Monthly Archives: August 2014

Why the Church has to atone for decades of child sexual abuse

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Just before I went on holiday I penned a piece for Exaro on moves under discussion by the Anglican and Methodists to start tackling  the huge legacy of child sexual abuse by priests and teachers employed by the church..

For once it was more optimistic piece suggesting that at long last church leaders were realising that they had to say more than sorry and had to start taking responsibility for what had happened and is still happening.

I was  a bit taken aback to find some strong Twitter responses suggesting that overnight I had turned from an investigative journalist to an apologist for the Anglican church and a budding correspondent for Church Times. Ironically it came just as the Church appear to think that I might have gone too far in highlighting what they were contemplating before they had reached a final decision.

The piece on the Exaro website highlights the work of the joint safeguarding liaison group for Anglicans and Methodists which is now looking at earmarking money to three groups – including the Lantern project in Wirral – to provide counselling for church sex abuse victims. This move is by itself welcome – given counselling has not been properly provided for thousands of victims whatever the government may like to claim.

The campaign group, Stop Church Child Abuse, says that hundreds of clergy with claims against them of child abuse have not been prosecuted, pointing out that safeguarding procedures allow bishops to keep such allegations away from the authorities. These procedures may not be changed.

Also Exaro has established that the CoE was pressing the government more than a year ago to set up a full-scale inquiry into child sex abuse in a range of institutions in the UK – long before Theresa May, the home secretary, decided to set up an independent panel and when David Cameron was being at best equivocal and at worst ignoring the scale of the problem.

I make no apologies for reporting some of the more positive moves by the Church. But make no mistake I will continue to pursue the issue and investigate the large number of cases where the authorities have failed and people’s lives ruined as a result.

 

 

 

Hidden Brittany: The petit delights of Dol-de-Bretagne

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Mont St Michel: Viewed from the almost deserted Dol Marsh

Mont St Michel: Viewed from the almost deserted Dol Marsh

Just back from a two week break in Brittany with the grandkids where to my surprise very little has changed once you get off the motorways. Rural France has empty roads, open spaces and places to visit without meeting the crowds at the height of the tourist season. Indeed two places we visited which commanded just a sentence in the Michelin Green Guide we had to ourselves.

Our destination was a busy campsite just outside the medieval town of Dol-de-Bretagne – a place which is more likely to attract French tourists than the English – and most of the people do not speak English. It also stages a medieval tournament in August celebrating the rivalries in France once the English had been defeated!

Once away from the huge international tourist Des Ormes campsite with its five swimming pools, horse riding,golf and zip wire, you can find places that have hardly changed in centuries.

View from Mount Dol over Brittany and the coast

View from Mount Dol over Brittany and the coast

Most popular with us was Mont Dol -a 208 foot high granite mound. approached by a narrow road with a midway hairpin bend. Despite its diminutive size- it offers stupendous views stretching for miles across the Brittany-Normandy border, a tower, an old windmill, picnic area, children’s playground and a creperie.

Going to collect cockles and mussels French style

Going to collect cockles and mussels French style

In front of the mound lies a bit of France that resembles  coastal Norfolk and Suffolk – a large expanse of salt marshes and drained farmland with dykes. Here only a few miles from the overcrowded  mega tourist attraction of Mont St Michael are deserted bays, huge open skies, roads and tracks only frequented by cyclists and people searching for cockles and mussels.

Ruined castle at Hede

Ruined castle at Hede

Inland were the towns of Combourg – which has its own cheese – and Hede. The former has a lake and a chateau , the latter is on a hill with a ruined castle where we had the place to ourselves and the grandkids discovered a secret passage. The only public warning was not to nick the stones.

Friendly lemur at the zoo

Friendly lemur at the zoo

We also discovered a more popular zoo at a Bourbansais Chateau. – again set in gardens with everything from lions to lemurs. It also had its own pack of hunting dogs who put on a daily display – without killing anything!

