Peter Morrison – the child abuser protected by MI5, the Cabinet Secretary, and Margaret Thatcher – updated July 2015
Posted: July 26, 2015 Filed under: Abuse, Conservative Party, Politics, Westminster | Tags: baron maude, bryn alyn, bryn estyn, child abuse, christine russell, christopher grayling, conservatives, don hale, edwina currie, elm guest house, frances mowatt, francis maude, frederic forsyth, grahame nicholls, gyles brandreth, harting, jeffrey archer, jillings report, john wakeham, jonathan aitken, leon brittan, lord armstrong, lord tebbit, macur inquiry, Malcolm Layfield, margaret thatcher, martin allen, martin roscoe, nick davies, norman tebbit, north wales abuse, operation fairbank, operation pallial, paul connew, peter morrison, robert armstrong, rod richards, simon heffer, sir antony duff, stephen norris, theresa may, vishal mehortra, william hague, william van straubenzee 13 Comments[With great thanks to @Snowfaked and @MySweetLandlord on Twitter for finding some extra pieces of information, especially relating to Morrison and Islay, and the picture of Thatcher, Morrison and Brittan]
In Edwina Currie’s diary entry for July 24th, 1990, she wrote the following:
One appointment in the recent reshuffle has attracted a lot of gossip and could be very dangerous: Peter Morrison has become the PM’s PPS. Now he’s what they call ‘a noted pederast’, with a liking for young boys; he admitted as much to Norman Tebbit when he became deputy chairman of the party, but added, ‘However, I’m very discreet’ – and he must be! She either knows and is taking a chance, or doesn’t; either way it is a really dumb move. Teresa Gorman told me this evening (in a taxi coming back from a drinks party at the BBC) that she inherited Morrison’s (woman) agent, who claimed to have been offered money to keep quiet about his activities. It scares me, as all the press know, and as we get closer to the election someone is going to make trouble, very close to her indeed. (Edwina Currie, Diaries 1987-1992 (London: Little, Brown, 2002), p. 195)
The agent in question was Frances Mowatt. A 192 search reveals that there is now a Frances Mowatt, aged 65+, living in Billericay in Essex, Teresa Gorman’s old constituency. She may be the same person who is a Local Authority Governor for St Peter’s Catholic Primary School in Billericay.
In 1982, a boy who would then have been around 14 (the same age as I was at the time) has given a vivid account of his experiences at the hands of Morrison (Bill Gardner, ‘Westminster paedophile ring: ‘I allowed my son to go with him. You trusted people more in those days”, Daily Telegraph, January 3rd, 2015). This boy encountered Morrison, dressed in a pin-striped suit in the village of Harting, West Sussex; Morrison told him his car had broken down, offered him money to help him start it, then invited the boy to his ‘nice big house in London for the weekend’. The boy said he couldn’t come, but gave Morrison his phone number when he asked, and then received repeated phone calls imploring him to come, eventually saying yes after refusing repeatedly. Morrison came down to Sussex with a driver, told the boy and his father he had homes in Chester and London, but not that he was an MP (he said he was a barrister). To the boy’s father’s great regret, he let him go; almost immediately on the journey, Morrison began to sexually assault the boy, who said:
He’d leave me alone for a little bit, and then he’d come at me again. . . . Before long, he had my trousers off. At one point we stopped for petrol, and I thought about running out of the car, but I realised the doors had some sort of child lock and I couldn’t get out. I was so frightened.
Matters got worse: Morrison gave beer and wine to the boy and then took him to a house, which the boy (now a man in his mid-40s) thinks was Elm Guest House. There were seven or eight men around the house, and Morrison took him upstairs, stripped him, and raped him for at least an hour; the man says ‘It was the most horrendous experience of my life.’ Morrison then told him they would be going to the sauna together, visiting a ‘party’, and he would be sleeping in Morrison’s bed later. The boy managed to sneak out of the house unseen, get back on a train to Harting, and tell his father what had happened. A local policeman was called, and the boy was taken to a police doctor, with medics telling the father afterwards that his son had ‘certainly been sexually abused’. Two detectives from Scotland Yard took a full statement from the boy, who soon afterwards received calls at home from various men in London asking where he was, which he attributed to Morrison panicking after he had disappeared. Nothing more happened until two Scotland Yard officers arrived on the family’s doorstep a year later, with the boy’s clothes in a bag, saying that the man in question had been convicted in a Chelsea court, had been imprisoned for two years, and nothing else was to worry about. Only years later did the victim recognise Morrison as a prominent MP in the Thatcher government. Operation Fairbank continue to investigate this story (Bill Gardner, ‘Thatcher confidant raped boy and police covered crime up’, Daily Telegraph, January 5th, 2015). The man now says that:
I believe that Morrison was a high-profile guy so he got away with it. Either the police were paid off or they hushed it up because he was an MP.
