Westminster paedo ring

Let's give this its own thread, because it's clearly going to run and run.

disestablishment wasn't all that huh

This is not a "post in this thread if you want to join" threads btw

guess who? papers

Well this thread's off to a good start.

The Smiths - Suffer Little Children
Oingo Boingo - Little Girls
Swans - Raping a Slave

Bruce Forsyth, "I'm Backing Brittan"

http://www.rosenthalpottery.com/discusjoin3.gif

http://www.charliehigson.co.uk/images/sized/images/uploads/characters/colin-200x200.jpg
good work, all of you.

sorry for the DM link but it's that sort of story. i hadn't read the shit about "PIE".

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2689379/Child-abusers-Home-Office-Amid-growing-furore-cover-paedophile-ring-heart-Westminster-expose-true-extent-scandal.html

There certainly seems to have been something going on at Elm Guest House, this is a good summary:

http://www.scriptonitedaily.com/2013/12/18/uk-establishment-closes-ranks-as-organised-paedophile-network-leads-back-to-no-10/

jesus fucking christ.

what in the ever-loving FUCK.

De Sade had it right all along

This is some end of season shit on another level entirely, if it plays as it should

That's from the internet remember.

omg

The thing is, none of this should be surprising

not saying there's not truth to story but, you know, consider the source etc etc

why should it not be surprising?

aged pop star

Soon as I saw Cliff mentioned I thought, "Oh shut up."

Men in positions of extreme power and influence inflicting trauma on defenceless prey? Say it ain't so

You mean, Jess Conrad?

Please explain the "consider the source" aspect of the scriptonite piece for a lowly American. I just read it and am feeling a bit vertiginous tbrr.

I'm not sure if its the scriptonite website where I first read this story, but the place I first read this was also awash with stories of a decidedly anti-semitic and homophobic nature. Like I say, there may be truth to it all. But this *is the internet.

A few years ago, a friend was telling me that the U.K. was absolutely awash in institutional pedophilia. She's a very trusting person with a history of buying into things she's seen on cable tv, so I tend to take the things she tells me with a few grains of salt and if necessary, gently push back with some guidance towards the facts if she seems to have been led a little too far out on a limb. So it's been really interesting for me watching the whole Jimmy Savile scandal unfold and now this whole thing popping up. Worried that I'm going to have to walk back my debunking of the Animal Planet Mermaids special.

It has a Bill Maloney link, he is a shouty activist type who muddies the waters with Ickeish type associations. My uncle who helped a lot of Artane abuse victims make cases against The Christian Brothers, says people like him are too unprofessional to be involved in such important work.

yes those Bill Maloney videos/documentaries on youtube are utterly mental and completely get in the way of incredibly important issues. even when some of the evidence is compelling, the presentation is too nuts to be taken seriously....

Soon as I saw Cliff mentioned I thought, "Oh shut up."

so, um, yeah

Not saying he's innocent or anything, but I checked to see if this thread revive was prompted by any new wrinkles in the story and it seems the main news story today is about how the BBC covered the raid, rather than any further incriminating evidence re: Cliff. Have I missed something?

it seems like all the papers have now gone into 'protect cliff, fuck the bbc' mode

no, nothing new, I just felt like stoking the fires of hell

i'm just glad that the calendar is going to continue

http://www.contactmusic.com/story/cliff-richard-backtracks-and-releases-2015-calendar_4349026

Do we think the papers would be in 'protect Cliff' mode if they knew he had actually done wrong? I know its crazy to imagine newspapers learning from their mistakes, but post-Saville and in this Yewtree era, isn't it crazy risky for them to turn a blind eye, if they 'know' of anyone wrongdoing on Cliff's part (and I mean 'know' as much as most people 'knew' of Saville's reputation and the surrounding rumours). Again, not defending or indeed 'protecting' Cliff, but I don't see waterproof logic behind the papers' move here, beyond rote BBC-bashing.

Could it be a way of keeping the story in the papers - wringing more clicks out of something which has so far proved to be a good source of clicks but which isn't generating anything else publishable right now?

this has been circling for years now and it just seems like there is loads of fairly well established information on it; how have there been no further charges? is it that almost everyone involved is already dead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORU5x-ryedU

Already linked in the Savile thread:

Historical abuse inquiry: Police examine 'possible homicide'

The investigation continues:

Child abuse inquiry: Police investigate three alleged murders

Fucking hell this gets bleaker and bleaker, it's like the plot of some Scandinavian police drama.

