FOI 1143-2025/26- Child sexual abuse

Request:

Please provide, for each of the last five calendar years, the number of recorded crimes that meet all of the following criteria:

Q1.      The offence involved two or more perpetrators (whether suspected, charged, or convicted), and

Q2.      The offence relates to the organised sexual abuse of children, defined for the purposes of this request as any child sexual abuse involving coordination, planning, or joint activity between multiple offenders.

If your force does not use a specific classification for "organised" child sexual abuse, please provide the number of recorded child sexual abuse offences in which two or more perpetrators were recorded, flagged, or otherwise identified.

Response:

Extent and Result of Searches to Locate Information

To locate the information relevant to your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police.

I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by North Yorkshire Police. 

Decision

I have today decided to disclose the following information to you.

A search has been carried out for sexual offence crimes within the timeframe specified where there is a victim, under the age of 18, linked and also more than one offender, to which there is 5. I am exempting the yearly breakdown pursuant to Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act). Please see the exemption explanation below.

*Please note This search does not include suspects. We looked for someone with an offender type involvement such as offender, charged, defendant etc

Further to the above North Yorkshire Police can neither confirm nor denies whether any other information is held, by virtue of the following exemption Section 23(5) Information Supplied by or Concerning, Certain Security Bodies. Please see the exemption explanation below.

Section 23 is an absolute exemption which means that legislators have identified that harm would be caused by any release, including a confirmation or denial that information is held. In addition, there is no requirement to consider the public interest test.

No inference can be drawn from this refusal that information is or isn’t held.

Exemption Explanation

Section 40 – Personal Information

Section 17 of the Act requires North Yorkshire Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which: (a) states that fact, (b) specifies the exemption in question and (c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

Section 40(2) is an absolute class based exemption, which does not require a public interest test, but requires the balancing of the legitimate interests of the public against the interests of the individual under the first Data Protection Principle; in that processing of personal data must be lawful and fair (DPA 2018 35(1), EUGDPR Article 5(1)).

Where an individual can be identified by such data, releasing it would clearly breach the first data protection principle of being ‘fair’ to the data subject.

This exemption applies because the right given under the FOI Act to request official information held by public authorities does not apply to the personal data of third parties where disclosure of that information would not be fair to the individual, and where there is no legitimate public interest in disclosure.

In all the circumstances of the case it has been determined that the duty to the individual under the Data Protection Act 2018 & EU General Data Protection Regulations, and the public interest in maintaining the exemption from disclosure of personal information held by the force in such instances, outweighs the public interest in disclosure.  In this instance, personal information can only be disclosed to the individual concerned. 

Releasing personal details to a person other than the data subject would not only breach the data subject’s Data Protection rights it may also breach the obligations placed on an authority under the European Convention on Human Rights

Pursuant to Section 17(1) of the Act this letter acts as a refusal notice under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in relation to your request.

Please note that systems used for recording information are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data.  It should be noted therefore that this force’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other responses you may receive.