Archive for investigations
A Newbury school has been exonerated by an independent review following claims made during a court case earlier in the year.
In April the principal at Mary Hare School, Tony Shaw, announced that Sir Roger Singleton would conduct the “evidential and exhaustive” investigation into safeguarding at the school for the deaf.
Now, in his report, Sir Roger, chairman of the Independent Safeguarding Authority, has concluded that the school’s portrayal during the court hearing as a place where promiscuity was condoned has not been supported by the evidence.
Sir Roger has stated in his findings: “The picture of rampant sexual behaviour at Mary Hare ...
Full Story
The following story has been extracted from the Daily Mail web site
A teacher with 30 years’ experience told yesterday how he was sacked after a rowdy pupil claimed he grabbed his arm and left four small scratch marks.
Ronnie Lane, 56, admitted confronting the unruly 15-year-old boy, who had special educational needs, after he had repeatedly wandered the classroom ‘scrunching up’ other boys’ GCSE art coursework.
The married teacher agreed that during the lesson in July 2009 he did touch the boy’s arm while asking him to release another pupil’s painting, to stop it being damaged.
But a ...
Full Story
The Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 (Defence Disclosure Time Limits) Regulations 2011
These Regulations prescribe the relevant period for the purposes of sections 5, 6 and 6C of the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 (c. 25) (“the Act”).
That period is the period within which the accused in criminal proceedings must give: a compulsory defence statement under section 5 of the Act; a voluntary defence statement under section 6 of the Act; or a notice of his or her intention to call any person, other than him or herself, as a witness at trial ...
Full Story
Our attention has been drawn to report produced earlier this year on “How to Conduct An Investigation” published by The Standards Board for England.
Although the guide has been written for monitoring officers carrying out investigations and other action relating to allegations referred to them by standards committees or ethical standards officers the principles apply to most investigation.
The guide provides an introduction to the practice of investigation and is designed to assist anyone delegated to investigate allegations of
misconduct.
The report outline the principles by which the Standards Board for England conducts its investigations.
It does not aim to be prescriptive and is ...
Full Story
“No touch” rules discouraging teachers from restraining and comforting children are to be scrapped, Education Secretary Michael Gove has said.
In an interview with the Guardian, Mr Gove said the move was part of a “new deal” for teachers.
They would also be given the right to anonymity when faced by allegations from pupils.
Mr Gove promised to change the rules on school discipline, saying the current system was too complicated.
He said: “At the moment if you want to become au fait with what this department thinks on how to keep order in class you have to ...
Full Story
Parents in Norfolk and Suffolk were last night reassured that incidents remain “extremely rare” after new figures showed more than 250 complaints were made against school staff in the two counties during the last year.
The alleged incidents – 139 in Norfolk and 109 in Suffolk – are among more than 1,700 across England unearthed by a request under the freedom of information act.
Of the 248 complaints against teachers, support staff and those driving school transport in Norfolk and Suffolk between April 1 2009 and March 31 2010, 134 alleged physical abuse, 78 sexual abuse ...
Full Story
Lord Carlile has been asked to lead an inquiry into child protection at a Roman Catholic private school.
Governors at St Benedict’s School called in the Liberal Democrat peer to review “past mistakes” that allowed a paedophile priest to abuse five pupils.
The move comes after independent inspectors said there were shortcomings in the school’s child safety policy.
Last year, former St Benedict’s head Father David Pearce was jailed for eight years for abusing five students.
He had admitted 10 indecent assaults and one sexual assault on five boys between 1972 and 2007.
He was head of St Benedict’s ...
Full Story
The Report by Commission of Investigation into the handling by Church and State authorities of allegations and suspicions of child abuse against clerics of the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin is published today.
The Commission came about because of the RTÉ Prime Time programme Cardinal Secrets, broadcast in October 2002. Produced by Mary Raftery, with Mick Peelo reporting, it investigated the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations in Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese.
The then minister for justice, Michael McDowell, said he was “very alarmed” by the programme, which he found “deeply disturbing”. It led to the Commission of Investigation Act 2004, which allowed for ...
Full Story
A 71-year old pensioner has become the fourth person to be charged in connection with Jersey’s historical abuse inquiry.
