Former Rotherham detective 'failed to investigate abuse claims'

A former South Yorkshire police officer, who was in charge of a unit investigating child sex abuse in Rotherham, failed to investigate information that two teenage sisters were having sex with workers from a car wash, a misconduct hearing has heard.

Former Detective Sergeant David Walker also failed to investigate intelligence that a council youth worker was passing on the names of vulnerable girls to potential sex offenders, the hearing in South Yorkshire was told.

Mr Walker, who has now left South Yorkshire Police, denies all the misconduct allegations outlined against him which relate to the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal which engulfed police and social services in the South Yorkshire town.

Opening the case against the former detective, Daniel Hobbs described how Mr Walker was in charge of Rotherham Child Abuse Investigation Unit between 2008 and 2012.

Mr Hobbs told a panel of three how Mr Walker was informed by a uniformed neighbourhood officer about how he had come across a drunk 15-year-old girl whose mother told him about concerns about her daughter and her 13-year-old sister.

The concerns involved the girl forming relationships and having sex with adult males working at a car wash in Rotherham.

Mr Hobbs told the hearing that Mr Walker "did nothing with this information".

The barrister said the former officer did not record the intelligence, did not interview either girls or make further inquiries with the officer who first reported the concerns.

He said a social worker said that one of the sisters was the "highest risk case she had ever dealt with".

The hearing also heard allegations that Mr Walker failed to act on information passed to him in a series of emails from Jayne Senior who ran the Risky Business youth project in Rotherham.

Mr Walker is one of 47 officers and former officers who were investigated by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) in the wake of the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal.

Eight have been found to have a case to answer for misconduct and six for gross misconduct.