Tag Archives: child sex abuse inquiry

Police re-open child sex abuse investigation into Labour peer Greville Janner

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Lord Janner Pic Credit: Wikipedia

Lord Janner
Pic Credit: Wikipedia

Leicestershire and the Met Police have re-opened their investigation into historic child sex abuse allegations against Greville Janner,the  Labour peer  and former Labour MP for Leicester North West and Leicester West until 1997. I report the  full story in Exaro News.

Until now it had been assumed that the police had dropped their inquiries after it was reported that the 86 year old peer was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and would be unfit to stand trial should the Crown Prosecution Service consider he should face charges.

The CPS has advised the police to continue their investigation so that it can decide whether charges are warranted. If Janner’s lawyers claim that he is too ill to face trial, prosecutors would insist on an independent medical assessment, and would potentially leave it for a court to decide whether he is fit enough. The investigation is called ” Operation Enamel.”

A spokeswoman for Leicestershire Police said “Operation Enamel is still an active investigation, and enquiries are still very much ongoing.”

The decision by both police forces to continue the investigation comes as police all over the country are stepping up inquiries into child sex abuse – both in the past and current cases – since Theresa May, the home secretary, announced the setting up of an independent panel into child sexual abuse covering a wide number of institutions. The police know they will be one of the bodies under scrutiny when the panel starts collecting evidence.

The investigation into Greville Janner is bound to be controversial since he was heavily defended by Labour colleagues when  during the 1991 trial  of Frank Beck,a warden for children’s homes in Leicestershire, and now a convicted paedophile  Janner  was named as having engaged in a sexual relationship with a teenage boy. Janner ferociously denied the allegations. A friend of his, who worked closely with him at the time, told me only last week that he did not believe the allegations could be true and had no knowledge about them.

Among Janner’s biggest supporters included former Labour leader, Neil Kinnock,Derek Foster, then Labour chief whip, passed on “tremendous support” from the party’s leader, Neil Kinnock to Mr Janner.

Keith Vaz, a Leicester MP and now chair of the Commons home affairs committee, was also one of Janner’s greatest supporters saying he was ” a brave man ” in handling the situation.

Vaz is now playing a big role in scrutinising the setting up of child sex abuse inquiry, by quizzing supporters and opponents of the present inquiry and intending to hold Theresa May to account over the present blunders in appointing a chair to the inquiry.

I did email Keith Vaz about his support for Janner and his role  as a solicitor in two other London boroughs, Richmond and Islington now the subject of child sex abuse allegations, but he never replied.

Why Theresa May was right to ignore David Aaronovitch over child sex abuse in North Wales

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Times columnist David Aaronovitch. Pic credit :Flickr

Times columnist David Aaronovitch. Pic credit :Flickr

Two years ago when Theresa May announced she was re-opening the police investigation into the North Wales child abuse scandal  Times columnist David Aaronovitch penned a highly controversial column warning that the nation was in danger of mounting a modern witch hunt over alleged paedophilia. Indeed his post was entitled Beware a modern Salem over child abuse.

He  pointed out that both the  original John Jillings report and the ” exhaustive inquiry ” by retired judge Sir Ronald Waterhouse Lost in Care had found no evidence of a paedophile ring and therefore  there was no need for any fresh inquiries.

I remember disagreeing with him on the BBC Radio Four’s Today programme over his findings after reading the report. He was right about  Waterhouse’s findings but failed to notice that the findings somewhat jarred with the detailed evidence contained in the same report.

He also firmly disagreed with the line taken by one survivor’s solicitor, Steve Messham, that Waterhouse had too limited a remit to inquire properly into the idea of an abuse network.

Fast forward to this week and Operation Pallial, the National Crime Agency run investigation set up by Theresa May, has achieved its first scalp,John Allen. He was sent to prison for life and given he is 73 will probably die there.

Nor was this minor stuff – he was convicted of 33 extra charges – that somehow had been missed in an earlier police investigation. The full background is outlined here in the Liverpool Daily Post. And he is not the only one to face new allegations which will be heard in future trials. To be accurate the latest Pallial statistics say 13 more people are facing trial, there are over 100 new suspects and over 200 survivors coming forward.

