Force paid child
A CONVICTED child rapist was paid almost £10,000 by Northumbria Police to inform about parties where they suspected girls were being drugged and sexually abused.
The sex offender was recruited as a police informer despite the fact he had drugged an underage girl and invited another man to rape her.
Years later the man – who can only be identified as XY – was tasked to help police in Operation Sanctuary, an investigation into sexual exploitation in the West End of Newcastle.
The shocking information was revealed during pre-trial hearings at Newcastle Crown Court which attempted, but failed, to halt prosecutions against a number of men accused of a range of serious offences including drug dealing and sexually abusing girls.
During extraordinary proceedings which can only now be reported, more than 20 prosecution and defence barristers argued about whether the cases of more than 10 men should be thrown out. In a judgement Judge Penny Moreland stated she felt everything XY said was “wholly lacking in credibility”.
She said: “Having heard him give evidence, I regard him as wholly unworthy of belief in respect of any matter at all.”
Defending barristers argued that the public’s confidence in the justice system would be undermined if the trials went ahead, given that XY had acted as an informant, also known as a covert human intelligence source, or ‘CHIS.’
Robin Patton, representing one of the defendants, said XY, who was on the sex offender register, was paid £9,680 over 21 months by Northumbria Police for informing.
Mr Patton said XY was subject to a suspended sentence when he was deployed by police in 2014.
He said police claimed they carried out a risk assessment, but that the “very next day” after he was recruited, XY was in court for a dishonesty offence.
After he was recruited, XY was arrested on suspicion of a sexual offence against an underage girl, who in 2015 claimed a man approached her and made an indecent proposition.
The informant was later told he would face no action.
Mr Patton said: “I have tried to think of convictions that make him less suitable to act as a CHIS in an operation of this sort...I have not been able to.”
David Hislop QC, representing another defendant, said XY had 13 previous convictions, including 26 offences of dishonesty.
During the legal submissions, XY gave evidence to the court and made a series of lurid claims against the police, including of racism. But Judge Penny Moreland rejected his claims, describing his evidence as “inherently unreliable” and “clearly dishonest”.
XY claimed he was recruited because he acted as an informal taxi driver for some of the defendants.
“I would get to know where they pick up their drugs, where the parties were,” he said.
Giving evidence from behind a screen, and with the public gallery cleared, XY said he had been a paid