IPCC Investigate Edward Heath CSA Allegation

Elsewhere on The Needle: Edward Heath: The Paedophile Prime Minister

Aug 3, 2015

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is to investigate allegations concerning Wiltshire Police’s handling of an alleged claim of child sexual abuse made in the 1990s.

It is alleged that a criminal prosecution was not pursued, when a person threatened to expose that Sir Edward Heath may have been involved in offences concerning children. In addition to this allegation, the IPCC will examine whether Wiltshire Police subsequently took any steps to investigate these claims.

The allegations were referred to the IPCC by Wiltshire Police following allegations made by a retired senior officer.

If you or someone you know has been affected by the issues referred to, you can speak to trained counsellors at the NSPCC on 0800 800 5000 or email help@nspcc.org.uk

IPCC

And a statement from Wiltshire police

A spokesperson for Wiltshire Police said:

“Following the announcement today regarding an independent investigation by the IPCC into allegations concerning how Wiltshire Police handled an alleged claim of child sex abuse made in the 1990’s, we are carrying out enquiries to identify if there are any witnesses or victims who support the allegations of child sex abuse.

“On becoming aware of the information, Wiltshire Police informed the IPCC and later made a mandatory referral. The IPCC investigation will specifically consider how the Force responded to allegations when they were received in the 1990’s.

“Sir Edward Heath has been named in relation to offences concerning children. He lived in Salisbury for many years and we would like to hear from anyone who has any relevant information that may assist us in our enquiries or anyone who believes they may have been a victim.

“We are working closely with the NSPCC to ensure that any victims are appropriately supported. They provide trained helpline counsellors to listen and provide assistance.

“We take all reports of child abuse, either current or that occurred in the past very seriously. Victims will receive support throughout any investigation and associated judicial process.

“If there is evidence of offences having been committed we will ensure that , if possible, those responsible are held to account through a thorough and detailed investigation. This includes any other parties who are identified as having been involved in child sex abuse.

“Some people may never have spoken out about the abuse they have suffered but we would urge them to please contact us and to not suffer in silence.

“Please call the NSPCC on 0808 800 5000 or email help@nspcc.org.uk as they have dedicated staff in place to deal with victims or if you have information that may help police please call us via 101.” Ends

Chief Executive of the NSPCC, Peter Wanless said:

“It’s important that people who believe they have been victims of abuse have the confidence to speak out knowing that their voices will be listened to.

Whether abuse happened in the past, or is occurring today, whether those being accused are authority figures or not, allegations of crimes against children must be investigated thoroughly.   While some people wait years before speaking out, we would urge them to act quickly so they can get help as soon as possible. Our trained helpline counsellors are always on duty round the clock to listen and provide assistance.”

Wiltshire Police

Apocalypse Now Then

Guy Mankowski is an academic, journalist and author of the novels Letters from Yelena and How I Left The National Grid. His forthcoming book, ‘Marine’ concerns institutional cover-ups.

Apocalypse Now Then: A Review of ‘An Audience With Jimmy Savile,’ Park Theatre, London, 9th July.

It is easy to conclude that a show like this shouldn’t exist. As Alistair MacGowan mentioned to me in a post-show interview, ‘The Tabloids concluded straight away this production was in poor taste, but the broadsheets all saw that it had merit’.

Take the cursory time to consider the development of this show and you learn that ‘An Audience With Jimmy Savile’ was written by investigative journalist Jonathan Maitland, using real-life transcripts of dialogue by Savile. Some sourced from police interviews, bolstered by the accounts of his former victims. Add to the melting pot that Alistair MacGowan not only had second thoughts, but ‘third, fourth and fifth thoughts’ about playing Savile, and we’re in thoughtful territory- hardly bad taste. So what was it that convinced MacGowan to play this sordid role? He mentions that a friend told him it would allow the public to achieve catharsis. That the show would allow us to finally see Savile confronted for his crimes, even if it is only using fictional dialogue. Savile- with his pantomime child-catcher persona- serves as an analogue addressing an array of issues here. He psychically sticks in the craw because he got away with it. This show addresses that.

A piece of art should not only be appraised for its content, but for its standpoint, its concept. Before the curtain is even raised at this small, arty theatre in central London, this show thereby deserves praise. It offers us, the public, the opportunity to examine why we have created mass institutions. Why the facades of celebrity protect people like Savile from justice. In holding up such a fine mirror, this show serves one hell of a function.

The set up is simple- a central red chair allows the cast of five, playing various roles, to follow two narratives. In the first Savile is the star of a sycophantic edition of This Is Your Life, in all but name. In fitting with this, the show begins with Savile’s ‘achievements’ being exuberantly announced to us, the unwitting audience of this fictional talk show. Shadow boxing amongst the smoke, from the back of the stage, ‘Savile’ enters, and creates a genuine shiver of revulsion amongst us.