There's a quote from the witness, 'Nick', directly implicating a former Tory MP in one of the murders:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/westminster-paedophile-ring-abuse-victims-4638748

the way things are going revelations that senior establishment figures are indeed 12-foot blood-drinking lizards from outer space would be something of a relief

is anyone ever actually going to be held to account? or are they just going to let everyone involved die of natural causes then shrug it off?

there are allegations that david cameron made a damning tape about ken clarke 'disappear' while cameron was head of comms at carlton tv.

Police have to investigate when allegations are made. Relatively recent examples (like McAlpine) make it pretty clear that not all the allegations being made are going to have much of a basis in reality.

Except in this instance the Met have put themselves on record as saying they believe the witness is credible, which is an extraordinary thing to say publicly given the circumstances.

Nevertheless, internet conspiracy theorists be having a field day over this - the Cameron/Ken Clarke thing seems particularly outlandish given that Cameron would later go on to put him in charge of the British legal system.

Wasn't LEON BRITTAN in charge of the British legal system for some time?

well, quite. i think regular conceptions of 'outlandish' don't really apply when we're talking seriously about MPs raping and murdering little boys.

Except in this instance the Met have put themselves on record as saying they believe the witness is credible, which is an extraordinary thing to say publicly given the circumstances.

They didn't just say the allegations were credible, they said they were "true", which is even more extraordinary unless they have substantially more corroborating evidence than they are admitting to.

A number of MPs were clearly involved in abusing children. That seems beyond doubt. Beyond that, it doesn't sound like they are currently in a position to say what happened. The degree to which the net and the press have been willing to accept 'the murderous gay conspiracy at the heart of the establishment' before any robust evidence has been brought to light makes me a touch uneasy, given the echoes of other homophobic conspiracy theories that have circulated over the years. Which is obviously not to say it couldn't be true.

The idea that they self-identified as gay to remove their actual 'sexuality' from investigation or scrutiny?

theres an antisemitic element as well as gay panic

Yes, absolutely.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/18/victim-i-watched-british-mps-sexually-abuse-murder-young-boys.html?via=twitter_page

I can't really understand the lack of coverage about this. Isn't it usually the kind of thing the guardian are all over?

They seem supportive: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/18/guardian-view-tackling-child-sex-abuse-job-half-done

When, in 1999, Sir William Macpherson published his report into Stephen Lawrence’s murder and pronounced the Metropolitan police institutionally racist, it marked the moment when the whole discourse around policing changed. Something similar may have happened on Thursday, when the Met declared that, despite a lack of corroboration, it found the evidence of a survivor of child sex abuse at the hands of a VIP paedophile ring to be “credible and true”.

Lack of anything to go on other than the statement mean there would be nothing they can print though. They can't accuse living people of anthing without any evidence.

I was wondering if this had to do with the cuts to the police budget?

I don't want to be rude or anything, but these stories sound an awful lot like some of the satanic ritual abuse cases in the late 80s/early 90s, which of course turned out to be totally false... Children being driven to secret abuse parties involving elite members of the society, kids being killed with no repercussions, etc, similar claims were made in those cases, and it turned out to be either false memories (in the case of adult witnesses), or just kids making up stuff. What makes me spectical is the claims of these sort of outrageous things (like child murders) happening involving heavily scrutinized public figures, and yet no one seems to have known or talked about this events besides this one guy, seems like the police can't even figure out who these supposed dead children were. It's just like what happened during the SRA panics.

I'm not saying this guy wasn't abused by someone as a kid, but since false memory syndrome is very real, and there are numerous cases where adults claiming they were abused as kids turned out be suffering from it, I find it weird if the whole police investigation is based on the claims of this one man alone, seemingly with no other evidence. Are the British cops really that eager to act?

Thing is, we're all aware of those past things, as are the Police.

seems like the police can't even figure out who these supposed dead children were

well, they have leads:

Officers confirmed that they had spoken to the family of Martin Allen, a boy who disappeared in 1979, but they said it was too early to say if his case was linked to Nick’s allegations. The force also said it was in contact with Sussex police which is carrying out a review of the case of an eight-year-old boy murdered 33 years ago.

Vishambar Mehrotra, a 69-year-old retired magistrate, recorded a male prostitute saying in a telephone call that his son Vishal may have been abducted and taken to the Elm Guest House in Barnes, south-west London, in 1981, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Mr Mehrotra took the recording to the Metropolitan Police at the time but told the newspaper that they refused to investigate an allegation implicating "judges and politicians".

