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How much evidence is there of long term high level UK paedophile ring?

re Operation Circus...wondering why - unless the risk involved was part of the sick jollies - you would get the use of street-level and under-age rent boys somewhere as public as Piccadilly Circus by "VIP's" if there was also the more discrete type of Dolphin Square / Elm House behind-closed-doors operation available for "high-level paedos"....

....was there an inner and outer circle of HLP's with some not invited to the club or was it so powerful that they were entirely confident they could just wave a get-out-police-custody card a-la Cyril Smith...
 
So according to the Times headline I read they're not going to start from a position of believing allegations any more? Whats going on with this? Will recent events mean they re evaluate this stance?
 
What recent events and what headlines?

Without this I may be barking up the wrong tree, but the main issue over their position was the language used, primarily the use of the word true when that bit is supposed to be left to the court system.

I doubt the police or any other organisation or humans could actually operate their brains properly without being able to form an opinion as to the truth of something. But to come out and say it when you occupy a certain role is a different matter. They aren't likely to be any more or less sympathetic towards or believing of victims as a result of operation midland etc, that stuff changed for the better and won't come undone easily at that level.
 
elbows said:
What recent events and what headlines?

Without this I may be barking up the wrong tree, but the main issue over their position was the language used, primarily the use of the word true when that bit is supposed to be left to the court system.

I doubt the police or any other organisation or humans could actually operate their brains properly without being able to form an opinion as to the truth of something. But to come out and say it when you occupy a certain role is a different matter. They aren't likely to be any more or less sympathetic towards or believing of victims as a result of operation midland etc, that stuff changed for the better and won't come undone easily at that level.
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I hope so.
 
Ta for there links. In that case I was barking up the right tree. Still not sure which recent events you were referring to.

Various parts of the establishment and state institutions won't get away with returning to an older era where victims were disbelieved in a manner and on a scale that made a variety of abuses easier to get away with than today. That stuff had already been changing since the 70's/80's, many breakthroughs in the 90's and whilst the post-Savile era offered the opportunity to take things further, it also cemented some of these gains for at least a generation or two.

On that front it doesn't matter if some of the most high-profile investigations go nowhere, there is still no road back to the bad old days for that lot. Thats why they have to be so careful with their language, and they will mess up sometimes and overcompensate, as in the 'credible and true'. But there is a limit as to how far they will adjust back in the other direction when called out by angry parties when they make a mistake.

Where things are much less clear is in other areas, such as media and public attitudes, and political will. There is more room for that stuff to wander in bad directions, but I'll save that for another time.

If I'm feeling optimistic (which isn't too often) then I can even look at all the mistakes that public bodies, deciders etc have made since things got 'real serious' are actually part of the process of making things at least a little better. I'm glad they messed up by choosing crap heads for the inquiry for example, and that their mistakes and missteps were highlighted and, often belatedly, responded to.

Perhaps the biggest threat to the police etc's enlightened attitude towards abuse cases is the large amount of resources they take up. The system is going to be virtually overwhelmed in various areas for some years to come, but we do need to remember that even if the highest profile cases fizzle out for lack of evidence, there are a lot of cases that don't involve famous names that are being dealt with and are securing convictions. We know that power and the misuse of it exists in all manner of human relations and since the elite are a minority I don't expect, even if various factors happened to give them a higher than average offending ratio, that we are dealing with a huge quantity of 'famous names'. But the pool of people who had power and opportunity of abusing others at less spotlighted levels of society so much more numerous. We are probably going to hear about a lot of 'locally prominent' abuses via various inquiries, and thats not simply because they may have had less effective powers covering up for them and less involvement of the security services, its because there are/were more of them.

Oh sorry I started waffling while waiting for my food to finish cooking, got too hungry.
 
By recent events I meant with Cameron which will no doubt leave people wondering what else people in the establishment are hiding and don't want found out about.
 
frogwoman said:
By recent events I meant with Cameron which will no doubt leave people wondering what else people in the establishment are hiding and don't want found out about.
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I don't know, people already wonder a great deal about that. And the public imagination already had some ideas about the posh and their educational establishments, e.g. soggy biscuit.

