‘Predatory carers abused hundreds of children’ – report

SEXUAL abuse of children in council care in Nottinghamshire was widespread for decades and repeated failures to learn from mistakes exposed more young people to harm, a report has concluded.

Some 350 people alleged they were abused while in residential or foster care in the county from the 1960s onwards, but the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) said the true scale is likely to be higher.

The panel, presenting its report yesterday following 15 days of evidence at public hearings in October, said it was the largest number of specific allegations of sexual abuse in a single investigation that the inquiry has considered to date.

Widespread abuse including repeated rapes, sexual assaults and voyeurism took place during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s in

many of Nottinghamshire County Council’s and Nottingham City Council’s homes as well as in foster care, the report concluded.

As well as this, “harmful sexual behaviour” also occurred between children in both settings, it said.

In a damning assessment of the councils’ failures, the report said: “For more than five decades, the councils failed in their statutory duty to protect children in their care from sexual abuse. They needed to be nurtured, cared for and protected by adults they could trust. Instead, the councils exposed them to the risk, and reality, of sexual abuse perpetrated primarily by predatory residential staff and foster carers.”

Between the late 1970s and 2019, the report said 16 residential staff were convicted of sexual abuse of children in residential care. Ten foster carers were convicted of sexual abuse of their foster children.

The panel said it was also aware of 12 convictions relating to the harmful sexual behaviour of children against other children in care.

The report recommends both councils should “assess the potential risks posed by current and former foster carers directly provided by the council in relation to the sexual abuse of children”.

Criticism was also levelled at Nottinghamshire Police, which the inquiry panel said had not properly resourced its initial investigation into allegations of non-recent abuse of children in care, nor treated the allegations with “sufficient seriousness”.