Failings By Officials After Leeds teen Raped and Killed

6 March 2012, 15:55 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

A report says more could have been done to stop a known sex offender from raping a killing a 15 year old teenager.

15 year old Zuzanna Zommer, was raped and her throat was cut by known violent sex offender Michael Clark at her home in Harehills in Leeds, in 2007.

A serious case review by the Leeds Safeguarding Childrens board says more should have been done to minimise the risk he posed to the community.

It also says police and public protection agencies failed to act effectively.

Now West Yorkshire Police, Humberside Police and Leeds Safeguarding Children Board have apologised to the family.

But officials said no-one could have predicted Clarke would commit murder.

40 year old Clark, was given a life sentence at Sheffield Crown Court for the murder on Compton Row in Harehills.

He attacked Zuzanna five weeks after her family had moved to the city from Poland.

Her body was found by her parents at their home in Compton Row with her throat cut and skull fractured, she’d also been raped.

The serious case review report has revealed there were missed opportunities and breakdowns in communication between the agencies.

Clarke, from Scunthorpe, had been released from Hull prison after serving a sentence for assaults against women.

He moved to Leeds 11 months before killing Zuzanna, but Humberside Police failed to give the public protection agencies in the city enough warning that he was moving there.

Information was passed one day before he arrived in the city.

The report finishes by saying that Zuzanna's murder “lay within the perpetrator's psyche, a man with a defined history of violence and sexual abuse perpetrated on women”.

It also says it was "highly probable and foreseeable" that Clarke would have gone on to harm a female, but Zuzanna's murder “was not foreseeable”.

Sex offender Michael Clark killed Zuzanna Zommer in Leeds