Damilola officer identifies cycle of abuse

Damilola bled to death in a stairwell in south London

A leading officer in the Damilola Taylor murder investigation says many young offenders go from being victims of abuse to perpetrators of crime because their pleas for help go unheard.

Chief Superintendent Rod Jarman of Southwark Police Station explored the histories of 20 prolific offenders, aged between 10 and 15. They were boys of all races with over 1,000 police intelligence reports between them.

He revealed that three separate calls for help made by the boys in the study, most of whom suffered sexual abuse, were met with silence.

He told BBC Radio 4's File On 4 programme: "These young people had been calling for help because they weren't being protected in the home, in school, and in the community. After three big calls for help, we had not protected them as a society."

For me, this was about saying, 'Let's just break with the way we thought in the past and let's just about what we can do to help these people, to protect them."

Chief Superintendent Rod Jarman

He added: "If you keep saying to people, 'We do not care enough to come when you call for help,' then what is there in society for young people to comply with the rules we've set?

"They go out and rob and rape people because it seems to them that society doesn't care about it.

"For me, this was about saying, 'Let's just break with the way we thought in the past and let's just about what we can do to help these people, to protect them."

Mr Jarman's comments come after last month's "Safeguarding Children" government report found child protection remains fundamentally flawed.

'Monster children'

He also echoes the concerns of children's charities over the way the government deals with youth crime and anti-social behaviour.

Some feel the continuing failure of social service departments has led to policies too focused on punishment rather than prevention.

"There are children who do slip through the system.

Minister for Children and Young People, John Denham,

Ms Batmanghelidjh, founder of the Kids' Company charity for violent children, said: "The public are being sold a story about a monster breed of children growing up in our communities who are going to threaten us, and they're called criminals.

Social service 'pressures'

"The truth is these are vulnerable children who are left to fend for themselves and it's the adults around them who, through lack of care, drove them to a point where they're so anti-social that they don't care what happens to them or to anyone else."

The Minister for Children and Young People, John Denham, admitted to File On 4 that social services sometimes fails in its child protection duties.

"Everyone would recognise there are pressures on social services and on occasion the systems that we have in place for dealing with children at risk are not as good as they should be.

"There are children who do slip through the system."

This edition of File On 4 on BBC Radio 4 was broadcast at 2000 GMT on Monday 10 December and will be repeated on Sunday 15 December.