Now if David Aaronovitch had won the argument Mr Allen would be a free man and would have got away with all this and died peacefully at home. A  lot of survivors claims would never have been proven and left to fester on no doubt ” lurid and preposterous” ( as Aaronvitch would have it) sites on the internet.

Of course Mr Allen, who had already been found guilty of previous offences, claimed in his defence he wasn’t gay, was not sexually attracted to children and had suffered a “miscarriage of justice ” when he was convicted in  the first place. His accusers were making it up to get compensation money, his defence lawyers said. The jury did not buy this.

I raise this because some of the commentariat and the Establishment believe the latest allegations of a Westminster paedophile ring and alleged murders of some of the victims is another fantasy and leading to a new witch hunt. While the investigation is in no way as advanced as Pallial – Pallial shows it needs following through.

Theresa May in setting up Pallial  and an overarching child sex abuse inquiry obviously does believe that further investigations are needed to find out  what really happened decades ago. She is in on record that this could be ” the tip of an iceberg”. David Cameron believes this is ” stuff of conspiracy theories ” and David Aaronovitch reflects this view in his own column and tweets.

I am backing Theresa May on this one.

Child sexual abuse: Thank you survivors and Zac Goldsmith

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Today I got  praised by Zac Goldsmith MP for the work  Exaro and I have been doing on investigating child sex abuse and helping to press for an overarching inquiry into the issue.

But I could not have done this without the help from survivors,contacts  and MPs who have passed vital information allowing me to investigate this scandal in the first place.

Also this is a team effort.  Exaro colleagues like Mark Conrad have uncovered amazing  leads and Mark Watts, editor of Exaro, has fearlessly put this whole investigation together.

There is much more to be done, much more to be exposed, but it is great to get some recognition from MPs like Zac.

I can assure everybody that Zac Goldsmith,Tom Watson and Simon Danczuk are very concerned to get to the real truth behind such a disturbing scandal that has remained hidden for decades. No one is going to be silenced very easily.

The Westminster Paedophile ring: Now a murder inquiry

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Over the weekend the inquiry into a Westminster paedophile ring took a dramatic turn with Met Police officially saying it had seconded  murder detectives to the investigation.

On Sunday the People newspaper and Exaro News disclosed the inquiry was related to the horrific  revelations from a  survivor called Nick (not his real name). It involved three murders including one boy being run over, another being strangled at a party where sadistic child sexual abuse seemed to be the norm. It also suggests that other premises in Central London as well as Dolphin Square were used as venues.

Some of the more sceptical MPs and commentators, some of whom are also incidentally  are opposed to an overarching child sexual abuse inquiry, have  expressed near disbelief that this could have happened anywhere near Westminster in the 1980s.

To those doubters I would say this has been a meticulous detailed investigation – by my colleague Mark Conrad – who in a related piece on Exaro News gives the background to the events.

It has taken months to uncover and has involved building up the confidence of the brave survivor who decided himself to report it to the police after years of being told never to repeat what happened.

As he said himself : “The MP was particularly nasty, even among the group of people who sexually abused me and others. I still find it difficult to talk about these incidents after all these years.”

Some of the scepticism is based on the fact that there may have been rumours of wild parties in Westminster at the time – and that people might have been smeared by Westminster gossip.  The fact that nothing was proved at the time does not mean it did not happen.

I am reminded by the  “cash for questions” investigation which I revealed on the Guardian in the mid 1990s. That actually referred to events happening a decade previously right under the nose of the Westminster lobby. And they were proved to be true.

These  allegations will now be investigated by the Met Police who will have to decide, along with the Crown Prosecution Service, whether there is enough evidence to prosecute.

In the meantime it is becoming very clear that this historic child sex abuse scandal is not going away. More revelations in London and other parts of the country will make sure it won’t.

Child Sex Abuse Inquiry Debacle: Why it is important where we go next

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Today (mon) home secretary Theresa May, will face a barrage of criticism in Parliament for her office’s failure to twice find a suitable person to chair the much needed historic child sex abuse inquiry

Losing not one chair but  two – Baroness Butler Sloss and Fiona Woolf – because of potential conflicts of interest in a matter of weeks smacks of real incompetence by a department that should know better. it also caused severe embarrassment both to the people appointed and to the home secretary herself.

