Rotherham: Police Investigator Did Not Act on Child Abuse Intel – Claim

A former senior police investigator in Rotherham has been accused of not acting on evidence that children were sexually exploited in the region.

Detective Sergeant David Walker — who was in charge of Rotherham’s child abuse investigation unit between 2008 and 2012 — has been accused of not acting on claims that children were being sexually exploited.

Walker is one of six officers who have been accused of gross misconduct after an investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct, an accusation the ex-police officer has denied.

According to a report by the BBC, a hearing on the matter has been told that Walker failed to record and investigate allegations of child abuse taking place in Rotherham.

In one example outlined to the hearing, Walker allegedly received an email outlining how the mother of 15 and 13-year-old girls alleged that the pair were forming relationships with adult men working at a car wash.

Also noted within the email was the claim that the 15-year-old was reported to have had sex with “several” of the men involved.

Despite this, however, Walker is reported to have had done “nothing with this information”, instead replying to the email sent by a social worker saying: “This appears to be a matter for social services. Please liaise and finalise.”

Walker was also accused of failing to act on information that a Rotherham council youth worker was passing on the details of vulnerable young girls to potential abusers, according to a report by The Times on the hearing.

“Walker did nothing in respect of this information and simply left any safeguarding actions to social services,” the misconduct hearing was told.

Other reported incidents where Walker is alleged to have not taken appropriate action include an example where a teenage girl was supposedly raped in the presence of an accomplice, another where a man is to alleged to have threatened a number of girls with a firearm, an alleged incident where a man — who had been previously arrested for sexual offences — was encouraging girls as young as ten to visit him, and one report which alleged that a 30-year old sex offender was the father of a girl’s unborn child.

According to The Times article on the hearing, it is expected that Walker will argue that non-familial child abuse was beyond the remit of his unit, and that he was under-resourced at the time, while also not being properly equipped with the training necessary to deal with child sexual exploitation.

The hearing is expected to resume on March 21.