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

[David Guyatt]

The bloody awful and, for me, completely compliant journalist interviews Liz Davies -- who mentions yet another missing paedo file; this one was handed to then Conservative Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd.

JULY 11, 2014Shifting beliefs: The need to listen to child protection experts

Liz Davies, Matthew Parris

A fascinating discussion between Matthew Parris (columnist and former Conservative politician) and Liz Davies (front-line child protection social worker from London Metropolitan University) about the forthcoming national inquiry into child sexual abuse was broadcast yesterday on the Spectator blog (transcript below). It was fascinating partly because of Liz Davies' recounting of how her investigations into child abuse and murders of children were stopped by unknown senior people, and partly because of Matthew Parris' refusal to accept that what Liz Davies was saying might be true. Although as Matthew Parris had just published a Spectator article called What kind of idiot tries to stand in the way of a national child abuse panic? I do' and subtitled I know the rumours. I think they're mostly nonsense. I don't expect a fair hearing' (pay-walled) he perhaps found it impossible to allow himself to be convinced by the evidence Liz Davies was setting out.
Putting Matthew Parris's individual views aside, what I generally took from the discussion was a reminder that many people don't yet accept that the organised sexual abuse of children has happened and is still happening, and that when the abuse is carried out by powerful and influential people it tends to get covered up, even after the abusers are dead.
We can't expect the new CSA inquiry to solve this alone, but if it delivers what it is being set up to achieve then it should help push forward the further cultural change we need. We need to acknowledge the issue of organised CSA and find better ways to prevent it and tackle it when it does happen. Victims and survivors shouldn't have to wait 20 years for a national inquiry a National Police Investigation Team should be dealing swiftly with these cases and securing prosecutions. We really need to start listening to child protection experts like Liz Davies and Peter McKelvie.
Discussion on 10 July 2014:
Matthew Parris: It seems to me to very likely be an overheated conspiracy theory. There's certainly a rush to judgement. It may or may not concern senior politicians 30 years ago. All we know is that Geoffrey Dickens, who was a delightful man we all liked Geoffrey very much but he was pretty nuts. He had lots of conspiracy theories. And he did believe Britain was in the grip of a huge paedophile ring involving very senior people in government. I think it highly unlikely that the Home Office would have willfully destroyed the documents that he gave to the Home Secretary. I don't say we shouldn't look into it. I just think everybody needs to calm down a little.
Presenter: Other inquiries, like Hillsborough have ended up being totally vindicated.
Matthew Parris: But the Hillsborough Inquiry was an inquiry by the police into themselves [sic]. If this new Home Office inquiry, which is an inquiry into two separate early inquiries, fails to find a conspiracy then I don't think the people who think these conspiracies exist will be satisfied. They'll then want another inquiry. But you can't win discussions like this with respect to Liz anyone who says calm down we don't need another inquiry' is always going to lose the discussion. And anyone who says let's at least try to get the truth of the matter and lay this to rest' is always going to win the argument, and so you'll get inquiry upon inquiry upon inquiry.
Presenter: I suppose Matthew is saying let's pause, reflect, and come back to this once the media storm has died down and see if we really need an overarching inquiry'?
Liz Davies: It doesn't feel like a rush to me. I've waited 20 years since I became aware of major cover-ups and people interfering with my investigations when I was trying to protect children. And where instructions came from for those interferences I don't know I want some answers.
Presenter: You knew about these particular allegations?
Liz Davies: I was investigating many, many allegations of sexual assaults of children and murders of children. I was working with the police and then suddenly the police were taken off the investigations into the most serious crimes you can imagine against multiple numbers of children. I had to then go to the civil courts to try and protect them as best I could, but there were no prosecutions against the perpetrators. Thanks to social media I've recently been able to contact those police officers who were removed from the investigations and they've told me their instructions came from very senior police officers. Who's going to investigate that? I've no means to do it. Why did senior police shut down my investigations into the abuse and murders of children? I want to know that I've waited 20 years. I'm not going to stop these are incredibly serious matters.
Presenter: Why do you think it is we have to wait 30 years before we have an inquiry into these things?
Liz Davies: More information's come to light now. Partly through social media a lot more victims and survivors have come forward. My inbox is full every day of people contacting me with stories to tell. But our biggest problem now is having enough police to investigate reports. Operation Fernbridge has only got 7 officers.
