Political correctness can lead to abuse...

The blindness of the politically-correct is just criminal...

A council's political correctness allowed a pair of homosexual foster parents to sexually abuse children in their care, a report has concluded.

Managers and social workers were reluctant to investigate Craig Faunch and Ian Wathey for fear of being accused of prejudice.

Instead, they were viewed as "trophy carers" who, by virtue of their sexuality, had a "badge" which made their actions less questionable.

A mother of eight-year-old twins raised concerns about them with social services after finding a photograph of one of the boys using the lavatory.

But the authorities took no action, accepting that the two men had been "naive and silly".

In reality, they had been using the boys for sexual gratification within months of being approved as carers by the Labour-run Wakefield Metropolitan District Council.

Faunch, 42, and Wathey, 33, were jailed last year for a string of offences against four boys, aged eight and 14, at their home in Pontefract, West Yorks.

The victims were among 18 children placed with the pair, Yorkshire's first homosexual foster parents, between August 2003 and January 2005.

An independent inquiry concluded that the children were let down by "failures in performance" of individuals and the systems operated by the council. However, it did not name the staff involved.

The panel, led by Brian Parrott, the former head of Surrey social services, found: "The fear of being discriminatory led them to fail to discriminate between the appropriate and the abusive.

"These anxieties about discrimination have deep roots, we argue - in social work training, professional identity and organisational cultures, and the remedies for these go beyond the remit of any single council or inquiry report."

The inquiry found that potential indicators of sexual abuse were inadequately investigated, understood or acted upon. At no time was an effective annual review of Faunch and Wathey conducted.