The peoples' tax money at work all
over the world !!!! Are they now afraid of the people ?????
Secrecy imposed on
the exposure of alleged child abuse – news and feature
Policemen,
social workers and prominent public figures have been accused of belonging to a
paedophile ring which indulged in a relentless campaign of physical and sexual
abuse in children’s homes in North Wales.
The names of the alleged members of the ring have been given by witnesses in
public sessions of the North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal, but they have been
suppressed by the tribunal’s chairman, Sir Ronald Waterhouse QC, who has
threatened the media with High Court proceedings if they print them.
The Guardian today publishes for the first time detailed evidence about the
alleged ring which is said to have been based in Wrexham, in North Wales, and
to have infiltrated local children’s homes over a 20-year period. Witnesses
claim that members of the ring used their connections with police and social
services to conceal their activities. All of the accused have denied the
allegations. Those who have been named to the tribunal include:
* A man who bears the same surname as a prominent Conservative supporter.
Two witnesses have told the tribunal of a rich and powerful man who belonged to
the alleged ring.
* The son of an influential peer who admitted to police that he had been
having sex with an under-aged boy from one of the homes. Despite his admission,
he was never prosecuted.
* A powerful public official who has previously been cleared of abuse. Six
different witnesses have given separate accounts to the tribunal of his alleged
rape of young boys. Another has reported him attending parties in Wrexham which
were supplied with boys from a children’s home.
* Two social workers and two police officers, one of whom was accused of
abuse on four separate occasions and exonerated each time, another of whom has
since been jailed in another part of the country for gross indecency with a
child.
* More than a dozen other local men, including an executive with a loacl
authority, a senior probation officer and a director of a major company.
All of those who have been named as members of the alleged ring have denied
the charges, either in evidence to the tribunal or through their lawyers.
When the tribunal was established last year, it had been assumed that the
press could report its proceedings, using the laws of privilege which allow
them to name names from court cases and public hearings without fear of libel
actions.
However, Sir Ronald then ruled that the media could not report the name of
any living person who was accused or likely to be accused of abusing children
in the North Wales homes unless they had previously been convicted of such an
offence. Since then he has extended his ruling twice: he has granted anonymity
to one man who died 16 years ago and to another who has twice been convicted of
sexually assaulting boys from a North Wales home.
Sir Ronald has argued that his ruling will encourage paedophiles to come
forward and to give honest evidence without fear of retribution. Critics say
that this is unnecessary since he has the power to compel witnesses to attend
and that those who have come forward have done so to deny the allegations
against them and not to make a clean breast of their alleged offences.
One lawyer who has been involved with the tribunal said he feared that the
anonymity ruling was actively discouraging witnesses. “Newspaper readers may
well have information of potential value to this tribunal. They may themselves
have been the victims of abuse, or they may have worked with the alleged
abusers. But if the press is not allowed to inform them of the names of those
against whom allegations are made, they will not learn that their information
is important. So they will not come forward.”
The tribunal was ordered by the last Conservative Secretary of State for
Wales, William Hague, after Clwyd County Council decided not to publish the
report of an independent inquiry into allegations of abuse in its children’s
homes. The tribunal, which has been hearing witnesses for eight months, is
expected to continue to take evidence until January next year.
Feature -
Lord A was a powerful man: he had a considerable private income; he was a
senior freemason, a respected patron of the arts and a champion of good causes;
he became a familiar figure in the corridors of power both in the City of
London, where he sat on the board of one of the largest companies in Britain,
and in the political world, where he became an influential figure in regional
politics. His son, however, was a very different creature.
His son drifted into the low life of Wrexham, in North Wales, where he made
his home. He drank, he mixed with a group of people who were in and out of
prison and, most of all, he hung around the red-brick public toilets by the bus
station in King Street. According to evidence which has been given behind a
screen of anonymity at the North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal, Lord A’s son was a
paedophile.
In July 1979, Lord A’s son, then aged 25, had an alarming experience. He
woke up in a room in the Crest Hotel in Wrexham to discover that all of his
clothes and possessions had been stolen – by a young boy with whom he had been
having sex that night. This boy, who was then two years below the age of
consent and was supposed to be in the care of the local authority, has now told
the tribunal that Lord A’s son used him for sex “on numerous occasions”.
