Ex-South Yorkshire Police officer accused of failing to act on Rotherham child sex abuse information
Former Detective Sergeant David Walker is facing a misconduct hearing, which is due to start next week, over a number of accusations.
South Yorkshire Police said the allegations against the former officer arise from the Rotherham Child Sexual Exploitation scandal.
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Hide AdAn independent report into CSE in Rotherham, published in 2014, revealed that at least 1,400 children were sexually exploited between 1997 and 2013 by men of predominantly Pakistani heritage while those in authority failed to act.
The report said officials feared action would result in accusations of racism.
Professor Alexis Jay’s scathing report said that within social care ‘the scale and seriousness of the problem was underplayed by senior managers’.
She added that ‘the police gave no priority to CSE, regarding many child victims with contempt and failing to act on their abuse as a crime’.
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Hide AdShe also revealed that of three reports on the issue, spelling out the scale of the problem and which police and council officials were aware of, one was ‘suppressed’ because some senior officers disbelieved the data it contained.
She said the other two, which set out the links between child sexual exploitation and drugs, guns and criminality in Rotherham, ‘were ignored’ and ‘no action was taken to deal with the issues that were identified in them’.
Prof Jay said at the time of her report: “No one knows the true scale of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham over the years.”
MORE: Rotherham sex abuse scandal compensation claims have cost nearly £4 million in legal fees alone
Former DS Walker is accused of:
- failing to record on police systems information about or relevant to suspected victims and perpetrators of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham that had been passed to him between 2009 and 2012;
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Hide Ad- failing to record and/or appropriately act upon information about a Rotherham Council youth worker potentially involved in sexual exploitation in Rotherham, passed to him in August 2009;
- failing to record and/or appropriately act upon a notification of child concern identifying two young sisters potentially at risk of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham in 2009.
Police officers who are no longer serving can still face misconduct hearings over allegations over their actions when they were serving.