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Introduction
In July 2015, the British Home Secretary, Theresa May, seemed to have at last acquired a trustworthy lawyer, Justice Lowell Goddard, to head up a public inquiry into claims of extensive CSA from the past.1 The start of the inquiry had been delayed for over a year because Mayâ s first and second suggestions for the leadership of the inquiry (Baroness Butler-Sloss and Lady Fiona Woolf) failed because of claims of their personal bias as part of the British Establishment.2 Goddard is from New Zealand and so May literally had to go to the other side of the world to find a credible leader for the task. And even her term in the role was short and controversial. More on this below, but first I trace the political history of the ongoing Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales.
The British Establishment
In 2012, the Metropolitan Police launched Operation Fairbank to investigate historical accusations about CSA at the hands of those in the âBritish Establishmentâ.3 By March 2015, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) was asked by âthe Metâ to examine serious allegations not only about politicians, but also a police cover-up during a period between the 1970s and 2005.4
The following main allegations were to be examined by the IPCC in relation to what the BBC in its news reports called âserious high-level corruptionâ in relation to children being supplied to paedophiles in Westminster:
1.That there had been âfailures to properly investigate child sex abuse offences in South London and further information about criminal allegations against a politician being droppedâ.
2.That investigations into âsex partiesâ with young male victims in South West London were halted because the police officers involved were âtoo near prominent peopleâ.
3.That a document with an identifier from the Houses of Parliament was found at the address of a known paedophile, which showed a link with âhighly prominent individualsâ. The latter named were MPs and senior police officers. Despite this primary evidence, the Met had taken no further action.
4.That a witness statement of a victim was altered in order to remove the name of a senior politician.
5.That details of child sex abuse at the hands of senior politicians were covered up by the police.
6.That a surveillance operation of a child abuse ring was closed down because of âhigh-profile people being involvedâ.
7.That some police officers themselves sexually abused a boy and then carried out surveillance upon him.
The very idea that politicians might sexually abuse children may be shocking. However, in the light of the points I explore later in the book about abusers being spread across the whole of society, we should not be surprised at all. We would expect a certain quota of any adult group to be paedophiles. Politicians are no exception to the rule of the dispersed character of CSA in modern societies. The importance of this first chapter then is not to shed a light on our political class, for containing abusers uniquely or exceptionally, but on the special privileges it tends to enjoy, once that activity emerges. In particular, this relates to the episodic collusive role of the police and the secret services in order to cover up active paedophiles within the political elite.
As a powerful wing of the state, the police are in a unique position to either amplify pre-existing privileges or challenge them. George Orwell noted in his diaries that although the political left are understandably suspicious of the police and its hard state power to defend capitalism, police officers are often highly aware of social injustice because of the very work they do. Because so much of criminality they encounter is linked to the economic powerlessness of the âunderclassâ,5 they may be insecure when, much more rarely, they have to deal with the rich and the powerful and are expected to confront them about serious crimes.
The case of Sir Jeremy Thorpe MP
The early investigation of the Leader of the Liberal Party, Jeremy Thorpe, about his lover Norman Scott (for whose murder Thorpe was later tried as a co-conspirator) was slowed down because police visiting him were embarrassed and instinctively deferential. They could not bring themselves to confront such a suave man of âhigh breedingâ, with the claims of homosexual contact.6
The relationship with Scott, a stable lad and later male model, began in 1961 when homosexuality was illegal in Britain and the police were instructed to inquire by their Special Branch colleagues. Under the canopy of ânational securityâ, the latter force can issue directives at whim. As will become clear below, when we think of âthe policeâ we need to extend the concept to Special Branch and from that onto deeper security services such as MI5 and MI6.
The Thorpe case was also an example of Establishment bias and bonds in the judiciary. The hostile summing up by the judge against the prosecution in the conspiracy to murder trial, when Thorpe was acquitted, is now notorious and became the focus of satirical attack.7 That ambivalence and bias about those charged with investigating and prosecuting those âin high placesâ comes through too in the topic of this chapter.
A key figure and counter-example in this story was the Metropolitan Police officer who tried to hold a line about the pursuit of truth and blow the whistle on what he suspected. Clive Driscoll, a retired chief inspector from the force, was investigating politicians and a paedophile ring in 1988. When he began to name names in case conferences, he encountered resistance from his managers and was moved to other duties. He has now become a key informant for BBC investigations about child sex abuse in the past in London.8
Driscoll embodied and exemplified our hopes for decency in our police. The fact that he was a failed whistle-blower highlights that the British police still have much to learn about upholding the law âwithout fear or favourâ. This involves not just the problem of the police investigating itself, (even the 2015 inquiry triggered by the IPCC was handed over to the police to action) but also the police acting as the guardian of other parts of the state. The tendency of those in power to protect their own is not peculiar to Britain as the Belgian case study in Box 1.1 indicates.
