British police paid child rapist almost £10,000 to spy on under-age girls

Police paid a convicted a child rapist almost £10,000 to spy on parties where they suspected under-age girls would be intoxicated and sexually abused, a court heard. He was recruited despite being a sex offender who had drugged an under-age girl and invited another man to rape her after he had done so, a court heard.

Years later, the man, who can only be identified by the media as XY, was tasked by Northumbria Police to assist their investigation into child sexual exploitation in Newcastle. Subsequent trials which followed Operation Shelter, until now unreportable, have heard girls were groomed by men who gave them cannabis, alcohol and the designer drug Mkat at parties, then encouraged into having sex.

The startling information came out during pre-trial hearings at Newcastle Crown Court which attempted but failed to halt prosecutions against a number of men accused of a range of serious offences including drug dealing and sexually abusing girls.

During proceedings which can only now be reported, more than 20 prosecution and defence barristers in wigs were in court arguing whether the cases of more than 10 men should be thrown out.

Defending barristers argued that the public’s confidence in the justice system would be undermined if the trials went ahead, given that the rapist had acted as an informant, formally known as a Covert Human Intelligence Source, or “CHIS”. Robin Patton, representing one of the defendants, said the rapist was paid £9,680 over 21 months by Northumbria Police for informing.

Mr Patton said that the rapist was a “convicted child rapist who drugged a child and invited someone else to rape her after he had” and was subject to a suspended sentence when he was deployed by police in 2014.

He said the confidence of the public in the administration of justice would be “substantially diminished” if they knew police had chosen “such an individual” to help their investigation into the exploitation and possible use of drugs by young people.

Police claimed they carried out a risk assessment, but that the “very next day” after he was recruited, the man in question was in court for a dishonesty offence. After he was recruited, he was arrested in September 2015 on suspicion of inciting sexual activity with a child after a teenage girl claimed a man approached her and made an indecent proposition.

The informant was later told he would face no action after he took part in an identity parade. Also on the Sex Offenders’ Register, he failed to notify police he had moved house, Mr Patton said.

“I have tried to think of convictions that make him less suitable to act as a CHIS in an operation of this sort… I have not been able to,” he said.