Police chief said he'd employ the convicted child rapist again if it protected more children from abuse
Children’s charities have responded with outrage at the revelation a police force paid a child rapist £10,000 to inform on a paedophile ring.
Steve Ashman, the chief constable of Northumbria police, said that the move was “morally right” after information provided by the informant led to the conviction of an Asian grooming gang in Newcastle.
However the NSPCC hit back saying the use of the child rapist was damaging to child protection policies which have taken years to develop.
Jon Brown of the NSPCC said: “We are appalled to learn that police paid a child rapist and planted him in the midst of vulnerable young girls. You just couldn’t make it up.
“It beggars belief that it would ever have been considered, let alone approved, and questions must be asked about the force’s approach to child sexual exploitation operations.
“However good the force’s intentions, their misguided actions run entirely counter to all current child protection procedures and what we know about sex offenders and could have compromised this investigation.”
Poll: were police morally right to pay a paedophile to inform?
The informant attended parties where young girls were drugged and sexually abused.
His role emerged during a series of trials at which 17 men and one woman were convicted of almost 100 sex and drugs offences yesterday (10 August).
When asked whether he would deploy XY— an Asian man in his 30s who had previously drugged and raped a child — again, Ashman told a press conference: “Yes I would.
“In the circumstances that we’ve been presented with, yes I would… As I said before, I get that this is a real difficult moral challenge, but we have to look at what it is we’re trying to achieve here and whether or not it’s worked. It has worked,” he said.
The police force denied that the rapist was paid to attend parties and said his role was to gather intelligence on when and where they were taking place.
However, officers did not deny the possibility that he was in rooms with girls during his deployment.
Sammy Woodhouse, who was 14 when she was abused by a grooming gang in Rotherham and now advises police on how to tackle grooming, said: “I think it’s outrageous. If I were in his (the rapist’s) victim’s situation I’d be disgusted by it.”
