THE rape of a nine-year-old boy by a 12-year-old fellow pupil at a centre for vulnerable and abused children was not taken to court due to a botched investigation by the school, an inquiry has heard.

A report by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) investigated reports of sexual abuse at five facilities across the country, including at Appletree Treatment Centre (ATC), near Kendal.

The rape, which took place on November 9, 2006, came to light after a pupil was overheard by a staff member weeks later accusing another pupil of sexually abusing a boy who was a resident at the centre.

The day after, the children were interviewed by staff but the matter was not immediately raised to children’s social care and was only reported two days after.

According to the report the local authority and the police both expressed “concern that the incident had not been reported sooner and that the children had been interviewed by ATC staff”.

Both the victim and perpetrator were later interviewed by Cumbria Police.

However, due to the school ‘contaminating’ evidence the Crown Prosecution Service decided to take no further action, the inquiry heard.

The report stated this was because; the perpetrator had admitted the offences, there were ‘discrepancies in the accounts’, the young ages and damaged backgrounds of the children involved, and the school ‘interviewing’ the children and contaminating the evidence.

The Crown Prosecution Service stated that, because of the way the school had gathered evidence from the pupils the court would have “thrown it out anyway, if it had gone that far”.

In 2007, the victim, who had moved to a foster home soon after the horrific events, described to his foster parent that he had been repeatedly sexually abused, “maybe a 100 times”, while he had been at the school.

He told the inquiry that the support he had received at his foster placement meant that he could talk for the first time about what had happened to him.