Category Archives: sexual abuse

Rape allegation: Why are the Met not following their own guidelines in Operation Fernbridge?

Posted on by

The latest disclosure revealed in  Exaro’s investigation into the rape of a young woman by a man who went on to become a Tory Cabinet minister raises even more disturbing questions.

It is now accepted as part of normal police procedures that if a person accuses another person of rape, the allegations are put to the alleged perpetrator.

 It is becoming increasingly clear according to the account from the victim ” Jane” that the police have told her that they have not done it in this case.

She told Exaro :“I could not understand why,” she said. “There were only two people present during the incident. But they refused to question the man who I identified.” She believes that this breaches guidance entitled, ‘Investigating and Prosecuting Rape,’ and compiled by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA).

This is one of the key points in the letter of complaint sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions  by Labour MP Tom Watson on the need for a review of the case.

 To me it seems this amounts to  double standards. Under Operation Yewtree into the Savile investigations celebs and entertainers are told about the allegations and in many cases charged.

Under Operation Fernbridge politicians are not told about the allegations and so far no one is charged.

This can only add to the public anxiety that Establishment figures with power are above the law and play into the agenda that politicians can often get away with anything.

 

Met Police ” smear ” rape victim in Fernbridge investigation

Posted on by

More damaging revelations are published today on the Exaro website about the Met Police’s handling of a  victim who came forward saying she was raped in her youth by a man who went on to become a prominent Tory Cabinet minister.

My colleague  Mark Conrad reports  that ” Jane” who brought  the allegations to the Met Police is extremely upset that not only did they not put the allegations to the ex-minister but told other people about her medical record which could cast doubt on the validity of her claims.

She told Exaro:“I am very angry. My medical history has nothing to do with the statements that I gave to the police about the rape. I volunteered information on my background and medical history to the police, and expected that it would be treated in confidence.”

This suggests that this particular case has not been well handled. I have met ” Jane”  and  she is remarkably clear about the events that happened to her so long ago.

Again this raises the issue which Tom Watson, the Labour MP, has taken up with the Director of Public Prosecutions, that the case should be reviewed. And so it should soon.

Why Tom Watson is right to press the DPP to review the rape claim against a former Tory minister

Posted on by

Action is urgently needed to press the Met  Police to continue their investigation into the claims that a former Tory cabinet minister raped a 19-year-old woman when he was at the beginning of his career.

 The allegations came to light in the Operation Fernbridge investigation – which is mainly centred around the abuse of boys at a Richmond children’s home and at the Elm Guest House. It only emerged because of the alleged figures involved in child sexual abuse was also said to have raped a young woman.

So Tom Watson is right to draw attention to the way the case has been handled by the Met Police to Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions.

 The full report is on the Exaro website but it raises deep questions about the way the police treated an allegation of rape  in 2013. To give you a flavour  Tom Watson’s letter says :“The elements of lack of freedom and capacity to consent make the decision highly irregular. This is shocking in itself.

“It further troubles me that the senior police officer who dropped the case revealed to the victim that he apparently took a series of worthless stereotypes and other irrelevant points into consideration.”

“Most of these stereotypes have been blown out of the water in recent months. Or so I thought.

“There has been a sea change in the climate surrounding rape, historic cases in particular. Why is it that the tide has not reached this case?”

Those who may doubt the woman’s description of the case can listen and see her account on the Exaro website here.

What you will know is that the police never put it to the alleged perpetrator. There are too many unanswered questions in the Met Police’s handling of this for no action to be taken. So Tom Watson is right to demand it.

 

Operation Fernbridge: A worrying failure over a rape case

Posted on by

Before Operation Fernbridge was  launched I received a high level promise from the police that whoever participated in the Richmond child sex abuse scandal – however high and mighty – would be prosecuted if the police could get the evidence.

 This ” no holds barred” approach gave me confidence that despite three failed attempts to get to the bottom of the scandal at Richmond’s Grafton Close children’s home and the notorious Elm Guest House that we would get a result.

 My belief is now being severely tested following a series of events – including the fresh disclosures from  the Labour MP for Rochdale Simon Danzcuk about how the police never took any action against Sir Cyril Smith, despite ample examples of his connections to paedophile activity..

