An independent report on the child murder victims of Rosemary and Frederick West has recommended new national procedures for keeping track of pupils when they change school.
One of 12 victims, eight-year-old Charmaine West, was allowed to disappear when the couple simply told her school in Gloucester that she had moved to London.
The report, commissioned by Gloucestershire County Council and written by the specialist Bridge Child Care Consultancy, warns education and social services not to “soft-pedal” issues of child protection and says that teachers and others should listen to children’s stories, “however apparently bizarre”.
It also recommends nationwide action to reduce the risks facing runaway children.
This week Rosemary West was convicted at Winchester Crown Court of murdering 10 girls and young women found buried at her Cromwell Street home in Gloucester. She received 10 terms of life imprisonment with a recommendation that she is never released. Her late husband Fred committed suicide in Winson Green jail after admitting to 12 murders.
Gloucestershire commissioned the report in January when it became apparent that the West family was known to the county’s social services and that two of the victims had been school-aged.
The Bridge Consultancy, which was recommended for the job by the Department of Health, clears the council of any major errors, stating that “there is not a child protection service in the UK that on the basis of the information available could have predicted that the family was at the centre of multiple murders”.
The report says that “a review is needed of the processes for tracking children who move schools to ensure that details of new addresses and schools can be more effectively obtained and subsequently checked. Steps towards an appropriate system have now been taken in Gloucestershire but consideration of national action is needed.
“National action is also needed in relation to children who run away from their families or care and place themselves at risk.”
It calls for guarantees that schools will report evidence of potential abuse to the social services. Fred West’s claim to a teacher in 1978 that he had “laid out” a boy went unreported.
The Department for Education and Employment said that the recommendations are being considered.
