Police failings left predator free to kidnap girl

Police failings and workload pressures left a dangerous sexual predator free to snatch a six-year-old girl off the streets, the BBC has learned. Lewis Jones, then 23,subjected his young victimto a violent and prolonged sexual assault in woodland in Manchester on 17 August 2022 before he was disturbed by the shouts of her family and neighbours. Merseyside Police had been investigating Jones, from Liverpool, since 2020 for grooming and sexually abusing a vulnerable child by pretending he was 14. An internal police review, obtained by the BBC via a Freedom of Information request, detailed a catalogue of errors that left the earlier case drifting for 18 months without "supervisory oversight". Merseyside Police said it had referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), which concluded that no individual officers had a case to answer for misconduct. But the force said it had "identified learnings" and detailed several changes to the way investigations into sexual offences are overseen and managed. The review was prompted in April 2023 after Jones, who admitted both sets of offences, wassentenced at Manchester Crown Court to life in prisonwith a minimum term of 12 years. Judge Hilary Manley told the court the Merseyside case was an "egregious example" how police delays in prosecuting offenders can leave them free to strike again. "This defendant, if he had been charged when he should have been, would not have been at liberty to abduct this six-year-old girl," she explained. "That's the cold facts of the case." In response to those criticisms, Merseyside Policeannounced a review would be undertakenand "personally overseen" by Assistant Chief Constable Mark Kameen, who has since retired. A copy of that review, led by Det Supt Steve Reardon, showed how the force's Unity and Protecting Vulnerable People (PVP) teams - which specialise in investigating rape and sexual offences - were impacted by staffing pressures across the force. The review said Jones was first arrested on 15 June 2020 after a vulnerable girl missing from the Cheshire area had reported meeting a much older man at Liverpool South Parkway railway station. It later emerged that Jones, then 21, had pretended to be 14 and groomed her into believing she was in a relationship, which became sexual. After being taken into custody and interviewed, he was released under investigation the following day, meaning he was not bound by any bail conditions. More than two years later, the investigation had not been concluded. Jones grabbed the six-year-old girl and ran off with her while she was playing with her cousins in the Droylsden area of Manchester. The review found a detective constable leading the Merseyside grooming investigation had held on to the file even when they were transferred out of the PVP team to help another unit with its workload. This meant little progress was made in gathering and reviewing evidence, including social media conversations and phone data. Additionally, another detective constable held on to the case during a period when they took on a temporary promotion to detective sergeant. Their additional workload reduced the time they had available to work on the case. When that detective secured a permanent promotion, they were reluctant to allocate the case to a more junior detective due to the team's workload, resulting in further delays. None of the issues were flagged to senior detectives due to a problem with the police databases used to track open investigations. The review said the case should have been flagged at 16, 32 and 48 weeks respectively to a detective inspector, a detective chief inspector, and a detective superintendent. This did not happen due to a problem with identifying the officer in charge of the case (OIC) on a police system called Niche. Meanwhile Jones had moved to Manchester with his father. He spent the morning of 17 August 2022 wandering around the area of the Droylsden attack. He took secretive pictures of local children playing, including his eventual victim. After grabbing the girl he put his hand into her mouth to muffle her screams with enough force to knock out a tooth. He threatened that if she did not stay quiet she would "not see her parents again". After sexually assaulting the little girl, he calmly left the area and even spent the rest of the day sending intimate pictures of himself to a girlfriend. Jones was recognised by his father in CCTV images circulated by Greater Manchester Police after the attack, and taken to a police station. In her sentencing remarks, the judge outlined how the girl had shown signs of deep trauma, including being unable to sleep alone and refusing to go out to play. Merseyside Police told the BBC it had made extensive changes following the review. A force spokesperson said: "We now conduct reviews of all rape and sexual offence cases within the Unity and PVP teams to ensure the correct OICs are clearly identified. "We identified learning in relation to rape and sexual offence cases being moved out of the Unity and PVP teams when staff members transfer out of the department. "We have since reviewed all relevant cases to reallocate them back to the department accordingly. "More staff have been recruited to support long-term workloads and improve the timeliness of investigations being submitted for charging advice." The force said it had also set up two new dedicated teams to help expedite investigations into sexual offences. One, known as the Gatekeeper Team, aims to improve the quality of files passed to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for a charging decision. This is designed to reduce the chance of prosecution lawyers asking for further evidence. The other, the Child Criminal & Sexual Exploitation Team (CCSET), aims to increase focus on grooming cases. Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside onBBC Soundsand follow BBC Merseyside onFacebook,X, andInstagram, and watch BBC North West Tonight onBBC iPlayer.