UNITED KINGDOM
The Independent
Martin Hickman
Wednesday 06 February 2013
Two men have been arrested on suspicion of sexual offences by Scotland Yard detectives investigating allegations that some MPs belonged to an establishment paedophile ring in the 1980s.
A pensioner, 70, from East Sussex and another, aged 66, from Norfolk were held in dawn raids and questioned by child-abuse investigation officers from Operation Fernbridge. Police are looking into allegations that figures from politics, diplomacy and other spheres of public life abused children at a guest house in Barnes, south-west London.
Children from the local Grafton Close children’s home are said to have been supplied to Elm Guest House. The 70-year-old man arrested at his home in St Leonards-on-Sea is understood to be John Stingemore, the former deputy head of Grafton Close. The other man was named by the Diocese of East Anglia as Father Tony McSweeney.
As The Independent reported last year, Scotland Yard launched Operation Fairbank into alleged historical sexual abuse, following claims by MP Tom Watson that an “aide of a former Prime Minister” had belonged to a paedophile network.
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