Comment by Hope on September 11, 2014 at 13:00

Keith Vaz seeks 'emergency law' to sack South Yorkshire PCC Shaun Wright

Wright is resisting widespread calls for him to step down, in the wake of last month's child abuse revelations

"The committee also heard that a Home Office researcher who uncovered the scale of child sex abuse in Rotherham more than 10 years ago was left in fear of her life after being visited by two South Yorkshire police officers."

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/09/researcher-rotherham...

This will come as no surprise to any real whistleblowers - why did TWO plain clothed police officers from Kent Police turn up without producing identification to former Cllr Sheena Williams home  and why would Kent Police refuse to name the other officer ? 

DCI Dominic Kilbride

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/dci_dominic_kilbride

The UK's European university -  University of Kent The Centre of Child Protection 

http://www.kent.ac.uk/sspssr/ccp/BT_115980_PUB493%20Centre%20for%20...

Alarm & Distress - Protection of Harassment Act

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/alarm_distress_protection_of...

Comment by Richard Card on September 11, 2014 at 13:13

Hope I can tell you that answer from Kent Police is not true.  In 2001 police used a first warning under Protection from Harassment Act to try to stop complaint against a private military cadet group Kent Adventure Training Corps.   The next stage (if a further letter is sent naming that group) would be written warning and another letter gets arrest.  Only at the arrest point does a person gain his Magna Carta Rights to trial.  I sent two more letters and copied them to Chief constable.  saying forget the written warning send some lads round to try making what would be an unlawful arrest.  Never heard another thing.  Until a couple of years later Special Branch of PSNI contacted Ramsgate Royal British Legion secretary asking for a report concerning, among other things, private military cadet groups in Kent.  Kent Police tried the stage one warning under Protection from Harassment Act to stop a report going to PSNI which named Kent Police officers.  And again they were defied and again no written warning and no arrest.  Just the abuse of a stage one warning to try to intimidate.  In 2003 KATC lost its KCC Youth affilaition status BTW.  I gather that this matter is once again topical in Thanet Royal British Legion circles.And we still do not know why Kent Police refused to investigate a KATC adult leader with a false Army Record who was working for Reliance Security Deal Barracks in the terrorist bombing year 1989 (11 Royal Marines killed).  We do now know that one KATC leader is an associate of a man who was a keyholder at the barracks some years before 1989.  

Comment by Hope on September 12, 2014 at 12:53

At last a tiny snippet from the BBC covering the abuse of children by the state.

Mickey Summers

East Midlands Today 11/09/2014

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04gmktv/east-midlands-today-1...

Comment by Hope on September 12, 2014 at 14:08

Massive Money Laundering – Asset Stripping Scam – Material on Paedophile Rings etc

You really couldn't make this stuff up !

http://outofthebagradio.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/7/5/12754388/rec_09_...

Andrea Davison is this the same woman who is mentioned at 21 minutes into the interview ?

Sonia Poulton Andrea Davison interview Thursday Dec 19, 2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5oqrMMuCHA

Andrea Davison

https://twitter.com/beforethestars

Comment by Hope on September 12, 2014 at 15:31

Foster care sibling separation row: 'I'd hear him cry out for his brother in the night'

Shocking new figures show that a third of British children in foster care have been separated from their brothers and sisters - with charities warning of the devastating, long term effects this can have on their mental health. 

A third of children taken into foster care are being separated from their brothers and sisters, new statistics have shown.

Thousands of siblings are being split up in the UK, each year.

Action for Children obtained the data through a Freedom of Information request. They show that of the 11,082 children with siblings placed in care between April 2013 and March 2014 (across 159 councils), around 3,598 were separated. That’s 32 per cent – or roughly, a third.

The charity has warned that the impact of placing brothers and sisters in different foster homes can have a serious impact on their mental health at a time when they are already suffering feelings of abandonment.

Chief executive Sir Tony Hawkhead said, “For many children, being taken into care can be a confusing and upsetting time; add the distress of being split up from your brother or sister into the mix and the impact will last a lifetime”. ....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-tongue/11082130/Foster-care...

