UK- Shattered parents talk for first time about how sex offender was allowed to prey on their family

3-14-2009 United Kingdom:

THE devastated foster couple whose two children were preyed on by a teenage paedophile placed in their care today speak for the first time about the abuse scandal that has shocked the nation.

THEY reveal how the 19-year-old—described to them as being “no risk whatsoever” by social workers—raped their three-year-old son and indecently assaulted their nine-year-old daughter behind their backs.

AFTER a week when our social services has once again been branded a shambles in a damning report, the shattered family—given false names to protect their identities—relive their heartbreaking ordeal . . . and their BETRAYAL by the people supposed to protect them.

SHATTERED foster parents Peter and Ginny Smith today condemn the blundering social workers who sent a monster into the midst of their loving family.

“We were completely betrayed,” storms Ginny. “Unknown to us we opened our home to a paedophile.

“He had convictions and they never told us—the very people we trusted and who are supposed to protect us.”

And Ginny—still trying to come to terms with the sickening rape of her toddler son Jack and attacks on daughter Danielle— reveals how social workers astonishingly FAILED to call in the police after the couple had reported what 19-year-old Rhys Jones had done.

“We couldn’t believe it!” she says. “We had to ring the police ourselves and they arrested him within an HOUR because they considered him so dangerous.”

Now she and Peter are trying to rebuild their ruined lives while planning to sue social services staff for their nightmare who, incredibly, have STAYED in their jobs.

Peter, 42, tells of the heart-rending moment he realised the truth about the troubled teenager they had grown to adore.

Bewildered Jack, aged just three, toddled up to his chair and shyly blurted out what had happened to him.

“He said, ‘Daddy? . . . ,” says Peter Smith, faltering as the tears suddenly well in his eyes.

But he cannot bring himself to speak the terrifying words as Jack had said them. “He told me in his way that Rhys—the boy we had taken in—had asked him to perform an oral sex act on him,” says Peter.

“My world fell apart right then. Jack was three, and this act was completely outside his range of knowledge so I knew it had to be true.” Peter recalls the fury that surged through him as he tried to comfort his little son.

“I started to cry but hugged my son so he wouldn’t see my tears,” he says. “It was very important that I controlled my anger so Jack didn’t think it was him who had done anything wrong. I told him Rhys should not have asked him to do that. But how I stopped myself from killing Rhys then and there, I’ll never know.

“There were some very dark days for me afterwards, days I even had suicidal thoughts.”

And Ginny, 39, tearfully remembers the painful moment her molested daughter revealed what Rhys had done to HER.

“I asked her why she had never said anything. She was sobbing.

“She shouted, ‘Because you love him, Mum! Everybody loves him. You go on about him all the time and what a wonderful boy he is—and I know how horrible he is’. I was so shocked. The guilt I felt was terrible.”

Last week the teenager was jailed for six years as Lord Laming’s scathing report on the murder of Baby P slammed Britain’s social services for FAILING to introduce reforms he ordered SEVEN YEARS AGO after little Victoria Climbié’s terrible death.

Now the Smiths know what it’s like to be at the mercy of such incompetence.

Caring Peter and Ginny had decided to become Adult Placement hosts last year—a kind of fostering in which they offered accommodation in their comfortable five-bedroom home to people with learning difficulties.

“It was something we’d thought about for some time,” says Peter, an engineer.

“We wanted to help others and we saw this as an ideal way to do it.

“We had ruled out fostering children as we felt this could be too disruptive to our own kids’ lives.” The Smiths took to their new roles like ducks to water. The first four adults they took in for short periods, all aged between 40 and 50, seemed to thrive in the family environment.

Then, last November, Vale of Glamorgan social services—headed by director Phil Evans—asked them to take in a teenager with slight learning difficulties who needed an emergency placement because he was homeless after being kicked out of a hostel.

Peter said: “The social worker explained this boy Rhys had been told to move out because of an incident between him and a 16-year-old girl in the hostel. He had tried to touch her while she was asleep.

“We were led to believe it had simply been the actions of an enthusiastic, but socially inept teenager, led on by an allegedly promiscuous young woman.

“That is how they put it. There was certainly no mention of any sexual abuse in the past. In fact the social worker said to us, ‘There is no risk to your children or family whatsoever’.

“We trusted these people to tell us the truth. We would never knowingly put our children in danger.” Rhys arrived in the Smiths’ house later that day. “I took to him straight away,” says Ginny.

“He was a bit shy at first but seemed very open and personable. There was something very young and naive about him too—he was small and acted more like a 13-year-old than a young man of 19. The children met him and seemed to adore him straight away, like us.

“It sounds terrible now, but I really felt very attached to him almost from the start. There were no clues. None at all. He seemed so young, the thought of him having any sexual desires didn’t enter our heads—he was like a little boy.

“We talked an awful lot about his background and about life in general—he seemed so open and trustworthy.

“But what I know now is that this was all an act. He groomed and manipulated us to love him so much that our daughter felt unable to confide in us.”

“And had our innocent son not disclosed his own abuse to us, it could have gone on for years.” Ginny recalls bitterly how she missed the first sign something was wrong when they were all watching EastEnders one night.

