Child-rapist earned £10,000 tipping off police about sex-ring
Force insists informant was crucial to smashing Newcastle gang jailed for harrowing attacks on girls
A POLICE force paid almost £10,000 to a convicted child-rapist to act as an undercover informant during a sex abuse investigation, it can be revealed.
Northumbria Police paid the man to infiltrate parties where young girls were being drugged and abused by an Asian grooming gang.
The informer, known only as XY, was recruited in 2014 even though he had been convicted in 2002 of drugging and raping a teenage schoolgirl and inviting another man to rape her. Detectives signed him up as a Covert Human Intelligence Source as they tried to smash a child-sex ring operating in the west of Newcastle.
Details of the case can only now be reported after the conviction of the final five members of the 18-strong gang – Abdul Sabe, Abdul Mohim Kawsar, Habibur Rahim, Badrul Hussain and Abdul Khayum.
The group, which included one woman, were convicted of carrying out harrowing abuse against at least 22 vulnerable girls, the youngest of whom was said to be 14.
Child protection campaigners last night expressed deep unease about putting a convicted paedophile on the police payroll. However, Chief Consta- ble Steve Ashman, of Northumbria Police, defended the decision, insisting that, as unpalatable and morally difficult as it was, it had led to vulnerable people being protected from harm and dangerous people being jailed.
The force paid XY regular instalments over 21 months, amounting to £9,680, to pass on information about the time and locations of parties where the young girls were being abused.
It can now also be revealed that in 2015, while still on the police payroll, XY was arrested on suspicion of another child sex offence. He was arrested after an under-age girl told police a man had approached her and
‘I would get to know where they pick up their drugs, where the parties were... I was chilling with the boys’
‘This simply beggars belief... what sort of message does this send to [his] original victim and her family?’
had made an indecent proposition. That case was later dropped, although the circumstances remain unclear.
XY’S role with the police only came to light at a court hearing last year when lawyers for some of the abusers argued that his involvement undermined the entire case. During the hearing, Robin Patton, a defence lawyer, described XY as: “A convicted child rapist who drugged a child and invited someone else to rape her after he had.”
It also emerged that XY had numerous convictions for dishonesty, was on the Sex Offender Register and was actually serving a suspended sentence when he was first deployed in 2014. Giving evidence from behind a screen and with the public gallery cleared, XY told the hearing that he had been a paid informant for six or seven years and had enjoyed working for the police.
He claimed he had been 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. At another point, he said: “I was chilling with the boys. I had to make it look like I was their friend.”
Although XY did not give evidence in any of the trials, Northumbria Police insisted his role was crucial. Mr Ashman said: “It is a decision we have had to wrestle with ourselves, but vulnerable people have been protected from harm who would not have been, had that not been the case.
“It is unpalatable to me as a man, a human being, a father, it is difficult for me to get my head around, but we have to step into a dangerous, shadowy and murky world … it is dangerous and difficult. If you expect me to do nothing then I am happy to disappoint you.”
Mr Ashman said the use of XY on the investigation had been the subject of an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which had found no misconduct.
But the revelation sparked deep concern among child welfare specialists.
Jon Brown, the NSPCC’S lead figure on tackling sexual abuse, said using a convicted paedophile could never be justified. “This case simply beggars belief,” he said.
“While paying criminals as undercover police informants might well be established in some areas of law enforcement, it can never be appropriate in cases where child protection is involved. To use someone who has a previous conviction for such a very serious offence against a child is absolutely unacceptable and unjustifiable.
“Apart from the danger posed to the other youngsters he was coming into contact with, what sort of a message would this send to his original victim and her family?
“It is also very worrying to learn that he was subsequently arrested on suspicion of another child sex offence, but the case was dropped.”