Child abuse scandal kept secret for three years
COUNCIL chiefs have hidden a report into a child abuse scandal for more than three years.
It’s understood two youngsters were left living with their convicted sex offender father who went on to prey on them, despite officials having involvement with the family.
It is believed initial allegations were made to the authority but ‘no child protection processes were triggered’.
But Fife Council refused to publish a Significant Case Review into the crimes, despite Freedom of Information (FoI) requests as far back as 2015.
Now the local authority has finally handed over a censored version of the report stripped of so much detail that even the page numbers and the gender of the offender have been blacked out.
Last night, former Fife councillor Gavin Yates, convenor of the county’s Police Board between 2012 and 2013, said: ‘I can see no reason why this report should be heavily redacted.
‘For people to have confidence in the police and the council, it is vital that the authorities learn from their mistakes and the public can inspect that process. The Press plays a key role in allowing that scrutiny to take place.
‘Secretive behaviour gives the impression – rightly or wrongly – that there is a cover-up afoot.
‘By keeping their mistakes hidden, these officials are not only eroding public trust, they are raising the risk that their errors will be repeated.’
The only previous hint of the scandal was one line buried away in the 2014 annual report of the now-defunct Fife and Forth Valley Criminal Justice Authority (FFVCJA). It said: ‘During 2013/14 FFVCJA’s chief officer was asked to carry out a significant case review into a registered sex offender from the Fife area who had been suspected of abusing his children.’
Requests dating from 2015 under FoI to see the Significant Case Review (SCR) were refused because of ongoing criminal proceedings. However, it’s believed the case passed through the courts and the man is now in jail.
Earlier this year, the council claimed that it would take ‘a number of months’ to consider whether to release the SCR, despite FoI laws stating that public authorities should provide information within 28 days.
When a further FoI request was submitted, Fife released an executive summary of the report that was rigorously redacted – even though the document itself is headed Version For Publication.
Swathes of it – particularly where it gives details of how police and social workers dealt with the offender, who is identified only as AB – are blacked out. Despite the censoring, it’s clear allegations about him were made but the authorities chose not to act.
Among the few things the report does reveal is that ‘AB’s risk level was increased’ and he was being supervised in the community following a previous sex conviction.
He was being dealt with under Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA), which bring together police, social work, NHS and Scottish Prison Service officials to ensure information about offenders is properly shared. But the document – prepared by the Fife Offender Management Group and Fife Child Protection Committee (FCPC) – refers to ‘confusion’, ‘chaos’ and ‘warnings [that] were not followed up’.
Even some of the dozen recommendations – which include speeding up but taking more care in dealing with allegations of child abuse – have been partially blanked out. It is unclear how old the children were, the extent of the abuse, when it happened and whether anyone was held to account for the authorities’ failings.
Scottish Tory justice spokesman Liam Kerr said: ‘This seems like yet another case of public bodies in Scotland looking to hide information in order to avoid a bad news story. The Scottish public deserves better.’
Labour MSP Rhoda Grant said: ‘This is clearly not in the public interest.’
Alan Small, the Fife official responsible for withholding the document, was a policeman who became a Scottish Government adviser on information sharing. He was one of the architects of the SNP’s Getting It Right For Every Child strategy, which includes the Named Person policy.
Mr Small is chairman of the FCPC and Fife MAPPA Strategic Oversight Group, which is responsible for ensuring that sex offenders are managed properly. He said: ‘What is published is based on legal advice, balancing out issues of personal data protection and what learning can be drawn from these types of significant events. It is important that we protect individuals involved from unnecessary exposure.’
‘Scottish public deserves better’