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/child-abuse-inquiry-met-police-investigate-alleged-murders-9933320.html

while i can see how this has parallels to satanic panics, there have been allegations swirling about this for a long, long time and there does seem to be a fair amount of evidence that those allegations were ignored or covered up and important evidence was conveniently 'lost'.

yeah, I think the 80s/90s satanic abuse thing is in the back of a lot of people's minds & it's another reason there isn't more noise about this yet.
Not really evidence, but interesting:
http://www.exaronews.com/articles/5428/police-privately-admit-cover-up-for-paedophile-mps-and-vips

just read that there were 144 complaints of abuse against cyril smith. fucking hell

Thing is, we're all aware of those past things, as are the Police.

I would hope so. Of course it's perfectly possible they have other evidence they're not willing to share with media yet, but based on all the articles linked to this thread their only source for these claims seems to be thic "Nick" guy. And sure there may be some kids who disappeared around the same time "Nick" says he saw boys being murdered, but sadly kids disappearing isn't that odd, there's isn't necessarily any connection.

What I'm trying to say is, I've no problem believing this guys was abused, and it's certainly possible some high-standing politicians could be pedophiles, such things have happened before. But the stories of kids being driven by chauffeured into secret pedophile parties where some of them are killed for thrills, this all sounds a bit too lurid, and too reminiscent of earlier (baseless) abuse panics to accept based on guy's testimony alone.

not so long ago people wouldn't believe this stuff because no one was on the record and now some people won't believe it, even though people now are on the record. some people don't believe the Bill Cosby stuff despite a tsunami of testimony, so.. you know.

At the very least people who come from traditionally powerful families, who have been through boarding school and elite universities, would not be out of place at an initiation or semi-ritual gathering involving sex

ot so long ago people wouldn't believe this stuff because no one was on the record and now some people won't believe it, even though people now are on the record. some people don't believe the Bill Cosby stuff despite a tsunami of testimony, so.. you know.

I knew someone would bring the Cosby case up, but I don't think it's comparable at all. With Cosby, you have several women repeating similar stories of what he did to them, and they were all grown-ups when he raped them, so there's no reason to doubt these stories aren't true. Something like false memory syndrome certainly wouldn't explain it. Whereas in this case there seems to be one person telling what happened to him when he was young child decades ago. The possibility that he's suffering from false memory syndrome, or that he simply invented some of this stuff, is much higher than in the Cosby case, where it's zero.

Again, I'm not saying that I think his whole story is false. That there are people with power who use that power to cover their abuse of children is an undeniable fact. But what this guy is saying goes beyond that, he seems to be suggesting that there was/is a conspiracy of paedophile politicians that managed to cover up, among other things, multiple murders. Of course it's not impossible that this really happened, but I don't think one guy's testimony, based on his childhood memories (however much he himself believes all these things really happened), should be enough to make it a fact.

I was wondering if this had to do with the cuts to the police budget?

It has been mentioned, with the subtlety we've come to expect from the British police force, that "investigations into historical abuse" might be compromised by further cuts - which would be fair comment if they'd picked another day to bring it up.

At the very least people who come from traditionally powerful families, who have been through boarding school and elite universities, would not be out of place at an initiation or semi-ritual gathering involving sex

― cardamon, Friday, 19 December 2014 13:15 (4 hours ago)

jesus, four hours and nobody has noticed this late contender for uk post of the year

What exactly goes on at these elite universities then?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piers_Gaveston_Society

inb4

Ian Hislop?!??!

struck by another's tut

That's fair put me aff ma tea. (xp)

inb4

― imago, Friday, December 19, 2014 5:34 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that was def a semi-ritual from your description

Oh well, even for Wiki that doesn't exactly scan like ironclad proof.

full turgidity, I protest!

Ironclad what? Oh, proof!

there is something telling in its low-functioning prurience, the notion that the golden thread is not between like instances of pederasty and violence, a predilection enjoyed by all classes since time immemorial, but between like instances of well-to-do people gathering in dark rooms, every struck jet eventually landing somewhere in the salo republic

pshaw.. Bollinger! *spits*

this lurid ingenuous nonsense is part of the same tendency that ensures that searching for the name of any jewish politician from the 1980s is likely to find intimations of hideous conspiracy

there is a limitless appetite for unearthing cabals, blood libels and all things sinister, which is all the more unhelpful in instances like this where serious crimes and coverups have happened

Hmm wasn't going for 'only toffs are paedos', more that there's this whole history of little clubs and fraternities and societies at the ancient universities and at eton and harrow, wherein people do various excessive things, which are contrary to their public demeanour/role

Like fraternities in American university life also help people get into exclusive networks, and help hide abusers, right? Not to mention the general trend for big organisations, closed to most people, whose meetings are necessarily secret to some extent, being places where abusers can get away with it - cf the Catholic church and the BBC

