Whistleblowers" Deaths Probe Call

Belfast Telegraph
December 22, 2014

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/uk/whistleblowers-deaths-probe-call-30854964.html

Child abuse survivors have welcomed Theresa May's indication that a panel conducting a troubled inquiry into historical abuse could be disbanded in order for a new and more powerful body to take over.

A campaigning MP has called for the reinvestigation of the suspicious deaths more than 20 years ago of two whistleblowers who he believes had significant information relating to organised child abuse.

And John Mann called on Home Secretary Theresa May to lift the restrictions of the Official Secrets Act in relation to historic abuse, which he believes are holding back former Special Branch police officers from coming forward with vital information relating to allegations of a child sex ring linked to powerful people in Westminster in the 1970s and 1980s.

Mr Mann's comments came as a second Labour MP warned that the Government looks as though it does not "want to get to the truth" about historic child abuse after Mrs May indicated that a troubled inquiry panel commissioned to look into the issue could be disbanded and replaced.

Simon Danczuk said victims would be dismayed at the lack of progress in the probe, and could not help worrying that the litany of mistakes - including the resignation of two chairmen following claims about their perceived closeness to establishment figures - was "deliberate".

Mr Mann has handed over a dossier to the Metropolitan Police detailing allegations relating to 22 MPs and former MPs - including some still active in the Houses of Commons and Lords. He said 13 former ministers were on the list given to the Operation Trinity investigation into alleged abuse in children's homes in Lambeth, south London.

And he said the two suspicious deaths involved victims believed to have been planning to hand over "signficant information" about abuse in Lambeth to the authorities.

One was council official Bulic Forsythe, whose body was found in a burning flat in 1993, and the other an unnamed Lambeth caretaker who died in a suspected arson attack a couple of years earlier.

Mr Mann told Sky News: "What I want to see is both those suspicious deaths reinvestigated because what links them together was both were people who in essence were blowing the whistle on child abuse."

The two men's deaths were "undoubtedly linked to child abuse and potentially linked into the wider scandal", he said.