Employees accused of Child Sexual Abuse

Reference: 24-25160

Date response sent: 08/08/2024

Details of enquiry

Pursuant to the UK’s Public Records Act, I hereby request the following:

1. A list of the number of all employees accused or arrested on charges of child sexual abuse from January 1, 2019, until the day this request is fulfilled.

Please consider the timeframe listed in request (1) above for all subsequent requests below.

2. A breakdown of the different crimes reported: rape, grooming, groping, lewd acts, anal or vaginal penetration, and other examples listed as crime by the Home Office.
3. All disciplinary files or records of employees investigated for child sexual abuse. This request relates to employees whose names have already been released into the public domain and as such, Section 40 of the Act which exempts sensitive information on the identity of these employees cannot be applied to this request.
4. An annual summary from 2019 of all legal costs, settlements, or restitution paid to affected families of these children.

Such public records should include, but not be limited to, all complaints; allegations; claims; investigatory reports; analyses; summaries; memoranda and/or notes; interview recordings; transcripts and/or notes; reviews; emails, text or other electronic messages, voicemails, and/or other communications and/or correspondence; determinations; decisions; orders; resignation letters; employment reclassification documents; offers in compromise and/or settlement agreements; termination and/or transfer papers; letters of reproval and/or other disciplinary actions, whether imposed or not; referrals to law enforcement, administrative, and/or licensing agencies, departments, and/or bodies; appeals; court filings and/or rulings; and all similar materials notwithstanding the use of other terminology, nomenclature, or categorization by this or other involved public agencies.

Response sent

1. A list of the number of all employees accused or arrested on charges of child sexual abuse from January 1, 2019, until the day this request is fulfilled.

The Trust’s response is ≤5

Explanatory Note on our use of ≤ 5

We have masked low numbers as the symbol ‘≤5’, which indicates where numbers are equal to 5 or less than 5.

It is the NHS Digital standard not to provide data where the numbers are smaller than 5 as this may lead to identification of individuals.

For this reason and in accordance with Section 40(2) and Section 40(3a) and Section 41(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, we have masked numbers under 6. Disclosure of this type of personal data or easily identifiable personal data would thus be unfair, breaching GDPR Principle (a): Lawfulness, fairness and transparency. As this is an absolute exemption, we do not have to apply the Public Interest Test when applying this exemption.

The Trust recognises a strong public interest in the conduct of staff working in the public sector, and we must balance this against disclosure of the low number of staff accused or arrested on charges, which, whilst not directly identifying individuals, would nevertheless give rise to a disclosure of personal data, which can be explained as follows:

a. As we are a small Trust (circa 700 staff) there is a high chance of recognition/identification of particular individuals by colleagues or others, by the low numbers, because it would be easy for those with inside knowledge to identify those described even though the allegations against them were not released into the public domain.

b. This is not a just a question of considering the means reasonably likely to be used staff or the general public, but also the means likely to be used by a determined person with a particular reason to want to identify individuals from data in the public domain and/or gained from other sources.

2. A breakdown of the different crimes reported: rape, grooming, groping, lewd acts, anal or vaginal penetration, and other examples listed as crime by the Home Office.

The Trust confirms that it holds this data but is withholding this under Section 40(2) of FOIA.  See our explanation of this exemption in our answer to question 1 above.

3. All disciplinary files or records of employees investigated for child sexual abuse. This request relates to employees whose names have already been released into the public domain and as such, Section 40 of the Act which exempts sensitive information on the identity of these employees cannot be applied to this request.

These employee names are not in the public domain, and the information you have requested is exempt from disclosure under Section 40(2) of the FOIA, Personal information.

Please refer to our explanation of the application of this exemption in our response to question 1 above.

4. An annual summary from 2019 of all legal costs, settlements, or restitution paid to affected families of these children.

Nil.