But I am aware that the excitement of chasing fictional cabals is a stupid thing to get involved in when a real child may actually have been abused in real life, and likewise the idea of digging out, er, 'cabals' comes with anti-semitic and homophobic baggage, and perhaps worst of all comes with a nice connotation that everything down here on my level is perfectly wholesome, bad stuff only goes on up there in dracula's castle, which is for sure not true

the problem is the conflation of consensual behaviour with what is being alleged here, rather as the way 'sex scandal' is used to describe adultery and rape alike, 'an initiation or semi-ritual gathering involving sex' is not a meangingful category if it includes both public school dormitory hijinks and the rape and murder of children

the 'all big institutions' claims are rather overstated, the primary social form that facilitates sexual coercion and violence is the primordial sewer of the nuclear family under nature, incest and the fathering of children by daughters being a historical commonplace; every derived patriarchal social forms facillitate it in the same measure

the interesting thing here is not so much the time honoured traditions of elite social groups having their way with children of the lower orders, but the way the paedophile information exchange enabled previously dispersed sorts of degenerates from prison workers, remedial schoolteachers, the judiciary etc to gather together

they were all the beneficiaries of the radical tolerance engendered by the new left, evident in places like daniel cohn-bendit's anti-authoritarian kindergarten and the (now of course strenuously denied) contacts between pederasty adovcates and the national civil liberties council, so really a politically and socially heterodox movement altogether

I don't think one guy's testimony, based on his childhood memories (however much he himself believes all these things really happened), should be enough to make it a fact

The police believe him, that's enough for me and it should also be enough for you.

mmmmmmmmmmm.......

I nearly said something very similar. Then I thought of times gone by.

Yeah, at this exact moment I'm not ready to give the police the benefit of the doubt. Though hopefully we will get more information at some point, we actually don't have to judge rigt now, right?

I don't think one guy's testimony, based on his childhood memories (however much he himself believes all these things really happened), should be enough to make it a fact

The police believe him, that's enough for me and it should also be enough for you.

I'm not sure if you're familiar the satanic ritual abuse hysteria I mentioned above, but if not, check the Wiki link in my post... In several of those cases the police believed abuse stories, the judges and juries believed them too, and many innocent people went to prison for years, until the whole hysteria finally died, their cases were reopened, and they were acquitted. (Though some of them had to sit in prison for over a decade, see this documentary for some particularly depressing stories. Or read Debbie Nathan's Satan's Silence, which is an excellent analysis of how these hysteria's started, explaining false memory syndrome and other factors that contributed into well-meaning psychologists, cops and other law officials sentencing judging loads of people for crimes they never committed.)

Again, I'm not saying abuse doesn't exist or that the cops are necessarily wrong here. But historically, it's well documented that sometimes the police have been wrong about such cases when they were based on nothing else but supposed childhood memories... And this has happened particularly at times when there has been a widely spread social panic that has lead to a "pedo hunt". I don't live in the UK, but it certainly seems like there's a wide pedo hunt going on there at the moment, fueled by the Jimmy Savile revelations and the subsequent arrests. Now, those cases are undeniably true, but maybe the cops feel a bit embarrassed that Savile and co. were allowed to do all that horrific stuff for so long while the law enforcement turned a blind eye on it, so they may have an extra incentive to appear "tough on pedos"? Of course it's their duty to carefully examine all abuse claims, but all I'm saying is that the more outlandish claims (such as this child murder conspiracy) should be treated with appropriate scepticism unless there's some solid evidence to back it up, because there's sad history of innocent people suffering when the officials accepted such claims unconditionally.

But like I said, my comments are based solely on those news stories, where the only evidence presented seems to be the memories of "Nick". If the UK cops have discovered other things that corroborate the story but haven't shared them with the media yet, that's a different story.

Iirc part of the investigation revolves around over 100 files, from 1979 onward, containing statements or allegations made to the authorities and submitted to the Home Secretary, Leon Britten which were subsequently lost or destroyed. To say that the entire case revolves around the allegations of Nick would seem, at this stage, to be incorrect or at least extremely unlikely.

yeah there seems to be a growing mountain of stuff that they have admittedly not completely released (and some of it has gone missing) that has been accumulating for over 30 years.

as to why no one has done anything about it until now, well, that is what is particularly disturbing

I was reading Connie Fletcher's What Cops Know recently and I was struck by how folkloric some of the knowledge cops had seemed to be, e.g., one or two cops were certain that a missing finger on a victim meant a murder was a part of a satanic ritual and that this fact was deserving of knowing grunts and nods from other cops and criminologists. The book was written before satanic ritual abuse was debunked, and I wonder how many cops still cling to their beliefs about that b.s.

