A policeman has complained to his own force that his six-year-old son was assaulted when he was forced to clean out a toilet at school.

Pc Kevin Miller, who is based at Leiston, Suffolk, has asked members of Suffolk police's child protection team to investigate the incident.

He alleges his son Ethan was "frogmarched" by a school helper at Reydon County Primary School, near Southwold, Suffolk, and made to clean out the toilet.

Pc Miller, 28, said the boy was given a rubber glove to wear and forced to put his hand down the toilet and pull out paper towels.

"I have asked our child protection team to investigate and consider whether Ethan was subjected to a common assault," said Pc Miller.

"They are looking into the matter. I'm not sure how far they've got."

A spokesman for Suffolk police said Pc Miller's complaint was being investigated.

Bullying

Pc Miller and his wife, Helen, 32, have now moved Ethan and their other sons, Ethan's twin brother Rhys, and Sears, eight, to another school.

The couple say Ethan was also being bullied by other children, but the school had failed to deal with the problem.

On one occasion, he had come home from school with a bruised head after being allegedly attacked by four other boys on the school bus, they said.

Pc Miller said he had complained to Suffolk County Council's education department about the toilet incident, and the way the school handled complaints about bullying, but had not been satisfied.

He has now asked the Education Secretary, David Blunkett, to look into the matter, and has complained to local MP John Gummer.

"We've been through the full complaints procedure with the council but no one has accepted that the school has done anything wrong," said Pc Miller.

'Appalled'

"The suggestion was that Ethan had stuffed these towels down the toilet himself. But an investigation by the governors failed to find any evidence of that.

"We were quite appalled by the way he was treated.

"In terms of the problems we were having with Ethan being bullied it seemed that the school and council just wanted to ignore us and hope we would go away.

"I just don't feel I can trust the school to protect my children properly."

A spokeswoman for Suffolk County Council said she could not discuss individual children.

But she said the council's full complaints procedure had been followed and investigations by education authority officials had failed to uphold any complaint that the school was not dealing properly with allegations of bullying.