Birmingham Child Abuse Lawyer Says Social Services Need To Act Quicker To Prevent and Stop Sexual Abuse

By Helen MacGregor

Expert child abuse lawyers at Irwin Mitchell say social services departments must act ‘quicker and more diligently’ to try and protect vulnerable youngsters after seven men were found guilty of a catalogue of serious sexual offences this week.

Oxford Crown Court heard how a paedophile ring in the city groomed and abused six vulnerable young girls over an eight-year period, acting ‘under the noses’ of the authorities who showed ‘almost wilful blindness’.

The court heard that all six victims came into contact with Oxfordshire County Council’s Children’s Services and one social worker from the department said it was ‘common consensus’ they were being groomed.

Mohammed Karrar, 38, and his brother Bassam Karrar, 34, and another set of brothers, Akhtar Dogar, 32, and Anjum Dogar, 31, were convicted alongside Kamar Jamil, 27, Assad Hussain, 32, and Zeeshan Ahmed, 28. Five of the seven men were jailed for life.

The court heard the men would hang around children’s homes and the girls, who Oxford County Council was responsible for, would go missing for days. The six victims were plied with alcohol, drugs, beaten, raped and trafficked.

The Council have since said that it had reported the children’s home in question to Ofsted and that the manager was later sacked and the home closed down.

During the Court hearing the mother of one of the six girls said that she and her husband were “scrutinised, judged and assessed” by professionals during the period their daughter was being abused. She continued by saying that they were “condescended to” and almost made to feel they were “inadequate, overreacting or wrong”.

One of the girls blames social services for what happened. She said “they were meant to be protecting us” and that “it took years for them to put me in a secure unit, by which point it was already too late”.

Joana Simons, Chief Executive of Oxfordshire County Council, responsible for the girls, said that social workers were doing the best they could at the time, by trying to protect the girls and repeatedly reporting incidents to the police. She did say, however, that “we’re incredibly sorry that we weren’t able to stop this any sooner”.

In Court one of the girls was described as having suffered “irrecoverable damage”.

Tom Fletcher, an expert child abuse and social care lawyer at Irwin Mitchell’s Birmingham office, said “Persistent sexual abuse of this nature will inevitably have a chronic impact on the life of vulnerable people.

“Sexual abuse causes permanent damage and turns the lives of victims and their families upside down.

“What is so shocking about the case is not just the severity of the abuse but the fact that social workers knew but yet it was allowed to continue for so long.

“Unfortunately we continue to see the tragic consequences of abuse and urge that social services departments act quicker and more diligently in these circumstances to prevent and stop sexual abuse.”

Read more about Irwin Mitchell's expertise relating to child abuse claims