Essex police apologise over failings in Martin Goldberg investigation

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/03/martin-goldberg-thorpe-hall-school-police-apology

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Essex police have apologised to parents at Thorpe Hall school in Southend-on-Sea for failing to properly investigate, for over a year, evidence that the deputy headmaster may have been a paedophile.

Martin Goldberg, 46, killed himself in early September, within a day of him being confronted by police over videos of naked boys he had bought online. After he died it emerged he had been filming and photographing dozens of boys in the changing rooms of the fee-paying school using a camera secreted in a rucksack.

Essex police were told about concerns about Goldberg by the National Crime Agency in November 2013 which itself had been tipped off in July 2012 by Canadian police investigating customers of a Canadian website selling videos of child abuse.

On Friday night detectives admitted that although the material related to customers of a website selling images of child abuse, they did not bother to check his employment status and so didn’t find out he was a teacher until 3 September this year. It was that revelation that finally sparked the full investigation. They also admitted the delay is likely to have allowed the deputy head to continue his sex offending at the school as some of the hundreds of images of naked boys found at his house appear to have been captured after he was flagged up.

After he killed himself, police found at his home 7,257 indecent images of children that he had downloaded from the internet and 1,468 images that he took himself, including 75 of naked boys in the school’s changing room. Three boys at the school have been identified from the photos. 465 further images depicting nudity recorded at in the changing rooms of the local leisure centre were also found.

The revelation that the teacher had been allowed to continue filming children at the school sparked fury from parents and teachers. One parent of boys at the fee-paying school told the Guardian this week: “The police are to blame in this instance. I am really angry at them. They should have done something.”

Essex police also revealed they decided not to act on concerns about the teacher even though they had established that in one case he had bought illegal material. The intelligence about Goldberg came in a package with information about 35 individuals, none of whom were labelled as “high risk”.

“An assessment was made that … this was a lower-risk investigation and other cases with evidence of more serious offending, being dealt with should take priority,” the force said in a statement.

Assistant chief constable Maurice Mason on Friday wrote to all parents at the school saying: “the delay in dealing with Mr Goldberg’s case would have caused the families affected additional distress and I apologise for it.

“We are still working to establish the full facts regarding how we have dealt with the information we received about Mr Goldberg,” he said. “This matter has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission and we are awaiting their decision as to whether Essex police involvement in this.”

The Essex chief constable, Stephen Kavanagh, has commissioned an urgent internal review into the failing and from now on employment checks will be carried out on suspects immediately, the force said.

“It is my initial assessment that the delay was as a result of Mr Goldberg’s case being considered as a lower risk than cases of child abuse by other potential offenders,” said Mason. “The need for prioritisation is unfortunate but necessary due to the large (and growing) amount of work referred to the Police Online Investigation Team.”