London’s Victims’ Commissioner Claire Waxman has highlighted a “gap in information” in the family court system which “hides police perpetrators”.
Ms Waxman OBE has warned that although there has been a huge amount of work in the Met to improve vetting procedures and practices there is a need for a national reform regarding information disclosed in the courts system.
Ms Waxman OBE has warned that although there has been a huge amount of work in the Met to improve vetting procedures and practices there is a need for a national reform regarding information disclosed in the courts system.
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00:00 Absolutely. I mean it will impact public trust and confidence. The public need to
00:05 see that there has been an urgent overhaul and reform of vetting
00:09 procedures to make sure that we're identifying officers earlier and making
00:13 sure they're not coming into the force and rooting out those that shouldn't be
00:16 in the force. So I know there's been a huge amount of work within the Met to
00:21 improve vetting procedures and practices and we're seeing the results of that but
00:25 it needs national reform. One of the areas that I'm very concerned about I'm
00:29 trying to shine a light on is that there's a gap in information between
00:32 what happens in our family courts in family justice and what comes across to
00:36 the criminal courts and we saw that recently in the Cliff Mitchell case and
00:41 what we saw there was he was subject to a non-molestation order but he didn't
00:45 have to declare it so the police had no idea and those sorts of things that
00:49 happen in family courts such as non-molestation orders, maybe a barring
00:52 order or a finding of domestic abuse or sexual abuse isn't coming across to the
00:57 police so how do they know who's a risk if they're a police officer coming in so
01:01 it's absolutely critical that we see national reform.