Sometimes I get the idea that this isn't only about justice, exposing people, changing things so its harder for it to keep happening. That we'd like to use 'the energy of the scandal' to get people interesting in an analysis of power. And this happens on occasion, but I doubt all the detail of it reaches the same size audience as the scurrilous bits :(
 
brogdale said:
When I said 'fall-guy' I did mean Det Supt Kenny McDonald, not 'Nick'.
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Thanks for the clarification. I still say no, because what makes or breaks these investigations is the evidence and number of victims that come forwards. If the numbers are insufficient then no further coverups are required. There are many reasons why the numbers and evidence may be insufficient - the passage of time, cover-ups or crimes of the past, lack of surviving victims, lack of criminal act in the first place.

McDonald may end up being the fall guy for language mistakes made, but not as part of some plan from the get go to build the investigation up and then knock it down. Thats a game the media play in many situations, but its not one I think the establishment were indulging in here.

And the reason I say that refers to my first point - the language mistake made was done so because the police were trying to overcompensate for past failings, and wanted to put out a statement designed with the best chance of getting any victims to come forwards. If it had worked then the investigation could build credibility by building a case. We don't actually know for sure that it has failed to do so yet. But if it has, and the fallout we've seen in the media gains weight, then so be it. Because I'll still see it as the opposite of what a plot would have been seeking to achieve - would a plot have risked having a stage where victims were genuinely encouraged to come forwards?
 
Operation Midland may not have ended but the attacks on it seem to be increasing. Following the Met Statement, Alison Saunders' criticisms and Hogan-Howe's interview on LBC (podcast here)*, The Times ran four pieces yesterday and today (paywalled).

[ETA: just realised that is LBC's subscription only service - the Hogan-Howe interview is on YouTube here]

Met chief defends child sex probe “shambles”
Jenny Booth
Last updated at 3:43PM, September 23 2015
Sir Bernard Hogan Howe today defended his force’s inquiry into alleged child murders by a VIP paedophile ring, insisting Operation Midland was “not a shambles”.

The Metropolitan Police commissioner rejected claims by the former Conservative MP Harvey Proctor that officers had been conducting a homosexual witchhunt, and were now preparing an exit strategy to back away from the troubled investigation.

Operation Midland is a probe into claims by abuse survivors that three children were murdered by MPs and other prominent public figures who held child sex parties, some at the Dolphin Square mansion flats in central London where many government figures live.

Scotland Yard yesterday acknowledged that a detective had overstepped the line at the outset by describing the main accuser’s claims as “credible and true”, which a force spokesman conceded had “suggested we were pre-empting the outcome of the investigation”.

Today however Sir Bernard Sir Bernard said detectives would have been rightly criticised if they had not taken allegations of three murders seriously, and said people should not focus on “the use of one word, in one interview”.

“I think they have carried out a very thorough and professional inquiry which they are in the middle of and you are saying ‘why are you still carrying it on?’. But for that one word then I think it has been a very good inquiry”, said Sir Bernard.

Claims that Midland would close were “not accurate”, he went on, adding: “We will do whatever we need to do to get to the bottom of this.

“It has taken a while to get this far, but the trouble with these inquiries is often the victims and the witnesses don’t have total recall of the information or the detail of the offence, and clearly we have struggled at times to corroborate, with such a passage of time, some of the things that have been said.”

When the inquiry was launched, Detective Superintendent Kenny McDonald said officers who had spoken to an alleged victim, known by the pseudonym “Nick”, thought his account was “credible and true”.

On Monday Scotland Yard defended its work, saying: “Whilst we start from a position of believing the witness, our stance then is to investigate without fear or favour, in a thorough, professional and impartial fashion, and to go where the evidence takes us without prejudging the truth of the allegations. That is exactly what has happened in this case.”