“I was never the same after what happened – he ruined my life really. I left school soon afterwards because I lost all my confidence. I couldn’t handle what had happened to me.
Scotland Yard, in January 2015, were unable to confirm whether Morrison had been investigated at the time (Rebecca Camber, ‘Tory MP who was Thatcher’s confidant ‘raped my 14-year-old son at paedophile guest house’, Daily Mail, January 4th, 2015). More ominously, it was revealed that the body of the murdered Vishal Mehortra was found in woodland in Rogate, less than two miles from Harting (‘Thatcher aide could be linked to body found in Rogate’, Midhurst and Petworth Observer, January 10th, 2015).
However, since then reports have alleged that Morrison was arrested twice for picking up men at the toilets at Piccadilly tube, taken to West End Central police station in Savile Row and let off with a caution each time (a second caution is very unusual); the Met are trying to track down officers who were involved with the arrests. There are also rumours of Morrison’s having been caught making similar approaches at toilets in Crew railway station in Cheshire. These have all led to a probe into police corruption and high-level cover-up (Nick Dorman, ‘Probe over claims Margaret Thatcher aide escaped prosecution because of Establishment links’, Sunday People, July 18th, 2015; Martin Beckford, ‘Met launch probe into Maggie aide and its own cover up’, Mail on Sunday, July 19th, 2015). A later report made clear that one of the offences for which Morrison was arrested involved a 15-year old boy (Matt Chorley, ‘Senior Westminster figures from 1970s and 1980s including former Home Secretary Leon Brittan named in government child abuse files’, Daily Mail, July 22nd, 2015).
The following are the recollections of Grahame Nicholls, who ran the Chester Trades Council (Morrison was the MP for Chester from 1974 to 1992), who wrote:
After the 1987 general election, around 1990, I attended a meeting of Chester Labour party where we were informed by the agent, Christine Russell, that Peter Morrison would not be standing in 1992. He had been caught in the toilets at Crewe station with a 15-year-old boy. A deal was struck between Labour, the local Tories, the local press and the police that if he stood down at the next election the matter would go no further. Chester finished up with Gyles Brandreth and Morrison walked away scot-free. I thought you might be interested. (cited in ‘Simon Hoggart’s week’, The Guardian, November 16th, 2012).
Former MP for Chester (1997-2010), Christine Russell
This week, it has emerged that previously undiscovered files exist on Morrison (and Leon Brittan, former Wokingham MP Sir William van Straubenzee, and others including a figure named only as ‘Vanessa the Undresser’) which are thought to relate to abuse, and were not seen by Peter Wanless and Richard Whittam QC when preparing their earlier report (a supplement has been published here) (Tom Parmenter, ‘Key Westminster Figures in Child Abuse Papers’, Sky News, July 23rd, 2015). A report in The Times has named Morrison as an MP about whom communications took place in November 1986 between the late Sir Antony Duff (1920-2000), then head of MI5, and Sir Robert Armstrong, then cabinet secretary. Two sources had approached senior officials with reports that Morrison had ‘a penchant for small boys’. He was questioned about these but the security services accepted his claims that the allegations were false (Daniel Martin, ‘Secret files ‘show MI5 let abuse claim MP off hook’: Security chief said the case would ’embarrass the Government”, Daily Mail, July 22nd, 2015). Duff concluded ‘The risks of political embarrassment to the Government is rather greater than the security danger’ (clearly the interests of the victims did not even filter into Duff and Armstrong’s calculations, as has been commented upon by many, including Wanless and a spokesperson for NSPCC) (Sean O’Neill and Gabriella Swerling, ‘Child abuse suspect was Thatcher aide’, The Times, July 24th, 2015 [see below]; Daniel Martin, ‘Secret files ‘show MI5 let abuse claim MP off the hook’: Security chief said the case would ’embarrass the Government’, Daily Mail, July 22nd, 2015; ‘Child abuse: PM Tells Police – No Limits’, Sky News, July 23rd, 2015; Joseph Watts, ”Child abuse’ files must give justice to victims, says NSPCC chief’, Evening Standard, July 23rd, 2015). Approached a few days ago by The Times, Armstrong had the following to say:
My official business was the protection of national security. I have to stress that there was nothing like evidence in this case. There was just a shadow of a rumour. It’s impossible to take investigative action on shadows of rumours. . . If there is some reason to think a crime has been committed, then people like the cabinet secretary are not to start poking their noses into it. It’s for the police to do that.
