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Originally Posted by Chris
He was investigated on more than one occasion by more than one police force. But none of the concerns, individually, ever amounted to grounds for a prosecution. Unfortunately the intelligence not only went un-shared, it was IIRC erased in a number of cases.
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IIRC, the problem was the Data Protection Act. The Police did not share the info because they thought that as he was only suspected, his personal information was protected by the DPA.
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There was a major lost opportunity to spot and take account of a long-term pattern of concerning behaviour. This was addressed by the Bichard inquiry, post-Soham, which in turn gave rise to the new SVG (PVG in Scotland) legislation. Sadly, in drafting the SVG Act, the Labour government used a sledgehammer to crack the nut and devised a scheme under which just about everyone who ever sneezed in the general direction of a child would have to become registered and subject to permanent monitoring. The Coalition has wisely reined things back but this has caused an inevitable delay.
Meanwhile in Scotland the equivalen PVG Act is going live this year and is a far less intrusive implementation of the same Bichard recommendations.
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The problem was that previous governments (not just Labour) have wanted to appear to be solving a percieved problem, and thanks mainly to cases like Huntley's (and the hype generated), paedophilia was percieved by the public to be a massive problem. While the problem is bad, I don't think it's nearly as bad as the public believed.