Police forces swamped by abuse claims
POLICE are being inundated by ‘poor-quality’ allegations sent by the troubled public inquiry into child abuse, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Chief constables are unhappy that they are having to investigate historic sex crime reports made to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse ( IICSA) that are anonymous and lacking in detail.
They have also complained that the investigation has demanded an ‘unrealistic’ amount of information in a short time from every force, and have told inquiry staff to slash the number of requests.
It is the latest evidence of the burden being imposed by the £100 million, decade-long inquiry that is looking into everything from an alleged Westminster paedophile ring to exploitation of teenagers on the internet and the fate of British children shipped to Australia.
Town halls, police forces, churches and Government departments are having to hire top lawyers to attend the lengthy hearings, and all public bodies are under strict orders to trawl through their archives for files that might be relevant.
Police chiefs set up a body, known as Operation Hydrant, to co-ordinate the soaring number of claims of child abuse in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.
An update from late last year, obtained by this newspaper, reveals there were 4,519 suspects in live investigations recorded by Hydrant – a 58 per cent rise on the previous year, while 2,678 cases have been closed. The number of alleged victims is 5,165 – an 88 per cent increase on the year before. Seven per cent of suspects are dead.
As many as 2,300 referrals to Hydrant in the past year came via IICSA.
The Hydrant report noted: ‘ An uni nt e nt i o nal c o nsequence is the quality of many referrals has reduced. Many are anonymised as well as being of poor quality.’
In June last year, IICSA asked each police force about its handling of internet sex abuse but Hydrant said: ‘The deadline for responses, together with the amount of information requested, was unrealistic.’
IICSA said: ‘The inquiry works to ensure the information it provides to the police is appropriate.’