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Elm Guest House: Sex Abuse and the Name Game
http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2013/12/ElmHouse.html
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by elfismiles » Wed Dec 25, 2013 6:32 pm
by cptmarginal » Fri Dec 27, 2013 2:41 pm
AhabsOtherLeg wrote:Just want to let everybody know that Exaro News is no longer a subscription service, anybody can read it now. They've done a lot of great work on Elm Guest House and Cyril Smith in particular.
Detectives have seized video that places a former Conservative cabinet minister at one of several parties where boys were sexually abused by men.
The Metropolitan Police Service’s paedophile unit seized the footage under ‘Operation Fairbank’, which is scoping historical claims against politicians of child sex abuse. It is investigating additional allegations against politicians and other prominent people under ‘Operation Fernbridge’.
The unit is focussing on a series of parties in London three decades ago at which boys were supplied for the sexual gratification of men.
Sources close to the investigation say that this line of enquiry will spin off from Fairbank to become a separate operation with its own name in the New Year.
Exaro has also learnt that police have “talked to” the ex-minister about his attendance at the “sex party”.
The ex-minister, according to the sources, confirmed to police that he was at the party, and that he “knew of” a specific victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons. But the ex-minister denied that he carried out any sexual abuse.
Exaro knows the ex-minister’s identity, but has decided against publishing it to avoid jeopardising police operations.
The police have obtained video that captures the ex-minister at one party. They are also talking to one victim in particular who was videoed at the same party.
Exaro can reveal that photographic evidence of the same victim at other “sex parties” in London was among material seized this summer from a known paedophile, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
The key witness told Exaro that the ex-minister could not deny that he attended one of the gatherings “because he was filmed at the party.”
He said: “They tell me that they have photographic evidence that I went to these parties. They have a photograph of me as a child, and it matched some other photographs that they have of me. They have quite a few photographs, and they have a bit of film as well.”
Detectives believe that some of the “sex parties” were organised by Sidney Cooke, the notorious paedophile who led the ring of four who were jailed for killing Jason Swift in Hackney, east London after gang raping him in 1984.
Other notorious paedophiles went to some of the parties. They include Jimmy Savile, the late BBC star, and Cyril Smith, the late Liberal MP, according to the key witness.
Exaro revealed in October how detectives from the Met’s paedophile unit had opened two new lines of enquiry in their investigation of the ex-minister.
One strand of the investigation centres on the same victim’s allegations that he was trafficked to Amsterdam, where, he claims, he was sexually abused by the ex-minister. He provided the police with a highly-personal description of the ex-minister.
He also gave a detailed account of the gang that trafficked him as a boy, along with other children, from the UK to Amsterdam. He told police that Cooke was a member of the gang.
The Met has sought assistance from Dutch police for its investigation into the allegations.
A senior Dutch police officer travelled to the UK to attend an interview by Met detectives with the key witness.
In February, Exaro also revealed how Met commanders received a secret briefing by the head of the paedophile unit on its plans to arrest the ex-minister over allegations of child sex abuse. The detective chief inspector made clear that he was not planning to take the step imminently, but this is where he expected the investigation to lead.
While the video and photographic evidence places the ex-minister and the victim at a party where boys were supplied to men, they do not prove that the senior former politician carried out abuse.
But one source close to the investigation, a specialist in child protection, stressed the significance of the seizure.
He said: “This is potentially bombshell stuff. I have long been aware of the fact that these parties took place in London,” adding, “This is potentially very significant.”
The developments come as the Crown Prosecution Service is planning to drop key charges brought under Operation Fernbridge against two men accused of child sex abuse.
semper occultus » Fri Jan 11, 2013 3:25 pm wrote:the Savile allegations begat Operation Yewtree, Tom Watson's begat Operation Fairbank :Elm Guest House – Child sexual abuse – 1 BIG cover-up
Police revisit the grim mystery of Elm Guest House – Child sexual abuse and much more …..
http://chris-ukorg.org/cover-ups/elm-guest-house-child-sexual-abuse/
A guest house where paedo VIPs are feared to have abused vulnerable underage boys for years is being probed by cops
A ring of rich and powerful people are said to have used it as a sordid playhouse – and were allegedly snapped and videoed with kids lured from a children’s home. One boy has alleged he was tied up, forced to perform a sex act and made to watch men having sex. A politician, top cop, judge, bishop and household names off the radio and TV are among those said to have been part of the ring between 1979 and 1982.
At these parties , young boys , specially brought over from several childrens homes would be plied with drugs and alcohol.
There is no more ordinary-looking row of suburban Edwardian houses in the country than Rocks Lane, south-west London. But nowhere has given rise to such an outlandish series of allegations than the one formerly known as Elm Guest House. The claims are now being re-investigated by the Metropolitan Police, decades after they were first made. Attempts have been made by care workers to lay bare the secrets of Rocks Lane but to no avail. Whatever the outcome of their investigations in the past, the police seem convinced that a number of serious wrongs need to be righted.