Cheeky grandson Leon in the ruined cloisters at Le Tronchet

Cheeky grandson Leon in the ruined cloisters at Le Tronchet

But probably the quietest spot was a a half ruined former Benedictine abbey at Le Tronchet – a small village- which turned out to have a garden attached to it with picnic tables. Again apart from two French cyclists we had the place to ourselves.

It’s still great to know that you can find places in August where you can get away from the crowds if you want peace and quiet- even with four grandchildren.

 

Elm Guest House: Child abuse charges to be reinstated

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A very important decision has been taken by the Crown Prosecution Service to reinstate charges against John Stingemore,the former deputy manager, of Grafton Close children’s home in Richmond.

Stingemore and Father Tony McSweeney,already face  a trial next February on a series of child sex abuse charges and have pleaded not guilty to all the charges against them.

The full story by my colleague Mark Conrad is on the Exaro website.but in essence it involved the CPS reviewing the  charges after a complaint from Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale, who revealed the scale of the scandal against Sir Cyril Smith, and planned action by Tom Watson MP to help the witness involved.

Exaro revealed last December that the CPS had withdrawn four charges based on accusations by one witness, but had made a serious mistake about the evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police Service’s paedophile unit under Operation Fernbridge. It led to an adverse view of the witness’s credibility.

 

While it would be wrong to reveal the full details of the circumstances of the case in order not to prejudice the trial, the decision is important for two reasons.

First it shows that survivors accounts should not be brushed aside and second it suggests that the pressure the police and the CPS are under to handle so many child sexual abuse cases at the moment that they may not have had the time to examine all the details.

If it was not for active MPs like Simon and Tom who are prepared to take up cases like this, we would still be facing the danger of further cover ups and evidence not being tested by the courts.

The last thing we want is anything else not properly investigated when people have waited so long for justice.

How the government lets your car reveal how much disability benefit you receive?

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DVLA -revealing disability benefits via car regostration

DVLA -revealing disability benefits via car regostration

With the tabloid media frenzy on cheating benefit claimants reaching new heights and people believing that some disabled people are fraudsters, the government seems to have found a new way to embarrass people on benefit.

The forthcoming abolition of car tax discs  from October means that the only way to check whether a vehicle is taxed is to check free on line at the Driver Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA). All anybody needs is the vehicle registration and the make of car – you don’t even need to know the model.

But the DVLA has decided to introduce a new  way of reporting  on line who doesn’t have to pay car tax  by creating a class of taxation called disabled.revealing whether the person who drives it is disabled rather than leaving it blank as previously.

As I reported in Tribune under the new system, people can find out on line that they pay no car tax, which is only available to people claiming higher levels of benefit. This is through mobility benefit included in the Disability Living Allowance or the new personal Independence payment system, and for war pensioners who have mobility supplements. The site also says whether they are disabled or not.

The changes highlighted on a professionally run benefits and advice website have provoked a storm of protest from disabled people who see it as a breach of privacy and revealing confidential information.

The website says: “The issue here appears to be one of data protection. The information that DVLA are making available is not about the vehicle itself. Instead they are publishing personal information about the benefits received by the individual who currently owns the car or for whom the car is solely used.”

One disabled person, Robert Adam commented: “There are malicious gits out there who resent people getting benefits who are 100 per cent entitled to them. If someone is accused of fraudulently obtaining the Disability Living Allowance, they are immediately pulled in for the new PIP assessment. This DVLA system stating “Taxation class disabled” is not information about the vehicle. It is information about the registered keeper being disabled and entitled to free road tax.”

The DVLA say this is not their intention. They claim their aim is to help people when the numerous parking companies are chasing up people for unpaid parking fines and private parking charges who will be saved from being pursued when they see their entry.

However given the DVLA is also making over £20m by handing over the names and addresses of people driving or keeping the cars to private enforcement companies at a cost of £2.50 a time they are not always that scrupulous. After all many of the parking charges sought by private companies are not enforceable any way as this site reveals and this story on BBC News also illustrates.

It strikes me as just another way of ratcheting up fear of  suspected benefit fraud while at the same time making money from some unscrupulous parking cowboys.