Police Failure

So much for the sex offenders registry and police monitoring.

A paedophile who was being monitored by police and was already on the sex offenders register, went on to abuse a four-year-old girl.

He had been convicted of sexual assault and gross indecency with underage girls- but instead of locking him up where he posed no further threat to the most vulnerable segment of society, the authorities let him walk free- and their system failed dramatically.

The police watchdog upheld a complaint, adding that the force failed to take appropriate action, 'endangering the welfare of the children living there'.

They also found 'organisational failings within the force's management of sexual offenders'.

But despite the fact that a four year old girl was assaulted because of those failings, no officers will be held accountable and punished.

'While the IPCC found that two junior officers had failed in their specific duty, we concluded those failings were a symptom of more serious organisational failures which led to the overall poor management of this registered sex offender.'

In other words, they failed to perform their duty- but because this particular police force's whole system was lacking, nothing is being done. As the police complaints body states,

'This little girl has suffered a traumatic experience and I hope that the family take some comfort that lessons have been learned from this to try and stop something similar going wrong in the future.'

Basically, we messed up and allowed your four year old to be abused by an already convicted paedophile but we hope it won't happen again. Oh, and no one will face any kind of sanctions for the fact that our whole system was a failure. Not the specific officers in question or their superiors.

And as for the two police officers who the commission found to have failed, what of them?

'Gwent Police has fully accepted the IPCC investigation findings and conclusions. I have also agreed with the force that while two police constables would receive management advice, no other individual officer should face misconduct action because of the organisational failings.'

Management advice is the "punishment" for two police officers failing in their duty to adequately monitor a convicted child abuser who went on to assault a four year old.

And I see that no senior officers will be held accountable for the so-called "organisational failings" of Gwent police. Apparently, no one is responsible for that.

And one other thing- this man was originally convicted in 1998 and then again, for this crime, in 2007. So what did the judge have to say about it all-

'There is a high risk you will continue to seek out and sexually assault young female children.

'In my judgement, there is a clear risk you will physically injure those children and given your selection in this case of a very young child, there is a substantial risk of causing serious physical risk to young children.'

And the judge's sentence?

An indeterminate sentence with a minimum tariff of three years.

Note, not a minimum tariff of thirty years despite the fact that he was not only guilty of already abusing young children but the judge himself said he posed "a high risk", "a clear risk" and that there was a "substantial risk" to young children from him.

It's not only the police who are to blame- it's the courts that allowed this man out of prison after his first conviction and who have again issued a too lenient sentence- after three years are up he will again be eligible for parole.