Operation Fairbank
Operation Fairbank is a police investigation into alleged sexual abuse, predominantly the abuse of children, by British politicians in the 1980s. The investigation, led by the Metropolitan Police Service, started in late 2012. The investigation is currently a “scoping exercise” aimed at a “preliminary assessment of the evidence rather than a formal inquiry”. The existence of the operation was confirmed on 12 December 2012, after operating in secret for several weeks. Five officers are currently working on the inquiry
Claims by Tom Watson MP
Operation Fairbank was set up following claims by Labour Party politician Tom Watson in the House of Commons that the police should look afresh at claims of a “powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and No 10″. Watson raised the issue at Prime Minister’s Questions on 24 October 2012. He suggested that such a network may have existed in the past at a high level, protected by connections to Parliament and involving a close aide to a former Prime Minister; neither the aide nor the former Prime Minister were named. Watson referred to Peter Righton, a former consultant to the National Children’s Bureau, who was convicted of importing and possessing illegal homosexual pornographic material in 1992. Watson said that files on Peter Righton contained “clear intelligence of a widespread paedophile ring…One of its members boasts of a link to a senior aide of a former Prime Minister, who says he could smuggle indecent images of children from abroad.”
Reported scope of investigation
The investigation was first set up under conditions of secrecy. The Independent reported that it focused on claims of sexual abuse and the grooming of children, involving parties for gay men at the former Elm Guest House in Rocks Lane, close to Barnes Common in south west London, during the late 1970s.
The guest house was run and managed by Carole Kasir between 1979-1982, who died in 1990 at the age of 47. A party was raided by the police in 1982, following which 12 boys gave evidence that they had been abused by men at the house. Kasir was convicted of the charge of running a disorderly house, but allegations of abuse against children, and a subsequent reported investigation in 2003, were apparently not pursued. Two friends of Kasir gave astonishing evidence to the inquest of her death about alleged sexual abuse of children at the guest house
A guesthouse where 30 years ago the rich and powerful are feared to have abused young boys is under police scrutiny again
Rocks Lane is a conspiracy theorist’s dream, taking in allegations of the grooming of young boys in care for sex, elaborate gay parties involving senior public figures including members of the Conservative Party, charges of a police cover-up and even the suggestion of murder. The police believe that in the context of the Jimmy Savile scandal and renewed claims over the treatment of boys in care in North Wales, there is every reason to look again at an extremely murky saga.
What is known is that in the late 1970s, the Elm Guest House on Rocks Lane was a safe, unthreatening meeting place for homosexual men free from the stigma of a sexual orientation legalised barely a decade earlier. According to a former friend of Carole Kasir, the guest house’s German-born manager, she initially regarded herself as offering gay men an opportunity to “be themselves” without fear. Rocks Lane, which overlooks a playing field, was known to homosexual men as it is close to Barnes Common, itself popular with gay men for cruising.
But Elm Guest House’s willingness to accommodate a small industry (“It became a convenient place for rent boys to take their clients,” says one person familiar with the place), began to attract the attentions of the local police force. One neighbour remembers a months-long police stakeout: “They were there all the time. Police hiding behind the trees to look at the property was a running joke with the neighbours.”
In 1982, the police learned that one of the guest house’s parties was to take place, and the Met’s notorious Special Patrol Group, the precursor of the Territorial Support Group, duly raided the property, resulting in a number of charges being brought against Kasir. The fact that two police officers were in the house at the time of the raid has fed the speculation. The IoS has established that, according to an officer closely involved at the time, two officers were embedded as guests in the property for two or three days, one even pretending to have a broken arm, hiding a police radio in a plaster cast to make secret recordings. If there was a cover-up, it appears not to have involved the local police force, who seem to have been assiduous in seeking to have the place closed down.
As many as 12 boys gave evidence to the police to the effect that they had been abused by men at the house, The IoS has established, but the only conviction was the comparatively minor one of running a disorderly house (ie, a brothel). “Abused boys do not always make the most impressive of witnesses once they get into the witness box,” someone involved in the case said. “The real unlawful activity was underage sex. The police should have been able to make the other charges stick, but the boys were only ever interviewed with a view to them being witnesses against Carole, not as kids who were abused themselves.”
The place continued to attract speculation. Who was at that party has never been established, but as time went on, more and more allegations began to emerge about Rocks Lane. The local police paved the way for the raid, but at some stage Special Branch felt the need to get involved. Why was that, some have asked, unless there was something even murkier going on? Child-protection campaigners alleged that boys had been taken from a local council-run home and abused, a line of investigation that police are now pursuing.
What makes the Rocks Lane story so tantalising for the media is the list of alleged attendees at the parties. One source suggested that Anthony Blunt, former keeper of the Queen’s pictures and an exposed Soviet mole, used to go the parties, but then Blunt’s notoriety made him a magnet for any number of fanciful theories. Those who knew him say the idea is absurd, and that his sexual tastes were far more conventional. Others have spoken of two High Court judges and a Foreign Office official attending. Chris Fay, a social worker who worked for a small charity, the National Association for Young People in Care (Naypic), has alleged that a terrified Kasir had shown him about 20 photographs of middle-aged men with young boys, taken at what he said were kings and queens fancy-dress parties, attended by a number of powerful and well-known people. One, Mr Fay alleged, featured a well-known public figure wearing nothing but a French maid’s apron alongside a young boy nude apart from a tiara.
In 1990, at the age of 47, Kasir was found dead in her flat. The coroner’s inquest concluded that, a diabetic, she had suffered an insulin overdose. Two Naypic employees told the coroner they believed that because she seemingly had not had an insulin injection for three days, she had been murdered, the victim of powerful people who feared she knew too much. Nonetheless, she was found to have committed suicide, worn down by an eight-year battle to have her son, who was taken into care after her conviction, returned to her.
