Force ‘failed to understand’ 16 years of exploitation

Police failed to “join the dots” to identify wider cases of child sexual exploitation (CSE), there was confusion about what should be recorded as a crime and investigated, and there was a failure to look into “worrying events”, such as under-age girls being plied with alcohol for sex by older men, a Serious Case Review (SCR) has concluded.

The Oxfordshire Safeguarding Children Board (OSCB), which commissioned the SCR, published the conclusions on Tuesday (March 3), and found that as many as 373 girls may have been targeted for sex by gangs of men in Oxfordshire in the last 16 years.

Thames Valley Police (TVP), along with other agencies, was criticised for a number of failures, including a lack of understanding of CSE and how to deal with it. Examples included officers viewing the victims’ “precocious and difficult behaviour” as something they decided to adopt, with harm coming because of their decisions to place themselves at risk.

There was no recognition of the fact that the girls’ ability to consent had been affected by a process of grooming which escalated to violent control, contributing to a lack of trust in the police by both victims and their parents, while there was also pessimism by officers about the prospect of criminal investigations being successful as evidence was often withdrawn or later denied.

The OSCB criticised the force over confusion about what should be recorded as a crime and investigated, including one incident where an officer noted on an intelligence report, rather than formally as a crime, a named man attempting to prostitute two girls aged 14 and 15 and plying them with alcohol to have sex.

Other concerns identified by the SCR include:

•The police had only 26 recorded offences related to the six girls on the main database, but the Bullfinch inquiry, the joint police and Oxfordshire County Council investigation into suspected serious cases of CSE, identified many more recorded in other ways which should have been responded to as crimes;

•There were weaknesses in supervision and an apparent tolerance of inappropriate sexual activity, which was contributed to through a lack of understanding around consent;

•There was very little use of disruption tactics prior to Bullfinch, despite them being available, and there was no police covert surveillance and rigorous intelligence gathering. This meant that taking something forward rested almost wholly on victim evidence – which the OSCB said in CSE cases can rarely be expected;

•In one case police were told of an historic rape allegedly committed by a named man. When a parent reported it and the child confirmed then denied it, the case was closed without full investigation;

•In cases where a crime was identified there was a lack of clarity about which branch led the investigation – from the attending officer through to CID and the Child Abuse Investigation Unit. This meant that there were occasions when the necessary understanding or skills for such complex work were absent;

•Opportunities were lost as police evidence gathering was delayed for the outcome of multi-agency meetings; and

•Prior to Bullfinch, TVP tended to look at the presenting issue only and not “join the dots” to other reports it received, including one girl being found at the same address where another had been the previous week, as well as information about two 14-year-old girls in 2006 who were held against their will and ‘consented’ to sex with up to seven men.

The OSCB said, while there were a number of arrests for offences up to rape, there were no prosecutions.

Maggie Blyth, independent chair of the OSCB, said: “It is shocking that these children were subjected to such appalling sexual exploitation for so long.

“It is clear that between 2005 and 2010, despite the efforts of some frontline staff working with children individually, there was no understanding of the type of abuse which later emerged, a culture across all organisations that failed to see that these children were being groomed in an organised way by groups of men a