Police criticized for poor handling of child abuse investigation

Some analysts blame the British police for deliberately mismanaging child sexual abuse cases after a recent report found that about 38% of their investigations were inadequate.

“In many cases, children are rarely believed when they report to the police. It is clear from the reportthat in some cases there may have been collusion between various organs of state that is police, medical professionals and indeed in many cases people involved in social services”, Joseph Ochieno, a London-based writer and commentator told Press TV.

The Inspectorate of Constabulary report took a sample of 600 inquiries and found that over third children were not looked at to a good enough standard.

Dru Sharpling who headed the inspections said, "We found limited evidence that the police listened to children, and poor attitudes towards vulnerable children persisted in some teams, we also found that investigations were often inadequate, with insufficient action taken to disrupt and apprehend some perpetrators." The figures were much worse when it came to investigating online abuse where it found that in a national sample of 124 cases more than half were not investigated properly.

Reacting to the report by the British Police Watchdog, Ochieno said although the finding is extremely worrying but not new to this country. He said that such cases usually come up despite the fact that “British people always present themselves as neat guys”.

“You can look at the parliamentary inquiries where members of parliament were accused of abusing children and there is cases where celebrities, somebody working for charities, found abusing children,” Ochieno concluded.

More and more victims of child sexual abuse are coming forward in the United Kingdom every day. The police’s national spokesman on child protection, Chief Constable Simon Bailey, said “The scale of child sexual abuse is staggering. By the end of 2015, we anticipate that police will be investigating over 70,000 cases of child sexual abuse, an increase of 88 per cent from 2012. We have got to fundamentally change our approach to policing so that our absolute focus is on working proactively with other agencies to protect the public from harm committed on or offline.”

The report which has painted the police in a negative light has also drawn criticism from campaigner and survivors of child sexual abuse. Karen Froggatt from Victim Support, said: "Children are vulnerable and deserve to be given the utmost protection from sexual predators, this report shows that they are being let down by agencies that are supposed to protect them."

The report has criticized the police force for its target driven policing which many feel means the protection of children are not put first and that there needs to be an overhaul in the way police deal with cases of child sexual abuse.

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