The alleged presence of household names adds to the intrigue, but in a celeb-obsessed age, there is a danger that, should such names not materialise, Rocks Lane will be seen as “just another” child abuse case. Yet police sources fear that dozens of boys were either taken or on the run from care homes to be abused. By any standards, that should be a big story.
by slimmouse » Fri Dec 27, 2013 2:54 pm
by coffin_dodger » Sun Jan 12, 2014 1:14 pm
Female MP abused boy in care
A FORMER female MP was involved in a paedophile network at the heart of government, police have been told.
Sunday Express Published: Sun, January 12, 2014
She is alleged to have forced a boy in care to perform a “vile” sex act at one of a series of drug-fuelled parties in Westminster in the Eighties where boys and girls as young as 13 were allegedly abused.
Last night her alleged victim told the Sunday Express: “I want justice.”
Andrew Ash, now 45, said he has given Scotland Yard the name of the former MP. We cannot name her for legal reasons.
Mr Ash claims he was frequently ferried down to London from the North of England, where he was in care, to take part in sex parties.
He says they were organised by a paedophile ring involving David Smith, Jimmy Savile’s former chauffeur who killed himself last year before he was due to stand trial for sex offences
cont: http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/453381 ... oy-in-care
by GuyWhoInventedFire » Sat Jan 18, 2014 11:53 am
The former Conservative party deputy chairman Lord McAlpine has died, his family has announced.
McAlpine, 71, was previously an aide to prime minister Margaret Thatcher. He died on Friday night in Italy, his family said.
In a statement, they said: "It is with great sadness that the family of Lord McAlpine announce his peaceful death last night at his home in Italy."
Prime minister David Cameron tweeted that his thoughts were with the peer's family, adding he was a "dedicated supporter of Margaret Thatcher and the Tory party".
Conservative former chairman and Cabinet minister Lord Parkinson, who worked closely with McAlpine during the Thatcher era, said: "Alistair McAlpine was an outstanding treasurer of the modern Conservative party – if not the outstanding treasurer.
"He served as treasurer when deputy chairman during the whole of the Thatcher years and was an extremely successful fundraiser. He was also a very close adviser to Mrs Thatcher and had her total trust. In addition to all these things he was a most unusual, intriguing, interesting character with a fantastic range of interests."
McAlpine was mistakenly embroiled in controversy when he was falsely implicated in the North Wales child abuse scandal, after the BBC Newsnight TV programme accused an unnamed "senior Conservative" of abuse which led to widespread innuendo on Twitter that McAlpine was the man implicated.
The decision to broadcast the Newsnight report without contacting McAlpine first led to further criticism of the BBC, and to the resignation of its director-general, George Entwistle. The BBC paid McAlpine £185,000 in damages which he donated to charity.
He also won £125,000 in damages plus costs from ITV following a November 2012 edition of This Morning which linked Conservative politicians to allegations of child sex abuse.
In February 2013, he dropped the defamation claims against Twitter users with fewer than 500 followers in return for a £25 donation to Children in Need.
In March 2013, McAlpine's representatives reached an agreement with writer George Monbiot, who had tweeted on the case and had at that time more than 55,000 followers on Twitter, for the latter to carry out work on behalf of three charities of his choice whose value amounts to £25,000 as compensation.
The prime minister, David Cameron, said McAlpine was a "dedicated supporter of Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative party".
Colleagues described him as a towering figure who made a huge contribution to public life.
Conservative party chairman Grant Shapps said: "Lord McAlpine made a huge contribution to public life.
"He was a man of integrity who had a successful career in both politics and business. He was a towering figure during the Thatcher era who did much for the Conservative party and our country. My thoughts are with his friends and family.
by RocketMan » Sat Jan 18, 2014 8:00 pm
The BBC will be plunged into a major crisis with the publication of a damning review, expected next month, that will reveal its staff turned a blind eye to the rape and sexual assault of up to 1,000 girls and boys by Jimmy Savile in the corporation's changing rooms and studios.
Dame Janet Smith, a former court of appeal judge, who previously led the inquiry into the murders by Dr Harold Shipman, will say in her report that the true number of victims of Savile's sexual proclivities may never be known but that his behaviour had been recognised by BBC executives who took no action.
Smith's investigations, which followed the Pollard inquiry into why the BBC shelved a Newsnight programme about Savile, will send shockwaves through the corporation.
A source close to the inquiry told the Observer: "The numbers are shocking. Many hundreds and potentially up to 1,000 people were victims of Savile when he was representing the corporation. The report will overshadow Pollard. It will go right to the heart of how Savile was able to get away with the most heinous of crimes under the very noses of BBC staff for more than 40 years."
The sheer scale of victims' testimonies being examined has delayed the publication of Smith's report by a month.
Peter Saunders, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac), which has been consulted by Smith's inquiry, said: "In Savile's lifetime I wouldn't doubt [that 1,000 people had been abused by him on BBC property]. The other thing I have found extraordinary, and very sad, is the number of people I have spoken to connected to the BBC, and that is a lot of people, who said: 'Oh yes, we all knew about him.'
"I was talking to someone at BBC Manchester in Salford who said 'we knew about Stuart Hall. He had a room where he would take women and young people'. You think: 'Oh my God, these people were offending almost in open sight and no one thought to intervene.'"
Liz Dux, a lawyer representing 74 of Savile's victims, said Smith had been forensic in her examination of witnesses and her report was likely to cause serious concerns for those at the top of the organisation. She said: "Every single opportunity Savile took it. He never had a quiet day basically so these numbers wouldn't at all surprise me.
