14 DAY TRIAL // The South Wales Police lost several DVDs containing an interview with a victim of child sexual abuse and failed to report it for a period of two years, earning a fine of £160,000 ($250,000 / €220,000) for breaching the provisions of the Data Protection Act.
The fine was given by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO),UK’s data protection watchdog, which determined that reporting the incident was delayed due to lack of staff training.
DVDs were stored in an office desk
Safe keeping of the recording, which was part of the evidence for the case, was the responsibility of an investigating officer, who discovered the loss of all three copies after an office move in October 2011.
The interview had been recorded in August 2011 and contained highly sensitive information from victims and witnesses. ICO was notified of the data breach two years later, on August 12, 2013.
Apart from the victim’s identity (her face was clearly seen throughout the two hours and 46 minute recording), the names of the perpetrators were also revealed.
At the time of losing the DVDs, the police station had no regulations in place regarding the safe storage of victim and witness interviews and practices differed across the force.
In this particular case, the officer placed the unencrypted DVDs in a desk drawer, shared with another fellow officer, in a restricted area where access was granted based on a digital electronic keypad.
The recordings have not been recovered
A second interview of the victim was attempted by the police, but recounting the abuse was too distressing and the endeavor was abandoned.
The case was under prosecution at the time of the incident, and lack of this sort of evidence could have influenced the outcome and caused additional distress to the victim.
However, the officer’s annotations of the interview and a statement from the victim clarifying some of the issues allowed prosecution to continue. Ultimately, the defendants were convicted in court.
"The monetary penalty given to South Wales Police should send a clear message that organisations have to take responsibility for personal data and the way in which it is stored," says Anne Jones, Assistant Commissioner for Wales.
Besides the monetary penalty, the police department was also forced to sign an undertaking to ensure that appropriate policy is enforced for preventing similar incidents from happening.
It is worth noting that the DVDs have still not been recovered, and if they resurface and are accessed by a third party, distress could extend not just to the victim but also to the defendants, who may suffer reprisal attacks when released from prison.