Statistically speaking, Herefordshire Council has a 3% chance of having made a safe decision.

Letter to Deborah McMillan from the Families Alliance for Change (Herefordshire)

Dear Commissioner

Ongoing risk of sexual harm to children

You have been made aware of concerns held by members of the public, professionals, priests and politicians about a foster care placement in Herefordshire. The placement in question is with a carer previously charged with 15 counts of child sexual abuse including the rape of a child. Even though the carer was found not guilty at trial, the police raised an urgent MASH referral in relation to this placement on the day they found out about it.

The carer was found not guilty in a criminal court, but surely you understand that the burden of proof in a criminal court is not the burden of proof you apply to a safeguarding decision. You may also know that the Government recognises that the conviction rate in rape trials is unacceptably low, and they have undertaken to overhaul the criminal justice system for rape survivors. Very few women who report a rape even get to the stage where charges are brought. (See the attached commentary from Rape Crisis England and Wales.) In this case, the CPS pressed 15 separate charges relating to 14 separate indecent assaults and 1 rape.

Council officers simply cannot know for certain if the alleged sexual abuse took place: a not guilty verdict tells us only that there was not enough evidence for a conviction. This was a trial about historic abuse, with no medical evidence available, so a not guilty verdict is unsurprising. The CPS do not bring charges unless the evidence before them is sufficient for there to be a reasonable prospect of a conviction. The police were persuaded, and so were the CPS that there was significant evidence that the alleged abuse had taken place.

It is simply not safe from a safeguarding perspective to use a not guilty verdict as a proxy for “safe”. A not guilty verdict does not tell us that the alleged abuse did not happen.

West Mercia police are the only statutory safeguarding partner within the Safeguarding Partnership to have access to the full facts in the criminal prosecution, and they have raised two safeguarding referrals since the not guilty verdict: one to the MASH team and one to their own Protecting Vulnerable Persons Unit.

Despite it being over a month since you were made aware of the risk, the children have remained in this placement. The carer has unsupervised access to the children and is allowed to carry out their personal care. The service dismisses the risk to the children simply on the grounds that there is currently no sign of sexual abuse.

Do we need to point out that until abuse starts, there is no sign of abuse? Once the abuse has started, the harm is done, and it can never be undone. Abuse can continue for years without being spotted by any professional, because young children are carefully groomed by abusers into silence. The absence of signs of abuse is no guarantee that there is no abuse.

Research on rate of false rape allegations

Research commissioned by the Home Office on rape allegations (Research Study 293) suggests that only 3% of rape allegations are false. Statistically speaking, Herefordshire Council has a 3% chance of having made a safe decision.

Widespread concern

Outside of the Council offices, the response to the simple facts of this case is widespread incredulity that any local authority would risk this foster placement. The carer may be not have committed the alleged abuse, but surely it is not worth taking the risk? FAC members have phoned around dozens of foster agencies and none to date would employ this carer given the historic charges and the police MASH referral. We are additionally alarmed by the information that this foster carer used to work in a children’s home and has changed their middle and last name twice.

The Director of Children’s Services

You were recently informed in writing that evidence has come to light that the new Director of Children’s Services in Herefordshire reviewed this case without even knowing the full scale and gravity of the charges the carer faced. She speculated in writing about what the charges might be. She speculated inaccurately and yet felt able to declare that the placement is safe.

Herefordshire’s new Director of Children’s Services is Tina Russell, who was responsible for child safeguarding in Worcestershire when 9-year-old Alfie Steel died after months of abuse at the hands of his mother and her partner. According to the BBC coverage of this case, “more than 60 calls were made to police and social services” before his death. There were in fact 64 calls to police or social services. 64 opportunities for Tina Russell and her team to prevent harm to Alfie Steel. Her track record on failing to spot clear and present risk to a child is alarming.