"Dame Janet is very widely respected and I am confident she won't leave any stones unturned. The clients who gave evidence said that they felt they were listened to very sensitively and sympathetically and were able to give their evidence in a lot of detail. This will not be a what-the-BBC-want sort of report."
A second report on the scale of Savile's abuse within the NHS has also been delayed due to the number of places in which Savile committed crimes and it is not expected until June.
Smith has used a similar methodology to that employed during the Shipman inquiry, which found the GP had killed hundreds of patients, not just the 15 for which he received life sentences before taking his own life in his prison cell.
Her team sent letters to every member of BBC staff past and present asking whether they had witnessed criminal acts by Savile in order to piece together his pattern of behaviour and establish an understanding of the scale of his crimes.
In three known cases, one of which involved a BBC cameraman who has since died, Savile carried out his abuse with others connected to the corporation, the review has heard.
The report will, however, express frustration that some of those closest to Savile or culpable for allowing him to go unchallenged have refused to co-operate. His criminality peaked in the 1960s and 1970s, when he was middle-aged and at the height of his career at the corporation, but continued right up until the last filming of Top of the Pops in 2006 when at the age of 79 he groped a girl aged between 13 and 16. Smith's review has been in contact with more than 1,000 witnesses and victims, including the 138 who are pursuing civil claims for compensation, but the scale of those affected by Savile's crimes dwarfs the number who have so far come forward.
The Observer understands the BBC has provided more than £10,000 in funding, and the assistance of a business consultant, to Napac to allow it to increase its helpline services. Further money is expected to be made available when the review is published.
Lord Hall, the BBC's director general, met the charity's chief executive shortly before Christmas and asked for his support when the Smith report is launched.
Dux hopes the BBC will respond to Smith's findings by offering further support to the victims, who are due to receive limited compensation through a scheme being agreed with the corporation, the NHS and the Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust. Those raped by Savile are unlikely to receive more than £50,000 in compensation.
Dux, head of abuse cases at Slater & Gordon, said: "What I hope doesn't happen is that the BBC goes into some sort of navel-gazing period. Rather than look internally, look at how they are behaving and accept some corporate responsibility, which is not what they have done so far.
"I have asked for counselling for my clients who have given statements but the BBC have done nothing; my clients have been left absolutely high and dry."
If the BBC really cared about these people then they would have contacted them as soon as they have given evidence and said: 'We accept that you have gone through an awful ordeal and whatever the outcome of the report we have made facilities to let you go and see this counsellor.'"
She added: "Whether these cases are resolved by settlement scheme or by court the amount of damages the victims of the BBC will get is absolutely tiny compared to what they have spent on their own legal fees, the Pollard inquiry and their own staff. The damages for compensation in civil law for rape is rarely over £50,000 and that is something that is life-changing and hideous. They are actually getting an insulting amount".
A spokesman for Smith's review declined to comment.
by jcivil » Mon Jan 20, 2014 10:57 pm
by cptmarginal » Wed Jan 22, 2014 3:10 pm
Retired police chief arrested on suspicion of sexual and physical abuse in North Wales care home scandal
Jan 22, 2014
By Tom Pettifor, Luke Traynor
Gordon Anglesea is the 18th arrested by police from Operation Pallial, investigating claims of sex abuse at 18 care homes in the region between 1963 and 1992
A retired police chief has been arrested on suspicion of the sexual and physical abuse of care-home boys aged as young as eight.
Former North Wales superintendent Gordon Anglesea, 76, was questioned over allegations that seven children were assaulted between 1975 and 1983.
He is the 18th person to be arrested by police from Operation Pallial, investigating claims of historic sex abuse at 18 care homes in the region between 1963 and 1992.
Mr Anglesea – a Rotary Club member and Freemason – was quizzed in December as part of the probe.
He is now on bail.
A Rotary Club spokeswoman yesterday said: “Gordon Anglesea has been granted leave of absence until the end of April. We are not able to comment further.”
And the secretary of the North Wales Province of Freemasonry Peter Sorahan said: “In view of the fact Operation Pallial is ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment.
"We welcome transparency in every aspect of such investigations.”
Mr Anglesea, who lives with his wife, 65, was a policeman for 34 years and worked as an inspector in Wrexham between 1975 and 1983.
He became a superintendent and retired in 1991. On Monday outside his home in Old Colwyn, North Wales, he said: “I have no comment to make.”
Last month, a National Crime Agency spokesman said: “Officers arrested a 76-year-old man on suspicion of a number of physical and sexual assaults.
"The offences are alleged to have taken place against seven boys, between 1975 and 1983, when they were aged between eight and 16.”
The following day the NCA said the man had been bailed until April.
To date, one person has been charged with a large number of serious sexual offences.
The NCA launched Operation Pallial in 2012. It is one in a string of probes into abuse claims in North Wales care homes.
In 2000 the Waterhouse Inquiry was opened to look at allegations in ex-council areas Gwynedd and Clwyd since 1974.
Eight people were prosecuted, seven of whom were convicted.
And in July, the Jillings Report was published – 17 years after it claimed officers and other professionals could have been potential “perpetrators of assaults”.
It had been blocked by the former Clwyd County Council because insurers feared compensation claims.
IN 1997 journalists working for the HTV current affairs programme Wales This Week were given a stark warning by the North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal.
If they broadcast newly discovered allegations of child abuse dating back nearly twenty years they risked being held in contempt of the Tribunal.