I've noticed a similar strain of hysteria and folklore in commentary about child sexual abuse, and although I agree with nakh that the family unit (nuclear or otherwise) is where most child sexual abuse occurs, the big difference between satanic ritual abuse and CSA/CSE is that the former is virtually nonexistent and the latter is incredibly common. It's also not always helpful to characterize CSA/CSE as "pedophilia," I think because that word has a tendency to assign abusers to a category of pathological deviant that is only sexually excited by children lacking secondary sex characteristics rather than to perpetrators who would seem ordinary to us sexually, romantically, personally, etc.

This book-length report on child sexual abuse by Catholic priests came to the conclusion that fewer than 5% of abusers were pedophiles:

http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/child-and-youth-protection/upload/The-Causes-and-Context-of-Sexual-Abuse-of-Minors-by-Catholic-Priests-in-the-United-States-1950-2010.pdf

I don't think that the stock profile of those priests necessarily matches the profiles of the hypothetical MP who visits a sex ring, though.

This ECPAT International report describes a spectrum of child sex tourism offenders, but, similar to the USCCB report above, it claims that most abusers are "situational" abusers and not "preferential child sex tourists" or "paedophiles."

Regardless of whatever the stock profile might be of an abuser who visits a domestic child sex exploitation ring, it's clear that horrific events of institutional child abuse have gone unpunished and under-investigated. No one was ever charged for deaths or murders that occurred at the Florida School for Boys.

Iirc part of the investigation revolves around over 100 files, from 1979 onward, containing statements or allegations made to the authorities and submitted to the Home Secretary, Leon Britten which were subsequently lost or destroyed. To say that the entire case revolves around the allegations of Nick would seem, at this stage, to be incorrect or at least extremely unlikely.

That's what the public enquiry is going to look into. Again, it seems fairly clear that there's a substantial amount of evidence against individuals including Cyril Smith and, even if it wasn't 'covered up' as such, it was ignored.

The allegations that three Tory ministers whose identities the witness, to this day, doesn't know murdered three children (again with no leads as to identity) and this was covered up by a shadowy cabal of senior government figures seem to be, even in the words of papers that accepted their truthfulness implicitly, "uncorroborated'" at this stage.

Yeah, my scepticism wasn't towards the claims that some individual men in power were abusers; there seems to be plenty of evidence for that. But the idea of a cabal of politicians killing kids for thrills sounds far more unlikely, the stuff of movies and TV shows like True Detective. So there definitely needs to be more evidence for that than the memories of one man. Based on what the papers have reported, these earlier allegations and investigations seem to be related to the former, not the latter.

I rather hold it should be our conviction by default that those of elevated station habitually molest children, sacrifice and/or eat them, dandle goats, etc. We should demand the furnishment of strong evidence before even considering the suggestion that such indulgences might not be any given blueblood's bread and cheese. And if one or two should by whatever dubious miracle seem to prove semi=human, our sincere faith in the monstrous corruption of the rest must stand unshaken.

even if it wasn't 'covered up' as such, it was ignored.

― Wristy Hurlington (ShariVari), Saturday, 20 December 2014 07:26 (Yesterday)

there's a way in which all the hysteria around this feeds even into sceptical reactions, because it means coverup becomes read as something far more purposive and orchestrated than how these things really transpire

if it weren't already a distinction without difference, the disappearance of the dickens dossier and the assertions of clive driscoll about his removal from relevant investigations and censure look like more than ignorance; perhaps not borne of sinister directives from on high but of institutional inertia and cowardice

nb to cardamon, clearly your post wasn't malicious or deranged in the way some of the hateful nonsense on twitter etc is, but there is still a lot of fanciful speculation around these things that is worth correcting

Why is anyone talking about Satanic death cults in this thread anyway? I'm fairly sure that sexual abuse of children is considerably more widespread than Satanic cult activity, to a degree that makes the comparison ludicrous even if you accept the basic point that this is unlikely to be a grand conspiracy.

If the Nick allegations are true then this is more likely to be the actions of a very small group OR a larger criminal gang that happened to cater to one or two Tory MPs. Above all else I don't believe it would have been that easy to discreetly set up an organised paedophile ring in the heart of Westminster, even in the 70s and 80s, without someone who might have had an interest in exposing it finding out. And I absolutely believe that the police would have looked the other way when powerful people were involved, because we pretty much already know they did with Savile.

