Charges were brought after investigation into Essex Police's Child Abuse Team
DC Sharon Patterson and former DC Lee Pollard are now on trial for misconduct
Prosecutors say they destroyed and forged documents to bring probes to an end
Two police officers sabotaged a string of child sex abuse investigations out of a combination of 'cynical disdain' for accusers and laziness, a court has heard.
Detective constables Sharon Patterson, 49, and Lee Pollard, 47, [forged]( (http://archive.fo/ruOjq) documents and concealed evidence over a three-year period, the Old Bailey heard today.
The Essex Police officers, who were in a relationship, discussed a plot over email, with Pollard thanking Patterson as his 'partner in deceptive crime', jurors heard.
Initially, five officers had been found by the Independent Police Complaints Commission to mishandle sexual abuse investigations. Essex Police had to apologize to the public in 2015.
The serious failings in 28 investigations affected nearly 60 alleged victims of child abuse.
The force at the time announced drastic measures to overhaul its child abuse investigation team in north Essex.
Most of the 30 investigations relate to the work of the child abuse investigation team that covers north Essex. The force said new officers had been put in charge of all 30 investigations and a senior retired detective had been brought in to review the ongoing child abuse investigations.
“We have contacted the families of those involved in these investigations to let them know what is happening and apologise for the undoubted distress this has caused them,” the force said.
The watchdog said the 30 child abuse investigations included cases where it appears police failed to consider the safeguarding of children, delayed arresting suspects or did not refer cases to the Crown Prosecution Service.
In other words: They did everything to make sure the investigations would fail. /smh in disbelief
The Essex force was criticised last year after it emerged that officers failed to investigate teacher Martin Goldberg for 10 months after receiving allegations about him.
Goldberg, 46, secretly recorded thousands of images of naked boys at Thorpe Hall school in Southend before killing himself a day after police visited him on 9 September.
British police had already been informed in 2012 about the allegations by the Canadian police, but only forwarded the info to Essex police 14 months later.
=> The Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating why UK authorities failed to act on allegations relating to 2,300 suspected British paedophiles including Goldberg.
Goldberg was one of more than 2,300 suspected paedophiles on a list passed to the UK’s Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre (Ceop) by Toronto police in July 2012.
Ceop, which became part of the National Crime Agency when it was founded in October 2013, failed to disseminate the intelligence to local forces until November 2013 – 16 months after receiving it. And then Essex police failed to investigate the case for another nine months.
Alexandra Healy QC, prosecuting, said: 'The allegations against them involve the forging of documents, concealment of evidence and the misrepresentation of the state of investigations, and the evidence involved in investigations, to supervising officers.
The effect was that allegations involving child sex offences were not properly investigated.
'The motivation appears to have been a combination of laziness, self-preservation and sometimes a cynical disdain for complainants in these child abuse allegations.'
The officers, who live together in Colchester, Essex, each deny three counts of misconduct in a public office between 2011 and 2014.
In one investigation, it is alleged Patterson forged an accuser's signature and falsely claimed to prosecutors that two teachers who may have been witnesses were dead.
Pollard allegedly removed and destroyed four photographs that were 'important exhibits' to an investigation and also misrepresented evidence to his supervisor so no further action was taken in a separate probe.
But the defendants' conduct went 'beyond incompetence' and was not because of a 'lack of resources' or 'insufficient investigative manpower', the prosecutor said.
The trial continues.
Another police officer from the same child abuse unit was sacked last year.
DC Peter Wood was dismissed after not taking steps to trace a suspect, failing to secure evidence for forensic examinations and lying to bosses.
He also made a false entry into the force system saying he had carried out checks which he had not done.
'Laziness'? 'Corruption' would be probably the better word. And why do you think had they 'disdain' for the victims?!
More info here.
view the rest of the comments →
[–] Vindicator 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
It does appear this may be true