The broadcasters removed the allegations. But having gagged the media, the Tribunal didn’t go on to investigate the allegations.
The story of how the Tribunal suppressed an important piece of evidence has never been told.
IT WAS a Monday morning in October 1997 at the studios of HTV on the outskirts of Cardiff.
The team at the channel’s current affairs programme Wales This Week were preparing the Thursday evening edition.
For Editor Clare Hudson and Director David Williams this was no ordinary programme.
It was the latest in a series of investigations into child abuse in North Wales.
A Tribunal was already hearing evidence about the extent of physical and sexual abuse in children’s homes in the area.
Wales This Week had played a substantial role in the events which led up to the setting up of the Inquiry.
Six years earlier a report on allegations of physical abuse at a home in Gwynedd, the north-west corner of Wales, had led to the county being included in the child abuse investigation which had already started in the north-eastern corner, the county of Clwyd.
A year later, in September 1992, Wales This Week broadcast the most explosive programme in its history.
It featured two witnesses who claimed that a policeman, retired Superintendent Gordon Anglesea, had sexually abused them while they were residents of the Bryn Estyn children’s home just outside Wrexham.
Anglesea was an inspector in Wrexham at the time the alleged offences were committed. He was also a member of a masonic lodge in the town.
The allegations, in varying degrees, were repeated by Private Eye, The Observer and the Independent on Sunday.
Anglesea sued all four companies for libel and a jury found for him in December 1994.
He accepted a total of £375,000 in damages and the case cost HTV nearly a million pounds when the legal costs of the 15 day trial were added.
Anglesea’s victory and vindication did little to stem the tide of rumour sweeping North Wales.
It was said that councils had covered up the extent of the abuse in their homes while police had failed to investigate allegations of child abuse properly.
The fact that two of the most important figures in children’s homes – Peter Howarth of Bryn Estyn and John Allen of the private Bryn Alyn complex – were already facing child abuse charges did nothing to stem the tide.
Even some members of the North Wales Police Authority, the civilian body that controlled the non-operational aspects of the force, were calling for an outside force to be brought in to handle the investigation.
There was also speculation that a child abuse ring was operating in the area and that it included Tory members of the British political establishment who were also freemasons.
According to conspiracy theorists, this ring was being protected by policemen who were also masons.
♦♦♦
IT WAS against this feverish background that William Hague, the Secretary of State for Wales, decided in June 1996 to set up a tribunal to find out the truth.
He chose former High Court judge Sir Ronald Waterhouse to chair the Tribunal.
On the third day of the Tribunal’s opening session the barrister representing the North Wales Police, Andrew Moran QC, delivered his opening address.
He revealed that the major police inquiry carried out by Superintendent Peter Ackerley between 1991 and 1993 had investigated Gordon Anglesea.
He then delivered a bombshell.
“We can now demonstrate that Mr Anglesea, apparently at sometime a Freemason, was shown not an ounce of favour nor was any other officer or former officer. The proof of that is incontestable in the recommendation made by Supt Ackerley that there was sufficient evidence to prosecute.”
He added it was the Crown Prosecution Service, the body that decides if a case is strong enough to go to trial, which decided that the police officer should not be charged.
Moran added: “Despite the verdict in the libel trial in which the authors and publishers could not even discharge the burden of proving on a balance of probabilities that Anglesea was guilty, the recommendation was justified at the time and nails the lie of Masonic influence and favour.”
As part of the libel settlement with Anglesea, HTV and the other defendants had agreed they would never repeat the libels against him.
So it was difficult, if not impossible, for Wales This Week to return to the issue.
Instead, the team turned to a privately run children’s home called the Bryn Alyn Community which was close to the council-run Bryn Estyn home.
Most of the rumours concerned Bryn Estyn and Bryn Alyn stayed firmly in the background.
Bryn Alyn was owned by John Allen – a man with no social work training – and his family.
In February 1995 he was convicted of six offences of indecent assault against young male residents at the Community. He was gaoled for six years.
There were two disturbing aspects of his case.
The first was he went “missing” for a week during his trial. He turned up in Oxford claiming to have had a breakdown and couldn’t remember anything about the seven days.
The second disturbing aspect is that during the period when he was missing, one of the former Bryn Alyn residents was found dead in his Brighton flat.
Lee Johns had given evidence against Allen at the trial and was one of the six former residents the jury were to decide had been abused by Allen.
The inquest verdict on Lee Johns was suicide. His family are convinced he did not take his own life.
Three years earlier he’d been seriously injured in this Brighton fire that also killed his brother Adrian. Adrian was also a former resident of Bryn Alyn.
Three years before he died, Lee had been badly injured at a catastrophic fire at a flat near Brighton in which five people died. One of those who died in the blaze was Lee’s younger bother Adrian who had also been in care at Bryn Alyn.
Both Lee and Adrian, after leaving Bryn Alyn, had stayed at properties which John Allen had helped to buy.
Wales This Week quickly discovered that, while the Bryn Alyn Community was a children’s home entirely funded by local authorities in England and Wales, it was actually a goldmine for John Allen.
Between 1974 and 1991 Bryn Alyn received more than thirty million pounds from councils for looking after problem children. A substantial slice of this money never went directly into looking after the children in the Community’s care.
More than half a million pounds went into a state of the art video studio in Wrexham and a large number of properties were bought including a villa in the south of France.
Allen bought a substantial country mansion for himself and paid £18,000 for a half-share in a yacht based in the Mediterranean called Dualité.
