Social worker in bid to clear name

A social worker who says his career was destroyed by false
indecent exposure accusations asked a High Court judge last week to
wipe his record clean.

The charges against the man, who cannot be named for legal
reasons, were dropped last year. But the chief constable of West
Midlands Police still disclosed them to the Criminal Records
Bureau. The CRB then passed the information to the man’s
employer and he was sacked.

His counsel told the court that all his client’s
subsequent attempts to obtain a social work job had failed.

He added that the police decision to pass on the information
without giving the man a chance to comment on the case, and despite
a woman identifying a man who bore no resemblance to him in a
line-up during the original investigation, was a violation of his
human rights.

But Fiona Barton, for the chief constable, said: “Once the
information was in the chief constable’s possession then, in
view of the risk posed to vulnerable members of the community, he
could not simply ignore it.”

The case continues.

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