Presenter: So what you'd like is a truly overarching inquiry looking not just into politicians but every single child abuse case where justice has not been achieved.
Liz Davies: People like me who've had investigations shut down want answers to those cases. I've tried for 20 years; I've raised the issues through the media. I've tried everything and got nowhere. I want to know who's behind it all. It's not all about politicians it's about abuse of power at the highest level and I want to know who those people are.
Matthew Parris: Well, the highest level is Ministers and you seem to be suggesting they are involved. I personally doubt it but these things have happened. But when you say these investigations were shut down that's not a very neutral phrase investigations are not proceeded with' by the police every day. You say they were shut down at the highest level but the senior police officer responsible will have taken a decision not to proceed. There may be a sinister explanation but it may just be that there wasn't sufficient evidence to proceed.
Liz Davies: I'd been working on cases for months. I'm a very experienced investigator, and I've worked with the police for many years I know when my investigation into very serious crimes has been closed down; when I go to work one day and I'm told by my senior manager "you will no longer have any police with you on these investigations from this day on".
Presenter: Could that be because of a lack of evidence?
Liz Davies: Absolutely not. We were in the middle of collating a mass of evidence. I had to get some children right out of London to secret venues to protect them. The level of investigation was very high and complex and I knew exactly what I was dealing with. Children were being taken all over the country to be abused in different locations by different people.
Presenter: Do you have any confidence that the new inquiry will put these matters to rest?
Liz Davies: No, but I might be able to ask some questions there's nowhere else for me to go. In Islington, 2 or 3 years before I was working there and raising serious issues, Geoffrey Dickens was also raising serious issues that's another dossier which no one is currently looking for. That one went to Douglas Hurd who was Home Secretary at that time.
Matthew Parris: All these children who have, as you say, been taken to different locations to be abused by senior people, you'll presumably be able to find some of them to testify?
Liz Davies: Yes, they will of course come and testify, but we need to have a lot of things in place support systems, witness protection. An inquiry won't solve this it'll get us a bit further. What I've argued for 20 years is that we need a National Police Investigation Team because we need somewhere that people can go where the connections are made across the country. When I went to Scotland Yard with my evidence for Islington I was used by Scotland Yard to go all over the country to liaise with other investigations like North Wales and so on nobody in the police was connecting it all up. I was hearing many names I won't say any of the names here, but many names I was hearing them in the different places I was visiting. Nobody has ever joined those dots up.
Matthew Parris: I won't ask you for names but I will ask you you do have names, and these are very senior people in the world of politics and you are reasonably confident that they have been involved in some of these activities?
Liz Davies: Yes. Some of the names that have come out recently, like Cyril Smith, were no surprise to me. When he died I wondered if anything would come out then. I heard his name for many, many years.
Matthew Parris: So had I. Although I hadn't entirely believed I'd thought perhaps whatever he had done hadn't been that serious or had been exaggerated. So you are right it is possible to be wrong about people, but that doesn't mean there is great national conspiracy involving top people all over the country transporting children to secret locations. I would need a lot of convincing.
Liz Davies: What we need is a proper police investigation into the allegations we know about that haven't been properly investigated or have been shut down over the years. My experience was you could so much, get to a certain level and it all got shut down, and I've had that time and again. We need more police resources, more social workers. And can I just say that what we're talking about is organised abuse of children and last year this government got rid of all the statutory guidance on this. They got rid of the definition of organised child abuse' and the means of investigating it. We're losing our tools for dealing with this.
Matthew Parris: I'm not here to defend Ministers but I don't think it's fair to say we got rid of all the means of investigating organised abuse.
Liz Davies: They've got rid of the policy that stated how police and other agencies should investigate organised child abuse.
Matthew Parris: Who are these senior police who you say are consistently shutting down every investigation the moment you get somewhere? It seems unfeasible in this day and age that a chief constable in a case where there is evidence of appalling abuse to young children would stop the investigations because they were under pressure from some national network.
Liz Davies: Well, you'd have to ask them wouldn't you? I wasn't operating at that level. I don't know who these people are. All I can tell you is what I know absolutely happened in my role, being paid to protect children, and not being able to protect them in the way I was expected to.

From whatcanidoabout blog