The most disturbing aspect of the conspiracy theories are the guys just casually conflating any party or social that may have involved gay MPs at Dolphin Square (where dozens of MPs lived) with supposed child sex abuse parties. You know, "Wiliam Hague, who also lived at Dolphin Square nudge nudge wink wink" or "this dude who happened to once go on holiday with the Portillos".

Allegations of abuse do not, in themselves, echo the testimony of satanic abuse witnesses. Allegations that the same person happened to witness a string of unconnected murders by different powerful individuals who were then able to hush it up but left the witness to tell the tale do echo that testimony, and the testimony of survivors of equally fictitious 'gay s&m' gangs in the 1980s. Which again is not to say it isn't true but does have a bearing on what kind of allegations people have been willing to accept in the past without corroborating evidence.

the interesting thing here is not so much the time honoured traditions of elite social groups having their way with children of the lower orders, but the way the paedophile information exchange enabled previously dispersed sorts of degenerates from prison workers, remedial schoolteachers, the judiciary etc to gather together

they were all the beneficiaries of the radical tolerance engendered by the new left, evident in places like daniel cohn-bendit's anti-authoritarian kindergarten and the (now of course strenuously denied) contacts between pederasty adovcates and the national civil liberties council, so really a politically and socially heterodox movement altogether

Can we have some unpacking of the link you make in the second of these paras

reminds me of The Red Riding books by David Peace

or Kill List

The Cllr Jaconelli thing in Scarborough is much more like Red Riding (xp)

Everyone I know who talks about VIPedophilia is very gallows-humour about its David Peace-ness. Am sure this territory will be covered in a future DP novel.

Can we have some unpacking of the link you make in the second of these paras

― cardamon, Monday, 22 December 2014 14:09 (4 hours ago)

https://twitter.com/r9k_txt/status/547086098351284225

this is interesting re: the paedophile information exchange's relationship with the left

http://ianpace.wordpress.com/2014/06/29/pie-and-the-gay-left-in-britain-the-account-by-lucy-robinson-plus-various-articles-newly-online/

and likewise the idea of digging out, er, 'cabals' comes with anti-semitic and homophobic baggage

genuine question, no snark : why anti-semitic ?

(i understand the homophobic aspect of course .. )

Allegations like these have been a mainstay of the far right for decades. The idea is that a group of Jewish establishment figures (including almost every Jewish MP from the 1970s onwards) have been conspiring to abuse and murder white British children. It's an unsubtle retread of the blood libel.

blimey.
i had no idea of the supposed connection.
i read these accusations/stories, and have never ever made such an association.
and yes, i have lead a very sheltered life.
thank you for explaining.

Prince Andrew, Duke of York, named in underage 'sex slave' lawsuit over claims of forced sexual relations

Alan Dershowitz and Ghislaine (daughter of Bob) Maxwell also accused and deny any wrongdoing. Prince Andrew does seem to have a litany of unsavoury friends, though.

Interesting story, but nothing to do with the Westminster paedo ring allegations.

The idea is that a group of Jewish establishment figures (including almost every Jewish MP from the 1970s onwards) have been conspiring to abuse and murder white British children

There's nothing antisemitic about the Westminster paedo ring allegations as far as I can tell. Some of the names on the Elm Guest House list are/were Jewish, sure, but plenty are not.

The fictitious antisemitic / homophobic allegations have existed for many years. They may be independent of the current set of accusations to some extent but when people say "oh there have been rumours about X, Y or Z for ages", that's often where they come back to.

Interesting story, but nothing to do with the Westminster paedo ring allegations.

I'm aware, it was a "I don't know where to put this so I'm putting it here"-thing, at least related in a people in high places being accused of this etc

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30938755

well that's convenient for him.

Got himself off the hook there you mean?

William Hague paying tribute in the Commmons right now, which seems a quite ridiculously short-sighted thing to do.

going to be interesting reading the tributes.

xpost

William Hague paying tribute in the Commmons right now, which seems a quite ridiculously short-sighted thing to do.

Nah, unless he really went to town, I think they have to take the qualified risk there, send out a safe pair of hands, otherwise their silence turns into a story in itself. Tabloid press has got a pretty free pass for its gushing tributes to Savile when he died, even though they now claim 'everybody knew, we just couldn't risk the legal battle'.

