Child sex abuse trial: Ex-detective had "sex with young girls”

PC Kenneth Dawes was arrested in May 2015 and is under investigation by South Yorkshire Police and the Independent Police Complaints Commission in relation to three allegations.

The officer, based in Rotherham from 1985 to 2004 — had been earlier demoted from Detective Constable after several misconduct offences.

The jury in the ongoing Rotherham child sex abuse trial has heard details of two of the complaints against him, were made last year by two alleged victims in the case.

One claims he failed to properly look into her sex abuse claim when she was 13 or 14 and that he “have sex with young girls” and pass drugs onto “Ash” – believed to be central defendant Arshid Hussain, now of Goole.

Another said that in 2002 or 2003 the PC had told an associate of a suspect that she had made a witness statement.

She also claimed she had witnessed then-Det Con Dawes supplying class A drugs.

On Wednesday, the court heard PC Dawes was also being investigated for searching the names of the central defendants in the trial on the police database “without apparent legitimate policing purposes”.

Mr Peter Hampton, prosecuting, said the officer searched on several occasions the names between 2006 and 2010 for Arshid Hussain, Basharat Hussain and one of the alleged victims in the current trial.

The information was revealed as part of the agreed facts confirmed by prosecution and defence counsel.

PC Dawes - who denies any wrongdoing — is still a South Yorkshire Police officer but is suspended and past retirement age.

Between 2000 and 2007, he admitted eight breaches of the code of conduct, the court told, receiving two warnings and, in 2004, was fined six days’ pay, moved from Rotherham to Sheffield and demoted.

It was also revealed in court that deceased PC Hassan Ali — said earlier to have been involved in a “no prosecution deal” relating to Hussain — was under investigation from the IPCC for two allegations of corrupt practice and three of neglect or failure of duty when he died following a road crash last January.

The court heard this week that in an interview before his death, PC Ali, denied the alleged handover took place, as did a colleague who was on duty with him at the time.