Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
CHILD RAPIST PAID £10K TO TRAP SEX GANG
Cops defend payout after perverts convicted of abusing victims as young as 13
POLICE paid a child sex attacker nearly £10,000 to infiltrate a paedophile gang.
They claimed he helped stop more abuse by the perverts, who preyed on girls as young as 13.
But the NSPCC said: “We are appalled. It beggars belief.”
CHILDREN’S charities last night spoke of their outrage after police allowed a child rapist to mingle with a gang of paedophiles as a supergrass in a bid to nail them.
The vile pervert was paid £9,680 of taxpayers’ cash over six years to gather information on the Asian group who preyed on girls as young as 13 at sex parties after plying them with drugs.
Police chiefs insisted the controversial move was justified as the grass, who was jailed for seven years for attacking a girl of 15 after spiking her drink, helped put many sex fiends in jail who would otherwise have carried on offending.
But the man, named only as XY, claimed detectives told him he was “above the law” and was encouraged to carry out illegal acts in the efforts to catch the gang of paedophiles.
And after the last of the 17 men and one woman were yesterday found guilty of abusing their terrified victims in the latest case, the NSPCC hit back at the use of a child rapist as a supergrass.
MISGUIDED
The child protection charity’s Jon Brown said: “We are appalled to learn that police paid a child rapist and planted him in the midst of vulnerable young girls. You just couldn’t make it up.
“It beggars belief that it would ever have been considered, let alone approved, and questions must be asked about the force’s approach to child sexual exploitation operations.
“However good the force’s intentions, their misguided actions run entirely counter to all current child protection procedures and what we know about sex offenders and could have compromised this investigation.”
Campaigner Jim Gamble, who set up the Government’s taskforce to fight child sexual exploitation, added: “All forces are under pressure to get things right. But there are ways and means to doing it.
“There need to be limits and there should be lines that shouldn’t be crossed. In my opinion they have gone way over the line on this one. Personally, I can’t envisage any circumstances where I would have authorised payment to someone convicted of rape. I can’t imagine how you could have control mechanisms in place with an informant of that type... that would give you reassurance that they didn’t still represent a risk to young vulnerable women.”
Sammy Woodhouse, who was 14 when she was abused by a grooming gang in Rotherham and now advises police on how to tackle grooming, said: “I think it’s outrageous. If I were in [his rape victim’s] situation I’d be disgusted by it.” But Steve Ashman, chief constable of Northumbria Police who nailed the gang, insisted: “To prevent victims being abused, you do not go to the post master or the district nurse. This is who you have to speak to. It was a difficult step but one which we were prepared to take. We got 93 convictions and more than 300 years in prison for dangerous offenders. I am satisfied it was the right thing to do.” He claimed XY gave a window on a “murky dangerous” world which they could not reach through overt surveillance tactics.
Detective Superintendent Steve Barron, the man who led the inquiry, described it as the most complex in his 25 years as an officer. But asked about the payments to XY, he replied: “What about the children being raped tonight? How acceptable is that? You have to balance that with paying that money.” And former Met detective Peter Kirkham said: “If you want good information you are going to have to deal with bad people because they are the ones that have it.
“In this case it appears the information led to the safeguarding of several, perhaps many, potential victims and the conviction of dangerous offenders.”
Newcastle crown court heard during the trial of the 18 paedophiles – mostly British-born Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Indians, Iraqis, Iranians and Turks from the West End of the city – that there were a potential 108 victims. One girl was raped three times by three different perverts. Another attended more than 60 sex and drugs parties. The force’s Operation Sanctuary into child sex abuse led to 461 arrests, with 93 convictions and more than 700 potential victims identified. During the investigations 12 men were booted out of the country.
It is the seventh largest sex gang scandal to hit the UK after cases in Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford and Bristol. Judge Penny Moreland ruled XY’S identity could be revealed to the gang he gave evidence against, a move which
If you want good information you have to deal with bad people PETER KIRKHAM FORMER MET DETECTIVE ON CASE
infuriated him. He is now in hiding after refusing police protection. The man, who we cannot name for legal reasons, said in an exclusive Mirror interview: “When I started I was a low-class criminal. I now know everybody. They made me what I am. I am going to tell everybody. They created the perfect criminal. I now know when a police officer is watching me.
“I know what to do and how to implicate a gang. I have been programmed for six years. I’m surprised they haven’t had me shot. I was told I was above the law. I knew everybody in guns, drugs and the police approached me. I was told to do illegal things.”
He also claimed he had two videos of police officers asking him to do “‘dodgy stuff ”.
XY added: “Police said we want to f*** over Pakis and Muslims.” And he alleges they told him: “We pay whatever you need.” He was hired as a Covert Human Intelligence Source in 2010, just months after being released from prison. XY, who has 57 previous convictions, claims 337 criminals had been jailed using his information, but the judge rejected his evidence “in its entirety”.
The gang’s legal teams tried to get the case kicked out. Barrister Robin Patton said: “I tried to think of a less suitable candidate to be a police informant.” Fellow layer David Comb added: “A rapist was put into the field where he was with vulnerable young women when intoxicated then compensated financially for that technique, which is unacceptable.” But the move was blocked.
Police then tried to keep some of his claims secret when he turned against them. XY met some of the gang he would later give evidence against while he was in jail for the sadistic attack on the 15-year-old virgin.
He was described as “brutal, merciless and utterly without compassion”. During his time as a supergrass, XY was arrested for dishonesty, disorderly conduct, fraud, assault in a mosque, breach of bail, and enticing a female.
He threatened a doctor, social workers, a head teacher, and warned he would expose undercover police, including his “handler”.
Northumbria Police admit making payments in exchange for information but deny racism or corruption in Operation Sanctuary, believed to be the biggest probe of its kind into UK sex abuse.