Channel 4 News has spoken exclusively to two figures on the inside of the police watchdog’s major investigation into South Yorkshire Police and its handling of grooming in Rotherham.
The investigation was described as their second largest ever, conducted over years and ending with few sanctions against any officers; no officer was ever sacked.
It was set up after the Jay report concluded in August 2014 that failings in political and police leadership contributed to the sexual abuse of 1,400 girls in South Yorkshire.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) launched what became known as Operation Linden to uncover where the police had failed.
Now two whistleblowers working on that investigation have come forward exclusively to Channel 4 News with claims the investigation into what went wrong was itself a failure.
Speaking out for the first time, Garry Harper, who spent seven years as an investigator with the IOPC, including working for two years as part of the major investigations team on Operation Linden, said:
“We’re just another chapter in the failure for the survivors. They haven’t received the service they should have received and the force hasn’t been held to account in the way that it should.”
Mr Harper was assigned a specific investigation as part of Operation Linden. During this, he says he was told by a supervising officer that he should concentrate on the person central to the investigation, an officer with just six months’ experience as a detective, and not look at senior officers.
“We were actively discouraged from working up the chain trying to find out what had gone on. It was very much this is your complainant, you deal with that and that alone,” he added.
Chris Owen, a former GMP officer with over 30 years’ experience, was working as a contractor within the major investigations team at the IOPC during 2018 and 2019.
Speaking to Channel 4 News, Mr Owen told the programme: “The organisation itself is a failed organisation. The leadership had no idea what they were doing. The systems didn’t work, disclosure was virtually non-existent, the management of it was haphazard. Exhibits were lost, documents were lost. There seemed to be no direction of the investigations they took.”
The IOPC says that the claim that documents were lost or mishandled is overstated.
Both officers raised their concerns with senior managers within the IOPC at the time.
Jayne Senior, a former manager of Risky Business, a youth project set up to work with girls and young women at risk of sexual exploitation, was among those who first attempted to highlight the issue of grooming in Rotherham
Ms Senior made several complaints to the IOPC about what was going on, providing them with large amounts of information during their investigation. But according to Garry Harper, the view of her from other officers inside the IOPC wasn’t a positive one. He has told the programme there were conversations about whether she should be made the subject of an investigation – something Garry said he personally objected to:
“She was seen as having some good points, but largely she was [seen as] a bit of a pain. Officers who were being investigated as a consequence of her complaint were submitting a lot of information about Jayne Senior and were pushing the investigator a lot with regards to her being not a reliable witness and not somebody we should be taking credibly or seriously at all. There was a conversation, legal advice was sought by the lead investigator to investigate Jayne Senior for her failure to do her job properly.”
As part of the investigation, Channel 4 News revealed this to Ms Senior, who responded to the programme’s revelations, saying:
“Shock, [I] just wanted to cry. Did those senior officers hate me that much for wanting answers for those children that that’s what they were willing to do?”
The IOPC says it would be beyond its jurisdiction to investigate Ms Senior and it had no reason to.
The programme has also learnt that Jayne Senior and Dr Angie Heal, who used to work for South Yorkshire Police, made a complaint about senior officers’ failures to protect children looked into by the IOPC. It was called Operation Amazon.
That complaint was upheld – the IOPC found that senior officers had failed in their statutory duties. Ms Senior and Ms Heal have asserted their belief that the report, which has never been made public but they have seen, has been deliberately “buried”.
Commenting further, Dr Angie Heal told Channel 4 News:
“So they upheld our complaint that senior officers failed in their statutory duty to protect children and then they buried their own report. They didn’t publish the findings.”
“I think there were some bits of the report where they got it but they didn’t go anywhere far enough. There’s no recommendations in it, nobody’s been held to account.”
Ms Senior added:
“I think it’s just another nail in their coffin, they’re inept, they’re unable to run independent investigations.
“I think it dismally failed and I actually feel it was planned to fail. They never wanted the truth, it’s just disgraceful. These are the people we trust to hold police officers to account.”
The IOPC denies any attempt to “bury” the report.
In a statement to Channel 4 News, a spokesperson for the IOPC said:
“Our priority from the very start of Operation Linden was always the welfare of the survivors, who showed incredible bravery in coming forward and throughout the whole process.
“Many of the survivors we spoke to made it clear they wanted primarily to see meaningful changes to policing that meant other people wouldn’t have to suffer in the way they did.
“Every one of the 91 investigations within Operation Linden was carried out thoroughly and all lines of enquiry explored by up to 50 IOPC staff. During the seven-year investigation, the second largest in our history, we investigated 265 separate allegations made by 51 complainants, 44 of whom were survivors of abuse and exploitation. Approximately 1000 statements were taken and 4000 investigative actions undertaken.
“It’s completely inaccurate to suggest that investigators were told not to investigate senior South Yorkshire Police (SYP) officers – there was a dedicated investigation within Operation Linden which was focused solely on senior officers within the force and, had we found any indication of corruption, it would have been rigorously pursued.
“Our final report concluded that SYP failed to protect vulnerable children and young people at that time and to recognise the scale of the offending and effectively tackle it. We found systemic issues including failures in leadership, lack of professional curiosity, cultural issues and gaps in skills and training. The force acknowledged past failings and the focus needs to be on learning from those mistakes.
“Where individual failings were identified they have been addressed (but our role is to investigate – we do not make the decision on sanctions). Of the 47 officers investigated, we found eight had a case to answer for misconduct and six for gross misconduct. In many cases, officers had retired and, due to the legislation, could not face disciplinary proceedings, the passage of time also had an impact on the evidence that was able to be gathered.
“All of our 13 recommendations – aimed at ensuring others did not have to go through the same experiences – were accepted by South Yorkshire Police as well as the National Police Chief’s Council, Law Commission and the College of Policing.
“One recommendation, accepted by the Law Commission, was for a review of the laws surrounding offences committed by young people who are being groomed or exploited to reduce the impact on their futures.
“Operation Linden resulted in actions to improve the way survivors are treated when they report child sexual abuse and exploitation, and ensure police officers are better equipped to investigate these horrific offences. This is something survivors consistently told us they wanted to see.”
In a statement to Channel 4 News, a spokesperson for South Yorkshire Police said:
“The Terms of Reference for any IOPC investigation is set by them. South Yorkshire Police fully cooperated with Op Amazon and supplied the IOPC with all relevant information. The decision on whether to publish the report is entirely a matter for the IOPC.”