But I hope today is seen not just as an opportunity for ” yah boo” politics between Labour and the Tories but for a more reflective discussion of how we got here and what is needed to put it right.

What cannot be denied is that the home secretary did not entirely fulfil what she promised the ” magnificent seven ” MPs requested in drawing up the panel. True she did take on board their request for survivors on the panel – appointing two – Graham Wilmer, who runs the Lantern Project and Sharon Evans,  a former TV  presenter who runs a children’s charity.

But there – as far as I can find out – been no through consultation over the appointment of the two chairs of the panel involving the MPs – and there has also, to my surprise, been no internal consultation inside the home office. Frankly they should also have asked survivors groups BEFORE not AFTER the appointments.

It is probably not well-known but the home office has its own very small unit which can advise on the setting up of independent panels, who is appointed to them, and can interview suitable people to sit on them – or at least advise newly appointed secretaries to inquiries set up by other ministries on how to get going.

I understand this body was never consulted yet it can claim a track record of success. Its biggest achievement has been the Hillsborough Inquiry into the tragic deaths of Liverpool fans where it got a chairman, now the former bishop of Liverpool, to preside. None of those families of the fans would now say it didn’t get to the bottom of a grave injustice hidden for years.

Yet child abuse survivors might be surprised to know that it got the information without any statutory powers by ruthlessly pursuing the evidence and cajoling reluctant authorities to hand over  the information, including stuff that is now landing the South Yorkshire Constabulary in dire trouble.

It did have one duty  – and only one duty – to tell the families who lost loved ones at Hillsborough Stadium first what it had found out. Once it had done this it published everything as fact – and set up of a train of events – now being shown by the inquest into Hillsborough.

It is also responsible for the current Daniel Morgan murder inquiry – where I suspect but do not know the same tussle is probably going on now.

Now many of the survivors seem to want a statutory inquiry which can compel people to attend, give information,  force people to confess to crimes, with grand public hearings and a very detailed terms of reference. Be careful what you wish for.

Superficially it sounds great but there are drawbacks to this approach. Terms of reference need to be nebulous rather than specific so the panel cannot be stopped following the facts wherever it takes them – and given the wide sweep of institutions involved it needs to go to places we may not have even thought about.

Second yes statutory power sound great but there is one drawback – I am told it allows lawyers representing anybody or organisation accused by survivors to demand the status of ” an interested party”. That means anything you tell them could go straight back to their lawyers before the inquiry even reports.

If it is non statutory there is no obligation whatever to tell them anything – and their lawyers have no right to find out.

If it follows what happened in Hillsborough and in Daniel Morgan – the families are centre stage. In this case, it means the survivors are centre stage – the panel is obliged to you, you are not obliged to the panel. This means you will know first what the findings are – not the armed forces, the security services, the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church, the councils, the police, schools or any other body that allowed you to be abused.

Finally I hope the panel can tell you whether they have obtained a freezing  or preservation order on all documents listing evidence or allegations of child sexual abuse. Whitehall permanent secretaries have a superb meeting and network facility – and could send out letters now banning the destruction of all documents. I would expect the Church of England – after Archbishop Welby’s words last week to do the same.

And as for a chair – whoever is appointed faces the risk of ” guilty by association ” if they worked in any organisation because of the widespread nature of child sexual abuse. It just depends on how guilty the association is and the Home Office needs to do a  better job of finding this out.

Exposed: The sick priest who posed as a psychotherapist to abuse children

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Psychotherapists are key people to help disturbed people and child sex abuse victims. There is probably no viler misuse of the profession than to masquerade as one to sexually abuse children.

Yet this is what Father Terence O’Brien did again and again at one of the country’s top Roman Catholic Salesian schools in Battersea, south London according to a  Met police investigation report obtained by Exaro.

The details are available in a new book The Devil’s Advocate: Child Abuse and the Men in Black by Graham Wilmer, a sex abuse victim, who runs the Lantern Project in the Wirral to help survivors and is now a member of the new national inquiry into child sexual abuse set up by Theresa May, the home secretary. You can buy his book here and all the profits go to fund his project.

