SOCIAL
workers repeatedly failed to protect three young children from 'severe and
prolonged' abuse on a remote Scottish island, a scathing report said
yesterday.
It said officials should,
have acted, sooner to rescue the girls. Some of the decisions they took
during the investigation of the case, amid claims of satanic rituals and
animal sacrifices which were later shown to be baseless, were seriously
flawed.
Though nine innocent people
were arrested and charged, it said, the prime suspect was never brought to
court. While the report will lead to a radical shake-up of the way such
cases are handled, it will provide little comfort for the families from
Lewis in the Western Isles whose lives were wrecked when they were wrongly
charged.
They have lived under the
shadow of the allegations since police carried out a series of raids in
2003. Some had their children taken into care.
All the charges against the
eight men and a woman were dropped before any of them ever went to court.
But they were ostracised by
many in the close-knit community. The ordeal was such that one of the
accused, Peter Nelson, attempted suicide. Disabled Mr. Nelson, 59, who is
looked after by his 34-year-old daughter Mary-Anne, 37, said: 'I spent time
in jail waiting for court appearances before being bailed, then my home was
targeted by vigilantes.
'We were shot at and
threatened with being chopped up, I had my house covered in paint and my
garden doused in die sol. 'We put in extra alarms, put up cameras and police
placed CCTV cameras around the area.’ Eventually I took an overdose because
I was driven to the point of suicide.'
His daughter found him lying
unconscious and he recovered after four days in hospital. The case has
disturbing similarities to child abuse allegations in Rochdale, Nottingham
and the Orkneys in which innocent families saw their lives ruined by false
claims.
But the £245,000 report by
the Social Work Inspection Agency left unanswered the question of why no-one
has ever been brought to justice over what it said was a decade of abuse
against the three girls, including sexual attacks.
There were said to have been
more than 200 incidents between 1991 and 2000, despite the fact that almost
100 health professionals had contact with the family.
The sickening neglect
involved one child having to eat cat food and another being made to sleep in
a cupboard. The children were burned with cigarettes and beaten and
constantly soiled themselves at school.
Incredibly, the main suspect
had been classified as 'high risk' at their previous home in England after
being convicted of indecently assaulting a nine-year-old girl.
The girls' mother was said to
have been a victim of abuse and an abuser herself. But when the family moved
to the Outer Hebrides in 1995, a social worker reclassified the father as
'low risk' because vital records were not passed on by social services in
his old area.
The 162-page report says
health professionals were too willing to believe the accounts of adults in
the family members rather than the children. They did not respond to the
girls' distress - all three had told people outside the family of their
suffering - and the decision to keep the family together was also flawed.
Decision-making within and
between agencies 'did not focus adequately on the needs of the children or
on exploring the legal options to secure their protection,' the report said.
Its 31 recommendations included ensuring that all family records are
transferred between authorities when a vulnerable child moves and making a
senior member of staff in every school responsible for passing on
information about child protection.
SWIA chief inspector Alexis
Jay said the girls, now 16, 14 and 12, were 'thriving' with foster parents.
d.wiiliams@dailymail.co.uk