Action for Children previously called NCH National Childrens Home .... says it all 

Comment by Hope on September 12, 2014 at 21:54

Samantha Morton reveals sexual abuse as child in residential care

Actor who spent childhood in foster care and residential homes says abuse was rife in Nottingham children's services

The Bafta- and Golden Globe-winning actor Samantha Morton, who spent much of her childhood in a succession of children's homes in Nottingham, has revealed for the first time that she was sexually abused by residential care workers and said she believes abuse was "rife" within the city's children's services.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Morton said she had reported one particular incident, in which two men jointly abused her when she was 13, to Nottinghamshire police and social services shortly after it happened, but no formal investigation was undertaken by either agency. The men were allowed to stay in their jobs, while she was abruptly moved to another home.

She said she was recently shocked to be told by police that her records from the time contained only a reference to "frolicking", rather than recording the serious child abuse allegations she had made.

The actor had chosen to speak out, she said, after it emerged last month that an estimated 1,400 children had been sexually exploited in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. "I just wanted to go public with this, to say, we know it's rife but why are there not further investigations into other areas? It isn't just Rotherham, I'm sure it's not just Rotherham," said Morton.

On Friday the widespread scale of alleged child abuse in Nottingham became clear when it emerged that 95 claims of abuse at 13 separate children's homes have been submitted to the city and county councils, while police investigations into five homes are ongoing.

The councils have already settled civil damages claims totalling £250,000 with 26 former residents of the Beechwood home in Mapperley, Nottingham, without admitting liability.

Morton spent time at Beechwood but says she was not abused there. At least three other homes where she was housed during her childhood are the subject of abuse allegations.

The actor, 37, who has twice been nominated for an Oscar,and starred inthe blockbuster Minority Report alongside Tom Cruise, was first taken into care as a baby and spent the rest of her childhood in and out of foster care and children's homes. She had told social workers about "all sorts of sexual abuse that happened to me from a very, very young age", she said, but no action had ever been taken. She described one incident when she was 13 when two male members of staff at the Redtiles home came into her bedroom at night, removed her nightclothes and abused her. She was initially embarrassed but eventually told social workers, who did nothing. "There was no support, no offer of counselling, no wanting to delve deeper ... Maybe they just assumed I had been abused already, or was being, anyway." She estimates that 90% of her friends in the home had been sexually abused, though not all by staff.

A few weeks later Morton told her mother, who took her to a local police station. Again, no further action was taken.

She said police officers suggested their hands were tied because the assaults were taking place within the social services system. "A lot of people who abused my friends were people in very, very top jobs within the social services. Nottingham in the 80s was rife with that."

Morton recently contacted Nottinghamshire police to ask what information was on file relating to her complaint as a 13-year-old, to be told her notes recorded no mention of sexual abuse. "I said that I was shocked and didn't know what to say," she said.

The Guardian later learned that the records referred to allegations of "frolicking", a term which an officer confirmed to Morton had been recorded at the time.

"I asked her what that meant. No answer. I said I didn't remember saying that and I can't imagine saying that at 13 ... Even now it's not something I would say."

In a statement, Superintendent Helen Chamberlain, head of public protection at Nottinghamshire police, said she had spoken to Morton at length. "But as yet she has not given enough to suggest a criminal offence nor stated that she wishes to make an allegation about an offence. We will continue to work with her and if she decides to report an offence she can be assured that we will investigate it fully, working closely with the local authority, and seek to take action, where appropriate."

Morton said she was "heartbroken" by the police response. She said and that she had described the incident to Chamberlain and stressed that she wanted to take it further. "If that isn't a criminal offence against a child I don't know what is."

Steve Edwards, service director for children's social care for Nottinghamshire county council, which had responsibility for children's services while Morton was in care, said the council was hoping to speak to her: "We are hoping in the near future to speak with Samantha so that we can fully understand her concerns which date back to 1991. "Nottinghamshire county council takes all allegations of abuse, whether current or historic, extremely seriously."

Asked what she believed should change, Morton called for an end to the privatisation of children's services, higher standards for residential care workers , a reversal of cuts to the care system and a legal requirement for people in authority to report abuse when they suspect it.

Peter Wanless, CEO of the NSPCC, paid tribute to Morton for speaking out and called for a culture change across social services, "so that children are listened to and taken seriously, not dismissed as troublemakers". He echoed Morton's call for mandatory reporting of suspected abuse in institutions which have a responsibility for the welfare of children.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/12/samantha-morton-reve...

