County council should be held to account
THANK you to the Post and to Richie Barlow (“Sex abuse survivor was tortured by mum because he was gay”, Post, May 10), especially for his bravery, for sharing the iniquities of the treatment meted out to Richie by Nottinghamshire County Council through its children’s and legal services departments.
I don’t know how long Mr. Pettigrew, children’s services director, has been in office but it’s clear from the Post article that his “proforma” apology was only issued after Mr Barlow had dragged the county council, through legal proceedings, to a point where it realised its bureaucratic and legal obfuscation had failed. I wonder how many victims of county council neglect will be reassured by Mr Pettigrew’s claim that it has “developed its services for victims of abuse”?
Has it really? When? Clearly it hadn’t three years ago!
It beggars belief that the county council’s in-house and external legal advisers were indulging in “victim blaming” as recently as three years ago. That such medieval mentality was still pervading the county council policies and procedures in the 21st century beggars belief! It has the appearance of institutional blindness to the needs of children and young people.
Were children’s services directors oblivious to the cases in the north west of England a decade or so ago involving the grooming and abuse of teenage girls perpetuated on an industrial scale? Not until care and support workers succeeded in prodding the prosecutors (and reluctant local authorities) into identifying that underage children and young people were not guilty of seeking out “members of the public with whom (they) sought contact” but actually victims of those who imprisoned and systematically raped and trafficked them were successful criminal convictions achieved.
Why did children’s services directors collaborate in such irrationality up until three years ago at least?
How was it that Weightmans (NCC’S solicitors) aided and abetted by the council’s in-house legal advisers could deny a duty of care to children in county council care by shielding behind the technicality of the absence of a care order because Richie had been placed into care by his abusive mother?
Why, with file evidence in its possession of 26 incidences of abuse involving Richie, did the county council embark upon such a doomed legal defence? This effectively subjected Richie to institutional bullying when he believed that such behaviour was long behind him! The lawyers statement that the council had no duty of care towards Richie is breathtaking in its stupidity and seems to saying that in the absence of a care order children and young people cannot expect protection from the very body charged with keeping them safe!
The tactics utilised by the county council’s lawyers (in-house and external) were, at the very least, arrogant and bullying.
How much public money has been wasted on devious legal manoeuvres to deflect Richie from pursuing his legitimate claim? Can we expect an inquiry into the failure of children’s services to protect those in its care irrespective of the tyranny of Thatcher’s notorious Section 28? The answer is probably no if the warped legal advice on offer from its legal advisers is anything to go by!
Richard Chamberlain
Carlton