Teenager’s sex killing ‘should have been prevented’

The brutal murder of a teenage girl at the hands of a convicted rapist could have been prevented but for a series of failings by key agencies in Yorkshire charged with protecting the public from highly dangerous offenders, a report finds today.

Polish-born Zuzanna Zommer had only been living in Leeds for six weeks when she was raped and left in a pool of blood at the family home in a frenzied attack by killer Michael Clark.

A serious case review said it had been “highly probable” that Clark would attack someone after his release from prison for the latest of a string of vicious assaults which saw him receiving sentences totalling 22 years between the ages of 20 and 40.

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It found the murder of 14-year-old Zuzanna 11 months later in October 2007 was not foreseeable but could have been prevented had agencies involved worked more effectively or had there been measures to restrict the freedom of high-risk repeat offenders.

It said: “More should have been done to effectively manage the risk posed by the perpetrator and, had everything been done that should have been done, the outcome may have been different.”

The report found Humberside Police, who were criticised for failings over the Soham murderer Ian Huntley in 2002, only told colleagues in Leeds that Clark planned to live in the city the day before his arrival, leaving no time to draw up a plan to manage the risks he posed.

There were further failings by West Yorkshire Police due to the “weaknesses” of a computer system which meant officers who questioned Clark over four unrelated incidents did not know he was a high-risk sex offender. His behaviour was not flagged up to specialist staff who were monitoring him and they later downgraded their checks despite his history of serious offending.

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The prison and probation service also failed to share a report compiled a decade earlier on Clark which showed he was a psychopath. He befriended the Zommers after they moved in near him in Harehills, Leeds. They had no idea he was a violent sex offender.

The report makes 15 recommendations including calling on the Home Secretary to review controls on high-risk offenders.

Today Jane Held, chair of the Leeds Safeguarding Children Board, said: “This was a tragic and deeply upsetting case for the family and the local community and my deepest sympathies lie with Zuzanna’s family.

“There were a number of things we could have done better. It is still extremely regrettable that we didn’t always do things as well as we could and we accept that is not good enough. The agencies involved accept all the findings and have acted on all the recommendations.”

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Humberside Police Assistant Chief Constable Alan Leaver denied the case had echoes of the failings identified in the Soham inquiry when Huntley’s details were wiped from computers.

“We do acknowledge that we could have communicated and transferred information better but I don’t believe that these were significant contributory factors in this case,” he said.

“When you have dangerous people like Michael Clark who are determined to commit a violent or serious crime, it’s extremely difficult to prevent these things from happening. It is our responsibility to manage people when they are released from prison and we do that do the best of our ability. But in reality our powers are very limited.”

Chief Supt Richard Jackson, of West Yorkshire Police, said: “We take the findings of the serious case review extremely seriously and have worked to ensure that all the recommendations were implemented quickly and at the earliest opportunity.”