she was reporting that herself. She had been a victim and was reporting it and asked to be moved because she was in absolute fear, and the baby was removed because the baby was seen as being unsafe when 20, 30 men a night were turning up to have sex with her and other children while she had to sit outside the bedroom door and listen.
Lastly in the who-knew-what category the Yorkshire Post have reported that former Rotherham MP Denis MacShane, who has denied knowing anything about CSE while he was in office was one of those written to in 2009 by the charity CROP (now PACE) giving a detailed account of how a CSE case they were very concerned about was being mishandled by Social Services.
That letter from CROP with victims names redacted
can be found online here.
MacShane's response according to the Post
The former MP said he has no knowledge of the letter, and that as it was not directly addressed to him but to a larger group he might not necessarily have had to act on it.
“No one ever approached me on this, not a single person came to me as a constituent on child abuse by Asian males. This notion that the whole world knew and there was a cover up is balderdash.”
MP and Home Office failed to act on Rotherham - Yorkshire Post
We are told the police are rascist you would think they would have leapt at a chance to convict these gangs?