The Foster Panel

You were also informed recently in writing that Herefordshire’s Foster Panel has not been informed about the full scale and gravity of the historic charges against the foster care. Nor have they been told that despite the not guilty verdict the police continue to assess the man to be a risk and have made both a MASH referral and then subsequently, in the absence of protective action from Herefordshire Council, the police referred the children to their own Protecting Vulnerable Persons’ unit. The Foster Panel has not been told these things.

It is a requirement in the Government’s National Minimum Standards on Fostering that the Foster Panel is informed of all necessary information to make a proper assessment of carers. Further, it is a requirement that the Foster Panel must be kept informed of any new information which emerges which is relevant to the safety of the placement, such as a police MASH referral.

Apart from the safeguarding risks, there has been a significant breach by Herefordshire Council of Government guidelines created to keep children safe.

Your response to the risk  

Your failure to engage meaningfully with the concerns raised is frightening.

1.      How can the Foster Panel properly assess the risks in this placement if they have not been told the full scale and gravity of the charges against the carer?

2.      How can the Foster Panel report concerns when they still don’t know there’s been a police safeguarding referral to MASH and a further referral to the Protecting Vulnerable Persons unit?

3.      In your response, you completely ignore the fact that your new Director of Children’s Services reviewed this case and reached her conclusions without even knowing the charges involved.

The power to intervene

The police have raised their concerns twice, directly with Herefordshire Council. The second time, it was the Superintendent no less who met with Council leaders to discuss the police concerns in this case. Sadly, the police have no power to force Herefordshire Council to remove the children from a carer they assess as a potential risk.

You, on the other hand, have been given considerable power and responsibility by the Secretary of State for Education through the Statutory Direction issued on 7 February 2025.

You could intervene in this case, if you were minded to. We urge you to do so as a matter of urgency or to explain to the parents of the children how you have concluded that the woman who came forward to say that she has been serially abused as a child was making the whole thing up.

FAC members support the bravery of all victims who report abuse to the police, and we deeply regret that once again this Council has adopted a stance of disbelieving someone who comes forward to say they have been the victim of sexual violence.

Yours sincerely

FAC(Herefordshire)

Relevant extracts from email exchange with Deborah McMillan after concerns were raised

Email to Deborah McMillan

We also talked … about … children … living with a foster carer even though the police have raised two serious safeguarding concerns about the carer (one directly to MASH and one internal referral to the West Mercia PVP unit).

I mentioned in our conversation that the Foster Panel had not been informed of the police assessment of the risk to the children in this case. Further correspondence from the service since you and I met supports this assertion.

The new correspondence also confirms that the Foster Panel has not been told the full scale and gravity of the charges - 15 separate charges of child sexual abuse, including rape, over a three-and-a-half-year period in relation to a child living in the man's home.

It appears that Tina Russell reviewed the case and concluded that the children were safe without knowing what the charges were. I can provide the correspondence which will confirm this to you.

Email response from Deborah McMillan

If members of the foster panel have concerns, then they should be directly contacting the MASH themselves

Comments on how to interpret a not guilty verdict in a rape trial

Head of Policy and Public Affairs, Rape Crisis England and Wales

There has been significant reporting and attention in recent years to the very small proportion of reported rape and sexual offences resulting in a charge. The Crown Prosecution Service has a high evidential threshold for prosecution, as well as a public interest test, both of which must be met. It is very typically communicated by police and prosecutors that their inability to take a case forward does not equate to them disbelieving the victim but is a matter of not necessarily being able to meet the evidential threshold. For context, between April 2023 and March 2024, approximately just 2.6% of rape cases were charged in the same year.

During rape and sexual offence trials, frontline rape crisis advocacy workers and the survivors they support, frequently cite the use of misogynist and sexist misconceptions and stereotypes that are used against survivors by defence barristers to make them appear to be less credible. There is ample academic research showing that juries can and do make decisions on a wide range of opinions, including those that are very problematic and biased. It would therefore be technically very flawed and extremely misguided to conclude that a “not guilty” verdict in any way equates to innocence of the defendant. These individuals can pose an extremely high risk to women and children, as they may be emboldened to continue raping and abusing.