The Power of the Paedos - another high profile case hits the 'never happened' wall?

[David Guyatt]

Thanks to the Slog for pointing out the following article, which explains how paedophiles are today protected in the UK.

How I tried to report a sexual predator
A father writes anonymously of his attempts to alert officials about a local councillor he has reason to suspect


The Guardian, Tuesday 7 May 2013 17.27 BST
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The writer's 16-year-old son told him he had been buying alcohol regularly for a year from a man he didn't know and he wasn't the only one.
Photograph: Alamy


It begins with a throwaway comment over breakfast, innocent and knowing, the way that teenagers can be. My 16-year-old son tells me he has been supplied with alcohol by a man he doesn't know. He's been buying it regularly for a year, and he's not the only one. The man's number is passed around the school playground. You can text him your order vodka, whisky, whatever you like and he will meet you in an alleyway to exchange goods for money. He charges the same prices as the shops, so the kids can afford it.


My son tries to return to his cornflakes, but I hit him with a rush of questions and he clams up, realising perhaps that my concern is more than casual. He says it's not important, that nothing weird happens and, anyway, he's now met a guy who's 18 and has ID, so they won't be using the man any more. I ask who the man is and he tells me. It turns out I know him, though have never spoken to him. He's a local councillor.


I go to my son's Facebook page and there's my councillor, popping up like a meerkat, immediately obvious because he's four times the age of everyone else on the page. He's making a suggestive comment about a photo of my son. I go through the list of contacts on my son's phone and find the councillor's number. I learn that he runs a Facebook group that has about 90 teenagers and no adults. When I look it up I can see the children of friends among the members.


I go to the police. I've thought it through the consequences for my son, whether I can protect his anonymity, how it would be for him if it went to court. I arrive at 9.30 on a Monday morning, having given myself the weekend to calm down, but I'm certain it's the right thing to do, to meet someone and talk it through. I'm nervous. I pause outside and take a deep breath before I push the door open. I wonder if I'll even make it past the desk sergeant or whether I'll have to spill the beans in the waiting room, with a dozen people listening. But they take me through to the back and they're very helpful. I even get tea and biscuits.


And they already know about him. They tell me a few things I didn't know. I learn that my councillor had been arrested six months earlier, following a tipoff. He was followed on CCTV and was seen meeting teenagers, but the boys were unwilling to give statements and later, so it turns out, the same is true of my son and his friends. None of them will speak to the police. They appear to see this man as some sort of ally in their war against parenting and, crucially, don't think they've done anything wrong, so, therefore, neither has he.


When I was a teenager in the 1970s, we had a bloke over the road who played the good Samaritan. He ran the local youth club. He used to take us swimming on a Friday night and afterwards we'd sit in his lounge, maybe 10 of us, and look at his Mayfair and Penthouse magazines. I don't think any of us told our parents. Why would we? Of course, things were different in the 1970s. We were a lot more innocent. We used to cycle in the street on our chopper bikes, staying out all day and getting back in time for tea and Jim'll Fix It on the telly.


I talk to the parents of my son's friends and, in our children's absence, three sets of parents go back to the police. Our testimony appears to corroborate the information and arrest from earlier in the year. We think it must be enough evidence, but it seems that, without a victim statement, it is simply hearsay. The police won't even issue a caution, which is what we had hoped for. It would be a public statement on the matter without one, the fear is that this will sit in a filing cabinet as if it never happened. I can already hear the drawer sliding shut.


My local MP appears to be rattled by my allegations. He promises to speak to people on my behalf, particularly the chief inspector. In the meantime, I take out a complaint using the council's formal procedure. I'm worried that his power protects him. Six weeks later I'm sitting in the office opposite the head of the council's legal team. She has a look of sympathy, tinged with regret. It's a look I'll see a lot of over the coming months, before they say they can't help me.