Samantha Morton: I was sexually abused as a child in care homes – video interview

http://www.theguardian.com/society/video/2014/sep/12/samantha-morto...

Comment by Hope on September 13, 2014 at 22:34

Operation Care (Care home child abuse in Merseyside & Cheshire)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfvczjS8cVk

Comment by Hope on September 13, 2014 at 22:42

'I was abused by my choir master': In a brave and haunting account, TV star and ex MP Gyles Brandreth reveals the years of abuse he endured at prep school

Gyles Brandreth, author, TV personality and former Tory MP, was the target of vicious comments on Twitter in July after he appeared on a Radio 4 programme to discuss historic allegations of a paedophile ring at Westminster.

Among the unproven claims was a suggestion that his predecessor as MP for Chester, Sir Peter Morrison — a former Tory deputy chairman and Whip — was implicated in sexual abuse at the Bryn Estyn children’s home in Wrexham. 

Brandreth’s denial that he had been aware of these rumours during the Nineties, when he was in Parliament, angered Twitter users who demanded: ‘What does Gyles have to hide? He should think about the victims for a change.’

His response here is both shocking and moving, as Brandreth, 66, reveals his own experience as a victim of child abuse at his boarding school, Betteshanger in Kent, more than 50 years ago.

+5

Gyles Brandreth was abused by a teacher at his boarding school when he was a child 

As it happens, I do think about the victims of paedophilia.

I know about its reality because when I was a child I was ‘groomed’. Yes, I was a ‘victim’ of child abuse, once upon a time. 

The experience lasted two years. It was a long while ago, but I remember it as if it were yesterday.

In the summer of 1959, when I was 11, my parents sent me to boarding school. It wasn’t that they didn’t like me: it was simply what middle-class parents of their generation did.

I was sent to a small preparatory school in east Kent, with a hundred boys or so, set in a handsome country house in the middle of nowhere, and I liked it at once. Wet runs, cold showers, lots of Latin.

It was a typical English boys’ prep school of its time — except there were no beatings. That’s how my parents found the school: they were looking for one that did not believe in corporal punishment.

The war still echoed. We boys made models of German fighter planes from balsa wood and plastic Airfix kits, and, under the bedclothes by torchlight, read Pan paperbacks with lurid covers featuring chilling accounts of Japanese prisoner-of-war camps.

Most of the masters were married men, and their wives were very much part of school life, supervising at meals or helping to make costumes for the school plays.

And then there was Mr Harkness. He was a bachelor, in his early 30s I suppose, though perhaps a bit older — his hair was thinning. It was dark brown hair, which he wore swept back.

He was of medium height and slim build; he dressed well (he owned a pair of blue suede shoes), and his fingers, though stained with nicotine, had noticeably well manicured nails.

Mr Harkness taught English and music, and was in charge of the school choir. In my first term I joined the choir — and, quite quickly, became a favoured pupil, his ‘pet’.

Each evening, by tradition long established, just after ‘lights out’ there was a close-of-day musical ritual known as ‘Nightingales’. On the landing, outside the boys’ dormitories, three or four choristers would gather, in pyjamas and dressing gowns, and stand in a semi-circle around Mr Harkness.

He would then strike a tuning fork to give us the note we needed, and conduct us as we sang, a capella, a verse or two of The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Is Ended, or another, similar, evening hymn.

One evening, when we choristers had finished our singing and were trooping off to our dormitories, Mr Harkness called me back to have a word. As I stood facing him, alone on the darkened landing, he put his hands on my shoulders and bent down to kiss me.

He kissed me on the mouth, quite gently. He smelled of tobacco and Old Spice. That is my most vivid recollection of him.

When Mr Harkness kissed me, I did not respond. I just stood there, accepting what was happening.

Over the next two years, I received his attention without questioning it and without complaint.

And his attention was considerable. Every day he found a moment when we could be alone: on the landing, in his classroom, in the school chapel, in the vestry of the beautiful church where the choir sang on Sundays, in his bedroom.

 

Despite knowing the abuse which took place at Betteshanger School in Kent (pictured) more than 50 years ago, Gyles Brandreth said he is not traumatised by what went on

When he kissed me (which he did daily), when he put his hand on my knee as I sat next to him on the organ bench, when he let his hand stray inside my shorts as I sat on his bed learning my lines for the school play, I knew it was wrong but I did nothing to stop him.

