Horrific ordeal of girl, six, who was physically and sexually abused by 23 of her primary school classmates

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 11:30 AM on 01st April 2010

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The girl was routinely assaulted by pupils of her own age within school grounds. (Posed by model)

The shocking case of a six-year-old girl who was physically and sexually abused by 23 of her classmates has emerged today.

The girl was stripped daily and routinely assaulted by pupils her own age in the grounds of the Welsh school.

But the school and local council said the children's young ages and lack of evidence meant little could be done.

A review has now been ordered into that investigation, which meant none of the children involved in the abuse were removed from school.

The Children's Commissioner for Wales Keith Towler said the inquiry into the case had been a 'shocking failure'.

A serious case review published two years after allegations of abuse first emerged accepted that sexually harmful behaviour had taken place.

But it said it had been difficult to establish exactly what happened.

The school and the local education authority, neither of which can be named, said the fact that the children had all been under the age of criminal responsibility meant little action could be taken.

The child's mother told how it took two years for education officials to investigate her daughter's torment.

She said she had been warned about what was happening by another mother whose daughter was also being abused.

CHILD'S MOTHER: 'I will never forget the look on her face.. the fear on her face. I said 'It is OK you can tell Mummy" and then it all started to come out. And she was telling me things that I think every mother dreads to hear from their daughter'

In an interview with the BBC, the child's mother described the moment her daughter began to tell her what had been going on.

'My daughter was just like any other little girl. I will never forget the look on her face.. the fear on her face. I said 'It is OK you can tell Mummy" and then it all started to come out.

'And she was telling me things that I think every mother dreads to hear from their daughter. It was horrendous what she'd gone through.'

The mother moved her daughter to a school in another area but it was not until she took legal action that the local authority carried out a serious case review.

She says her daughter is doing better but believes she will be traumatised for life.

Children's Commissioner for Wales Keith Towler said the inquiry into the case had been a 'shocking failure'

'My daughter was going through that every day. Every day she was being stripped, she was being physically and sexually abused every day and every day she cried out for help and nobody ever came. And I think you can't excuse that.

'How can you possibly say that is OK and nobody is answerable for that?'

The child's family say she was failed by the school and by the system which took so long for something to be done.

Children's Commissioner for Wales Keith Towler said teachers needed on-going training to better recognise such incidents and the serious case review system in Wales would be changed to help prevent similar failures in the future.

'This is a shocking failure and the bottom line is the family will never know what happened to their child,' said Mr Towler.

'We are going to review the serious case review process in Wales to make sure they are much more timely published, within a year of incidents happening, so that we get really clear for everybody involved, what happened, why it happened and what we need to do to put things right.'

The local authority concerned has said it was confident the case review had been a robust one and said the school had received excellent inspections before and after the case.

Directors of Social Services in Wales president Neelam Bhardwaja said: 'If there are these number of children involved, it begs the questions, "Where did that behaviour arise from? Why are these children behaving in this way, and are they from abusive situations themselves, which they need protecting from?" '

She said an examination of the serious case review process in Wales had been going on for the last three months and was due to be completed by June.

She said it would be looking at the overall process, not the investigation in to the six-year-old's case.

A Welsh Assembly Government spokesman said it took 'its roles and responsibilities around the safeguarding of children very seriously'.

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