BOX 1.1THE BELGIAN PARALLEL
In 2004 in Belgium, a sadistic paedophile, Marc Dutroux, who had imprisoned, tortured and eventually killed girls, with the complicity of his wife, was put on trial and found guilty. He was arrested in 1996 and when the story first broke a mass demonstration of over 300,000 people took to the streets of Brussels in protest. The time lapse between arrest and successful conviction is one of many unnerving aspects of this case. Another was that two girls he kept in a dungeon, actually starved to death during a period when he received a short sentence for thieving. Despite being found guilty in the 1980s for child rape, Dutroux only served 4 years of his 12-year sentence. In the 8-year interim after 1996 it emerged that, as with the British case, there was police complicity and that senior politicians and other members of the Belgian âEstablishmentâ were implicated in a paedophile network. A link to that network was the Brussels businessman Jean Michel Nihoul. In 2002, the investigative journalist Olenka Frenkiel pieced together the story for The Observer newspaper, showing how Dutroux was part of a criminal network that had been shaped and âplayedâ by Nihoul.9 Although arrested and tried, he was released after only a short sentence, raising suspicions that the criminal justice system protected Nihoul in order that he in turn would protect other paedophiles, including police officers, judges and politicians.
Frenkiel presented her findings on the Belgian case study in a BBC documentary and it contained an interview with a police officer who, like Driscoll in the 1980s, had been blocked from further investigations. His managers too realised that senior Establishment figures were emerging as part of the paedophile network that was supplied with victims by Dutroux and other criminals. Children abused at those paedophile parties gave accounts in Frenkielâs documentary of Nihoul being a sadistic participant. However, when brought to trial he was not convicted as a co-defendant in relation to the Dutroux murders but instead only for criminal conspiracy and drugs charges. Nihoul received a 5-year sentence, Dutroux life with no release and his wife received 30 years.
Thus, the âend pointâ perpetrators eventually got their just desserts but the brains behind the crime, Nihoul, who arrogantly dubbed himself âThe Beast of Brusselsâ, was barely punished by the state. He was part of the exploitation of children in what was simply another criminal âracketâ. In Belgium, hitmen tracked and threatened investigating magistrates. State lawyers were being driven around in bulletproof cars in Brussels at the turn of this century: an extraordinary scenario in Northern Europe. The Belgian case reminds us that paedophilia is multi-faceted. The selfish need of some adults to use children for personal sexual satisfaction may be at its centre but there are other pertinent layers to consider of commercial exploitation, involvement of agents of the state and organised violence against those trying to protect victims or seek justice for them.
The challenge of challenging state power
If we think then of an axis of power between politicians and the police, which might be closed and corrupt rather than open and benign in its workings, then the âVIP paedophile ringâ is a good case study. Paedophiles from any part of society who want to act on their desires conspire, of necessity, in order to avoid detection. Paedophiles âin high placesâ have more to lose but they also have more resources (cultural, political and financial) at their disposal to avoid shame and prosecution. Moreover, the inner dynamics of Establishment power take on a particular life of their own, even before there is a risk of scrutiny from without.
Tim Fortescue MP, who died in 2008, was Ted Heathâs Chief Whip between 1970 and 1973. In a BBC documentary about the role of the Whip in party politics in 1998, he revealed that when MPs had problems, then he would do all that he could to help them. In this pastoral role, as he put it in the particular language of the British public-school system, he would do his best to âget a chap out of troubleâ. But this was in exchange for voting loyalty when required. He gave two examples casually in passing: problems of debt and problems with âsmall boysâ.10
To confirm this pact of mutual backscratching, Ted Heath kept a âdirt bookâ of these personal difficulties revealed to the Whip, in order to keep his troops in line. Thus, there is an inner working of power, where âa nod is as good as a winkâ to colleagues to keep a group secret. Complicity with wrongdoing and strong group loyalty within the power elites then become opposite sides of the same coin. Nothing has to be said explicitly in the subtle but powerful bonds of trust between âgentlemenâ.
The case of Sir Cyril Smith MP
As well as that inner dynamic of party political loyalty, the âWestminster villageâ has relied on the police to keep its secrets about CSA hidden from public view. On the day that the IPCC announced its concerns about historical abuse and the Met cover-up (March 16, 2015) BBC Newsnight began with a piece on Cyril Smith MP. It reported for the first time on a three-month investigation in the early 1980s in South London. Detectives had kept six addresses in South London under surveillance, where they believed that paedophiles were holding sex parties. They raided one of these venues in Lambeth and, amongst others, found Smith. He was arrested and taken to a nearby police station.11
During the detention period when Smith was interviewed and paperwork prepared, a senior officer, till then unknown to those working on the case, appeared and ordered them to release him and destroy all records of the arrest. The latter included notebooks, photographs and video recordings. Defiance of his order, the senior officer insisted, would lead to the arresting detectives being prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act (OSA). This was a dedicated operation involving the crime squad from the Met as well as specialist detectives seconded from the Yorkshire force.
Clearly until 2015, when the story eventually came out, those officers were intimidated into silence by the threat of the OSA. Although the latter was, and still is, intended in spirit to be limited in use to protect matters of grave nation...
