Investigation into police officers accused of sex assaults in Britain’s notorious child rape gang hotspot Rotherham sees suspect re-arrested on further alleged offences, the policing watchdog reveals.
A retired police officer who was arrested at the end of last year over “complaints of child sexual abuse” while he was an officer in Rotherham in the 1990s as been arrested again, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) says. The unnamed man is said to be in his 60s and the new allegations relate to a new complainant who states she was attacked by the officer between 1997 and 2002.
That officer was previously arrested in October, then on suspicion of “misconduct in public office, attempted rape and three counts of indecent assault” allegedly against two girls between 1995 and 1999.
A second police officer, also unnamed, had been arrested in December. He is described as being in his 50s and was arrested on suspicion “suspicion of sexual assault and misconduct in public office and one count of indecent assault in connection to incidents that reportedly occurred around 1995-1996.”
The IOPC describes the complainants against the officers as “four survivors of child sexual exploitation and abuse in Rotherham” and that the alleged attacks took place while the Rotherham-based police officers “were both on and off duty”.
A spokesman for the IOPC said the allegations are: “very serious complaints and we will ensure they are thoroughly and robustly investigated”
The arrests follow the IOPC’s Operation Linden, one of its largest investigations ever, which investigated the actions of South Yorkshire Police around the mass rape of children in Rotherham. The IOPC was moved earlier this month to deny it had attempted to bury its findings, or that it had been told not to investigate senior officers, characterising these whistle blower claims as “completely inaccurate”.
An estimated 1,400 young girls were sexually abused by predominantly Pakistani gang members in the town, the Jay and Casey reports found.
