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Multiple “missed opportunities” allowed a predatory high school headteacher to sexually abuse teenage girls for years, a review has found. Neil Foden, 68, is a “skilled manipulator” who had created an environment in which he was “inviolable to challenge” meaning he was able to offend in “plain sight”, a child practice review by North Wales Safeguarding Board said. The review, published on Tuesday, found more than 50 examples of times when concerns were raised and not sufficiently acted on by those working in the Cyngor Gwynedd local authority. Foden, who worked at a school in North Wales, was described as a “powerful figure” within the education community in Wales. It was heard that he had joined Ysgol Friars school in 1988 and became headteacher in 1997. In 2023, he was arrested after a pupil showed staff members “explicitly sexual” messages and images from the headteacher on her phone. Foden was subsequently convicted in July 2024 of 19 offences involving the abuse of four girls over a four-year period. A judge described the former union boss as a “domineering” character who had a “sexual obsession with young teenage girls” and sentenced him to 17 years in prison. A child practice review, led by expert Jan Pickles, found that concerns were raised over Foden on several occasions. But the report said there were multiple missed opportunities to intervene and stop his behaviours. It described Foden as a “sophisticated and opportunistic predator who had developed his strategy for sexual offending undetected over a long period of time”. The report said: “Foden had cultivated and refined an environment where, by normalising his behaviours and by abusing his power and position of trust, he was able to make himself inviolable to challenge and thus able to offend in plain sight.” The report said concerns over Foden had been “openly discussed” as early as March 2019. Around this time, a member of staff on the senior management team at the school had reportedly spoken to Foden and advised him not to have one-to-one interactions with female pupils “alone in his room”. The review said this member of staff had reminded him of “professional boundaries” and said “he was making himself vulnerable to allegations”. By early 2022, a member of the school’s senior management team was aware that he was having “increasingly frequent contact” with vulnerable female pupils in his office. In March 2023, concerns were again discussed among senior staff members and Foden was “warned about his behaviour”. And, in June 2023, Foden was known to be seeing a “vulnerable” girl both in his office and out of the school premises, but “no intervention was made”. It stated that when anybody reported Foden’s contact with vulnerable female pupils, “both he and the professionals working with him cited offering counselling support as the prima facie reason for his having 1:1 contact with pupil”. Foden was described as a “skilled manipulator” who “groomed the environment in which he worked”. “A lack of staff training coupled with poor record keeping meant that Foden’s patterns of behaviour were not recognised and not recorded,” it said. The report stated that professionals working in the school and local authority failed to “recognise Foden’s grooming behaviours either, and where there were concerns about his interaction with pupils these were not viewed from the perspective of potential risk of harm to a child, but only through a lens of the potential for a child or children to make malicious or false allegations against Foden”. The report made a series of recommendations to the local authority. Lynne Neagle, Welsh Education Secretary, described the report as a “sobering and shocking read”. She said: “I am truly sorry for the abuse (survivors) suffered, sorry for the trust that was betrayed and sorry that they were failed by so many of the people and organisations that should have protected them. “I know many people reading the report and listening to the coverage will be disappointed and frustrated that we are once again in a position where we are learning the lessons of an appalling abuse of trust. “I want to be clear – these events should never have happened, and it is incumbent on all of us to ensure that they are never repeated. “I would like to affirm my commitment to the children and young people of Wales, and that of the Welsh Government. “We want you to be safe, supported and able to follow your dreams without facing abuse, discrimination or harm. “We want Wales to be the best place to grow up, and we are committed to listening to you, and to acting on what you tell us.” Ms Neagle confirmed all recommendations directed at the Welsh Government in the report would be accepted, and said the Government was committed to acting on these “immediately”.
