Elite Sinks Child Abuse Probe To Save Itself, Morning Star (September 15, 2016)

There is something amiss in the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse when its third chairperson resigns amid disturbing revelations about its ever-changing remit. It has certainly lost the confidence of the victims, says STEVEN WALKER

Back in April Justice Lowell Goddard, the chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, admitted that she was going to ignore allegations against prominent politicians as directed by the then home secretary Theresa May.

She also agreed to stop investigating allegations of a cover-up of such criminal activity by the security services, the police and Whitehall.

When she recently resigned from the inquiry Goddard became the third chair to quit in two years.

She was appointed by May, who also changed the terms of the inquiry to focus on institutions covering an enormous swathe of public life such as schools, hospitals, churches, children’s homes, youth clubs — anywhere children were meant to be looked after.

The widening of the inquiry was seen as an obvious attempt to take the spotlight off what was emerging as a potential parliamentary paedophile scandal dating back decades.

The first inquiry head Elizabeth Butler-Sloss quit following revelations that her brother Michael Havers, who was attorney-general under Margaret Thatcher, limited the scope of an inquiry into child sexual abuse at the Kincora children’s home in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.

An Anglican judge and one-time failed Tory parliamentary candidate, Butler-Sloss admitted covering up the crimes of Anglican priests while presiding over an inquiry into their paedophile activities.

Cabinet minutes from 1983 reveal that Havers ensured that MPs and other prominent public figures were protected by restricting the terms of reference of the inquiry.

In the early 1980s, Havers was accused himself by Geoffrey Dickens MP of a cover-up when he refused to prosecute Sir Peter Hayman, a diplomat, former MI6 deputy director and member of the Paedophile Information Exchange (Pie), a lobbying organisation for child abusers.

Another Pie member has confirmed that he kept Pie files, records and membership details in the Home Office itself. A former army intelligence officer has said he was ordered to stop investigating allegations of child sexual abuse at the Kincora boys’ home in the 1970s.

Brian Gemmell said a senior MI5 officer told him to stop looking into claims of abuse at the home in east Belfast because people of the “highest profile” were involved in paedophile activity.
Gemmell presented a report on the allegations to the police in 1975 but nothing happened.

The second inquiry head Fiona Woolf resigned soon after being appointed after evidence emerged of her links going back at least a decade to Leon Brittan, who was accused of involvement in a cover-up when he was home secretary.

Brittan, who died last year, admitted that as home secretary he received the now “lost” dossier on paedophile MPs compiled by campaigning Dickens. Brittan failed to act on the evidence.

The history of cover-ups stretches back decades — 20 years ago the north Wales child abuse scandal was the subject of a three-year, £13 million investigation known as the Waterhouse inquiry into the sexual abuse of children in Wales which included the Bryn Estyn children’s home at Wrexham visited by paedophile MP Peter Morrison — an adviser to Thatcher between 1974 and 1990.

The report was published in 2000. However, the remit of that inquiry was narrowed to ensure that names of high-profile paedophiles such as MPs were not recorded and members of the inquiry complained about constraints on them which made it difficult to complete a thorough investigation.

The real impact of the wider terms of the current inquiry has been to distract attention away from paedophiles operating within Parliament. No fewer than 16 MPs, most now deceased, have been publicly named as alleged paedophiles by credible witnesses.

They include notorious Liberal MP Cyril Smith and several senior Tories who were close to Thatcher, including her parliamentary private secretary Morrison (died 1995), the late deputy chairman of the Scottish Conservatives Alistair Smith (died 2012) and the Scottish solicitor-general Nicholas Fairbairn (died 1995). Also mentioned are former Tory ministers Rhodes Boyson and Keith Joseph, as well as former Labour MP George Thomas and the Labour peer Lord Jenner — all dead now.

Two years ago, just after announcing that a former Tory cabinet minister was about to be arrested by the Metropolitan police, Peter Spindler, who had been leading the police criminal investigation into organised paedophiles, was taken off the investigation and moved sideways to another job.

He had been investigating the sexual abuse of young children from a council children’s home in Richmond upon Thames who were procured and taken to a hotel frequented by Smith and other MPs.
A former social services official has said his warnings about the threat of a Westminster-based paedophile network were ignored by civil servants because he was told “there were too many of them over there.”

David Tombs, who ran Hereford and Worcester social services, said he warned the government after the arrest in 1992 of prolific paedophile Peter Righton who had Establishment.

“I was disappointed because I was told that I was probably wasting my time, that there were — and the words used were along these lines — ‘too many of them over there.’ Now, I was talking about paedophilia and was in the Department of Health and the ‘over there’ to me indicated, although the words weren’t used, within Parliament or within government and Whitehall.”

In November 2012, Tony Robinson — a former special branch officer with Lancashire Police in the 1970s — said that a dossier of sexual abuse allegations against Smith which police claimed was “lost” was actually seized by MI5.

Robinson said that he was asked by MI5 to send to London a police dossier that had been kept in a safe in his office which he said was “thick” with allegations from boys claiming they had been abused by Smith. Clive Driscoll, a former Scotland Yard detective, has claimed that he was moved from his post when he revealed plans to investigate politicians over child sexual abuse claims. Speaking about his inquiries in 1998 into activity alleged to have taken place in Lambeth children’s homes in the 1980s, Driscoll said that his work was “all too uncomfortable to a lot of people.”

A report emerged that Special Branch officers seized a paedophile dossier naming Establishment figures drawn up by Labour peer Barbara Castle in the 1980s. Officers citing “national security” confiscated the file, which listed 16 MPs along with senior policemen, headteachers and clergy. The dossier was collated by the late Castle who handed it to Don Hale, the editor of her local newspaper the Bury Messenger.

The current inquiry has lost the trust of child sexual abuse survivors — a fourth chair has now been hastily appointed and the whole process has been a complete shambles from the beginning.
In years to come this will serve as a case study of how Establishment can succeed in sabotaging any attempt to uncover the truth behind the depraved behaviour of powerful politicians.