Lord A’s son had no doubt at all about how to handle this theft. He went to
the police and not only named the treacherous boy but explained quite openly
why it was that they were sharing a room. A contemporary note made by the boy’s
social worker records that the police were aware of allegations of “homosexual
activities” between the boy and Lord A’s son. The police investigated. The
outcome was clear: the boy was convicted of theft and sent to a detention
centre for three months; Lord A’s son was never charged with any offence at
all.
Under normal circumstances, Lord A and his son would both by now have been
identified in the press as their names surfaced in the proceedings of the
tribunal, which has been holding open sessions for eight months. The public
would have joined the tribunal in making a judgement about whether Lord A’s son
escaped prosecution simply because there was insufficient evidence (he later
told police that his claim to have had sex with the boy must have been “a
figment of the imagination”) or whether Lord A’s son was right to boast, as one
convicted paedophile told the tribunal, that his influential father could
intervene to protect them.
As it is, Lord A’s son has not been named because the chairman of the North
Wales Tribunal, Sir Ronald Waterhouse QC, has ruled that, unless they have been
convicted in court, no living person who is or is likely to be accused of
abusing children in care can be identified. It so happens that Lord A’s son is
dead – and so is his father – but Sir Ronald has extended his ruling to prevent
either man being named.
For more than ten years now, a dark storm of scandal has been gathering over
the children’s homes of North Wales – a swirling mass of allegations not only
of the routine rape and battering of children in care but, more than that, of
the existence of a paedophile ring, a conspiracy of abusers both in and outside
the homes who were nourished by each other’s obsessions and protected by each
other’s power. Power is the key.
Power is the fabric of a paedophile ring, essential first to subjugate the
children, whose passivity is essential for the adults’ indulgence; and second,
where possible, to neutralise the authorities who might otherwise frustrate its
activities.
In the case of North Wales, the allegations of conspiracy have embraced
police officers, social workers, local authority executives, senior businessmen
and politicians – in one case, a prominent supporter of the Conservative Pary –
all of whom are accused of using their power corruptly to protect the
paedophile ring to which they belonged. More than ten years after these
allegations first surfaced, their truth remains a matter of bitter dispute.
On the fringe of the tribunal hearing, there are disturbing suggestions of a
violent cover-up. The London Evening Standard has run a series of stories about
two brothers, Adrian Johns and Lea Homburg, who were abused by a convicted
paedophile named John Allen. Allen ran a complex of homes in North Wales and
London and is said to have been supplying boys to wealthy outsiders. The
Standard reported that the two brothers were trying to blackmail him when, in
April 1992, Adrian was burned to death in a house fire in Brighton. Lea later
died in mysterious circumstances.
A dozen others who complained of abuse by the alleged ring have also died.
One is said to have slipped on ice on a railway bridge and fallen to his death.
Another, who was found dead in his flat was said to have died of natural
causes; he was aged 21. Several are said to have committed suicide although in
the case of one of them, his mother said his supposed suicide note was written
in someone else’s handwriting. Others died apparently through abusing heroin,
alcohol and solvents.
Over the years, twenty seven police inquiries failed to disclose the scale
of the alleged abuse. Thirteen reports by social services went unpublished.
Several journalists reached out for the truth and ended up scorched by libel
actions. When police finally launched a major inquiry, in 1991, they secured
the conviction of only four care workers and concluded that there was no
evidence of a paedophile ring. Clwyd County Council then commissioned its own
independent inquiry but decreed that its report could not be published.
The tribunal was to be the tool which finally unlocked the truth, sitting in
public, with the power to compel witnesses and to order the disclosure of
documents. However, the decision by its chairman, Sir Ronald Waterhouse, to
grant anonymity to all those who are alleged to have belonged to the ring has
made it almost impossible for the public to make any judgement about the
strength of the allegations.
The most powerful argument against these allegations is that they are, in a
profound sense, incredible. Among the nearly 300 men and women who have named
148 abusers to the tribunal, there is one man in particular who claims to have
suffered at the hands of members of the alleged ring – 49 of them in all, he
says, some of them care workers, some of them outsiders, all sexually abusing
him over the years, one predatory man moving aside only to be replaced by yet
another. His name, as the victim of a sexual offence, is protected by law. We
will call him Leon.
