Barrister to
PROBE INTO EXPLOITATION SET TO BE PUBLISHED BY END OF YEAR
THOUSANDS of homes and businesses in Gosforth were left without electricity after a sudden power cut.
Northern Powergrid say 2,330 premises were left without power just before 2pm yesterday.
Engineers are currently in the area working to restore power to families in NE3.
The exact cause of the power cut is not currently known and has been described as an “unexpected problem with the cables or equipment”.
Engineers restored the power for all homes at 3.10pm yesterday.
The Twitter account for Northern Powergrid, which distributes electricity for the North East, Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire, posted: “We know about the #powercut in #NE3. We’re working hard to get the power back on, thanks for your patience, updates to follow.”
A smaller power cut was also reported in Jesmond, affecting 30 homes in the NE2 area.
Electricity was expected to return by 6pm.
If you experience a power cut, call 105 to report it or visit the Northern Powergrid website northernpowergrid.com for updates. Crime Reporter BARRISTER David Spicer has been appointed as the independent author of the Serious Case Review which will look into Tyneside’s sex exploitation scandal.
He will examine how victims of the Operation Shelter predators were safeguarded.
Newcastle City Council announced an SCR was under way as it was revealed that 17 men and one woman had been convicted of offences relating to grooming vulnerable young women and girls in the city’s West End.
The review is due to be published before the end of the year.
But today we take a look at child abuse expert Mr Spicer’s previous work and the experience and expertise he could bring to the probe.
Mr Spicer is a barrister and a trustee of the British Association for the Study and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (BASPCAN),
He has specialised in the law relating to child welfare for more than 30 years. During this time he has been a member of and a legal adviser to area child protection committees and safeguarding children boards.
Mr Spicer has significant experience working on inquiries into serious child abuse cases and acting as the independent overview report author in SCRs.
Over recent years he has undertaken more than 16 SCRs, mainly for Welsh local authorities.
Mr Spicer was the author of the BASPCAN submission to and a witness at the inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbie in 2001.
The eight-year-old girl died in London in 2000 after suffering horrifying torture at the hands of her aunt, Marie-Therese Kouao and her boyfriend, Carl Manning.
In 2013 Mr Spicer was appointed to author an SCR into a sex grooming ring in Oxford.
Seven men were jailed in 2013 for abusing six girls in the city, between 2004 and 2012, in a case that mirrored the crimes uncovered through Operation Shelter.
Jurors heard how the girls, aged between 11 and 15 at the time, were plied with alcohol and drugs before being forced to perform sex acts.
Some were burned.
However, Mr Spicer had to beaten and step down from this post for health reasons. In 2015 he compiled an SCR into the case of a baby killer Carl Mills who murdered three generations of the same family in Wales. Kim Buckley, 46, her daughter Kayleigh, 17, and six-month-old granddaughter Kimberley died in a house fire in Cwmbran, in September 2012. It was the first night prematurelyborn Kimberley had come home from hospital. The SCR found that Gwent Police’s probes into Mills’ background were “inadequate”, after Ms Buckley contacted police and social services because she was concerned about his relationship with her young daughter, who he met on Facebook. The review found Mills, from Bolton, had previously been involved in 45 incidents of violence committed against his mother Dawn Mills. And Mr Spicer said the force’s arrangements for getting information from other forces did not meet recommended standards. He also criticised police and social service workers’ decision to stop treating Kayleigh as a child when she had turned 16, saying: “Children are children until they reach 18 years.” Before joining BASPCAN, Mr Spicer was head of legal services at Nottinghamshire County Council, managing a team specialising in the care and protection of children and vulnerable adults. Operation Shelter formed part of Northumbria Police’s ongoing initiative to tackle the exploitation of vulnerable people, Operation Sanctuary. Victoria Climbie