He describes O’Brien as the Salesian order equivalent  to Jimmy Savile- a prolific paedophile- who died in 2000 but got away with it for years. You read the full story on the Exaro website.

But to give  you an idea of just how vile he is – here is an extract from the police report ( look away now if you are of a sensitive disposition) :

“Fr. O’Brien was a prolific paedophile, who would subject children to strip naked and be massaged, masturbated and physically penetrated, under the pretext that they were being rid of bad spirits that made them behave badly. The children were brought to Fr O’Brien by their parents in the belief that he was a child psychotherapist, and could treat them for their behaviour.

“This abuse was practised on children on a weekly basis, sometimes for years. The victims were instructed never to inform anyone of their treatment, or it would not work.

“Fr O’Brien was not a psychotherapist at all, yet he was allowed to practice his trade upon the grounds of the Salesian school without question, on a regular basis.”

Now you might have thought the Salesian order which runs this reputable school would want to make amends for such damning police findings. But this is their response:

“Fr O’Brien did not at any time work from or in the Salesian College in Battersea . He did occupy Salesian property in Battersea but this was not on the school site nor was it part of the school. At no time did he conduct any of his practice from any Salesian school.

 “Fr O’Brien is a subject of Operation Torva, the inquiry being carried out by the Metropolitan Police. We are cooperating fully with the police in their inquiry and unable to comment further beyond saying that there were no allegations concerning Fr O’Brien until the late 1980s and 1990s and allegations were dealt with by the police.

  “In accordance with the Safeguarding policy of the Catholic Church, we do not investigate any allegation of offences against Children. These are passed to the Police.

 The Salesians will, of course, cooperate fully with the forthcoming government inquiry if they are required to do so.”

After further checks I am told the house actually adjoined the school. So the main concern of the Salesians is that Father O’Brien employed as a priest and teacher by the Salesians used a house next door to the school to carry out these vile acts on pupils and children ( both boys and girls) . So it is all right as  it didn’t happen technically  to be on school premises. And they won’t co-operate with the inquiry unless required.

If ever there was a need for this new national inquiry – this is it. Their attitude to this is both sickening and perverse.

 

Survivors speak: Fiona Woolf must declare how well she knows Leon Brittan

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The remarkably busy Lord Mayor of London, Fiona Woolf, needs to come clean about her links to former home secretary Leon Brittan, according to a number of child abuse survivors who have contacted Exaro.

They want the newly appointed chairman of the inquiry – who is yet to chair her first meeting –  to explain exactly how much contact she had with the Brittans.

A report by my colleagues Mark Conrad and Tim  Wood  on Exaro highlights the concern by survivors -particularly among those involved in an alleged Westminster paedophile ring.

Two witnesses who gave accounts to Exaro of how MPs and other VIPs sexually abused them and other children at a series of parties at Dolphin Square, a residential block close to Parliament, expressed deep unease about Woolf’s appointment.

One said: “I would like to see a full and transparent statement from Fiona Woolf as to her links, and why survivors should have confidence in her ability to chair this inquiry.”

The concern about Brittan centres round the disappearance of a dossier submitted to him by former Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Dickens, allegedly naming VIP paedophiles.

Once again this seems to emphasise the need for Fiona Woolf to clear matters up  so that survivors have confidence in the inquiry.

Child sex abuse:The audio file that names an ex Tory Cabinet minister

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An audio  recording that names a former Tory Cabinet minister in connection with alleged child sex abuse is expected to be heard by MPs shortly.

This latest dramatic development is reported fully on Exaro’s website is of an interview with a customs officer who witnessed seeing the minister on a seized videotape at Dover,

The video is political dynamite. Customs and Excise seized it, along with other “indecent or obscene” films and videos of children, from Russell Tricker, a businessman, as he attempted to bring the material into the UK from Amsterdam.

Senior managers took over the case at the time, and are understood to have passed the video cassette to the Security Service, MI5. Tricker was released, and no further action was taken.

