Southend football youth coach inquiry prompts police apology

Essex Police has apologised for how officers handled an investigation into a former Southend United youth coach who sexually abused boys.

A victim made the force aware of 82-year-old Derek Hinchliffe’s crimes in 2012, but the inquiry was dropped and not reopened for five years.

Hinchliffe was jailed on Friday and the court heard he asked teenage boys to bathe with him during the 1970s, and for one to train naked with him.

A police spokesman said the original investigation “did not meet the high standards we would now expect”.

First reported by the Echo, he added: “We acknowledge this and apologise for it.”

Hinchliffe, of Ossett, West Yorkshire, was found guilty of 11 counts of sexual and indecent assaults after a 14-day trial at Basildon Crown Court.

He was sentenced to seven years and seven months in prison.

Passing sentence, Judge Shane Collery KC said the abuser was first reported to Essex Police in 2012.

However, he revealed officers “rather remarkably” closed the case because they failed to identify who Hinchliffe was.

“It was not, I have to say, the most effective of investigations,” the judge said.

The investigation was reopened in 2017 when allegations made to the Football Association were passed to detectives.

The police spokesman said a “meticulous investigation” then led to Hinchliffe’s unanimous conviction by a jury.

Hinchliffe was described by Judge Collery as a “man to be feared” who abused his power at the club.

Prosecutor Emma Nash added that the four victims followed his sexual demands because they were “desperate to become professional footballers”.

In 2015, Essex Police apologised to alleged victims of abuse after it found problems with 30 investigations involving 59 children.

The reports were made to the force between April 2011 and November 2014.

Detectives Sharon Patterson and Lee Pollard were jailed in 2019 after a prosecutor said their “laziness” scuppered some of the investigations.

Patterson and Pollard, who were having an affair, told the Old Bailey there was administrative chaos within the unit at the time.

The BBC does not know if the allegation against Hinchcliffe in 2012 was one of these 30 cases.