It took Leon the best part of a week to tell his story to the tribunal,
reeling off names as he progressed, each new claim pushing harder on the bounds
of belief. When he was eleven, he said, he joined the army cadets in another
part of the country where he was then living with his alcoholic father: two of
the instructors were policemen; both of them raped him repeatedly. At weekends,
he went to an army cadet camp; a third instructor, whom we will call Carpenter,
raped him. He was taken into care: the social worker who drove him to the home stopped
in a lay-by to fondle him. Inside the home, he said, he was indecently
assaulted by the superintendent, fondled by one housemaster, beaten black and
blue by another, battered and half-drowned by a senior housemaster and slapped
by a policeman to whom he tried to complain. At fifteen he was moved to another
home. There, again, he was regularly raped by the deputy headmaster and then by
one of the housemasters. “Come on, you know you enjoy it,” he recalled the
housemaster saying.
His story continued, moving still further away from the familiar and the
credible. Leon told the tribunal how he had seen a powerful public official
walking in the grounds of the home with the deputy headmaster who was so fond
of abusing him. The deputy introduced him to the man, who said : “Come with me
for a minute.” He led him into an outbuilding, he claimed, told him to kneel
down in front of him and raped him orally. Then he raped him anally. “Just
remember who I am,” he said, according to Leon. From time to time, according to
this evidence, this official returned to use Leon again, sometimes in his car,
sometimes in the grounds of the home, always evidently with the blessing of the
deputy head, always implicitly with the result that the deputy head had less to
fear from the authorities.
Eventually, aged 16, Leon fled from the home, into Wrexham, and ran straight
into the arms of Carpenter, the army cadet instructor who had raped him at
weekend camps. Through Carpenter, he was introduced to a group of some 20 men,
each of whom, he alleged, took his chance to abuse him – in Carpenter’s flat,
in their own homes, in cars, in the stinking red-brick toilet by the bus
station. Leon said they tied him up, photographed him, pushed chair legs into
him, used him for oral sex and anal sex, used him in orgies, and booked him
into a hotel room so their friends could use him too. He named these men. One
was a director of a major company. Another was a local authority executive.
There was a market trader, two jewellers, and a Roman Catholic priest who came
fingering his way into his bed at night. There was a second social worker, who
picked Leon up in the toilets half a dozen times and used him for whatever sex
he wanted, molesting him in his car, buggering him in Carpenter’s flat. Another
was Lord A’s son. And then there was Mr B, the mysterious man with the powerful
connections.
Mr B, said Leon, was a rich and powerful man who had used him for sex on
three occasions. One of these was in the Crest Hotel, where members of the
paedophile ring used to rent a room on Sunday evenings and listen to the
Country and Western show in the bar downstairs before taking Leon or one of the
other boys upstairs for sex. This man had a chauffeur who used to drive round
Wrexham in flash cars, he said, pretending to be one of this man’s family. And
who was this man? For the first time in his long saga, Leon became reticent. He
had been threatened and burgled and had had his car attacked, he said. He would
give no more – except for this man’s surname. Which happened to match that of
one of Mrs Thatcher’s most prominent supporters.
Throughout his story, Leon pointed to signs of collusion between the
abusers. The deputy headmaster would give him permission to go into town – and
Carpenter would be waiting for him in his car outside. One of the Wrexham
abusers wanted Leon to move into his house so that he could abuse him more
easily – and the social worker who had fondled him in a lay-by arranged for it
to happen. Several of the abusers made remarks to the effect that they had
heard all about him. Other boys from the same homes were shared with the same
ring of men in Wrexham. A named probation executive found work for Carpenter in
a bail hostel. Two named social workers were selling information to the ring.
And, over and over again, he said, the abusers escaped punishment as though
someone somewhere were protecting them.
Under cross examination, Leon claimed that the powerful public official had
been shown favours by the 1991 police inquiry which led to the arrest of 17 suspects.
“For some unknown reason, he was not arrested like anybody else. He was allowed
to walk round the North Wales Police headquarters and he was allowed to
vindicate himself from anything, as if he was the boss…. He is the perpetrator,
he is the pervert and he is a paedophile and I will stand by that and I will
not retract that in any way shape or form… I tried to tell the police of many
instances not just relating to him and I was told at that time and I will never
forget it as long as I live, that they were not interested in that.”
