Police and other agencies made numerous failures in the case of twin sisters who killed themselves after reporting sexual abuse, official reports concluded yesterday.
The parents of Sam and Chris Gould, who died within four months of each other, said that a series of chances to save them were missed.
A review by Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Safeguarding Children Partnership Board found that agency responses after the girls reported abuse were “fragmented”. Police closed the case because the girls were struggling with their mental health and did not want to give video evidence, but guidance was not followed that said alternatives should have been explored.
Officers failed to contact people to whom Chris had spoken, while communication between Sam’s school, mental health services and the local authority was “ineffective”. Having moved to Cambridgeshire, at the age of 14 Chris told a friend that she and Sam had been abused from the age of six to their teenage years in Hampshire.
Their parents, Ian Gould and Jane Cannon, said that the girls had felt “completely invalidated” when told that no action would be taken against the person they had named. Sam, 16, took her own life in September 2018 and Chris died five months later, at 17.