She tells me that my complaint cannot be taken forward because the code of conduct for councillors applies only to activities related to official duties. This is a major disappointment, not least because the code appears to uphold some high ideals. I point to one I believe my councillor has contravened: you must not conduct yourself in a manner that could reasonably be regarded as bringing your office or authority into disrepute. Seems like a no-brainer. I choose another entitled "duty to uphold the law".


It does me no good. Case law stipulates that a councillor's behaviour is private and not subject to complaint unless it occurs in the performance of their roles and duties. Unless my councillor sells booze out the back of the town hall during a council meeting, it's nothing to do with them. She wishes she could do more and I believe her, but without the allegations becoming a matter of public record, the town could re-elect him.


I visit the town clerk in the hope of putting a question to the council and am told I won't be allowed to do so. It's an unfortunate meeting that sets the tone for our future correspondence. There are mumblings about having me removed from the building if I decide to cause trouble, and warnings about accepting the consequences of my actions should I make any unsubstantiated allegations public.


I write more letters, about the councillor's use of public buildings, about his roles on committees and in community groups. I feel as though I am looking through a telescope from the wrong end. Every time I write a letter, it is there looming large, a disturbing pattern of behaviour that must be obvious to everyone, but then I get a response from the police or council and they have turned the telescope around again, made it tiny and insignificant.


I meet the chief inspector and come out with a promise that the police are proceeding with investigations and hope to have made progress within two weeks. That impresses me. I imagine swoops by plain-clothes officers, perhaps court orders granted to gain access to the councillor's text messages. But the councillor is put on a good behaviour bond, which means he is required to report any request for alcohol from teenagers to the police.


The chief inspector suggests I might want to inform other parents of the situation, but I don't want to. I want him to. The whole point of this is that it shouldn't be up to me. I don't want to go around saying things behind people's backs. I don't want to lead a witch hunt. But neither do I want to be one of those people who stand up in 15 years' time, when the filing cabinets are being flung open, saying I knew something about this and did nothing.


So I email the councillor, politely and briefly, asking him to explain his behaviour. I expect a reply, get none, and three weeks later receive a letter from the police accusing me of harassment. I could have knocked on his front door, but decided an email would be less confrontational. Yet without a single piece of public censure from any authority, I have nothing to back me up. As the town clerk points out, the police and the council have looked at the matter and taken no action. It's as good as an alibi.


As for my son, I know people think he is old enough to know better. I've seen the look in their eyes, though they won't say it to my face. But I'm glad he told me. Out of all the kids who knew about the councillor, he is the only one who talked, and I'm proud of him for that.


A police officer tells me she is never surprised by teenagers, and for the first time in my life I concede that perhaps they are, after all, a strange and alien species beyond our understanding. Except they're not. They're still children, at a stage where they're taking risks, finding out for themselves how the world works and how they want to live in it. I still believe they should be given the space to do it as safely as possible.


I was 15 when the good Samaritan over the road was arrested for flashing at a boy. Three years later we had a call from a family who had moved away, saying their son had gone to the police and asking if we knew of anyone else who had been abused. I didn't know. It wasn't the sort of thing we talked about.


Nowadays it's different. You can't open a paper without seeing a court case, most of them historical, with multiple victims. We talk about joining up the dots so we can see the bigger picture, hoping it might help prevent more serious accusations in the future. We'd like to think there must be some course of action that falls between a criminal conviction and doing nothing.


But I don't know what that is, and neither, it appears, do the police, the council or the politicians. So we don't join up the dots. We shut the filing cabinet and walk away, while all the time knowing.

The argument used by the Council's legal head is, of course, complete bollocks. But what she says is very troubling. If a Councillor was a murderer, organised crime lord, etc etc., would the council also turn a blind eye also legal grounds? If they can do that - and argue this to be necessary - then there's no point in further maintaining the illusion that the law has any remaining authority whatsoever over anybody, anybody at all.

It means the world has gone stark raving mad...