 What has particularly shaken me are the revelations meticulously put together by my colleague Mark Conrad and disclosed in a series of articles in Exaro News this week and in the Sunday People about the principal suspect in more than one historic paedophile scandal- A former Tory Cabinet minister.

 The  detailed allegations this time from a woman about events when she was just 19 and the man was at the beginning of his career make chilling and dramatic reading – and under today’s standards very few people would doubt she was sexually assaulted without her consent. I need not repeat the full circumstances – you can read  them in a series of articles in Exaro News if you want a blow-by-blow account.

The good news is that Tom Watson – the MP who first raised the issue of  leading political figures being involved  in historic paedophile rings – has written to Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions, demanding a review of the police’s handling of the case and he is very critical of the way the police have handled it. I hope she takes notice.

The Met Police have of course said little about this. However the nearest explanation for their non action is on The Needleblog  .

My concern about this is three-fold. First of all it appears that there has been a serious failure by the Met police to take seriously a claim from a credible witness at a time when people are being encouraged to report historic rape and sexual abuse cases. This provides little confidence for others to come forward.

Second it appears that the allegations are far stronger than many of allegations being put to celebrities facing trial at the moment.

Third it is not clear that Crown Prosecution Service was presented with a full file by the Met Police who never even put such strong allegations to the perpetrator.

All this is worrying. The most worrying aspect of it all is that the police appear to be losing their appetite to pursue this high profile figure – suggesting there is one rule for celebrities and another for anybody with real power like a politician. The failure to pursue this is not an isolated incident in  Operation Fernbridge. On the contrary other allegations when they refer to the notorious Elm Guest House appear to be dropped or ignored as well.

 

Richmond child sex abuse trial postponed

Posted on by

The trial of John Stingemore and Father Tony McSweeney – due to start on May 6 at Southwark Crown Court – has been postponed.

Southwark crown court today  said that there will be no hearing on the 6 May and that it is due to make a fresh announcement on future court dates on 13 June.

Exaro understands that 71 year-old Stingemore, the former officer in charge of the Grafton Close children’s home in the London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames, is suffering from ill-health and was recently admitted to hospital.

Privately, sources close to the case have expressed fears that Mr Stingemore may not be fit enough to stand trial unless his health improves significantly.

Mr Stingemore’s solicitor was unavailable for comment this afternoon.

John Stingemore, of Stonehouse Drive, St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, faces five charges of indecent assault, once count of taking an indecent image of a child, and one count of indecency with a child. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Father Tony McSweeney, a 66 year-old priest, faces two charges of indecent assault, three counts of making an indecent image of a child, one of taking an indecent image of a child, and a further count of possessing indecent images of children. Father McSweeney, of Old Brighton Road North, Pease Pottage, West Sussex, has also pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The charges had been brought following the Met police’s Operation Fernbridge. There is a back catalogue of stories explaining the Fernbridge operation on the Exaro website.

Police examine 33 new boxes of files in Rochdale child sex abuse scandal

Posted on by
Child abuser Sir Cyril Smith at 1990 Liberal Democrat conference. pic credit: PA News Photo via Huffington Post

Child abuser Sir Cyril Smith at 1990 Liberal Democrat conference. pic credit: PA News Photo via Huffington Post

Expect major new revelations about child sex abuse in Rochdale  around the late paedophile Mp Sir Cyril Smith as the police examine 33 boxes of new evidence uncovered from Knowl View Special school.

 A report in Exaro News by my colleague Nick Fielding warns that the files now being examined by the police could provide further horrendous disclosures surrounding child sexual abuse in the town. Although the police abandoned an investigation in Cyril Smith they are now investigating complaints of child sexual abuse involving the school committed by other people at the time.

The investigation comes as a new book by Labour MP Simon Danzcuk, the MP for Rochdale will be published this month which  will look at Cyril Smith’s career and connections.

 Far from going away it looks like that further revelations will show just like the Jimmy Savile affair, Cyril Smith was able to get away with his appalling predatory career without any hindrance or intervention from people who should have known better.

The child sex abuse customs video: Why didn’t the police act?

