A left-run city council in Britain has vowed that it will never again put a child in the care of a paedophile again after authorities were exposed for doing just that, leading to a young girl being sexually abused for years and ultimately impregnated.
Labour Party-controlled Leeds City Council has been forced to pledge that it will increase safeguards to prevent a repeat of the case of “Ruby”, a vulnerable local girl who was put into the care of a known paedophile by a family court on the advice of the local authority
The scandal was revealed in a report in January.
An outspoken critic of the leftist local government’s handling of the case, Conservative councillor Ryan Stephenson put forward a motion this week to guarantee that such carelessness does not occur again.
Stephenson, who said that he was forced to introduce the measure as a last resort, according to the Telegraph and Argus newspaper, told a silent chamber: “The abuse inflicted on Ruby was both predictable and preventable.”
“A number of us have been pursuing the lessons and responses from this case for over a year now. It didn’t need to come before full council today,” the Conservative councillor complained. “It’s only doing so because there’s been a co-ordinated attempt to block democratic scrutiny.”
The Labour Party-controlled administration’s executive member for children’s social care, Councillor Fiona Venner, attempted to point towards a recent inquiry by Ofsted, which gave Leeds an “outstanding” rating for child services for the second year in a row last May — despite the abuse of “Ruby” coming to light prior to the grading.
“In their recent visit Ofsted didn’t find any serious issues of concern with the safeguarding of children in Leeds,” Councillor Venner insisted, going on to claim that the council and its partners have an “open and reflective culture”.
However, Conservative councillor Dan Cohen said this week that the Ofsted rating should not be used as “a shield to deflect legitimate criticism”.
The local Conservative Party leader, Councillor Andrew Carter, went on to say that he had been “seriously misled” by the local Labour-run administration, accusing fellow councillors of being “more concerned with reputation than what had gone wrong in a very clearly tragic case”.
As a result of Stephenson forcing the debate, all parties within the local council voted in favour of adopting a white paper which said: “This council believes there should be no circumstances in which convicted child sex offenders are given custody of a child”.
According to the report from the Leeds Safeguarding Children Partnership that uncovered the case, a convicted child sex offender was granted legal custody over Ruby despite concerns about his suitability given his history as a paedophile, and nothing was done to stop it.
After being granted custody of the child, he was arrested over allegations of illicit photographs being on his computer, although he was ultimately released without charge for lack of evidence.
The abuse Ruby suffered at the hands of the convicted paedophile was only uncovered after she became pregnant and sought to have an abortion while she was still a minor. As she was still below the legal age of consent — 16 in England — Ruby was referred to social services who later revealed, through testing, that her paedophile guardian was in fact the father.
When interviewed after being saved from her abuser, Ruby said that she hadn’t realised that she was being victimised as it had “always” happened for as long as she could remember.
She also revealed that she was pressured into keeping quiet by her guardian, who threatened to kill himself if she spoke to authorities.
The Safeguarding Partnership, who commissioned the review, claimed that the local council has implemented “significant changes to systems and practice” following the report, and that they were “committed to continually reviewing how agencies in Leeds work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people in Leeds.”
Going forward, a report will lay out the measures that the council will put in place to prevent paedophiles from being granted custody of children before the local council, which hopes to use the recommendations to inspire national legislation.