Instinctively, I understood that what he was doing was transgressive (without knowing the word), but I acquiesced. I did not like what he did to me, but I did not mind it that much. I felt neutral about it, and I felt no pressure — and certainly no desire — to respond.

I never touched him. I would not hold his hand. When he said ‘I love you’, I did not reply.

I suppose I liked him. At least, I was flattered by his attention. I think I felt it was my due. I was 11, 12 and 13 when this was happening, and quite full of myself. Mr Harkness took lots of photographs of me. We both admired the results.

I vividly remember he smelled of Old Spice and tobacco  

And I enjoyed the treats. He allowed me to use his bedroom whenever I wanted and provided little ‘feasts’ for me: fresh crab in soft white rolls was my favourite. He lent me books, too.

I remember that he had an adult friend called Rex, who drove down to the school one day and took us on an expedition to Deal, or Folkestone.

Another boy in my year came with us for the outing. I realised that day that he was another of the choirmaster’s pets.

‘I don’t love him like I love you,’ Mr Harkness assured me later. I was not bothered. I was not jealous. I was not emotionally involved.

During term-time, I spent time with Mr Harkness every day. During the holidays I did not see him but he wrote to me. I have kept the letters. (That is not especially significant — I keep everything.) The letters are affectionate and chatty, but circumspect. They do not give much away.

My parents noticed their arrival, of course, not only because 12-year-olds don’t get much correspondence, but also because Mr Harkness wrote in an elegant, rather flowery script and used turquoise ink.

Was it my parents who brought it to a head? Did they speak to the school about it? I don’t know. I never discussed it with them. All I know is that during my final term at school, I learnt that Mr Harkness was moving on.

+5

The author and TV personality became the target of vicious comments when he appeared on radio to discuss historic child abuse at Westminster

Then, one day, I was invited to have a chat with Mr Burton, one of the two headmasters. Unusually, the conversation did not take place in Mr Burton’s study. We went for a walk around the school forecourt, and tentatively he asked about Mr Harkness and his behaviour towards me.

He mentioned the police, and wondered if there was something they should be told? I said I didn’t think so. It was an awkward walk.

As I remember it now, thinking back, I can picture the gravel beneath my feet. I must have been looking down. I am afraid I was not very helpful.

Has this experience of being a victim of child abuse had a lasting effect on me? I certainly don’t feel traumatised by it, nor even resentful. I did not complain then, and I am not complaining now.

When he said 'I love you', I did not respond  

I don’t feel that I was robbed of my childhood. I haven’t turned to drink or drugs, or been haunted by the memory of what happened — though, now that I have stopped to think about it, I am startled by how much I do remember and how vivid are the details.

Yes, my innocence was violated and it was wrong. It should never have happened. The man should have been stopped — and I hope he was. He was clearly discovered, and he moved on.

Maybe he mended his ways. We will never know, because he is dead now.

Apart from being a reasonably robust and self-confident little lad, and coming from a secure home with a loving family, I suspect that one of the reasons I did not feel traumatised is that I took the experience as part and parcel of boarding-school life — something you had to take in your stride; something that happened to lots of people.

Perhaps for my generation it was. We may never know the whole truth.

And will we ever know the truth about Sir Peter Morrison, my predecessor as MP for the City of Chester?

+5

Sir Peter Morrison, pictured at Downing Street, was reportedly picked up by police twice after being spotted in public lavatories and in his car with young boys 

When I first met Peter Morrison in 1991, I sensed that he was gay, and I could see that he was a heavy drinker. He was stepping down as an MP, aged 47, after 18 years in Parliament.

He was a privy counsellor, he was a knight, but he told me he knew he wouldn’t make it to the cabinet, so he was giving up politics for business.

‘I’m going now while I’ve got time to start another career,’ he told me. ‘I want to make some money.’

I believed him. But my wife Michele, whose instinct is always good, said she thought he was jumping before he was pushed.

When we arrived in Chester in 1991, the word on the street was that Peter was ‘a disgusting pervert’. Out canvassing, knocking on doors in the large council estates, we were told that Morrison was a monster who interfered with children.