Allen was also using huge amounts of petty cash for his own purposes which were never properly recorded in the accounts.
He told the North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal in 1997 that he estimated he’d spent £180,000 in presents for residents and former residents.
He said that Bryn Alyn ran an after-care system that included accommodation in Wrexham, London and Brighton as well as financial assistance for former residents.
♦♦♦
AS PART of the investigation into the financial affairs of the Bryn Alyn Community Wales This Week also talked to Des Frost, the former social worker who became joint number two at Bryn Alyn and looked after the finances.
But Frost didn’t just know about the finances, he’d also heard stories about John Allen’s behaviour.
When he was interviewed on camera, Frost said that on one occasion John Allen came in one morning with a black eye.
He said it had happened the previous night when he was trying to get into the caravan where a boy was sleeping. Allen did not offer any explanation for his behaviour.
Frost did nothing. But, on another occasion, he said
“I was approached by a member of staff who told me briefly of some rumours that were going around the organisation. And I explained it would be better not to talk about it at Bryn Alyn.”
“So I went up to his house at a later stage. And he told me some pretty hairy stories about allegations of child abuse by John.”
“I can’t remember honestly what they were except one which I remember was a member of staff caught in, shall we say, a compromising position and John had a perfectly legitimate answer for that one – but that was a rumour amongst others that were going round.”
Frost says he was aware the boys in Bryn Alyn were “not necessarily pure and innocent” – they were “streetwise”. He did not personally believe that John Allen was abusing the children at Bryn Alyn.
“Nevertheless, I was concerned about these rumours but the question is – what do you do about it? Because – do you go to your boss and say ‘excuse me, are you assaulting these children?’ If he wasn’t – or, rather, if he was, he would have said ‘mind your own business”. And if he wasn’t, I would have been down the road without a job.”
Frost says he went to see a local magistrate who had connections with Bryn Alyn.
“I was somewhat anxious that he should be such a friend of John’s that it would get back to him. But fortunately he wasn’t that involved – and he already had his own suspicions about the stories that I told him.”
The two men agreed there was nothing to do but to stay in touch. But Frost remained concerned.
“I then decided to go to the police on behalf of myself and the rest of the staff because, it was a difficult situation, but I didn’t want it ever said that – why didn’t you do anything about it?”
He said he felt he couldn’t go to the police station in Wrexham because Bryn Alyn residents were often in trouble with the police.
He was afraid John Allen would find out he’d been there and that he wouldn’t have a credible explanation for the visit.
“So I phoned the CID in Chester where I lived and asked them to come to my house which they did. Two detectives arrived. I can’t give you their names because I can’t remember.”
He says he told them of the rumours that had been passed on to him.
“What I hoped was that they – in fact I think I asked them to – was to communicate what I’d said to Wrexham police because I explained, as I just said, that it would not have been circumspect for me to walk into Wrexham police station.”
After the interview Wales This Week asked Cheshire police if they had any records relating to this interview. Cheshire said all records would have been destroyed long before but, if the interview had taken place, the procedure was straightforward – Chester police would have produced a report and passed it to the North Wales Police.
Frost says he never heard anything back from the Chester detectives. But shortly afterwards the local policeman – PC Jim Jones based in the village of Llay – asked to see him.
“He came to my office when normally he wouldn’t have done that because I wasn’t on the care side.”
“And he had a letter from a boy, an ex-Bryn Alyn boy, from Newcastle who’d been arrested. They’d found a letter on this boy addressed to John asking for money. The policeman wanted to know if this was blackmail.”
Frost explained that he didn’t think it was blackmail because of the aftercare system John Allen provided boys when they left the home. This involved him sending some former residents money.
“So I said, no, I didn’t think it’s blackmail. When he got up to go he said a very strange thing, he said, ‘well, I suppose everything is alright because you and mister so and so work here’. And the other person he referred to was also a member of the senior management.”
He and Frost were lay preachers.
“I just wonder whether he was on a trawling expedition having been alerted by Chester police to come and see me and see if I had anything else to say.”
But Frost did not tell PC Jones about the allegations he said he’d gone to Chester detectives about. The visit of PC Jones gave him the opportunity to repeat those allegations in a legitimate meeting arranged by the policeman.
Frost, who didn’t want to be interviewed for this article, now says that he was concerned that the PC would tell his superiors and that John Allen would find out.
At the time of the Wales This Week interview, Frost told the programme-makers that the Tribunal – already more than half way through its public hearings – had not interviewed him and he had not been put on notice that he might be a witness.
♦♦♦
So, on Monday 21 October 1997, the Wales This Week team began assembling the programme including the Frost allegations dating back to the early 1980s.
The journalists believed they had uncovered important new allegations that the Tribunal had missed.
That day, the Tribunal moved against the programme.
Press officer David Norbury rang to say the Tribunal was concerned that a number of people, including Frost, had been interviewed by Wales This Week.
The next day he rang again. Again he was concerned about the interview with Frost. Editor Clare Hudson made a note of the conversation: “I asked is Frost a witness, has he given a statement? DN [David Norbury] didn’t know.”
She then asked “what exactly is the nature of the concern? He said “in a nutshell, contempt of court.”
Norbury said Brian McHenry, the lawyer seconded from the Treasury in London to act as the tribunal’s solicitor, wanted to talk to the programme’s lawyer.
After the lawyers talked, it became clear that if the programme contained any new allegations the Tribunal would consider referring Wales This Week to the Attorney General for contempt of the Tribunal.
