A police force paid almost £10,000 to a convicted child rapist to act as an undercover informant during a major sex abuse investigation, it can be revealed.
Northumbria Police paid the man to infiltrate parties where young girls were being drugged and abused by an Asian grooming gang. The man - known only as Mr XY - was recruited by the force even though he was convicted in 2002 of drugging and raping a teenage schoolgirl and inviting another man to rape her.
In 2014 detectives signed him up as a Covert Human Intelligence Source (CHIS) as they tried to smash a child sex ring operating in the west end of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Details of the case can only now be reported following the conviction of the final members of the 18 strong gang.
The group, which included one white woman, were convicted of carrying out harrowing abuse against at least 22 vulnerable girls.
Last night child protection campaigners expressed deep unease about putting a convicted paedophile on the police payroll. But Northumbria Police's Chief Constable, Steve Ashman, defended the decision, insisting as unpalatable as it was, it had led to vulnerable people being protected from harm.
The force paid XY regular instalments over 21 months amounting to £9,680 in order to pass information to officers about the time and locations of parties where young girls were being abused.
But it can now also be revealed that in 2015, while still on the police's payroll, he was arrested on suspicion of another child sex offence.
He was arrested after an underage girl told police a man had approached her and had made an indecent proposition.
The case was subsequently dropped although the circumstances why remain unclear. XY's role with the police only came to light during a court hearing last year when lawyers acting for some of the abusers argued that his involvement in the investigation undermined the entire case.
During the hearing, defence lawyer, Robin Patton, described him as: "A convicted child rapist who drugged a child and invited someone else to rape her after he had."
It also emerged he had numerous convictions for dishonesty, was on the Sex Offenders Register and was actually serving a suspended sentence when he was initially deployed by police in 2014.
Giving evidence from behind a screen and with the public gallery cleared, XY told the hearing that he had been a paid informant for six or seven years and had enjoyed working for the police.
He claimed he had been recruited because he acted as an informal taxi driver for some of the defendants.
"I would get to know where they pick up their drugs, where the parties were," he said.
At another point, he claimed: "I was chilling with the boys. I had to make it look like I was their friend.
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