Posted on by

Over the weekend my intrepid colleague, Mark Conrad, broke a very detailed story on Exaro News and in The People, about a pornographic child abuse video seized by the customs way back in 1982. You can read the full story on both sites.

 The customs officer, Maganlal Solanki, then handed over the tape to senior managers at Customs and Excise. They took over the case. took no further action, and are understood to have passed the video cassette to the Security Service, MI5. No one was prosecuted.

The officer says a prominent  Tory Cabinet minister was on that tape but he is still too scared to discuss what he is doing and there still seems an attempt to gag him.

Again like the scandal at Elm Guest House, the failure to pursue paedophile  Sir Cyril Smith, and what is being revealed about the scale of sexual abuse in a Durham detention centre, the police and the security services and special branch( who certainly knew about Smith) have questions to answer.

 Why  is it taking 40 years for the police to review cases ? It begs the question of whether it will be covered up yet again.  Or have people destroyed all the evidence?

Given such a video would have provided prima facie evidence for any prosecution why was nothing done about it and why was the person who brought it into Britain at Dover allowed to go on his way?

 The more we look into this murky area, the more unanswered questions there are and the nastier the cover up.

 

 

Why authorities named by Gove must investigate thoroughly the Savile sex abuse allegations

Posted on by
Commend him for announcing the Savile investigation

Commend him for announcing the Savile investigation

This week Michael Gove, the education secretary, took the bold step of announcing to Parliament investigations into historic child sex abuse by Jimmy Savile at local authority, Roman Catholic and charity children’s homes and schools.

 His decision is to be commended and the full Parliamentary statement can be seen here. It names council homes in Bournemouth, Devon, Gloucestershire, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham.Nottinghamshire, Surrey and the London boroughs of Hounslow, Islington, Southwark and Tower Hamlets. It also names Barnados in Redbridge; the Henshaw school for the Blind in Leeds and the Notre Dame Grammar School in Leeds and Sevenoaks School in  Kent.

The Savile scandal has been one of the worst  child abuse scandals to come out affecting not only schools but the BBC and even Broadmoor Hospital. It also extended outside England to Jersey.

I hope that all the authorities do a thorough review and uncover every fact possible – even though it dates back to the 1960s,70s and 80s. It will also mean tracing the children who had been there. I hope also the authorities know that if they do approach people they must be given proper and adequate support – something that has been noticeably lacking in current historic paedophile inquiries I have been covering.

 Nothing must be hidden. It is scandal in the unrelated historic paedophile inquiry in the London borough of Richmond ( which did not involve Savile) that it has taken over 40 years for anybody to be brought to court to answer such crimes. It should also look at whether Savile had any accomplices that allowed such things to happen.  The time for cover up is over.

Clifford Hindley :The damning verdict on the pederast scholarship of a Home Office civil servant

Posted on by
Clifford Hindley: Home Office civil servant with an academic obsession with boy love. Pic courtesy: Daily Mail

Clifford Hindley: Home Office civil servant with an academic obsession with boy love. Pic courtesy: Daily Mail

I am putting up on this blog a link to an extraordinary analysis by Ian Pace, a music lecturer from City University on the academic work of the late Clifford Hindley, the man exposed by Exaro News and the Sunday People this weekend. Currently under investigation by Mark Sedwill, the permanent secretary,for possibly authorising taxpayers’ money to support the Paedophile Information Exchange, his findings are damning.

 He concludes: “This far from exhaustive account of Hindley’s writings in retirement should leave no doubt as to what a central role pederasty played in much of his thought. Beneath a scholarly and deeply learned exterior, steeped in antiquity, lies an obsessiveness and distorted morality which is not so different to that to be found in the more obviously explicit writings to be found in Magpie and other paedophile publications.

“I do not believe we should censor Hindley’s work, by any means, nor that it is without worth. But if the allegations about his having facilitated government financial support for one of the most insidious of all paedophile organisations – members of which have been linked to child pornography and abuse rings and international networks, ritual exploitation of those in children’s homes, and a whole host of cases of sexual predation upon very young boys in other institutions – are proved correct, as looks likely, then Hindley’s scholarly legacy should be afforded a good deal more critical treatment than has hitherto been the case.