If the programme makers were found guilty then, theoretically, they could be sent to gaol.
The programme’s legal advice was clear – remove the allegations – and Clare Hudson felt she had no option but to do so.
But the team decided to make it clear that Wales This Week had the details of these allegations.
When the programme about John Allen went out on the evening of Thursday, October 24th the script was clear.
After stating that Des Frost was concerned about the rumours he was hearing, the commentary added:
“Finally, Des Frost, an evangelical preacher, became so concerned about John Allen’s behaviour that he went to the police.”
“The North Wales Tribunal investigating child abuse is concerned that there should be no public discussion of these events at the present time.”
Two and a half years later, the Tribunal issued its report known as the Waterhouse Report after the former High Court judge, Sir Ronald Waterhouse, who chaired it.
It effectively cleared North Wales Police of the charge that it had failed to investigate child abuse properly.
True, it criticised a 1986-88 inquiry carried out by the then head of the CID at North Wales Police, Gwynne Owen, as being “defective in many respects” and “sluggish and shallow”.
However, the Tribunal added that there was no evidence that, had it been pursued properly, the police would have been aware that it needed to investigate child abuse more deeply.
The Tribunal Report concluded “there was no significant omission by the North Wales Police in investigating the complaints of abuse to children in care”.
But there was one incident which the Tribunal concedes might have triggered a wider inquiry. The Tribunal’s report states:
“There was an occasion in 1981 or 1982 when John Allen’s sexual activities might have come to the attention of the police. Police officers in Durham had become aware that a former resident with the Bryn Alyn Community was receiving substantial cheques from Allen.”
“A police officer at Llay, near Wrexham, was asked to investigate the position and learnt from the Bryn Alyn accountant at that time that money was being paid to former residents.”
This police officer was PC Jim Jones.
“We heard the recollections of four witnesses about this matter but only one of them, Keith Allen Evans [the head of care at the time], claimed to have told the Llay police officer about rumours or banter in relation to residents who received gifts in return for “bending down” for Allen; and Evans himself did not believe what was being said about Allen.”
“The Llay police officer, on the other hand, said that there was no suggestion by the Durham police or by the Bryn Alyn staff of blackmail. The officer said that blackmail was not the subject of investigation and that he was not told of any rumour of sexual abuse by Allen.”
“In these circumstances,” the report concludes, “we cannot be satisfied that anything was said to the North Wales Police at that time to put them on notice of allegations of sexual misconduct by Allen.”
At the time the Llay police officer investigated the letter his superior officer was Inspector Gordon Anglesea, a fact that is not mentioned in the Tribunal Report.
When he gave evidence to the Tribunal, Anglesea was not asked if he knew anything about the visit to Bryn Alyn by PC Jones.
The accountant mentioned in the paragraphs from the Tribunal report about PC Jones’ visit is Des Frost.
And the events that are being discussed come, according to Frost, after he claims to have gone to the police in Chester with allegations of sexual abuse by Allen.
For this article Rebecca Television pressed Frost for more information that might help give the date more accurately.
Frost has always maintained that his visit to Chester was around the time of a suicide that happened not far from Bryn Alyn. A former resident called Robert Chapman had committed suicide by jumping from a railway bridge near Bryn Alyn.
Later a letter arrived for him and, because John Allen was away, Frost decided to open it. The letter had strong homosexual overtones. When John Allen returned and discovered that the letter had been opened he went, Frost recalls, “ballistic”.
We checked the date of the Robert Chapman suicide – it was in July 1978. This means that, if Frost’s recollection is correct, his interview with Cheshire police happened several years before Durham police alerted North Wales Police to the suspicious letter they had seized.
♦♦♦
Frost also has an extraordinary story about the events that surrounded the censorship that took place in the October 1997 Wales This Week programme about John Allen.
He says that ten days after he was interviewed by the programme-makers, he received a phone call from Detective Inspector Neil McAdam who said he was outside with another officer.
McAdam said they wanted to interview him. Frost says he formed the impression they were from the Tribunal.
He agreed to meet DI McAdam. McAdam and detective constable Karen Lewis took a statement from him.
Frost says he told them what he’d told the television journalists.
By an extraordinary coincidence, this day – 22 October 1997 – was two days before the Wales This Week programme about John Allen was due to be screened and during the period when the Tribunal was expressing concern about the interview with Frost.
Frost says that McAdam and WDC Lewis returned a fortnight later with the statement for him to sign.
But McAdam and Lewis were not employed by the Tribunal.
They were detectives from the North Wales Police. McAdam, in fact, had been involved in the investigation that led to the conviction of John Allen.
In December 2009 Rebecca Television asked McAdam, who is still serving, to confirm he’d interviewed Frost and to explain why he had done so.
A fortnight later McAdam emailed to say the questions were “receiving attention”.
In July 2010, after six months’ silence, we lodged an official complaint against McAdam with the Professional Standards Department of the North Wales Police.
The investigation was carried out by Superintendent Paul Breed of the Western Division.
He said that three days after he received the questions from Rebecca Television, McAdam brought the issue to his Divisional Command Team.
The Divisional Command Team then talked to the senior officers at force HQ in Colwyn Bay “with the suggestion that given the nature of the enquiry DI McAdam should not be the person to respond…”
“It is reasonable,” concluded Breed in his report on the complaint, “that DI McAdam has sought advice and guidance from his line managers expecting that ownership to respond … rest with someone higher within the organisation.”