Ronald George Thorne, of St Helier faces four charges of inciting acts of gross indecency with a boy on four separate occasions.
The alleged offences are said to have taken place between 1983 and 1987. The charges are not related to Haut de la Garenne.
The States police released a statement yesterday saying that they had charged the pensioner following advice received from the legal advisers acting on behalf of the Law Officers’ department.
Source: Jersey Evening Post and State of Jersey Police
Full Story
A man who sexually abused boys at a Jersey care home when he was a teenage resident in the 1970s was today sentenced to two years’ probation.
Michael Aubin, 46, who was born in Jersey and lives in Southampton, carried out the attacks while he lived at the Haut de la Garenne home in the 1970s.
The former cleaner, who claims he was abused himself at the home by a member of staff known as “the bogeyman”, was sentenced at Jersey’s royal court for two counts of gross indecency and two of indecent assault on children under 10.
The court heard Aubin suffered ...
Full Story
The Scottish Government have announced that the Independent Inquiry Into Alleged Abuse at Kerelaw Residential School Secure Unit (ISBN 978 0 7559 5952 5) undertaken by Eddie Frizzell has been published.
Contents
Foreword
1 Executive Summary
2 Background
3 Introduction
4 Kerelaw Residential School and Secure Unit
5 Looked after children legislation and regulation
6 Policy trends and initiatives
7 Range of allegations of abuse
8 The nature of abuse
9 Organisational culture
10 Capacity for improvement
11 Inspection
12 The child at the centre
13 Glasgow City Council’s stewardship of Kerelaw
14 The closure of Kerelaw
15 The Glasgow City Council investigation and discipline of Kerelaw staff
16 Disqualification from working with children
17 Lessons learned by Glasgow City ...
Full Story
The joint independent inquiry on Kerelaw Residential School and Secure Unit has returned its findings.
Commissioned by both Glasgow City Council and the Scottish Government, the inquiry team led by Eddie Frizzell has published a comprehensive report on events at Kerelaw in the run up to its closure between 2004 and 2006.
The inquiry had been asked to examine the circumstances that led to the abuse of children at Kerelaw over a number of years, appraise the Council’s stewardship of the school since taking charge in 1996, to consider the Council’s own internal investigation into Kerelaw and to assess what steps the ...
Full Story
The following report by Dominic Kennedy, Investigations Editor appeared in the TIMES on 28th February
The Crown Prosecution Service has confirmed the authenticity of police notes discovered by The Times which a force had said never existed. They show that a doctor calculated that Paula Gilfoyle died at home at a time when her husband Eddie was at work. Gilfoyle has served 17 years in jail for murdering her.
Mrs Gilfoyle was found hanged in the garage at the couple’s home in the Wirral in June 1992. She was eight months pregnant.
Her husband was found guilty of murder at Liverpool Crown Court ...
Full Story
The 15th of February 2009 marks the 9th anniversary of the publication of Lost In Care (The Waterhouse Report) report of the North Wales Tribunal of Inquiry into [allegations of] abuse in North Wales Children’s Homes sees the publication in paperback of the much acclaimed The Secret of Bryn Estyn – the making of a modern witch hunt by cultural historian Richard Webster. Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize.
In 1991 journalists on broadsheet newspapers began to publish stories claiming that Bryn Estyn, a home for adolescent boys on the outskirts of Wrexham, lay at the centre of a network of evil – a paedophile ...
Full Story
For those who missed it there is disturbing story of Keran Henderson’s conviction of the manslaughter of a little girls she was childminding, in Daily Mail on the 20th January.
Keran and Iain Henderson were the ideal couple: he was a police officer and she a mother who loved children so much that she looked after them for a living.But, in a case that has terrible echoes of previous miscarriages of justice, Keran suddenly found herself accused of manslaughter, and the family’s nightmare began…
Shortly after 8am, I answered a knock on the door of our Buckinghamshire home. Two police officers flashed ...
Full Story
The House of Lords.
Children & Young Persons Bill – Committee Stage 17th January 2008.
Baroness Walmsley.
Amendment No. 98 is about making sure that if a foster parent is accused of an allegation they can continue to receive the fee, because in those circumstances the child will have been taken away from them so they are no longer entitled to the allowance. That is natural justice. It is about being innocent until proven guilty.