Yeah maybe, in which case they send out the guy whose political career is already basically over. Still wouldn't want to be that guy though when it all comes out.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/leon-brittan-abused-children-westminster-5038101

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/top-tory-leon-brittan-photographed-5037869

do i need to know more about jeffrey epstein or can i go about my life w/o

Ex-Tory MP Harvey Proctor denies any role in Westminster abuse ring

Key Westminster Figures In Child Abuse Papers

gosh, how unfortunate that they're all dead

Ben Fellows, a former child actor, is currently in court for perverting the course of justice over allegations he made about Kenneth Clarke.

There are some absolutely astonishing allegations being made in court right now, the most lurid of which is Fellows' claim that the former Head of the Met's paedophile unit told him that he was aware of a porn film starring Joanna Lumley. Even if that were true I don't really understand what bearing it would have on anything.

Pretty sure Thatcher is going to be named in those papers too but unless they can say why, it isn't much help. Can highlight the dead ones as they can't sue for libel.

If it transpires that Thatcher both knew about this and covered it up then that is the biggest political revelation/scandal of most of our lifetimes, right there. If it isn't already. I'm really surprised this isn't front page news more often as it stands.

Sort of vaguely curious as to how they even went about setting up a covert paedophile ring in the middle of Westminster, it's not the sort of thing you can put on the House of Commons notice board. And there must have been people who weren't directly involved who had an inkling what was going on.

Sir Peter Morrison was very close to Thatcher.

Presumably it was like a 77 private board type arrangement ?

(x-post)

Hah

This is pretty far down the news pages of the bbc and the guardian. It's not even on the opening "splash" page of the guardian. Wtf are they so shy about? The bbc Ireypticence can understand, somewhat.

Er. *The bbc's reticence I can understand, somewhat.

It's on the front page of The Guardian website now. There's no story to tell from the Sky "revelations", though. Unless they can show the context in which the individuals were named (which has not been disclosed) there's barely any point in reporting it.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/03/ted-heath-child-abuse-investigation-police-watchdog-ipcc

This seems extraordinary:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/06/sex-abuse-claim-against-leon-brittan-began-as-joke-bbc-report

The police are effectively telling Panorama not to broadcast the episode given the risk of jeopardising ongoing cases. Panorama are telling the police that vulnerable witnesses were coached into making dubious allegations.

So it seems my speculation upthread may have been correct? (Except that it wasn't a case of childhood false memory syndrome rather than someone making stuff up as an adult.) Or is this "David" some other person than the "Nick" mentioned in the earlier stories?

Oh, okay, sorry, this was mentioned later in the article:

It is understood that David is not the same person as Nick, whose allegations are still being investigated by Operation Midland detectives.

Multiple people have named Leon Brittan though haven't they? This strikes me as extremely dodgy and I'm not really sure what Panorama is up to here.

Well, like I said upthread, there's a long history of child abuse claims leading to hysteria and false convictions, so I'd think it's the duty of journalists to find out whether such allegations have a solid basis? In the US many innocent people spent years in jail before it became apparent the evidence against them was based only on the child "witnesses" being manipulated into giving the answers their interviewers wanted, and/or false memory syndrome, so their convictions were overturned. Paedophilia is real thing and should be taken seriously, but sadly false accusations and "paedo hysteria" are something that can happen too, so that needs to be taken into account as well.

this is the most comprehensive thing I've found setting out the allegations against Brittan:

https://theneedleblog.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/the-long-strange-saga-of-leon-brittan/

there are some intersting articles on that site criticising the conduct of Exaro news, for example:

https://theneedleblog.wordpress.com/2015/08/26/on-the-harvey-proctor-allegations/

https://theneedleblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/01/on-janes-allegation/

Janner dead

Danjuk has chosen his words carefully.

it seems somewhat suspicious that met have chosen the moment that everyone's attention is being diverted by post-budget tory implosion to announce this:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/21/last-living-suspect-harvey-proctor-vip-paedophile-ring-inquiry-will-face-no-charges

Exaro has folded.

they didn't publish much eh? was p much Westminster paedo focused and there hasn't been a lot of developments in that of late

Yes, it started out as an investigative new site with a broader remit but seems to have been just focused on this for at least a year.

I've seen some speculation that Exaro's folding could be related to the Henriques inquiry into the police's handling of Westminster paedo allegations, which may well be critical of Exaro + the police's relationship with them. I think they had financial problems as well, though?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3716348/Janner-s-family-warn-child-sex-inquiry-flawed-s-revealed-star-witness-probe-lied-abuse-care-home-boss.html

Doubts about Tony's reliability are especially significant because, although 33 people have now claimed Janner abused them, for many years he was the only accuser. They suggest that the decision not to charge Janner was not an 'Establishment cover-up', as some have claimed, but a determination on ordinary legal grounds.

