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 |  Subject: UK's MPs and government ministers - abused children for "decades", a former child protection manager claims  Tue Jul 08, 2014 1:56 am | |
| Former child protection manager Peter McKelvie says there is now a chance of justice for the victims of child abuse
There is evidence at least 20 prominent paedophiles - including former MPs and government ministers - abused children for "decades", a former child protection manager has claimed.
Peter McKelvie, whose allegations led initially to a 2012 police inquiry, said a "powerful elite" of paedophiles carried out "the worst form" of abuse.
The government has already announced two reviews into claims of abuse.
The Home Office's top civil servant will appear before MPs later.
Permanent secretary Mark Sedwill will face questions from the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee about his department's handling of child abuse allegations made over a 20-year period.
Announcing the reviews in the House of Commons on Monday, Home Secretary Theresa May said the first would be a wide-ranging inquiry - similar to the inquiry into the Hillsborough disaster - led by an independent panel of experts on law and child protection.
The second review - which is to be led by head of the NSPCC Peter Wanless - would cover how police and prosecutors handled information given to them, she told MPs.
Home Secretary Theresa May: "With allegations as serious as these, the public needs to have complete confidence"
Following the announcements, Mr McKelvie - giving his first television interview for 20 years - told the BBC he believed there was evidence to link a number of former politicians to an alleged paedophile network.
"I would say we are looking at upwards of 20 (people) and a much larger number of people who have known about it and done nothing about it, who were in a position to do something about it," he said.
Mr McKelvie said some of those who were alleged to have abused children had now died.
He told the BBC he had spoken to victims over "many, many years" and that children - "almost exclusively boys" - were moved around like "a lump of meat".
They had been subjected to the "worst form of abuse", including rape, he said.
Mr McKelvie was a child protection manager in Hereford and Worcester and worked on the conviction of paedophile Peter Righton - a former consultant to the National Children's Bureau.
Righton, who is now dead, was also a founding member of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), before he was convicted of importing child pornography.
However, Mr McKelvie told the BBC that the evidence discovered in the case went much further than simply Righton.
'Boxes of evidence'
Mr McKelvie - who had access to documents relating to paedophile networks linked to the Righton inquiry - said he told police in 2012 there were seven boxes of potential evidence being stored by West Mercia police.
He said the evidence included letters between Righton and other alleged paedophiles.
In 2012, Mr McKelvie took his concerns to Labour MP Tom Watson, who then raised the matter in Parliament, prompting a preliminary police inquiry in 2012 that became a formal inquiry in 2013.
His interview comes after footage emerged of a former Conservative MP suggesting to the BBC in 1995 that party whips might not disclose certain behaviour of colleagues including that "involving small boys."
Tim Fortescue, who was a senior whip in Sir Edward Heath's government from 1970-73, claimed that MPs would "come and ask if we could help and if we could, we did".
Meanwhile, Greater Manchester Police have also said there will be a wider inquiry into allegations of a cover-up involving paedophile abuse at Knowl View residential school - a school linked to the late MP Cyril Smith - in Rochdale in the 1980s and 1990s.
Why has this come up now?
Labour MP Simon Danczuk last week called on Leon Brittan to say what the then home secretary did with documents he was passed in the 1980s containing allegations about powerful figures and paedophilia.
What happened to the files?
Lord Brittan passed them to Home Office officials. A 2013 review found 114 documents were unaccounted for. The review found the minister had acted appropriately.
What did the papers allege?
The allegations, compiled by Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens, were set to "blow the lids off" the lives of powerful child abusers, the MP's son has said. The late Mr Dickens said he planned to expose eight such figures.
Announcing the reviews after weeks of increasing questions about how past claims of child sex abuse were handled, Mrs May said the review headed by Mr Wanless would be assisted by a senior legal figure.
She said it would focus on concerns the Home Office failed to act on allegations of child sex abuse contained in a dossier handed over in the 1980s by former Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens.
David Cameron: "We're going to leave no stone unturned to find out the truth"
A review commissioned last year by Mr Sedwill, into the Home Office's handling of child abuse allegations between 1979 and 1999, found that some 114 files were missing but no evidence that they had been removed or destroyed "inappropriately".
Mrs May said she was confident the work commissioned by Mr Sedwill had been "carried out in good faith", but added that with "allegations as serious as these the public need to have complete confidence in the integrity of the investigation's findings".
Lord Butler, the former head of the civil service, told BBC Newsnight he had heard nothing about a child abuse network at Westminster.
He said that given the number of files involved, "it's quite difficult to imagine there could have been a cover-up without quite a lot of people knowing about it".
Prime Minister David Cameron vowed that the investigation into how public bodies had handled abuse claims would "leave no stone unturned".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-28203914 |
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