Children as young as five are alleged to have been targeted in South Ribble, Lancashire, The New Day reports
Children as young as five were “sexually exploited” by taxi drivers after a local council failed to run background checks, a new report claims.
Drivers in South Ribble, Lancashire, have been accused of violating children while carrying out council-funded school runs, according to an interim review of the licensing of hackney carriages and private hire vehicles by South Ribble Council.
The horrifying report – which bears troubling similarities to the Rotherham sex abuse scandal – claims children were being put at risk on their daily commute.
It classes the failure of authorities to vet 44 of its drivers as particularly severe, since a report into the Rotherham attacks had warned 1,400 victims were picked up by taxis from school and children’s homes.
The report – ordered by the Cabinet after a string of local government failings – details one shocking case involving a five-year-old girl whose family claim she is so disturbed she can no longer socialise with other children.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided the five-year-old victim was too young to give evidence – even though the report noted that “police believed the driver had committed the offence”.
And for months the accused driver was allowed to keep his taxi licence until a few weeks ago when the girl’s family won a fight to make the council revoke it.
Two licensing officers…