MacGowan comes onstage, Savilism’s trickling from his lips as easy as lies. MacGowan, settling into the red seat, seems to more than embody the dark spirit of this modern-day bogeyman. Indeed, as the show progresses, he seems to channel something much more than the mere catalogue of ‘now thens’ and ‘young mans’ that we all know and hate. Step-by-step, MacGowan takes us to the point where he gets to portray the font of dark rage at the heart of Savile. This anger is revealed only when the mask is pulled off, when the control Savile craves is put under threat. Savile bullies the presenter into ‘asking’ him about exaggerated achievements. Like the most charismatic merchants of nothingness that we see in the media today, Savile pulls you into his own rhythm, syntax and worldview. During the fake interview MacGowan is fully immersed in Savile’s peculiar, rangy riffs, from the first moment to the last. When the lights are dipped, Macgowan actually seems to be Savile. God knows how, but he even captures the bulging eyes, the indulgent slouch, the sense of flipped switches that Savile constantly conveyed. One moment boasting and bullying, the next retreating into a passive-aggressive haze of cigar smoke.

We soon see what happens when Savile’s worldview is tested- a burst of rage that makes the whole crowd jump. One rather challenging audience member refuses to turn their phone off and the confrontation is direct and furious. ‘You turned your mobile off yet, young man?’ he roars, adopting the condescension that seemed as all the rage in the eighties. ‘Well, we’ll all wait until you do,’ he adds, to the frozen member of the public. In such moments we, the audience, are actually confronted by Savile. A former victim of Savile’s that I spoke to after told me of their desire to run onto the stage and strangle him.

Savile here demeans a young female stage-hand by grabbing her hair, demanding she come backstage to give him ‘biscuits’. When falteringly asked what type, after a Pinteresque pause, Savile replies ‘ginger nuts’. It’s testament to Maitlands’ writing skill that his Savile soon blurs what he wants with who the woman is. In later scenes Savile then refers to the stage-hand as ‘ginger nuts’, and the laughter prompted in the audience is hollow indeed.

In the second narrative a middle-aged woman is haunted by her rape at the hands of Savile, as a hospitalised child. Her father (a brilliant amalgamation of Little English evasiveness played by Graham Seed) begs her not to scratch the façade of familial happiness that he’s so carefully maintained. Their relationship serves as a concise analogue for how England dealt with Savile. ‘Sweep it under the carpet,’ ‘it can’t be true’ and, perhaps, most tragically, ‘perhaps you are to blame.’ Her, Maitland captures that catalogue of cowardly disengagement with skilful brevity.

Leah Whitaker, playing in one character a combination of many of Savile’s victims, takes on a difficult task with commendable spirit. At first her sudden kinetics and impassioned breathiness seem overly dramatic, but such an impression soon seems mean-spirited. In the character of ‘Lucy’ she confronts people about the abuse she suffered again and again, and she acts as the cleansing white to Savile’s black. Police officers are (in a most English way) mean-spiritedly supportive and easily beaten off-track, having recently promised to ‘leave no stone unturned.’ The supporting cast capture England, from the bully-boy surliness of Savile’s chauffeur to the greasy support of a newspaper editor, who predictably wilts under pressure.

Maitland captures precisely quite how Savile was able to get away with it, during the many confrontations between Savile and the people who tried to call him to account. Savile makes mincemeat of the talk show host that questions his backstage behaviour. Circling him like a matador, and menacingly reminding him that they are both part of the same media ‘family’. A newspaper editor, played with great swagger by Robert Perkins, seems determined to hold the tracksuit sporting pervert to account. But by unbalancing him with insults, appeals to his intelligence, and spiky mentions of support in high places, Savile neuters the threat. In a deftly choreographed police interview scene (drawn from a frustratingly toothless real-life encounter) two officers question Savile under caution. Savile, like many of those desperate to cling to power, orchestrates every aspect of the event. Needless to say, the officers are ruffled, and they soon scurry back to the comforting rhythms of their own lives with the gentlest questions traced on their notepad.

All of this begs the question- what was Savile’s internal logic about his crimes? In one of his many indulgent riffs Savile here talks about wanting ‘total freedom’, and it seems that everything about him, from his abuse to his gaudy choice of leisurewear, was about his pathological desire to achieve this. Savile designed his life so there was an exact join between desire and realization- a juncture that celebrity still permits. Savile really seemed to think that the scale of his fundraising gave him freedom to fondle and rape vulnerable people whenever he wanted, and anyone seeking redress was, in his words, ‘a fly’, to be swatted off. Like many abusers, Savile hated details offered by anyone but him. Beware the man in power who paints his own portrait in broad brushstrokes, allowing no ones else’s colour to leak into the frame.