The fact that MPs want to hear this should mean that the police will have take this latest claim seriously as they will have to decide whether to hand over the tape to the new child abuse inquiry, summon the customs officer to give evidence to Parliament  or press the police to follow up this incident properly.

Yet another fast moving development in a story that is not going to go away.

 

Child sexual abuse inquiry:Butler- Sloss quits after Exaro reveals Havers Kincora inquiry connection

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Baroness Butler-Sloss Not her brother's keeper

Baroness Butler-Sloss Not her brother’s keeper

Baroness Butler Sloss made a dignified exit as chair of the new  overarching child sexual abuse inquiry today because of a damaging conflict of interest caused by her dead brother, the former attorney general, Michael Havers.

Her decision was announced after it was publicly revealed on the Exaro website that her brother ,Lord Havers effectively skewed the terms of reference of a  inquiry under the late  judge William Hughes to concentrate only  on staff abusing boys and not  possible prominent visitors to the Kincora boys home who are alleged to have abused them.

As Zac Goldsmith MP said on the BBC’s World at One: |”These kind of things are really big and it’s inevitable that a proper, all-encompassing inquiry would find its way all the way to Kincora. It would look at who set the terms of reference. It would look at who was excluded, who was protected by the terms of reference. And that would lead to Havers himself, who was responsible for that.”

Those who study publicly available documents can see both from the terms of the inquiry and an intriguing Cabinet minute already published on this website  which hoped this inquiry would end  “rumour and unfounded accusations”. about sexual abuse at the home.

The judge himself made pointed remarks:.

He wrote: “The conduct of the police, or elected representatives, or clergymen, or military intelligence or any other persons who may have been in receipt of allegations, information or rumours relating to Kincora or any other home, was not under scrutiny in this inquiry.”

What was missing was finding a source who could connect the setting of the terms of reference directly to the then attorney general, Sir Michael Havers.

Both me and my ex Guardian colleague  David Pallister were able to do precisely that over the weekend. A top level  source whose name we agreed to protect said : “Havers briefed him, and it was Havers who gave the terms of reference to him.”

From entirely separate sources I have been aware that Theresa May  has known that this could surface over the weekend and that it could cause immense problems for Baroness Butler-Sloss if she started to probe into the Kincora inquiry and the current inquiry going on in Northern ireland about historic child sexual abuse. But no action was taken.

To put in context Baroness Butler-Sloss is not to blame for this. She is literally in this case not her brother’s keeper. Nor is Theresa May who I have on good authority i\s committed to tackling this problem and was always more sympathetic to an overarching inquiry than David Cameron.

From yet another source the indecent rush to appoint someone to head the inquiry lies at the door of Downing street which shocked by the  slur of child abuse stories making headlines on Sunday made a rushed decision to set up an inquiry after ignoring the views of 145 MPs.

The real lesson from  this latest incompetent and botched up initiative is that  people need to reflect on who they want and take into account the views of victims and  child experts before rushing to fix a problem. The lesson is stay calm and sort it out properly. Otherwise it is just another episode for Yes, Prime Minister.

 

 

Andy Burnham becomes first shadow cabinet minister to back child sex abuse inquiry

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Andy Burnham: backing an inquiry pic credit:Wikipedia

Andy Burnham: backing an inquiry pic credit:Wikipedia

Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, has become the first member of Ed Miliband’s shadow Cabinet to back an over arching inquiry into child sexual abuse.

Over the weekend he was joined by Hilary Benn, the shadow communities secretary and Emily Thornberry, shadow attorney general. With others this brings the number of MPs backing the inquiry  to 118. Impetus for the inquiry has been heightened following the latest sickening disclosures about Jimmy Savile’s predatory behaviour from Broadmoor secure hospital to other 27 other NHS trusts.

Andy Burnham made his views very clear when he was challenging Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, over the publication of the Savile investigations in Parliament yesterday as well as confirming to Tim Loughton, one of the Mps and former children’s minister, that he was supporting his letter to Theresa May, the home secretary, calling for the inquiry. There is a  full report by my colleague Alex Varley-Winter on the Exaro website with an up to date list of names.

There next question is whether more of the Shadow Cabinet will back the idea.