“We’ve got to go out proactively, without being alarmist and without creating a witch hunt. We’ve got to start turning over the stones to see what we find,” says chief superintendent Ivan Wood, head of Durham constabulary’s safeguarding command.
Following damning reports by Alexis Jay and Louise Casey into the Rotherham scandal, in March the coalition government published a letter to the heads of frontline agencies across the country reminding them of their duty to share information to help protect children. And with tackling child sexual explotation an ever-increasing issue in the UK, Durham has turned to an initiative first developed in the US by the Texas Rangers to help vulnerable children.
The Intervene to Protect a Child (IPC) programme has led to more than 50 convictions for child sex offences and the recovery of 160 at-risk children in the US since 2009.
The programme has been developed in part by Joe Sullivan, an internationally renowned expert on child sex abuse, who has worked on the Madeleine McCann disappearance and the murder of April Jones. It is a single four-hour session that aims to “sensitise frontline professionals to potential child exploitation by applying the principles of forensic behavioural analysis” in their day-to-day duties and routine visits to identify possible child abusers. This can include picking up on changes in behaviour, as well as certain tattoos, photographs or literature that could imply a sexual interest in children.
“If you stop a vehicle and there’s foil or a syringe, we consider the possibility they are using drugs,” explains one detective constable from the public protection unit at Durham HQ. “If people turn up at work and they’ve got bruises, we ask them to explain, and if they don’t explain them very well, we start to consider the possibility they are a victim of domestic violence. It’s the same concept.
“It’s about educating people about some of the things they could be aware of, that might indicate that person is a victim of sexual abuse or a perpetrator.”
Durham constabulary has so far trained 400 officers in the IPC programme, and the scheme has already proved to be a success. Just two weeks after receiving the training, police community support officer Adam Grundy took action to prevent a previously convicted child sex offender from having access to a girl aged under five. It followed a routine visit to the elderly man’s home, where Grundy noticed he was “evasive and standoffish”, repeatedly questioning why the officer was there. He was also dressed in a formal shirt ready to go out, which was unusual for him.
“I happened to glance at the kitchen bench and there was a condom and a Viagra tablet,” says Grundy. “I didn’t let on I’d seen that but I just quizzed where he was going because something wasn’t right. Relating back to the training, one of the signs was if someone’s evasive it sparks off questions in your mind about why that person is being that way. So I felt as though I had to dig a bit deeper.”
It was established that the man had begun a relationship with a woman with a young daughter, so police worked with social services to ensure the child was safe.
Grundy is candid about the influence of the new scheme on his actions. “If I hadn’t had that training, I don’t think I would have had the confidence to pursue my hunch,” he says. “Having the IPC training gave me that extra boost to think ‘something’s not right here’.”
The IPC training is being delivered to partner agencies, from education, welfare and the fire service to individual heads and teachers. Carole Payne, head of children’s services at Durham county council, says: “We are keen to develop expertise and awareness across the children’s services workforce and this training will develop shared understanding and knowledge in a critically important area, helping to improve practice and partnership working between agencies.”
Ivan Wood says partnership arrangements in the county are already good, but the IPC programme will help improve the skills of all frontline professionals.
“I would hate to think, and what we want to try and avoid, is that we miss opportunities to identify [child sexual exploitation], that we miss opportunities to intervene where children are vulnerable,” he says.
Evidence suggests police forces are looking at the programme as a way to strengthen local approaches to tackling child sexual exploitation, with Wood revealing that a number of other forces in England and Wales have been in touch about adopting the scheme.
Wood points out that although Durham has not had the issues with child sexual exploitation that have plagued forces such as South Yorkshire, it cannot be complacent: “These issues are happening within communities and we’ve got to be better at identifying them.”
