Evidence mounts in Britain's child abuse cover-up investigation

A dam of official silence around child abuse in Britain began to break after the 2011 death of entertainer Jimmy Savile.

|
Suzanne Plunkett/REUTERS
The Dolphin Square building is seen in London March 5, 2015. Operation Midland has been set up to investigate child sex abuse claims, which involve politicians and other high-profile public figures and include allegations that three young boys had been murdered. Some of the alleged child abuse reportedly took place in the Dolphin Square building.

A toxic mix of misuse of power and official silence has become Britain's shame as the country faces up to a growing web of evidence that the abuse of vulnerable children by powerful men was covered up for decades.

Several lawmakers said Tuesday that former detectives and intelligence officers should be guaranteed protection from prosecution if they speak out about child abuse by senior police, politicians, and other prominent people.

On Monday, the BBC's "Newsnight" program reported that an ex-detective had told it that a lawmaker, Cyril Smith, was arrested in the early 1980s as part of an investigation into child-sex parties, but was released hours later.

He said officers were ordered to hand over notebooks and video footage from their undercover operation, and were told they would be violating the Official Secrets Act if they revealed what had happened.

The BBC did not identify the former detective because of the legal threat hanging over him.

After Smith died in 2010, prosecutors revealed that in 1970 eight men had accused the Liberal lawmaker of abusing them as teens. The prosecutors said Smith was never charged, but should have been.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said Tuesday that the BBC was alleging "very, very serious dereliction of duty and of wrongdoing" against police investigating "some of the most grotesque crimes imaginable."

"I would just very much hope the police now can investigate this very thoroughly without fear or favor, get to the bottom of the truth," he said.

A dam of official silence around child abuse in Britain began to break after the 2011 death of entertainer Jimmy Savile, who was exposed as a predatory pedophile who assaulted victims in hospitals, children's homes and TV studios over several decades.

Since then, several once-prominent entertainers have been convicted and police have reopened dormant abuse inquiries.

But police themselves are accused of having been part of the problem. On Monday Britain's independent police watchdog said it was looking into allegations that Scotland Yard covered up historic allegations of child abuse from the 1970s to the 2000s.

Labour Party lawmaker Tom Watson, who has campaigned to expose sexual abuse by politicians, said former police officers and civil servants with information should be protected from prosecution if they speak up.

He said it is "the duty of all former police officers, intelligence officers and civil servants who have knowledge of a cover-up to come forward."

The British government has ordered a public inquiry into how public agencies — including government bodies, police, hospitals, churches and the BBC — handled child-abuse allegations.

The abuse claims reach so deeply into the upper echelons of British society that finding a figure to head the inquiry has been problematic. Two chairwomen were appointed and then rejected because of their connections to the Establishment. Last month a judge from New Zealand, Lowell Godard, was selected to lead the probe.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Evidence mounts in Britain's child abuse cover-up investigation
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2015/0317/Evidence-mounts-in-Britain-s-child-abuse-cover-up-investigation
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe