A 12-year-old who raped and abused a neglected nine-year-old schoolboy wasn’t prosecuted due to a bungled investigation by his teachers, a report has shown.
The abuse happened while the unnamed boys were both students at Appletree School in Cumbria, a special school for children who have been abused or neglected.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) heard how the victim was repeatedly sexually abused, ‘maybe 100 times’, by the 12-year-old and others while at the school.
But when staff came to investigate, bungled efforts to interview the children involved meant they ‘contaminated evidence’ and stopped the possibility of a prosecution.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse heard how a nine-year-old victim was sexually abused ‘maybe 100 times’, by a 12-year-old and others at the Appletree School in Cumbria in 2006
The damning findings are part of a report into abuse at residential schools published today.
The report refers to one incident involving the victim at Appletree after he had absconded with two older unnamed children, aged 12 and 11, in November 2006.
During a later police interview, he said the 12-year-old had ‘pulled down his pants’ before raping him, a report published by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse said.
The boy had told his attacker to ‘stop and get off’, but he did not until he was left hurt and then managed to ‘run away’, the report said.
The abuse came to light a few weeks later after a member of staff overheard friends of the nine-year-old making accusations towards his alleged attacker about his behaviour.
The alleged victim was later interviewed by Cumbria Constabulary, but no action was taken due to factors including the boys’ conflicting accounts and their ‘damaged backgrounds’, the report said.
In 2007, the alleged victim told his foster parent he had been repeatedly sexually abused, ‘maybe a 100 times’, by the 12-year-old and other pupils while he had been at the school.
But he said he didn’t feel he could tell school teachers about his ordeal because ‘all the staff knew each other’, and he didn’t think he would be taken seriously.
He said: ‘Essentially, from the day you’re brought in there, you’re essentially… you are the problem, you are the problem child. So anything that comes out your mouth is rubbish.’
Despite receiving admissions from the 12-year-old boy, the report said the Crown Prosecution service had decided to take ‘no further action’.
This was because there were ‘discrepancies in the accounts’ and due to ‘the young ages and damaged backgrounds of the children involved’.
But also the report said it was because of school staff ‘interviewing the children and contaminating the evidence.’
The Crown Prosecution Service stated that because of the way the school had conducted its investigation, a court would have ‘thrown it out anyway, if it had gone that far’.
The 12-year-old alleged attacker was said to have a ‘chaotic and abusive’ early life.
The report stated his father had a previous conviction for a sexual offence against a young child and there had been concerns that he had also been abused in a children’s home.
Prior to his placement at Appletree School, he had been excluded from a mainstream school for sexually abusing a five-year-old boy in its toilets.
During this time, a report cited he was said to be developing ‘a pattern of sexually abusive behaviours towards others’.
He had absconded from Appletree School on a regular basis between June and November 2005, and September and November 2006, with other children.
But the report said none of the children told staff during that period that harmful sexual behaviour was happening when the children were off-site.
After the 12-year-old boy was interviewed under caution later in November 2006, he never returned to Appletree School.
The report into abuse at residential schools is the nineteenth produced by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse.
An Ofsted inspection report from 2006 said that Appletree was ‘an effective school which meets successfully the academic, personal and social needs of its pupils’, adding that there was a ‘consistent management of pupils’ behaviour, for which there are high expectations’.
Appletree School has been contacted for comment.