I can’t really go into how the show achieves catharsis about Savile without giving too much away. But I will say that Maitland breaks down his psychopathology in some exhilaratingly dramatic scenes.

‘It that really how you think it works?’ Lucy says, confronting the presenter in the shows climax. ‘Rape, marathon, rape marathon?’ Pleasingly for us, but perhaps departing from possibility, Savile let’s her speak, and Lucy unfurls her hypothesis regarding his evil. She belittles him, calls him to account, makes him hear her festering grievance. I won’t tell you how Savile reacts. But catharsis is achieved. A sense of justice which our ‘Great British Institutions’, with all their guidelines, enquiries, vows and money, never managed to even vaguely create.

What more can we ask theatre to offer, than this kind of resolution?

Responding To Criticisms Regarding Timing Of Jeremy Corbyn CSA Story.

Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn with his former agent Derek Sawyer.

Yesterday, I posted a story about the close relationship between left-wing Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn MP and his constituency agent until 2010 and former Islington Councillor Derek Sawyer and his very close personal and business relationship to a notorious convicted paedophile Derek Slade. That can be found HERE. This followed the publication of a story in The Daily Mail in which Dr Liz Davies explained how she and other Social Workers approached the Islington MP regarding the systemic child sexual abuse  back in 1992 and that Jeremy Corbyn did not help. That story can be found HERE.

Some have suggested that the timing of these stories are an attempt to smear Jeremy Corbyn MP as he is a controversial left-wing politician who appears to be ahead in the current Labour Party leadership contest and that if there had been serious substance to these allegations then they would have been made before now.

From my own point of view, Jeremy Corbyn’s politics are irrelevant. If a similar clear connection to a prolific and notorious convicted child abuser could be made with any of the other Labour leadership candidates then I would have no hesitation before publishing it and the same goes for any prominent figure regardless of their party affiliation. However, that Jeremy Corbyn might conceivably become the leader of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition means that there is a greater public interest in publishing than if he had remained a backbencher. I had been aware of Derek Sawyer and his relationship with Derek Slade long before yesterday but I had not been aware of Sawyer’s closeness to Jeremy Corbyn MP.

Dr Liz Davies has left a comment on The Needle strongly refuting the suggestion that she had not commented before about the matters reported in The Daily Mail story which I print below;

Just for clarification – Islington survivors and whistleblowers have been raising this for 23 years – its not new to us. We sought assistance from both MPs at the time. It would be so easy for Corbyn to say a few words expressing his determination to bring the extensive crimes against children to the fore when/if he becomes leader. There have also been comments on other fora about why I didn’t report the matters to police. Of course I have worked closely with police from the 90s until this present day… as any social worker doing their job to protect children would do. – Dr Liz Davies

If there are some that still believe that these allegations have been suddenly concocted as a way of smearing Jeremy Corbyn MP then I can do no better than refer them to a story which I’ll republish in full below, written by award winning journalist Eileen Fairweather, for The Independent back in May 1995. After reading it it should be clear that concerns about Jeremy Corbyn’s failure to act when informed about systemic child sexual abuse in his Islington constituency are long standing.

As the journalist who instigated the newspaper investigation that led to the exposure of mass sexual abuse in Islington children’s homes in north London, now seems a good time to “out” myself as a Labour-voting feminist, and join the debate on what role “political correctness” played.

The Labour borough has finally put its hands up. Last week an independent report confirmed that pimps, paedophiles and pornographers had for years preyed on children in Islington’s homes. Not all were “gay”, but many were, and the report unequivocally blamed Islington’s dogmatic interpretation of equal opportunities. Getting the council to admit it was wrong took 60-plus articles, 13 independent inquiries and endless midnight phonecalls from scared “whistle-blowing” staff. We were all branded right-wing homophobes.

When the children’s harrowing stories first appeared, Margaret Hodge, then leader of Islington council, sought refuge in killing the messenger. The London Evening Standard’s month-long investigation was clearly sourced by scores of staff, children, police officers and documents. But because the newspaper is considered in right-on N1 to be “right wing”, Hodge airily dismissed it as “politically motivated … a sensationalist bit of gutter journalism”. A month later she took up a top City job.

This typified Islington’s Stalinist reluctance to study the facts when the facts do not fit the theory. If gays are oppressed, then all gay men are good, was its simplistic credo. Men who hurt boys are not “gay” – they are paedophiles. But intelligent analysis was impossible in Islington, where paedophiles cynically exploited the gay rights banner and those who suspected this were branded as reactionary.