“It was about the paedophile plotline with Bianca’s daughter Whitney and her stepdad. Afterwards Rhys said, ‘That’s awful —he should go to prison for that’. At the time I thought his disgust was genuine.

“What I didn’t see, but later learned from my daughter, was that behind my back while he said it he was making faces at Danielle, raising his eyebrows suggestively and winking at her.”

But on the surface things were going so well the Adult Placement service and Rhys’ social worker began discussing a long-term stay with the family.

“I just felt he’d had such a bad start in life and we had a chance to help him get a job and start living independently,” says Ginny.

Rhys returned to his family at Christmas—but he phoned the Smiths every day and after he returned he told Ginny he wanted to live with them for good. “I was over the moon,” says Ginny. “The contracts were prepared and we were due to sign them later that week.”

The only member of the family who didn’t seem enthusiastic about Rhys’ return was Danielle.

“I suppose I did wonder why she wasn’t happier but it didn’t seem overly significant at the time,” says Ginny.

But two days after Rhys’s return she found out the truth when little Jack made his shocking revelation. Peter tells how his son had been abused by Jack in an act considered as rape in law.

“He was made to kiss him too, and Rhys had used his tongue,” says Peter. “I can’t tell you how I felt at that moment. That was my little boy. And he had been violated in our own home.” But when Peter confronted Rhys with what his young son had said, he denied it all.

“Before I’d even finished talking he was shaking his head but I could tell he was lying. Eyes down, chin tucked under, he was tight-lipped and defensive,” says Peter.

“I told him to go pack his bags and stood over him as he did so. Again, I asked him how he could have done such a thing after we’d opened our home to him.

"But he showed absolutely no remorse at all, and just kept repeating, ‘OK, OK. Stop going on about it will you?’.”

Later that day, Ginny came home and was told the dreadful news. “I was horrified,” she says. “I suppose it took a while for it to sink in that he had betrayed us so completely. We didn’t discover the full extent of that betrayal until I spoke to Danielle.”

Ginny sat her down in the lounge and gently questioned the nine-year-old. “I said, ‘Danielle, has Rhys ever done anything to you that was inappropriate or anything you didn’t like?’ Her face changed completely and she went a funny colour and shook her head. I knew straight away she was lying and my heart raced.” Only when Ginny assured her daughter Rhys had gone and was never coming back did she feel able to talk about her ordeal.

“The floodgates opened and she started sobbing,” she said. “Then her words came tumbling out, ‘He doesn’t leave me alone, Mum! He chases me round and makes me lie on top of him, he tries to kiss me and he drags me into his room and when I try to run away he swears and calls me names’.

“She said, ‘He tries to put his hands down my trousers. I hate it. I go to bed and cry myself to sleep every night’.”

Ginny was in shock. “The worst thing is I really thought she would have told me if something bad was happening. The last two months had been a nightmare for her and we hadn’t seen it.”

The Smiths immediately contacted social services who said the offences were so serious, they would be reporting Rhys to the police themselves.

“When he was taken away, our Adult Placement worker had been assured by the social services ‘leaving care’ team they would contact the police,” says Ginny. But after three days, social services had still not contacted police. The next day, Rhys rang them, thinking he was in the clear—they were horrified.

“They obviously hadn’t done what they’d said they’d do,” added Ginny. “So we called the police and within an hour they took statements from us and picked him up.” Two weeks later two senior members of Glamorgan social services visited the family to apologise. But the Smiths still didn’t have a clue as to Rhys’ true past— until the day of his case at Cardiff Crown Court.

n 2004 Rhys had acted in a sexually inappropriate way with another boy and a year later he admitted exposing himself and touching another young boy sexually at a hostel. In 2007 he quit a job in a bowling alley when his parents found he was trying to get young girls’ phone numbers.

Then came the incident with the girl in the hostel last year. Rhys admitted raping the Smith’s little son and indecently assaulting their daughter.

He was told he would serve at least six years of an indeterminate sentence. Meanwhile, a statement from the council said there had been ‘a serious error of judgement’ over the placement.

Judge Nicholas Cooke QC said: “A tragedy ensued for a family who only wished to serve the community. They were unable to protect their own children because of a failure to provide them with information.”

Ginny says: “I nearly fainted. Why hadn’t they told us about his past? They knew what he had been capable of and that meant he should never have been placed with our family. Somebody needs to be held accountable.”

Evans, Vale of Glamorgan’s £100,000-a-year social services director, apologised to the family—yet no one has been sacked.

Now an internal council inquiry, overseen by the NSPCC, is due to report in April—and Peter and Ginny say they are confident that the appropriate people will be dealt with.

Peter—who praised Vale of Glamorgan Police for acting sensitively and professionally throughout—says: “We want to find out the truth and the right people to be held to account. The errors that led to this happening originated in other social services departments—not in Adult Placement.

“And afterwards we would dearly like to move on with our lives. This has been a shattering experience and our daughter is still plagued by fear and flashbacks.

“As for our son, he was very confused by what had happened to him but seems for now at least to be forgetting.

“We will never forget. And I only hope that in speaking out we can ensure it never happens to another family.” ..News Source.. by Katy Weitz