Legal Updates

The high court has considered further questions of disclosure of information about sexual offenders. (See also legal update 14 January 2002.)

In Re C (sexual abuse: disclosure) 14 February 2002 a father had a long history of allegations of serious sexual abuse made against him by young children. Since none of the allegations had ever resulted in any criminal conviction, he was outside the compulsory registration regime of the Sex Offenders Act 1997. In 1995 he moved to a flat owned by the D housing association, who also owned flats nearby which housed families with children. In 1999 his partner gave birth to a son, and in view of the history the local authority took care proceedings. The judge was satisfied of a substantial number of allegations and made a care order in respect of the respondents' child.

The local authority were given leave to disclose a copy of the judgement of the care proceedings to the Department of Health and to any social services department or police force within any area where the father might be residing. Permission was then sought to disclose the findings made in the care proceedings to the D housing association and to other housing associations or private landlords to whom the first respondent might in the future make an application for accommodation. The object of the application was to try to ensure as far as possible that families with children were not moved into accommodation near to the respondents and that, if for any reason the respondents moved out of their present accommodation, they were not re-accommodated near to such families.

The court ruled:

(1) In addition to the required balancing exercise of competing rights and interests, such as the welfare and interests of other children generally, against the maintenance of confidentiality and the importance of encouraging frankness in children's cases, there also had to be real and cogent evidence of a pressing need for the requested disclosure. The court had to consider:

(a) the interests of the alleged paedophile and his family;

(b) the likely impact which the disclosure might have on them in terms of vigilantism, gossip and employment difficulties;

(c) the risk of driving the paedophile 'underground' whereby he might become a greater risk to children;

(d) the difficulties in controlling sensitive information once it had been released further than to 'the usual' statutory agencies; and

(e) the overall circumstances of the case.

Further relevant factors were:

(i) the extent of the police or local authority's belief in the truth of the allegations: the greater the conviction in their truth, the more pressing would be the need for disclosure;

(ii) the extent of the interests of the third party in obtaining the information: the more intense the legitimacy of the interest of the third party in having the information, the more pressing the need to disclose was likely to be; and

(iii) the degree of risk posed by the person if disclosure was not made.

Since the father had never been convicted of any sexual abuse, disclosure of information had to be regarded as exceptional. However, the balancing exercise came down in favour of permitting disclosure by the police and the social services to the D housing association since there was real and cogent evidence of a pressing need for disclosure. Such disclosure had to be limited to that necessary to achieve the legitimate aim of trying to prevent crime and/or in the assist in the protection of children.

(2) In respect of disclosure to other housing associations and landlords, the applicants had not made out their case. If the information was more widely released, there were greater difficulties in controlling it. Such difficulties of control increased:

(a) the risk of harm to the respondents from the local community; and/or

(b) the possibility of greater risks to the general community from the respondents 'going underground.' That was not to say that an order permitting such wider disclosure might not be justified in the future; but it was a question better addressed incrementally, if and when the need arose. The wider disclosure sought did not at this stage constitute a 'pressing need'.

Richard White

White and Sherwin Solicitors