Operation Midland includes allegations of sexual abuse but it is “and remains” a murder investigation, the statement said.

Last month Mr Proctor, who has been questioned twice by investigators, told a packed press conference that former prime minister Sir Edward Heath and ex-home secretary Leon Brittan had been named among his “alleged co-conspirators”.

Today the former MP, who represented Basildon in Essex from 1979 to 1983 and Billericay from 1983 to 1987, criticised Sir Bernard’s comments.

“I’m not sure that the police commissioner should be in the media treating it like a quiz show, allocating marks of quality and ranking to his inquiries,” said Mr Proctor.

He added that Mr McDonald’s words had not been “off the cuff”.

Mr Proctor said: “It was a very slow and deliberate statement and it was made after Scotland Yard threw their own press conference.”

followed by a shorter slightly toned-down article today saying much the same (presumably to keep it on the front page)

Police chief defends VIP abuse inquiry
Fiona Hamilton Crime Editor
Published at 12:01AM, September 24 2015
The Metropolitan police commissioner defended his force’s inquiry into historical abuse yesterday and denied that it was a “shambles”.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe described Operation Midland, an investigation into allegations of child murder and abuse carried out by establishment figures, as a “very thorough and professional inquiry”.

He was speaking after the Met, in a statement earlier this week, admitted that it was wrong last year to state that claims by a man known only as “Nick” that he saw three murders in the 1970s and 1980s were “credible and true”.

Sir Bernard, speaking yesterday to LBC radio, said that it had been a good inquiry rxcept for the use of the word ‘true’ and denied claims that it was about to be wound down.

He said: “I think they have carried out a very thorough and professional inquiry which they are in the middle of and you are saying, ‘Why are you still carrying it on?’.”

He admitted that detectives had “struggled at times” to corroborate claims by Nick.

They cover the same ground as the Guardian's piece but from a more hostile perspective.

Westminster paedophile ring inquiry 'not a shambles', says police chief - Guardian

The Times also found an ex-policeman to say
Police ‘scared’ to end VIP abuse inquiry
Sean O'Neill Chief Reporter
Published at 12:01AM, September 23 2015
Police chiefs are frightened to scale back their investigation into allegations of child murder by a VIP paedophile ring because they do not want to be accused of a cover-up, a retired senior murder detective said yesterday.

Colin Sutton, a former detective chief inspector who was drafted in to solve the Night Stalker rapist case in 2009, said that senior Metropolitan police officers needed to take a detached look at the allegations of child murder by top politicians at Dolphin Square and reach professional conclusions.

Scotland Yard admitted this week that it had been wrong to state last year that claims made by a man known only as Nick that he witnessed three murders in the 1970s and 1980s were “credible and true”. It is continuing with Operation Midland, although no bodies have been found and it is not known who was allegedly killed.

Mr Sutton said: “They’re frightened. A culture has emerged of automatically believing victims and nobody’s got the balls to stand up and say the emperor’s got no clothes on.”

The Met has faced criticism over the conduct of historical sex abuse cases since the allegations against the former Tory prime minister Edward Heath.

Alison Saunders, director of public prosecutions, said yesterday that police may have “overstepped the mark” in initially saying the allegations were true.
 
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The pièce de résistance however is a column by David Aaronovitch - clearly the column which his increasingly vocal "scepticism" over recent months has been leading to:

We've been conned by the new McCarthyites
Published at 12:01AM, September 24 2015
Only now are police admitting they were wrong to describe lurid allegations of VIP sex abuse as “credible and true”

Finally, somebody else said it. That man on the horse riding down the street preceded by flags and followed by drums? The one whose wonderful attire they’re all loudly acclaiming? Stark naked. Not a stitch on. That’s what former Detective Chief Inspector Colin Sutton told The Times yesterday.