Leon’s long account contained a high-octane combination of rape and
corruption. But was it true? Almost without exception, those whom he named have
derided and denied his story. Some have given evidence attacking Leon. Others
are due to appear in the next few months. The powerful public official whom he
accused of rape has previously been investigated and cleared. Leon confessed to
the tribunal that he had made numerous complaints to the police almost always
without persuading them to believe him, even though he claimed to have given
them explicit photographs of some of the Wrexham men abusing half a dozen boys
from childrens homes. Lawyers for some of the accused suggested that he was
inventing these stories in search of compensation payments. And yet, for all
that his story seemed so incredible, other evidence began to corroborate it.
Take, for example, the first police officer who was named by Leon for raping
him in the army cadets. It might have sounded like a self-serving swipe at the
police. But the tribunal now knows that that long-serving and apparently
trustworthy policeman was jailed last year on a long sentence after another
police force caught him committing acts of gross indecency with a child. Two of
the alleged paedophiles who have given evidence to the tribunal have suggested
that they knew of this officer’s activities. One said he had met him looking
for sex in the public toilets in Wrexham and in Connah’s Quay near Chester.
Similarly, the tribunal now knows that Carpenter, whom Leon placed at the
centre of the Wrexham ring, has since been jailed twice for indecency and
buggery with under-aged boys. The tribunal heard how Carpenter had worked not
only with army cadets but also with choir boys, private school boys, patients
in a mental hospital and young men in a probation hostel, boasting all the time
to his friends that he was seducing those in his charge.
Several of Carpenter’s associates, who were accused of abuse by Leon, also
turn out to have convictions. One of them has been jailed seven times for gross
indecency, buggery, indecent assault and inciting a child to commit gross
indecency. His victims were boys, the youngest only 11. And the tribunal has
confirmed that although the police deny that Leon supplied them, he is correct
in saying that they obtained photographs in which six local men, including
Carpenter, could be seen abusing five boys who had been in care in local
children’s homes.
The social worker whom Leon said used to pick him up from the public toilets
sounded a particularly unlikely paedophile, quite possibly the victim of some
private grudge of Leon’s. And yet, the tribunal has since heard how this man
was followed from one job to another by complaints of indecency against boys:
at an attendance centre, a nine-year-old boy complained that he had kissed him
and tried to bugger him; at a children’s home, he was said to have gone round
“blowing kisses and pinching bottoms”; he was suspended twice by the local
authority, once after two boys said he had slept with both of them together and
then again after two different boys said he had taken them to his flat and
buggered them. He resigned from the local authority and went to work in a
private home – where visiting nurses then complained that he and other staff
were indecently assaulting the boys in their care. Despite all of the
complaints by all of these boys, he was never prosecuted or disciplined.
This social worker took advantage of the anonymity ruling which was intended
to encourage witnesses to tell the truth to come and tell the tribunal that he
had visited the public toilets only because he was working on a two-week
research project about young homeless people. Other alleged paedophiles
nevertheless declared that he was a frequent visitor, looking for sex. The
social worker said he had no interest in sex at all; he told the tribunal that
the condoms which police had found in his wallet had been for the benefit of
clients who might need them.
The powerful public official whom Leon accused of rape at his second home
has now been named by a total of six other witnesses to the tribunal, most of
whom say they encountered him at the same home courtesy of the deputy
headmaster’s introduction. In a statement, one described how he had woken up in
his bed in the children’s home to find himself flat on his belly with his arms
pinned down above his head while this official spat on his backside and then
penetrated him. “The size of the man completely pinned me down and I was
helpless.” As the man pulled away, he said, he saw his face clearly.
The other witnesses also described rapes and attempted rapes by this
official. One of them claimed that on several occasions he saw the deputy
headmaster line up a group of boys so that the official could take his pick
from them. Another witness told the tribunal that his brother, now dead, had
complained of this same official raping him in the woods near his home. All of
them referred to his power in the local community.
One of these witnesses was challenged by a barrister who acts for the
official. If his story was true, he asked, why had he not complained at the
time? “Shall I tell you why?” replied the witness, with some force. “Because
I’m shit scared of the man. Right? Because he is in Rotary, the masons, the
magic circle and I damn well know what he is capable of. I am scared of that
man.”
The tribunal has been told that North Wales Police investigated allegations
against this man and recommended that he be prosecuted, but, the tribunal
heard, the Crown Prosecution Service in London, who had taken over the decision
from their local branch, ruled that the case should not to go to court because
of “difficulties with the evidence”.