I'd never have covered up for a child abuser  

At the time, I don’t think I believed it. People do say terrible things without justification. Beyond the fact that his drinking made Morrison appear unprepossessing — central casting’s idea of what a toff paedophile might look like — no one was offering anything to substantiate their slurs.

At the time, I never heard anything untoward about Morrison from the police or from the local journalists — and I gossiped a good deal with them. Four years after stepping down, Peter Morrison was dead of a heart attack.

What did Mrs Thatcher know of his alleged dark side? When I talked to her about him, I felt she had the measure of the man. She knew he was homosexual, and she knew he was a drinker. She was fond of him, clearly, but told me that he had ruined himself through ‘self-indulgence’ — much as Reginald Maudling had done a generation earlier.

When it came to the love lives of her colleagues, Mrs T was not judgmental (she was quite ready to forgive Cecil Parkinson for his affair with Sara Keays); but I am sure she would not have countenanced a child abuser as her parliamentary private secretary, let alone have authorised a cover-up on his behalf.

Gyles Brandreth appears on TV-AM with Cheryl Baker in 1987

The first, and only, official acknowledgement of my predecessor’s possible involvement in child abuse came my way in 1996, when William Hague, then Secretary of State for Wales, came up to me in the Commons to let me know that he had ordered an inquiry into allegations of child abuse in care homes in North Wales between 1974 and 1990 — and that Morrison’s name might feature in connection with the Bryn Estyn home in Wrexham, 12 miles from Chester.

Sir Ronald Waterhouse QC, a retired High Court judge, was appointed to head the inquiry. It took three years, cost £12 million, and when the Waterhouse report appeared it made grim reading.

It named and criticised almost 200 people for either abusing children or failing to offer them sufficient protection. Credible evidence had been found of ‘widespread sexual abuse’, with the existence of a paedophile ring in the Wrexham/Chester area.

But Sir Peter Morrison’s name did not feature.

The accusations against him surfaced again in 2012. Channel 4 reported that Morrison had been seen driving away from Bryn Estyn ‘with a boy in his car’.

+5

It seems unlikely that Margaret Thatcher knew of his rumoured tendencies, much less covered them up  

Further inquiries were announced, and maybe, eventually, Peter Morrison will be nailed beyond reasonable doubt.

But, for now, what do we actually know? Not much.

We do know that in the late 1980s, a Sunday newspaper reporter, Chris House, received a tip-off from police, who said that Morrison had twice been caught in public lavatories with under-aged boys, and had been released with a caution.

Ten years later, another investigative journalist, Nick Davies, followed up the story and confirmed with the police that Morrison had indeed ‘been picked up twice’ — but added that ‘there appeared to be no trace of either incident in any of the official records’.

Was there a cover-up? The story would certainly have been embarrassing. At the beginning of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, Morrison was in the Whips’ Office. He went on to become a junior minister, then a minister of state, and in 1990 became Mrs Thatcher’s parliamentary private secretary.

He was a force to be reckoned with — at the heart of the Establishment, close to the PM, and, throughout this period, his sister, now Dame Mary Morrison, was a friend and lady-in-waiting to the Queen.

This association with Buckingham Palace adds an undeniable frisson to the story. That said, I doubt that Dame Mary knew anything about her younger brother’s private life. It’s not the sort of thing a chap discusses with his sister.

So, if there was a cover up, who managed it? Peter was a Whip, and the Whips do look after their own.

But all I can say is that in my time in the Whips’ Office, we helped people with mental problems, marital problems, drink problems, financial problems, and more besides — but I don’t know of any case where we covered up for anyone who we believed to be guilty of a serious criminal offence.

My own experience makes that unthinkable.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2754017/I-abused-choir-mast...

Comment by Hope on September 13, 2014 at 22:53

All Perverts hiding within all political parties need to be exposed !

40 Pedo`s in British politics named &shamed time to stand up Britain!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrbcUaG2uIQ

Comment by Hope on September 13, 2014 at 23:05

Former chair of Paedophile Information Exchange claims he hid material in 'locked cabinets' at the Home Office

Steven Adrian Smith, who was jailed in 2011 for possessing indecent images of children, was an electrical contractor at the Home Office for four years in the 1970s and 1980s

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10950563/Former-chair-...

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