Nearly three years have passed since the Savile scandal broke and — in its wake — the MP Tom Watson (now Labour’s deputy leader) stood up in the House of Commons and asked David Cameron to ensure that the police “investigate clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to parliament and No 10”. In that time, the idea of a Westminster paedophile ring has entered the popular folklore of British politics. It has been deployed by social media partisans in the Scottish referendum campaign, in support of Ukip, and by just about anyone short of a stick to beat politicians with.

A few of us (at the beginning, very few of us) watched this process with alarm. From Watson’s acorn — or alleged acorn because, of course, no names were named and no cases detailed — grew a forest of lusty oaks. A phenomenon arose akin to a latterday McCarthyism, a general assertion that has relied on its own vigour to grow, rather than on anything as footling as evidence.

This minor witch-hunt has had no figurehead. There has been no single interrogator and many of those involved seem to have been motivated by conscience and a sense of the public good. But then, aren’t they always? Newspapers, BBC journalists, online press agencies that sell stories by the yard, politicians such as Zac Goldsmith, John Mann and Simon Danczuk, authors, victims’ groups and others have together created an impression of certainty that there was once, and maybe still is, a conspiracy to commit and then to cover up the most appalling crimes against children by some of the most powerful in the land.

Whatever it was Watson had in mind when he stood up and made the claim (and he has never publicly detailed it) what has bubbled out in the years since has been almost impossible to keep up with and evaluate. In the same way that Savile begat Operation Yewtree and thousands of claims of historical child abuse by celebrities — some of them upheld in courts, some not and some never proceeded with — so the Watson statement was followed by claims of politician abuse.

For the first time, wider credence was given to claims previously confined to the margins of the internet. A list, purporting to be of visitors to a guest house where paedophile parties allegedly took place, gave rise to Operation Fernbridge. In pursuit of which, claimed the press agency Exaro more than a year ago, a former cabinet minister would shortly be arrested.

People began to come forward and a rubric developed. If anyone made an allegation of anything involving a claim of child abuse, then the police would have to say they were taking it seriously and investigating it. At this point the very fact that it was being investigated would be used as an argument for the existence of crime itself. After all, why would the police waste their time investigating something that hadn’t happened?

One claim led to another. The logical extension of this was “Nick”. “Nick” was the man who appeared in silhouette a year ago on an item that led the BBC Six O’Clock News. He claimed he had been abused as a boy by leading politicians in the 1980s. In a week Nick had gone from claiming to have witnessed not one murder by the Westminster gang, but three. Those politicians were not named by the police (who infamously agreed that his account was “credible and true”) but their supposed identities were nevertheless the common stuff of internet legend. And then one or two other people came forward and claimed that they had been abused in the same way by the same perpetrators.

Since Savile it has been obvious that the police and the DPP, scarred by the (often justified) claims that they failed to take abused children seriously, and apprehensive about future inquiries, have been falling over themselves to avoid offending the Abuse Lobby. We’ve all felt it. Those of us who looked at what was being alleged, trawled the online sites, listened hard and stuck to the Golden Question — where is the evidence? — nevertheless felt real pressure not to question what was going on. Who wants to be called, as I have been, the paedophile’s friend, the shill of the establishment?

So it grew. The accusations became widespread enough for some papers to feel that they could just print any claims on the front page under a banner headline, without doing even the most basic research on the credibility of their informants. It became open season on dead Tory politicians. Keith Joseph? Rhodes Boyson? Michael Havers? Leon Brittan? Who, apart from their families, would care enough to defend their reputations? Open season too on live but anonymous politicians, whose good names could not be defended without their defenders themselves repeating a libel.

And then it came out that “Nick” had accused Ted Heath. And the former MP Harvey Proctor — so far as I know the only living accusee in this particular case — came forward and made public the accusations. Nick had not only witnessed three killings but, at a sex-and-murder party in Dolphin Square, Proctor had supposedly threatened to cut his genitals with a knife, and had been saved by the squeamish Heath. Proctor had given the knife to the boy who kept it, had given it to the police, who now showed it to Proctor.