We had already written separately about the issue to Chief Constable Mark Polin back in January 2009. He never answered.
We wrote to Gordon Anglesea to ask if he remembered anything about PC Jones’ visit to Bryn Alyn. He didn’t answer.
We wrote to Gerard Elias, QC who was the Tribunal’s main counsel. He did not reply.
We also wrote to Andrew Moran, QC who represented the North Wales Police at the Tribunal. He did not reply.
We wrote to Sir Ronald Waterhouse about the Frost allegations. He told us: “the Tribunal has said all that it could properly say on the evidence before it in its report and that it would be both unwise and inappropriate for me to comment further.”
At that point, we had not discovered that North Wales Police had interviewed Frost. When we wrote to Sir Ronald about this interview, he did not reply…
We also sent a synopsis of this article to the two other members of the Tribunal: Morris le Fleming and Margaret Clough.
Morris le Fleming told us: “I have no wish to comment on your synopsis. I am not, nor ever have been, a Freemason.”
Margaret Clough said: “Thank you for the courtesy of sending the synopsis but I do not have any comment to make.”
NOTES
1 This article was first published in 2010, part of a series called The Case of the Flawed Tribunal — other articles in the series will be added at a later date.
2 Events have moved on since this article was published. Last year, David Cameron announced a new child abuse police investigation and ordered a review of the Tribunal, headed by Mrs Justice Macur. Rebecca Television has given two statements to both inquiries.
3 The interview with Des Frost can be seen in the video A Touch of Frost.
♦♦♦
© Rebecca Television 2013
Between 1975 to 1983 he was a North Wales Police Inspector based in Wrexham.
He served as a policeman for more than 34 years and reached the rank of Superintendent by the time he retired in 1991.
Anglesea is a Rotarian and a Freemason.
Shortly after his arrest last December, he informed his local Rhos on Sea Rotary Club that he had been detained.
Six days after the arrest, on December 20, Rebecca Television rang John Roberts, secretary of the Rhos club.
We told him we were planning to name Anglesea.
Roberts replied that Anglesea had not resigned.
Roberts said the retired police officer had applied for leave of absence and that the request would be considered at the club’s January meeting.
At that meeting, which took place on January 7, Anglesea was given leave of absence until April.
He is a long-standing Rotarian, one of 51,000 members in Britain and Ireland.
He has been President of the Rhos on Sea club on three occasions — 1989-90, 1990-91 and 2007-8.
In 2010 he was the club official in charge of “Youth Service”.
A spokeswoman for Rotary International told Rebecca Television that “while there was a legal process under way, the organisation could not comment.”
Anglesea is also a Freemason of more than 30 years standing.
There are 250,000 masons in England and Wales — outnumbering Rotarians 5 to 1.
In 1976 Anglesea joined a masonic lodge in Colwyn Bay.
In 1982 he became a member of Wrexham’s Berwyn lodge.
He left in 1984 to join a new Wrexham lodge called Pegasus becoming its Master in 1990.
The secretary of the North Wales Province of Freemasonry, Peter Sorahan, said:
“In view of the fact that Operation Pallial is an ongoing investigation, it would be inappropriate for me to comment.”
“However”, he added, “I can assure you that if requested by the Police to do so, the Province of North Wales will provide full assistance with their inquiries.”
Masonic HQ, the United Grand Lodge of England based in London, also confirmed it would assist the police if asked.
On January 8 Rebecca Television wrote to Gordon Anglesea informing him that the website intended to reveal that he was the man arrested on December 12.
We asked for a comment.
Royal Mail confirmed delivery of the letter.
There was no reply.
The present accusations are not the first he has faced.
The background is laid out in the article The Trials Of Gordon Anglesea.
In 1994 a libel jury found journalists had falsely accused him of abusing children at the Bryn Estyn children’s home in Wrexham.
Private Eye, The Observer, Independent on Sunday and the broadcaster HTV paid him combined damages of £375,000 with their legal bills running into several million pounds.
These and other allegations were also considered by the North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal of 1996-2000.
In its 2000 report Lost in Care, the Tribunal found no evidence that the retired police officer had abused children.
Libel case witness found hanged
Friday 03 February 1995
A witness in a High Court libel action, brought by the former North Wales police superintendent, Gordon Anglesea, has been found hanged at his home. An inquest was told yesterday that there were no suspicious circumstances.
Mark Humphreys, 30, of Wrexham, Clwyd, was a former resident of the Bryn Estyn children's home in Wrexham. Mr Anglesea won substantial libel damages against HTV, the Independent on Sunday, the Observer and Private Eye, over allegations of sexual abuse at Bryn Estyn.
by beeline » Thu Jan 23, 2014 3:54 pm
by RocketMan » Thu Jan 23, 2014 7:26 pm
by semper occultus » Fri Jan 24, 2014 5:10 am
Jimmy Savile: transcript reveals 'policy' used to halt abuse claims
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/oct/15/jimmy-savile-boasted-police-abuse
http://www.theguardian.com/media/interactive/2013/oct/16/jimmy-savile-police-interview-transcript
by semper occultus » Fri Jan 24, 2014 5:18 am
by cptmarginal » Thu Jan 30, 2014 5:35 am
semper occultus wrote:Jimmy Savile comics superstar...
by Hammer of Los » Thu Jan 30, 2014 5:45 am
by semper occultus » Thu Jan 30, 2014 3:29 pm
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