Professur
Well-Known Member
By ALASTAIR TAYLOR
September 06, 2007
TWO gay foster parents were allowed to sexually abuse boys because social workers feared being accused of discrimination, a report reveals.
Officials knew there were question marks against Ian Wathey, 40, and Craig Faunch, 32.
But despite allegations about the first two kids they fostered, they were allowed to have 18 children in their care over 18 months.
An independent inquiry said managers and social workers at Wakefield Council, West Yorks, were reluctant to investigate them for fear of being seen as prejudiced against gay people.
The inquiry’s report said: “The fear led them to fail to discriminate between the appropriate and the abusive.”
It said some council staff were “ill-equipped” for their jobs and chiefly blamed middle managers for blunders.
Faunch and Wathey, of Pontefract, were jailed for six and five years respectively in June 2006.
Their trial at Leeds Crown Court heard that when suspicions were raised about an indecent photo of a boy urinating, social workers decided the men had been simply “naive and silly”.
Source
Draw your own conclusions.