Like Senator McCarthy in 1954, when he went after supposed Communists in the US Army, the accusations had over-reached. How could such totally implausible and uncorroborated stuff be regarded as “true”? And if it couldn’t, what about the rest? If there had been murders, where were the bodies? Why, after more than a year had Operation Midland come up with nothing?

How did we allow this madness to take hold? How much damage has it done to the reputations of the innocent — and to the cause of genuine victims? For the moment let’s just note our lamentable tendency as a society to swing the pendulum an unnecessary full arc from negligence to hysteria without ever stopping at common sense.

This minor witch-hunt has had no figurehead. There has been no single interrogator and many of those involved seem to have been motivated by conscience and a sense of the public good. But then, aren’t they always? Newspapers, BBC journalists, online press agencies that sell stories by the yard, politicians such as Zac Goldsmith, John Mann and Simon Danczuk, authors, victims’ groups and others have together created an impression of certainty that there was once, and maybe still is, a conspiracy to commit and then to cover up the most appalling crimes against children by some of the most powerful in the land.
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The Aaronovitch piece is no surprise because I don't view it as a destination he's just reached. He's had that stance for a long time and been vocal at times when to be so was further out of step with 'the public mood' and the tone of much of the press than may be the case today. He's used much of the same insensitive, loaded language before too I think, though I haven't time to fact-check right now.
 
elbows said:
The Aaronovitch piece is no surprise because I don't view it as a destination he's just reached. He's had that stance for a long time and been vocal at times when to be so was further out of step with 'the public mood' and the tone of much of the press than may be the case today. He's used much of the same insensitive, loaded language before too I think, though I haven't time to fact-check right now.
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Entirely agree that he's had these views for a long time. He claims now it's from the very start, but then "he would, wouldn't he". My impression from looking back at his column, listening to the R4 thing about SRA, his twitter comments etc., was that before this it's been expressed at a more "nudge nudge wink wink" level.

At any rate I haven't seen him express them this baldly, and my assumption is that he's only been emboldened to do so by the sea change in attitudes since the Proctor press conference. Which for me is the main point of interest.
 
The Telegraph write a piece about Chris Fay's fraud conviction, presumably to follow up their story just over a week ago about "Darren"s past convictions.

'VIP child abuse ring’ accuser served time in prison for fraud - Telegraph

At the end they quote Fay expressing his unhappiness about his former associate putting his notes about Elm House on line :
He added: “It was so wrong to put that list online. It starts with hunts. That list could have encouraged people to make up claims.”
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The Telegraph's sub-editor fails to pick up the obvious typo in the second sentence. And when the Mail, as usual, crib the article wholesale, neither does theirs.

Social worker who accused Leon Brittan and other VIPs as being members of an alleged paedophile ring was convicted of fraud in 2011 - Mail

(For the benefit of anyone unaware of what Fay has said in the past about the 'Elm House Notes' it's worth reading the posts by him at the needleblog here and here, as well as some of the follow-up blog posts there, for example this one which he comments on).
 
Yeah I had to link to his very clear and sensible explanation of what the list was and was not, back when this thread had more participants and people would stumble on stuff like that list without knowing the back-story and context.

I'm not happy with the tone of Telegraph articles. The facts they have used to write the Fay story are far from new, we discussed them in this thread quite some time ago, including the fraud conviction. A conviction which doesn't really affect my opinion of the list at all - an opinion which is similar to Fay's, its a starting point for proper investigation, not a list of the guilty.
 
elbows said:
Yeah I had to link to his very clear and sensible explanation of what the list was and was not, back when this thread had more participants and people would stumble on stuff like that list without knowing the back-story and context.

I'm not happy with the tone of Telegraph articles. The facts they have used to write the Fay story are far from new, we discussed them in this thread quite some time ago, including the fraud conviction. A conviction which doesn't really affect my opinion of the list at all - an opinion which is similar to Fay's, its a starting point for proper investigation, not a list of the guilty.
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Entirely agree. IMO these articles are not interesting because of any new information they provide, but because they reflect the different varieties of scepticism, about Operation Midland specifically and VIP abuse more generally, which are being expressed more forcefully and to a degree are coalescing.

