Cambridgeshire Police sorry to abuse victims for seven-year wait

Police have apologised after abuse victims were left waiting more than seven years for their attacker to be convicted.

Dean Nicholson, 57, was jailed in December after admitting sexually abusing four youngsters between 1992 and 2004 in Cambridgeshire.

One of his victims originally reported the crimes in 2015 and said the wait for justice left her feeling "neglected" and "abused by the police".

Cambridgeshire Police apologised.

The force said Nicholson, formerly of Station Road, Abbots Ripton, was 26 when he began abusing his victims, who were all under 16, including one who was just six years old at the time.

He initially denied the charges, but pleaded guilty midway through his trial, after two victims had given evidence.

One of his victims, Autumn, not her real name, said when she first went to police she quickly took part in a video interview which led her to believe: "This is going to happen, he's going to be arrested and this is going to be finally dealt with."

But the police investigation took years, leaving her and the other victims feeling "like we weren't important".

"You're just hoping every day that somebody is going to come back to and say, 'right, we've sorted this now', but it didn't.

"Now, when I look back on it, I'm so angry that it took seven-and-a-half years to get justice. It's too long," she said.

"Every time I tried to contact the police they would say, 'Oh, it's not a live case, so we can't deal with this right now - we're dealing with live cases'.

"It just felt so it just felt like we didn't have a voice, that we didn't matter because we didn't have money or celebrity status.

"I do feel abused by the police, they neglected me, which is abusive. It was like I just didn't matter."

Heather Birch, from the charity Peterborough Rape Crisis, which is supporting the women, fears the slow process will dissuade other victims from coming forward.

"That's my main concern - that this now becomes the norm," she said. "That because of police resources we now see police investigations taking a lot longer.

"It's going to stop people coming forward... and then in turn perpetrators will get away with their crimes."

Det Insp Sherrie Nash, from Cambridgeshire Police, said the force apologised "unreservedly".

"Seven years out of anybody's life is a hugely long time and no investigation, in all honesty, should take that long," she said.

She said the force "set ourselves high standards in terms of our investigations and we have fallen short on this occasion, and I'm aware of the impact and re-traumatisation that this process has had."

Det Insp Nash said that reported sexual offences had grown in an "unprecedented fashion".

"That means, unfortunately, as with all areas of business within policing, that we have to apply a risk-based set of principles to manage that demand.

"In no way does it mean that any case is more important than another and I wish to stress that to the victims in this case, and any other victim whose crime is under investigation at the moment, but we have to apply those principles in order to keep people safe as best we possibly can."

Find BBC News: East of England on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you have a story suggestion email [email protected]