Such mindless name-calling paralysed many. I find it terrifying that the entire Islington scandal would never have been exposed without the courage of, initially, just one social worker. She contacted me in despair after being investigated as “anti-equal opportunities” for ringing alarm bells about a gay children’s home worker (a traumatised boy later confirmed months of buggery). We cajoled other colleagues into secret meetings and confiding. Two had already been sacked after raising concerns, and one received death threats. I took some staff to Scotland Yard, although it was off their patch: publish, was the advice.

Naively, the whistle-blowers hoped the council would protect them. I acted as go-between and, two months before the first stories appeared, met Islington’s chair of social services at the town hall. Councillor Sandy Marks asked to see the evidence but would not agree to protect our sources’ confidentiality. The Standard’s politics could not be trusted, so nor could I: apparently I had sold out to Fleet Street for a fat cheque.

No one appealed to Hodge. A manager had earlier asked for extra funds to investigate why a stream of disturbed children were visiting a man previously imprisoned for running a child brothel. She wrote rebuking him: “Given the state of the social services budget, I expect more The Independentappropriate responses.” That was two years before this “unknown” scandal broke.

Shortly after publication, some social workers met Islington Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn begging him to influence the council, then still denying everything. Soon after, I met him. He did make inquiries but was reassured. There the matter rested.

Radical acquaintances accused me of “whipping up homophobia”; Islington mysteriously lost files requested by police; at a feminist conference I addressed before inquiries tentatively vindicated our work, I was barracked for “abusing” children. This was Hodge’s widely reported claim: that we had bribed disturbed children to invent those heartbreaking stories. She repeated this allegation while securing the Barkingside candidacy and has only just retracted it saying she had been lied to.

All it takes for evil to flourish, one philosopher said, is for good men to do nothing. Only one Labour Party member ever helped this investigation.

The Independent

Derek Sawyer, Jeremy Corbyn’s Former Constituency Agent.

Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn with his former agent Derek Sawyer

On that day in 1992, they duly ‘told him everything’, says Davies.

‘We were in his office for more than an hour. We shared all of our concerns, including our fears that local children had been murdered by abusers.’

Corbyn listened politely. ‘He responded that he’d heard similar things from other constituents, and promised to do something about it, starting by talking to Virginia Bottomley, the Health Secretary,’ says Davies.

‘We were very pleased to hear him say that. I’d say that we all left the room feeling heartened.’…

…Or so they hoped. But, in the event, Davies and her fellow social workers would be sorely disappointed.

Corbyn never wrote to Davies, or telephoned, to acknowledge their meeting, or thank her for seeking to blow the whistle.

‘After that meeting, we never heard another thing,’ Davies recalls. ‘There was no letter. No phone call. I never, ever saw him speak about it.

‘In fact, whenever I saw Jeremy afterwards, sometimes years later at Stop The War marches and events like that, I’d always go up to him and say: “This scandal is still going on, Jeremy.” He’d be very polite, but he never seemed to do anything.’

Indeed, 23 years later, Liz Davies has yet to see Corbyn express what she regards as sufficient anger, or regret, over the Islington abuse scandal, or to publicly criticise the many local politicians, council workers and political allies who allowed it to happen in the first place.

The Mail

Jeremy Corbyn did nothing when told about systemic child sexual abuse in Islington ?

Surprising ?

Perhaps, readers should watch Roger Cook’s ‘An Abuse of Trust’ again which highlights Derek Sawyer activities. Derek Sawyer was for a time Jeremy Corbyn’s constituency agent and the programme details the very close relationship Sawyer had with notorious paedophile Derek Slade over many years.

Eight teenage boys who allege they were sexually abused by their English headmaster at a school in India are seeking compensation.

Lawyers have been instructed to pursue claims on behalf of the ex pupils of Anglo-Kutchi Medium School in Gujarat, where Derek Slade was headmaster.

Slade was jailed for 21 years in 2010 after he was found guilty of sexually abusing 12 boys in Suffolk.

He became involved in the funding and building of Anglo-Kutchi in 2001.

A six-month investigation by journalist Roger Cook for the BBC’s Inside Out programme uncovered the allegations of abuse.

The boys are claiming compensation from three defendants who they say owed them a duty of care because they ran the school which employed Slade.

The claim is being made against Derek Sawyer, former leader of Islington Borough Council and former chairman of the London Regional Courts Board, Abdul Osman, Labour Lord Mayor of Leicester, and the charity Help a Poor Child, which supported the school.

BBC News