The possibility of an allegation being made against them is a constant fear for foster carers. Due to the nature of the children and young people placed with them, ...
Full Story
Two men suspected over allegations of child abuse after a police operation in Hampshire have been found dead. Anthony Whitlock 54 is believed to have shot himself in the head in a remote part of the New forest after being told that the police wanted to question him. Kenneth Milton was found dead at his home in Ventnor Court Southampton. He was one of ten peole who were due to stand trial after allegations of abuse in the 1970′s and 1980′s
Source: Times Saturday 19th January
Full Story
As a result of a misheard 20-second phone call with a 13-year-old partially deaf and emotionally vulnerable foster child, a care worker with an unblemished record lost his job, was put on the sex offenders’ register and suffered a nervous breakdown that brought him to the brink of suicide …. Newcastle city council social services department suspended Gillon pending an investigation, during which he was not interviewed. He was then sacked following a disciplinary hearing at which he was not even present. In addition, his union rep was denied access to records that revealed details of the child’s hearing problems and the ...
Full Story
It would be reassuring to dismiss Shieldfield as a terrible aberration. The story of what happened to Dawn Reed and Chris Lillie is so bizarre that it might seem to be without parallel. But that would be to replace one delusion by another. On the day after the libel judgment, the Guardian newsdesk was contacted by a reader who told them of a similar case. And the next day, 1 August, Canadian journalist Margaret Wente published a story which has close parallels with Shieldfield. This concerned a police officer who had lived for 10 years under the shadow of horrific ...
Full Story
A charity worker will appear in court this week charged with the theft of £60,000 from a sex abuse victim support group. It follows an extensive police investigation launched into the running of the group set up to help victims of one of Britain’s biggest sex abuse scandals. Thousands of pounds of public money was used to help set up NORWAS in North Wales so that people who were abused as youngsters in children’s homes could have help and support. But police were called in to investigate the running of the organisation and its chairman Steven Messham was arrested and questioned ...
Full Story
Police leading a huge but largely abortive child abuse inquiry denied yesterday they had encouraged false allegations and wrecked the lives of innocent teachers and care workers by “trawling” for evidence in children’s homes. Dozens of professionals in the north-east, backed by MPs, have lodged complaints about the blunderbuss effect of the five year Operation Rose that saw more than 200 people investigated but in the end only six convicted. The £5m inquiry led to 558 claims of assault, rape and other sexual abuse from 277 residents or former residents of 61 care homes. The methods used by Northumbria police ...
Full Story
A former housemaster at an council-run Ty Mawr Approved School in Gilwern, near Abergavenny, Monmouthshire has gone on trial accused of abusing boys in his care. Michael Doggett, 57, Mr Doggett, of Bwlch in Powys, faces charges of sexual abuse and cruelty involving young boys in his care. Last September, former Ty Mawr headmaster Ralph Taylor was cleared of assaulting pupils at the school by caning them… A judge at Newport Crown Court jailed 66-year-old Barrie Alden, the former deputy principal at the Ty Mawr School near Abergavenny for 15 years after a jury convicted him of 10 offences against ...
Full Story
Jon Slater charts the alarming proliferation of such cases and asks: has the pendulum swung too far in favour of pupils’ rights? Mark Harris’s nightmare is coming to an end. Last week police dropped their investigation after finding no evidence to support the allegations against him. After a month out of school, his headteacher wants him to return to work as soon as possible…
TES (link no longer active)
Full Story
Anna Climbie was failed at every turn by authorities who could have taken simple measures to prevent her murder. Now, detailed investigations are to look at what went wrong in the slow, tormented months that led to the child’s death in February 1999.
Guardian
Full Story
Tony Butler, the Chief Constable of Gloucestershire and spokesman on abuse issues for chief police officers [ACPO], said: “In the past social workers and police officers simply didn’t believe the children. We didn’t think that short of thing went on in children’s homes. With Beck’s trial it became painfully clear that they could and did go on in children’s homes.” Since Beck, many other abuse inquiries and trials have taken place, including the report by Sir Ronald Waterhouse into the horrific abuse of children in care homes in North Wales, which was first revealed by The Independent. But as a ...
Full Story
