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Crime Agency head to examine north Wales abuse claims May launches north Wales child abuse inquiry
(35 minutes later)
The head of the National Crime Agency will oversee an investigation into historic abuse claims in north Wales care homes, the home secretary says. Home Secretary Theresa May has announced a new police inquiry into allegations of child abuse in North Wales dating back to the 1970s and 80s.
Keith Bristow will look at both old claims and fresh allegations relating to the Bryn Estyn care home, and involving almost 40 other homes. She said the head of the National Crime Agency would investigate any fresh allegations, and examine the way the police handled the original complaints.
He will report by April 2013, Home Secretary Theresa May told MPs. One victim has alleged that a senior Conservative figure from the Thatcher era was involved in the abuse.
The Serious and Organised Crime Agency and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre will be involved. He said an inquiry in 2000 failed to fully examine all the claims.
The allegations of abuse began to emerge in the 1990s. They were highlighted again last week when Steve Messham made his claims.
The crime agency head, Keith Bristow, will look at how the historic claims were handled, and at fresh allegations. He will report by April 2013, Mrs May told MPs.
The Serious and Organised Crime Agency and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre will also be involved.
Convictions and compensation
In a statement to MPs, Mrs May said: "The government is treating these allegations with the utmost seriousness. Child abuse is a hateful, abhorrent and disgusting crime, and we must not allow these allegations to go unanswered, and I therefore urge anybody who has information relating to these allegations to go to the police."
She said North Wales Police chief constable Mark Polin had asked Mr Bristow to "assess the allegations recently received, to review the historic police investigations and investigate any fresh allegations reported to police into the alleged historic abuse in North Wales care homes".
An inquiry was set up in 1996 to examine the allegations of abuse in Gwynedd and Clwyd Council areas. Sir Ronald Waterhouse's inquiry sat for 203 days and heard evidence from 650 people, with more than 80 people named as abusers - mainly care workers and teachers.
After the report was published, there were 140 compensation claims settled on behalf of the victims.
However, concerns have now been raised that the remit of the inquiry was too narrow, and that it failed to consider allegations about children being taken out of the homes to be made available to abusers.
Wider abuse claims
Mrs May's statement came a day after Prime Minister David Cameron announced that a senior independent figure would lead an urgent investigation into whether the Waterhouse Inquiry did its job.
The latest abuse inquiries come in the midst of several inquiries into separate allegations of widespread abuse by former BBC presenter Jimmy Savile, relating to hundreds of victims over many decades.
Mrs May told MPs that Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary was looking at all forces that received allegations in relation to Savile. It would examine whether these allegations were investigated properly, and identify wider lessons from the response of the police forces involved.
She said the HMIC would also "take into account any lessons that emerge from these latest allegations".
Defamatory content
North Wales Police did investigate the care home abuse claims in 1991. Of eight prosecutions, seven former care workers were convicted.
"Despite the investigation and convictions, it was widely believed that the abuse was in fact on a far greater scale. But a report produced by Clwyd Council's own inquiry was never published because so much of its content was considered by lawyers to be defamatory," Mrs May said.
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper warned that there could be confusion as a result of the number of different investigations into child abuse allegations.
Her call for a single overarching public inquiry was echoed by a number MPs.
"We have already raised concerns that the Savile investigations ought to be brought under a single inquiry and we remain concerned that these multiple inquiries have no way to draw together the common themes, the problems, the lessons that need to be learned.
"Of course we need to get to the bottom of what is happening in each case, but at the moment the framework the government has set out risks being very confused."
Mrs May responded: "If, at the end of the processes that we've set in train it appears that it is necessary to move forward to a wider investigation then we will look at that."