Birmingham nursery rapist’s ‘relationship known about’

A nursery worker who raped a toddler had a “special relationship” with the girl that Ofsted and a council were aware of, a review has found.
Paul Wilson, 21, who also groomed 22 other girls, admitted raping the girl at Little Stars Nursery, Nechells, Birmingham, in July 2011.

The nature of the relationship should have rung alarm bells, the city’s Safeguarding Children Board said.

Wilson, of Nechells, was jailed for life after admitting 40 other offences.

The review found “interacting factors” including poor management within the nursery, failure on the part of Ofsted and the local authority to investigate properly worries about the perpetrator’s behaviour.

Concerns were also raised about the availability of resources to the police to respond to the increasing incidence of internet abuse Wilson was carrying out.

‘Weak safeguards’

During the case, Wilson admitted more than 40 offences related to grooming young girls on the internet and distributing indecent images.

He had filmed himself on his phone raping a toddler at the nursery he worked at for 18 months.

The review found the lack of supervision of him, failure to understand the risks of “special relationships” with individual children, the layout of the nursery and “the weak safeguarding practice within the setting” combined to create an environment “where the external factors that might have deterred the perpetrator from abusing the child were missing”.

Jane Held, independent chair of the multi-agency board, said: “In this case there were unfortunately a number of weaknesses in the way that nursery was run and a number of opportunities to intervene earlier and prevent the continuation of abuse which were missed.”

The board said the report made eight key recommendations which were being addressed.

Wilson, 21, from Nechells, was jailed for life in July 2011 after admitting two counts of raping the child at Little Stars Nursery.

At his original trial, he was ordered to serve a minimum of 15 years in prison. The Court of Appeal cut this to 13 and a half years in February 2012.