May | 2013 | Westminster Confidential

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a particularly honest and decent journalist who is prepared to take up causes and issues others might ignore. I am reproducing her article today on the exposure of Stuart Hall via The Needle blog because it is also providing an invaluable archive of child abuse over the last 30 years.Those who are following the Richmond child abuse scandal will find the articles well worth studying as they illustrate the depth of successive cover ups of this issue today and in the past.

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I think The Independent were brave to publish this article and the lady who wrote the original correspondence which launched the investigation into Stuart Hall was very brave indeed. Please read the entire article.

While most of the media are portraying the crimes Stuart Hall has pleaded guilty to as inappropriate kissing and groping this article betrays the lie to all that and indicates possible collusion with others in the establishment.

I have been waiting anxiously for this moment, the moment when Stuart Hall would either be found guilty or innocent of the sexual abuse of young girls.
Last year I became personally involved in this saga, and that involvement led to the investigation by Lancashire Police which ended with Hall’s confession. His victims must have feared that with his power and money he would fight their allegations and win. He did initially deny all charges and made statements about his “innocence”…

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For those following the Richmond child sexual abuse scandal a most extraordinary phone conversation has just taken place between my colleague Mark Conrad for Exaro News and Louis Minster, director of social services at the time.

Mr Minster was in charge of the council’s social services council at the time it is alleged boys from Grafton Close children’s home were taken to Elm Guest House in Barnes and sexually abused by VIPs, including the late Sir Cyril Smith in the early 1980s. He was the boss of John Stingemore, the head of the home, who has already been arrested by the Met police as part of Operation Fernbridge

Mr Minster is in a bit of the trouble. The 81-year-old ex director now living in retirement in Malta first claimed he had never had heard of the scandal when first approached by Exaro. Then it emerged he was briefed by Terry Earland, head of children’s services and now Richmond’s own files showed he twice unusually pulled the file of a 14-year-old boy in care who had knowledge of child abuse at the time. Yet he knows nothing.

Naturally we would want to ask him about these discrepancies. So when rung up in Malta he pretends he isn’t there and he isn’t Louis Minster. When rumbled he doesn’t want to answer any questions. Listen to the amazing interview at Exaro News (http://www.exaronews.com/articles/4950/ex-richmond-boss-louis-minster-denies-being-louis-minster ).

Perhaps it is about time he was questioned by the Met Police. Then he won’t be able to dodge these questions and pretend he is someone else.