Six-year-old girl 'was sexually abused by classmates'
Devastated mother reveals horrifying ordeal during television interview but case remains shrouded in secrecy
London: A devastated mother has told how her six-year-old daughter was physically and sexually abused by more than 20 of her classmates over a period of months.
The little girl was stripped of her clothes and assaulted on a daily basis by pupils her own age within the grounds of a school in Wales.
Her ordeal only came to light on Thursday after her mother gave an anonymous television interview.
The case has been investigated by police and social workers but an extraordinary cloak of secrecy was thrown over it.
The mother said it took two years for school officials to fully investigate after she complained.
A ‘serious case review' finally confirmed that sexually harmful behaviour had taken place at the school, but said it was difficult to establish exactly what happened. All of the 23 children involved, aged six to ten, are too young to be prosecuted for the sustained abuse. None were even removed from the school. The school has not been named, to protect the youngster's identity, and the local education authority also remains anonymous.
The girl's mother learned about the bullying and sex abuse when she spoke to another parent whose daughter was also being abused.
She then broached the subject with her daughter. "I will never forget the look on her face, the fear on her face," she said..
"I said ‘It is okay, you can tell mummy', and then it all started to come out. She was telling me things that I think every mother dreads to hear from their daughter. It was horrendous what she'd gone through."
It was only when the six year old was moved to another school and her mother took legal action that the local education authority launched the serious case review. It then took two years to publish its findings, but because the authority has not been identified, those findings have not been made public.
Incredibly, the local authority has since claimed that the case review had been robust and that the school had received excellent inspections before and after the incident.
But the child's family say she was failed by the school and the system, as they took so long to act. The mother added: "I think you can't excuse that. How can you possibly say that is okay and nobody is answerable for that?"