On January 29, 1991, Tony went to a local police station to spend the whole day being interviewed about Janner.
This was when he made his claims about Barbara Fitt.

After the interview, the police passed the allegations about Mrs Fitt – who was still running Station Road – to the social services department, along with a copy of Tony's statement. In the summer of 1991 a panel of senior managers noted her exemplary record and decided to take no further action, determining that the claims were bogus, a complete fabrication.

Mrs Fitt told the panel she thought Tony may have been seeking 'revenge' because she had been responsible for having him moved in 1974, after the incident with the six-year-old.

this seems concerning, though it would be helpful to know how the panel came to the conclusion that the allegations against Fitt were bogus, and obviously it could be the case that his account of abuse by Fitt was fabricated but his account of abuse by Janner was true.

Fitt also mentioned here ("Mr A" = the accuser referred to as "Tony" in the Mail article)

https://ianpace.wordpress.com/2014/08/08/decision-not-to-arrest-greville-janner-in-1991-then-attorney-general-and-dpp-need-to-answer-questions/

Mr A claimed that weekly trips had been arranged for him to the MP’s London home and to the Holiday Inn by Barbara Fitt, then Officer-in-Charge of Station Road children’s home, Wigston, Leicester, though conceded that this would have been impossible with the first visits, as Fitt had only taken over the home four months before he left it.

TBH I assumed Exaro was funded largely by someone who cared a lot about this and basically nothing else, to the point of monomania.

seeing reports that Goddard has quit as head of the csa inquiry?

the Times is alleging that Goddard quit after "she was warned by a senior official over her frequent use of racially derogatory language", including claiming that Britain has so many paedophiles "because it has so many asian men"

https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/786678658182291456

also, the Henriques inquiry into Operation Midland has apparently been completed, but the police have not said how much of it will be published, if any?

jings

Sir Edward Heath would have been questioned over sex abuse claims if he was alive when they came to light, police have said.

Wiltshire Police launched Operation Conifer in 2015 when the former PM was accused of historical child sex abuse.

The Conservative politician would have been interviewed under caution over seven claims, including the alleged rape of an 11-year-old, they said.

No inference of guilt should be drawn from this, police stressed.

The allegations include one of rape of a male under 16, three of indecent assault on a male under 16, four of indecent assault on a male under 14, and two of indecent assault on a male over 16.

The earliest, dating from 1961 when Sir Edward was Lord Privy Seal, alleged he had raped and indecently assaulted an 11-year-old boy in London "during a paid sexual encounter in private in a dwelling."

Another two of the seven claims relate to "paid sexual encounters."

The Sir Edward Heath Foundation called the report "profoundly unsatisfactory".

There was that credible testament from the lady who said she saw 11 children from Haute de la Garenne go out with Heath on his yacht, but only 10 returned.

testimony even. just having a grim lol at the idea of the testaments of the twelve pederasts!

what makes the testimony about him dumping children's bodies from his yacht "credible"?

tbh the report is highly unlikely to say "if allegations like these were brought to light today, we'd totally blow them off". idk how much point there is in releasing a report that just indicated the police would do the basics of their job in 2017.

the usual formulation is "credible witness" i think: which means the testimony may be implausible but nothing (besides this specific implausibility) seems to stand against our taking the witness seriously*

*and of course credible witnesses often just make mistakes

xps
only one she alleged. And given the children's home he was frequenting, and its sordid history - it seems credible enough to me.

well tbf the focus of operation conifer wasn't 'what would the police do about these allegations today' it was 'is there any substance to these kid-fucking allegations about ted heath and others' xp to sv

and to that end

As part of the £1.5m investigation, three people unconnected to Sir Edward were arrested for offences related to child abuse, one of whom is still being investigated.

That's the point of the operation but if the conclusion as to whether there is any substance to it is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ then i'm not sure how much value there is in publicly saying they would have questioned him - which would be the starting point of any basic investigation but will inevitably be interpreted as an indicator of guilt however many qualifiers they put in.

Strikes me as a weird statement to release.

the fact that the police also leaked to newspapers about how they're "110% sure" that there is substance to the allegations may lead one to think a lot of this is about justifying the time and resources that have been spent on this

given that it was already known operation conifer's remit would include ted heath it surely would have been stranger if they hadn't addressed their findings, inconclusive as they are, when the report was published

it'd be the first thing the media would ask about, might as well address it head-on

This business seems to have run its course:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/14/westminster-vip-abuse-accuser-fled-to-sweden-when-story-collapsed

Jesus.

I don't wanna say "I told you so", but...