Investigative Panel: "Gay" Status Helped Couple Get Away with Sexually Abusing Foster Children

Blame laid squarely on culture of political correctness among British civil authorities

By Hilary White

WAKEFIELD, UK, September 6, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A report by an independent panel has laid the blame in a homosexual child sex abuse case squarely on the culture of political correctness among British civil authorities. It was a local Council's fear of offending the homosexual movement or being labeled homophobic that allowed two men to continue to sexually abuse boys placed in their care as foster parents.

Ian Wathey, 40, and Craig Faunch, 32 were convicted in May 2006, of molesting and filming eight-year-old twins and two 14 year-old boys placed in their care by the Wakefield Council. Since they were approved as foster parents in 2003, Wathey and Faunch took in a total of 19 boys.

Despite growing reservations by staff and complaints from the mother of two of the boys, the two men were treated by the authorities as "trophy carers" who, because of their status as homosexuals were regarded as beyond scrutiny. An independent investigative panel has found that officials of Wakefield Metropolitan District Council, controlled by the Labour Party, allowed "the fear of being discriminatory" to lead them to "fail to discriminate between the appropriate and the abusive."

The Daily Telegraph reports that the review panel found authorities ignored or inadequately investigated complaints against the two men and that an annual review was never conducted.

The Telegraph quotes one social worker who told the inquiry team, "you didn't want to be seen discriminating against a same-sex couple."

At the time of his conviction for sexual abuse, Judge Sally Cahill told Faunch, "Once you realised social services were going to take no action in respect of the photos that had been found, and believed your ridiculous story about why you had taken it, you went on to abuse others in your care believing yourself to be safe from the authorities."

The men were convicted of multiple counts of sexual activity with the two 14 year-old boys, and Faunch was convicted of using a camcorder to film two eight year-old boys while they showered. Wathey was also found guilty of encouraging a 14 year-old child, who suffers from Asperger's syndrome and has the mental age of a seven year-old, to watch homosexual pornography.

Referring to one boy's "very troubled background" the judge said, "You are presented as a couple but this is not a case about homosexuality, it is about a breach of trust".

The panel leader, Brian Parrott stated, "These anxieties about discrimination have deep roots, we argue - in social work training, professional identity and organisational cultures, and the remedies for these go beyond the remit of any single council or inquiry report."

Five weeks before their conviction, Wathey and Faunch took part in a civil partnership ceremony and are thought to have been the first homosexual partners in Yorkshire to be allowed to act as foster parents. That Faunch was jailed for six years and Wathey for five years, outraged some children's charities who said that for such a "breach of trust" the sentence ought to have been ten years.