Not surprising if there isn't more of this in the run up to next weeks edition of Panorama.

And here is Frank Furedi at Spiked :
Operation Midland: Treating Fiction As Fact - Spiked
 
The Mail continues the 'complainants discredited' and 'Watson is to blame' line with

Woman who falsely accused Lord Brittan of raping her is a Labour activist who admitted hating the Tories - Mail

This is 'Jane' whose allegations were prominently reported by Exaro. The Mail have actually run this story more than once before but this time they state baldly that the allegation was 'false'.

Commentary on it at the Needleblog which continues it's ongoing criticisms of Exaro :
I can only tell you what my interpretation of it all was at the time and that was that it was nothing more than an unscrupulous play to prolong and exploit the lucrative commercial value of Jane, their source, and that at no point was any consideration given to the duty of care that they owed her.
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and at the 'Bartholomew's Notes on Religion' blog which also makes some observations about the current newspaper 'backlash' against claims of VIP abuse.

Daily Mail Returns to Leon Brittan and “Jane” as VIP Abuse Claims Come Under Scrutiny

The critique of Exaro continues with a blog post by Matthew Scott, Where now for Exaro?, which discusses it's background and the evolution of its business plan and journalistic focus at length but then goes on to make very serious criticisms of the way it has treated its sources. The whole thing is worth reading IMO but these extracts seem particularly to the point :

As a result of [Darren's] exposure by Exaro, he says, he has been “ridiculed nationwide.” One of his allegations is that Exaro suggested that he join Twitter. They “said it would be good for me and get more exposure for my case.” He took up the suggestion (if that is what it was) last May, tweeting under a pseudonym.
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(...)
The Telegraph reported one important point that was not included in the Exaro report:

“Police sources have suggested the referral to social services was made over growing concerns that Darren’s postings on the social networking site Twitter were increasingly alarming.”

In other words, according to the Telegraph, the referral to social services was linked to Darren’s twitter account, an account he had set up because Exaro asked him to do so.
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(...)
Exaro might suggest that publicising his case through social media will help expose and catch the criminals responsible for his abuse and the murder he witnessed.

In fact the contrary is true. Quite apart from the damage that may have been done to Darren himself, the more he discusses his case with others on social media, the less compelling his testimony is likely to be should it ever come before a jury.
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And the result of giving Darren’s case “more exposure” has been that Darren has been ridiculed, his account has been ridiculed, he has had to deal with the threat of Social Services removing his child, and he has withdrawn co-operation with the police.

Whether his account is true or false, from Darren’s point of view this seems a pretty disastrous outcome. It also seems disastrous from the point of view of anyone hoping to see his allegations properly and fully investigated.
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The Times/Daily Mail tag team continue. Yesterday the Times published a story, based on blog postings, about "Darren"s criticisms of Exaro amongst other things. The Daily Mail then run with it.

Man who said he was abused by VIP paedophile ring now claims he was 'manipulated' by news website that led the crusade against politicians

Today the Sunday Times publish a piece by Max Hastings criticizing Lord Bramall's treatment by Operation Midland. The Mail run their own version.

Former Army chief fighting 'entirely unfounded' child sex abuse claims should be 'exonerated at the earliest opportunity'

On the end of it they add another attack on "Nick" this time spun into another anti-BBC piece about the 'internal war in the BBC' over this Tuesday night's edition of Panorama The VIP Paedophile Ring: What's the Truth?

Two weeks ago the Solicitor General issued a public warning to the media over identifying complainants in sexual abuse cases. That followed a Daily Mail story which offered strong clues to "Nick"s identity including a partially pixelated photograph and details of his job. Their purpose was presumably much the same as the highly criticized police press conference outside Edward Heath's house - to encourage people who know and can identify "Nick" to come forward with usable information about him. In this latest story the Mail shows what it feels about the Solicitor General's warning by republishing another version of the pixelated photograph.
 
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