There is no doubt that the deputy headmaster who is said by Leon and the
others to have supplied this official with boys was a paedophile. He was Peter
Howarth, who can be named because he has since been convicted of the systematic
rape of children in his care and sentenced to 10 years in prison, where he died
in May. There is no doubt either about the housemaster whom Leon named at that
home. He was Stephen Norriss, now serving 7 years for similar offences.
Numerous other men have been named at the tribunal, sometimes with
conflicting evidence. In the case of Mr B, who shares the name of Mrs Thatcher’s
ally, Carpenter appeared to offer some confirmation for Leon’s story. He said
that in prison he had met another sex offender who claimed to have had a
relationship with Mr B and who had possibly been Mr B’s chauffeur. This man had
described going to parties in Wrexham where young men were available for VIPs,
including Mr B and the powerful public official. Since Mr B has been identified
only by surname, it is not clear whether the witnesses are referring to Mrs
Thatcher’s colleague.
Leon’s evidence suggests that they are not – he said that he thought Mr B
was dead, whereas Mrs Thatcher’s supporter is still alive and prominent.
However, the Guardian has established that another survivor of abuse gave a
long statement to police on September 9 1993 in which he provided a thoroughly
detailed account of being sexually assaulted by a wealthy man. At that time, he
positively identified this man by name and photograph as Mrs Thatcher’s former
advisor and recorded in his statement how a friend had told him “You’re going
to bring down the government”. However, when this witness came to the tribunal
he declared that he was unable to identify the man.
There is a conflict of evidence, too, over the social worker who is accused
of fondling Leon on his way to the children’s home. This social worker has
given evidence, denied the allegation and produced contemporary records to show
that when he drove Leon to the home, he was accompanied by another social
worker and that he did not then own the car which Leon described in detail in
his allegation.
Just as there has been some evidence to corroborate Leon’s allegations of
abuse, so too there has been independent evidence which appears to support his
claim that there was collusion between the abusers. The tribunal has heard how
Carpenter boasted in the past of social workers who had offered to supply him
with boys from the children’s homes; and of how one of the social workers who
is accused of abusing Leon had stayed in Carpenter’s house.
When the police found photographs of Carpenter and five other men abusing
boys, they took Carpenter and one other man to court, where they were convicted
and jailed. No other men were prosecuted. Carpenter told the tribunal that Lord
A’s son had begged him not to tell the police about him, promising that his
father could help him. When the tribunal asked Carpenter how it was that he had
been released from his prison sentence several months before he was eligible
for parole, Carpenter shrugged and said he had no idea.
All of these alleged perpetrators have been named in open session at the
tribunal. Under normal circumstances, the press could have identified them in
reports, protected from libel proceedings by the legal privilege which
surrounds all public hearings in courts and tribunals. However, the anonymity
ruling has blocked almost all public awareness of the allegations against these
men. In the case of the powerful public official, those outside the tribunal
who have heard of him are likely to know only that he has been cleared in the past.
Sir Ronald has indicated that the tribunal would find it difficult to challenge
this earlier exonneration.
He has also said that even though the tribunal’s final report may name some
of the abusers, he does not think he will name either of the two police
officers who have been identified by Leon. Those alleged incidents, he says,
fall outside the time frame of the tribunal’s inquiry. In the meantime, he has
extended the anonymity ruling to cover Carpenter, even though he has two
convictions for abusing children in care.
In a final statement to the tribunal, Leon pleaded for justice: “I know this
is my last opportunity to tell exactly what happened to me but to be honest I
think most people will find it hard to believe what went on and find it
uncomfortable to talk about. Who wouldn’t? The way I see it, I was a slave. I
was sold. Yes, I was given money. I was given things. I was tied up. I had
bottles, legs of chairs and various other things used on me. Pictures were
taken and videos, which are out there somewhere.
“Who knows? Maybe if people had listened many years ago this could have
stopped years ago or at least some of it. Maybe I didn’t shout loud enough. I
know I should have done more to stop it but I didn’t… One very important lesson
which we must learn is we must start listening to children. Do not ignore them
in the way we have ignored them for many years. Listen to our children’s cries.
Listen to what they are saying and take action without delay.”
When the inquiry opened in January, the lawyer who acts on behalf of the
tribunal, Gerald Elias QC said: “This tribunal will leave no stone unturned in
its search for the truth about any of the issues which it considers.“ The
difficulty now is that once again, these stones are being turned over in the
dark.
By Nick Davies