“And above all, in no sense should Hindley’s work be seen as representative of wider gay-focused studies and scholarship. There is no more intrinsic link between same-sex desire and paedophilia as there is for opposite-sex desire; both remain minority inclinations belonging to those in desperate need of help before they do untold damage. It is to Hindley’s discredit that he attempted to dissolve such distinctions, and legitimise paedophilia as the most natural representation of same-sex desire, in exactly the manner in which paedophile groups appropriated the language and rhetoric of gay rights to suit their own twisted ends.”

His blog is long and scholarly and also discloses that prior to joining the Home Office he was in India and after leaving he contributed to a legal review to lower the age of consent to 16.

For those who want to find out how a very intelligent and scholarly man educated at the best universities in the country used his academic abilities to twist and justify his obsessive interest in young boys this is a must read.

Revealed: The civil servant in the Home Office’s PIE funding inquiry and his academic articles on boy love

Posted on by

 

A former top civil servant who later went on to write academic articles on the love between men and boys in  ancient Greece and in Benjamin’s Britten’s operas is at the centre of a Home Office inquiry into whether he sanctioned taxpayers’ cash to fund the Paedophile Information Exchange.

Clifford Hindley, who died some five years ago, was head of the Home Office’s Voluntary Services Unit from at least 1979 until 1983, which is now under investigation after a former civil servant has alleged there may have been a ” cover up ” over a grant  re-application from PIE.

 Reports in Exaro News and The People reveal today that the Home Office inquiry  under permanent secretary. Mark Sedwill is examining  recollections from the whistleblower that when he raised questions about why the Home Office should fund such an organisation Mr Hindley brushed  this aside and asked him to hand over the paperwork. This happened around 1979 and 1980.

This has raised the question  – as the whistleblower thinks it was a re-application  -whether the  Callaghan Labour and Thatcher Conservative governments actually funded PIE just at the time when the National Council for Civil Liberties was also supporting the organisation, Such a decision  would be far worse than the present row going on between the Daily Mail and Harriet Harman, Labour’s deputy leader, over her role at NCCL. It would mean that taxpayer’s cash has been given to fund paedophiles.

The whistleblower  originally contacted Tom Watson MP who passed him on to the Home Office.
Last night Tom Watson said: “It’s a remarkable state of affairs and the Home Secretary must make sure a ­report is presented as soon as possible.

“If the allegations are true, it shows how insidious an organisation PIE was that they could even convince the Home Office to give them taxpayers’ money.”

 Investigations by Exaro revealed that Mr Hindley, an assistant secretary in Whitehall, holds degrees in classics and philosophy from Oxford University and a degree in theology from Cambridge.

Exaro has also found articles  and book contributions written by  Clifford Hindley after he retired  for academic and music magazines – all entirely on same sex relationships between men and boys.

 His contribution to the Cambridge Companion on the composer Benjamin Britten is entirely on  emphasising the love relationships between boys and men in his operas – a view that is challenged by other experts on Britten. as too extreme.

 He has also written articles on the Greek historian and pupil of Socrates, Xenophon,  again entirely on love between men and youths – either in the army or in society.

Ian Pace, a lecturer in music at City University, where he is head of performance, and a researcher said: “It is very hard to deny that there are pederastic themes in some of Britten’s operas, most obviously The Turn of the Screw and Death in Venice (mirroring such themes in the original literary works of Henry James and Thomas Mann respectively); and arguably also in Peter Grimes and Let’s Make an Opera (The Little Sweep). 

 “Some of Hindley’s writings on Britten certainly show a strong interest in such pederastic elements.”

An example is his description of the relationship between the ghost Quint and the boy Miles in  the Turn of the Screw.

 Hindley writes: “‘Quint is not a monster but one who opens fascinating new opportunities to the imaginative boy. Also fundamental is the fact that their relationship is one of homosexual love. It is presented as an emotional and mutually responsive relationship, in which the physical element is barely hinted at. It is nevertheless a bond of the kind rejected by conventional society’.”

The Home Office were not giving anything away about the inquiry – though it sounds as though documents – particularly from the Thatcher era – appear to be missing on anything to do with PIE.

At the moment a search is on to find out whether  a dead man files will disclose a highly damaging fact that the vile organisation the Paedophile Information Exchange was actually funded by the government.