Fury over child rapist paid £10,000 to spy for police

POLICE were under fire last night for paying a convicted child rapist £10,000 to spy on the sex gang.

The Asian man, known as XY during the case, had been jailed for seven years for attacking an under-age girl, whom he plied with drink and drugs and raped with his friends. He had more than 50 convictions.

However, he worked under cover as a police informant over almost two years for Operation Shelter.

He was still serving a suspended sentence when he was recruited, after working as an informal driver for the gang.

Even after he was taken on by the force, XY, who is in his 30s, was arrested for dishonesty and an assault and questioned about making sexual advances on a 13year-old girl. The latter case was dropped.

He was paid £9,680 by Northumbria Police over a period of 21 months to act as a Covert Human Intelligence Source to gather information on the gang. The force also tried to keep his involvement in the investigation secret.

Police were forced to defend the use of the informant after the NSPCC responded to the news by saying: ‘We are appalled. You just couldn’t make it up.’

Northumbria Police chief Steve Ashman insisted XY’s involvement in the case had allowed the force to detect and prevent crime that would ‘not have been possible through conventional methods’.

During the trial, XY, who by now had been moved, along with his family, out of the Newcastle area and was under roundthe-clock police protection, was called to court and gave his evidence from behind a screen. He was questioned on what police had asked him to do, and blamed his many inconsistencies on the pressure of working as an informant.

However, the revelations about XY’s involvement in the case came out only during pre- trial hearings which attempted, but failed, to halt prosecutions against a number of the accused.

During the proceedings in October and November, defending barristers argued the public’s confidence in the justice system would be ‘diminished’ if the trials went ahead, given that the rapist XY had acted as an informant.

Judge Penny Moreland, however, dismissed the abuse of process application, ordering the trials of the defendants should not be thrown out.

Jim Gamble, who set up the government’s taskforce to fight child sexual exploitation, said: ‘All police forces are under pressure to get things right. But there are ways and means of doing it. There need to be limits and there should be lines that shouldn’t be crossed.

‘They have gone way over the line on this one. I can’t envisage any circumstances where I would have authorised payment to someone convicted of rape.’

However Chief Constable Ashman said: ‘The lawful and regulated use of such tactics is always overseen by a senior police officer and is also subject to review by an independent body.

‘In the case of XY it is clear that his relationships with others have allowed the police to prevent and detect some of the most serious crimes in our communities.’

‘There should be lines that aren’t crossed’