UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian
Michael White
Monday 8 February 2016
It looks as if the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, is edging towards an apology to Field Marshall Lord Bramall (92) over unfounded allegations of child sex abuse and that some kind of further apology is coming to the family of the late Leon Brittan. It’s too late to do him much good, as it is to former prime minister Edward Heath, also caught up by some wildly improbable allegations.
Today’s report by senior Dorset police officer James Vaughan into the Met’s handling of the Brittan allegations shows how complicated such historic claims can be.
Vaughan’s report says detectives were “fully justified” in pursuing a “fairly compelling account” of rape in 1967, but only made to police in 2012, though procedural mistakes were made.
Newspapers that made hay with separate lurid claims of sexual abuse and worse, made by someone known as “Nick” and others, later switched sides, as their reporting of Vaughan confirms today.
His report did not say Brittan would have been cleared, only that an acquittal was more likely than a conviction.
It’s worth noting in passing that Vaughan concluded that a key police officer in the Brittan case misunderstood the law on consent and it would have been reasonable to arrest the former cabinet minister, which nearly happened but didn’t. As so often, loose ends need tidying up.
But is (arguably) the most distinguished of all those accused, George Bell, Bishop of Chichester (1929-58) – a saint by some reckonings – being quietly traduced by the Church of England to cover its own back?
I’ve made some inquiries, but don’t claim to know the definitive answer. Others are furious in his defence. One of them, ex-Telegraph editor and formidable Thatcher biographer, Charles Moore, thinks that Bell has been stitched up by the police and his church. This case is again bubbling this week thanks to a scoop in the Brighton Argus – of which more later.
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