Let down by social workers

Yet the failings behind this horrific case – which has chilling

parallels with the abuse meted out by Josef Fritzl in Austria – are familiar; a lack of communication between the relevant authorities that allowed a Sheffield man to repeatedly rape his two daughters over 25 years and father seven children by them.

It was the inability of Humberside Police to share information that led to Ian Huntley obtaining a caretaker's job at Soham, Cambridgeshire, before going on to murder schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. The police may have learned lessons – but other agencies appear not to have done so.

In this instance, officials and social workers in Sheffield and Lincolnshire missed countless opportunities to intervene, and stop the father's 35-year reign of terror, because they refused to listen to his daughters, the victims of this bureaucratic horror story whose ordeal began when they were as young as eight years-old.

And, when the brutal father started moving his family 67 times to avoid detection, no one, including several senior professionals, questioned

his motives.

Officials openly talked about the case – but they failed to act. In time, the family came under the auspices of 28 different agencies and 100 members of staff. Even by the standards of recent Serious Case Reviews, this is negligent – and indefensible.

The consequence of this serial incompetence was that these two poor women continued to be abused, for decades, by the one man who they should have been able to trust implicitly – their father.

Mercifully, he has been imprisoned for life. But that is no consolation to his daughters as they seek, somehow, to rebuild their lives. A belated apology does not deserve to suffice.

Of course, resources remain a challenge. A recent report revealed that two out of three frontline social workers in Sheffield are

inexperienced. This does not inspire confidence. But numbers are not the sole issue – there will always be a risk of abusers, like this sadist, slipping through the net and tormenting their victims while the communication between all care agencies remains naive, flawed and, most seriously of all, uncaring.