Southend 'grooming gang' victims 'died from drugs and suicide'

Robin Jamieson, the former NHS district psychologist for Southend, ran the borough’s mental health services in the 1980s and 1990s. He said dozens, if not hundreds, of paedophile ring victims were let down by police and social services, whose failures meant they weren’t quickly referred to mental health services.

Some of the abused children have since died in tragic circumstances. 

Robin was involved in the official multi-agency response to the so-called “Shoebury Sex Ring” – a south Essex child abuse network uncovered in 1989. His staff treated some victims but raised repeated concerns that others abused by the same paedophiles hadn’t been referred for treatment.

He wants the Lampard Inquiry to go through the list of known and suspected victims, see how many eventually came to the attention of mental health services and whether any are among the deaths under investigation.

In 1989, local charities discovered dozens or hundreds of local children had been abused and trafficked by Dennis King and Brian Tanner, leaders of what the authorities dubbed the 'Shoebury Sex Ring' (Image: Anglia Press Agency / Essex Records Office)

A number of vulnerable young people linked to the ring have since died from drugs, alcohol and suicide – but were not inpatients at the time of their deaths.

The Lampard Inquiry, probing the high death rate among Essex mental health inpatients, rejected Robin’s application in part because he retired in the late 1990s, whereas it is investigating deaths between 2000 and 2023.

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“The inquiry doesn’t appear to accept that a death in the year 2000 or beyond could have been set in motion by a serious failure years earlier,” Robin said. “It seems like a very arbitrary way of making such important decisions, which I feel has the potential to let a lot of people off the hook.

“It may be that failures which contributed to some deaths began outside the mental health service, with other agencies that were too slow to refer.”

Robin is now seeking legal advice over the rejection.

An inquiry spokesman said: “It is not necessary to be a core participant to engage meaningfully with the inquiry.” 

They said regular witnesses’ evidence had “equal value” to that of core participants, adding: “Core participant status is a matter which is decided by the chair and the inquiry will not comment publicly on the status or reasons behind specific applications.”

In 2016, then-Essex Police and Crime Commissioner Nick Alston said modern police attitudes and tactics were very different to those at the time of the original investigation.

He and then-Chief Constable Stephen Kavanagh publicly announced a fresh investigation.