To the Mail, Armstrong (who would not name Morrison to them), said:
I thought MI5’s actions were correct at the time. I think they were right to report the rumour, they were right to make what inquiries they could and they were right to come to the conclusion they did. I think if there was evidence it would have been properly examined at the time. I don’t think this is a matter of important people being protected. You can’t pursue inquiries unless you have evidence on which you can base the enquiry. A shadow of a rumour is not enough.
He went on to say ‘I think he [Morrison] was interview but he denied it. It is not my position to name him’, and did not know if Thatcher was made aware of the MI5 decision, which drew a furious response from Rochdale MP and long-term campaigner against child abuse Simon Danczuk (Vanessa Allen, Claire Ellicott and Daniel Martin, ‘I won’t name child abuse MP; Fury as Mrs Thatcher’s Cabinet chief defends failure to act over senior Tory’, Daily Mail, July 24th, 2015). See also Armstrong’s non-committal response to questions sent to him by investigative journalist Tim Tate, and Tate’s own blog on this.
Armstrong, who once became notorious for using the phrase ‘economical with the truth’ when involved in trying to prevent the publication of Peter Wright’s Spycatcher (Sue Reid, ‘Mandarin who can’t help being economical with truth: Lord Armstrong at centre of accusations of child abuse cover-up’, Daily Mail, July 24th, 2015), also has past form in terms of his dismissive responses to the entreaties by pianist and whistleblower Martin Roscoe for the Royal Northern College of Music, of which Armstrong was the chair of the board of governors in 2002, not to employ violinist Malcolm Layfield as their Head of Strings, after his record of sexually exploiting girls at Chetham’s School (see Charlotte Higgins, ‘After Michael Brewer: the RNCM teacher’s story’, The Guardian, February 13th, 2013; ‘Correspondence over appointment of Malcolm Layfield at Royal Northern College of Music’, The Guardian, February 8th, 2013).
On top of everything else, the Labour MP John Mann published a series of important tweets: ‘In 1984 Geoffrey Dickens gave Leon Brittan as Home Secretary a further list of alleged paedophiles linked directly to Peter Morrison’; ‘What happened to the list of Peter Morrison linked paedophiles given to Home Secretary in 1984? And why was no action taken?’; ‘I have just met person who gave list of Peter Morrison linked paedophiles to Geoffrey Dickens. Astonishing developments and cover ups’; ‘The new list of Dickens names was entirely different to first. It was given to him precisely because of publicity about his initial action’ all of which suggests new dimensions to the files supplied by Dickens to then Home Secretary Leon Brittan.
Sir Peter Morrison (1944-1995) was known, according to an obituary by Patrick Cosgrove, as a right winger who disliked immigration, supported the return of capital punishment, and wished to introduce vouchers for education. He was from a privileged political family; his father, born John Morrison, became Lord Margadale, the squire of Fonthill, led the campaign to ensure Alec Douglas-Home became Prime Minister in 1963, and predicted Thatcher’s ultimate accession to the leadership (Sue Reid, ‘Did Maggie know her closest aide was preying on under-age boys?’, Daily Mail, July 12th, 2014, updated July 16th). The young Peter attended Eton College, then Keble College, Oxford. Entering the House of Commons in 1974 at the age of 29, during the first Thatcher government he occupied a series of non-cabinet ministerial positions, then became Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party in 1986, replacing Jeffrey Archer after his resignation, and working under Chairman Norman Tebbit. His sister, Dame Mary Morrison, became a lady-in-waiting to the Queen (Gyles Brandreth, ”I was abused by my choir master’: In a brave and haunting account, TV star and ex MP Gyles Brandreth reveals the years of abuse he endured at prep school’, Daily Mail, September 12th, 2014).
Morrison was close to Thatcher from when he entered Parliament (see Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: Harper Collins, 1993), p. 837), working for her 1975 leadership campaign and, after she became Prime Minister, putting her and Denis up for holiday in the 73 000 acre estate owned by his father in Islay, where games of charades were played (Jonathan Aitken, Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 158-160, 279-281); Thatcher stayed there after her 1979 election victory, together with Morrison and also Leon Brittan (see the image below of the three of them, from Tom Shields, ‘Mrs T weathers rainy day blues’; Glasgow Herald, August 17th, 1979; see also Michael White’s his obituary of Brittan on how he helped to ‘keep her entertained during her reluctantly taken holidays’; Michael White, ‘Leon Brittan: Thatcher’s protege turned scapegoat’, The Guardian, January 22nd, 2015) Lord Margadale had previously entertained Princess Alexandra, Harold Macmillan and Ted Heath there. Morrison himself said in 1979 that Thatcher likely knew the people of Islay better than any others, except for in her constituency of Finchley (Tom Shields, ‘Not even on Islay can Mrs Thatcher get away from it all’, Glasgow Herald, August 16th, 1979; Tom Shields, ‘Islay estate sacks half its workers’, Glasgow Herald, August 2nd, 1982).
After being appointed as Thatcher’s Parliamentary Private Secretary in 1990, Morrison ran what is generally believed to have been a complacent and lacklustre leadership campaign for her when she was challenged by Michael Heseltine; as is well-known, she did not gain enough votes to prevent a second ballot, and then resigned soon afterwards. Morrison was known to some others as ‘a toff’s toff’, who ‘made it very clear from the outset that he did not intend spending time talking to the plebs’ on the backbenches (Stephen Norris, Changing Trains: An Autobiography (London: Hutchinson, 1996), p. 149).
Jonathan Aitken, a close friend of Morrison’s, would later write the following about him:
I knew Peter Morrison as well as anyone in the House. We had been school friends. He was the best man at my wedding in St Margaret’s, Westminster. We shared many private and political confidences. So I knew the immense pressures he was facing at the time when he was suddenly overwhelmed with the greatest new burden imaginable – running the Prime Minister’s election campaign.
Sixteen years in the House of Commons had treated Peter badly. His health had deteriorated. He had an alcohol problem that made him ill, overweight and prone to take long afternoon naps. In the autumn of 1990 he became embroiled in a police investigation into aspects of his personal life. The allegations against him were never substantiated, and the inquiry was subsequently dropped. But at the time of the leadership election, Peter was worried, distracted and unable to concentrate. (Aitken, Margaret Thatcher, pp. 625-626).
An important article by Nick Davies published in The Guardian in April 1998, also made the following claim:
Fleet Street routinely nurtures a crop of untold stories about powerful abusers who have evaded justice. One such is Peter Morrison, formerly the MP for Chester and the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. Ten years ago, Chris House, the veteran crime reporter for the Sunday Mirror, twice received tip-offs from police officers who said that Morrison had been caught cottaging in public toilets with underaged boys and had been released with a caution. A less powerful man, the officers complained, would have been charged with gross indecency or an offence against children.
At the time, Chris House confronted Morrison, who used libel laws to block publication of the story. Now, Morrison is dead and cannot sue. Police last week confirmed that he had been picked up twice and never brought to trial. They added that there appeared to be no trace of either incident in any of the official records. (Nick Davies, ‘The sheer scale of child sexual abuse in Britain’, The Guardian, April 1998).
Recently, the former editor of the Sunday Mirror, Paul Connew, has revealed how he was told in 1994 by House of the stories concerning Morrison. Connew has revealed that it was a police officer who was the source, dismayed by the lack of action after Morrison had been arrested for sexually molesting under-age boys; the officer revealed how Morrison had attempted to ‘pull rank’ by demanding to see the most senior officer, and announcing proudly who he was. All the paperwork relating to the arrest simply ‘disappeared’. Connew sent a reporter to confront Morrison at his Chester home, but Morrison dismissed the story and made legal threats, which the paper was not able to counter without naming their police source, which was impossible. The story ultimately died, though Connew was able to establish that in the senior echelons of Scotland Yard, Morrison’s arrest and proclivities were no secret; he had been arrested on multiple occasions in both Chester and London, always hushed up (Paul Connew, ‘Commentary: how paedophile Peter Morrison escaped exposure’, Exaro News, September 26th, 2014).
In an article in the Daily Mail published in October 2012, former Conservative MP and leader of the Welsh Tories Rod Richards claimed that Morrison (and another Tory grandee who has not been named) was connected to the terrible abuse scandals in Bryn Estyn and Bryn Alyn children’s homes, in the Wrexham area of North Wales, having seen documents which identified both politicians as frequent, unexplained visitors. Richards also claimed that William Hague, who was Secretary of State for Wales from 1995 to 1997, and who set up the North Wales Child Abuse inquiry, would have seen the files on Morrison, but sources close to Hague denied that he had seen any such material. A former resident of the Bryn Estyn care home testified to Channel 4 News, testified to seeing Morrison arrive there on five occasions, and may have driven off with a boy in his car (‘Exclusive: Eyewitness ‘saw Thatcher aide take boys to abuse”, Channel 4 News, November 6th, 2012; see also Reid, ‘Did Maggie know her closest aide was preying on under-age boys?’).
Rod Richards
The owner of Bryn Alyn and other homes, John Allen, was sentenced to life in December 2014 for sexual abuse of 18 boys and one girl there (‘Children’s home boss John Allen jailed for life for campaign of sex abuse’, Daily Telegraph, December 1st, 2014), and was revealed to be a friend of Michael John Carroll, who was abusing children in homes in the London borough of Lambeth (Tom Pettifor and Elwyn Roberts, ‘Two notorious paedophiles at centre of nationwide network of abusers including Tory and Labour politicians, Daily Mirror, December 1st, 2014). The implications – that Morrison was connected not just to abuse in North Wales but also to a wider ring of abusers – are almost too horrifying to contemplate, but must be considered (see also my collection of reports on abuse in Lambeth, which I will update soon).
John Allen
More stories and allegations have emerged about a Wrexham paedophile ring operative in the 1970s and 1980s, and trials are ongoing, so I will just link to a few articles about these (James Tozer, ‘Police probe into historic paedophile ring reveals 140 victims allege abuse by 84 people at 18 care homes across North Wales’, Daily Mail, April 29th, 2013; David Holmes, ‘Chester man alleges his child abuse claims were ignored for more than a decade’, The Chester Chronicle, December 3rd, 2014; Steven Morris, ‘Wrexham paedophile ring preyed on boys in north Wales, court told’, The Guardian, April 21st, 2015; ”Predatory’ paedophiles abused boys in Wrexham in the 1980s’, BBC News, April 21st, 2015; ‘Historic Predatory Paedophile Ring In Wrexham Convicted’, Wrexham.com, July 2nd, 2015; Steven Morris, ‘Five men found guilty of being members of ‘predatory paedophile ring”, The Guardian, July 3rd, 2015). As far as those who have been convicted is concerned, it is a matter of paramount importance to establish whether Morrison was acquainted with any of them. The 2000 Waterhouse Inquiry Report concluded that there was a paedophile ring operative in Chester and Wrexham (‘Waterhouse Inquiry: recommendations and conclusions’, The Telegraph, November 6th, 2012), thus linking North Wales abuse to Morrison’s own constituency.
Morrison’s successor as MP for Chester, Gyles Brandreth, told the press that he and his wife Michelle had been told on the doorstep repeatedly and emphatically that the MP was ‘a disgusting pervert’ (David Holmes, ‘Former Chester MP Peter Morrison implicated in child abuse inquiry’, Chester Chronicle, November 8th, 2012). This appeared in Brandreth’s book, Breaking the Code: Westminster Diaries (London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), p. 54, in the entry for September 12th, 1991 (taken from the entry ‘Brandreth on the child abuser Peter Morrison MP’, cathyfox blog, July 26th, 2015):
In a build-up to the launch of a new edition of Brandreth’s book (London: Biteback Publishing, 2014), which suggested major new revelations but delivered little, Brandreth merely added that when canvassing in 1991 ‘we were told that Morrison was a monster who interfered with children’, and added:
At the time, I don’t think I believed it. People do say terrible things without justification. Beyond the fact that his drinking made Morrison appear unprepossessing — central casting’s idea of what a toff paedophile might look like — no one was offering anything to substantiate their slurs.
At the time, I never heard anything untoward about Morrison from the police or from the local journalists — and I gossiped a good deal with them. Four years after stepping down, Peter Morrison was dead of a heart attack.
Gyles Brandreth.
What did Mrs Thatcher know of his alleged dark side? When I talked to her about him, I felt she had the measure of the man. She knew he was homosexual, and she knew he was a drinker. She was fond of him, clearly, but told me that he had ruined himself through ‘self-indulgence’ — much as Reginald Maudling had done a generation earlier. (Brandreth, ”I was abused by my choir master’)
Brandreth did however crucially mention that William Hague had told him in 1996 that Morrison’s name might feature in connection with the inquiry into child abuse in North Wales, specifically in connection to Bryn Estyn, thus corroborating Rod Richard’s account, though Brandreth also pointed out that the Waterhouse report made no mention of Morrison (Brandreth, ”I was abused by my choir master’).
At present, William Hague (who retired from the Cabinet and Parliament quite suddenly, stepping down at the 2015 election, in circumstances which have never been fully explained) is expected to be heavily criticised in a forthcoming report on the North Wales abuse scandal, from the Macur inquiry, to which Rod Richards gave evidence (Glen Owen and Brendan Carlin, ‘Hague faces cover-up row over Thatcher ally’s link to care home abuse scandal: Former foreign secretary said to have been made aware of Sir Peter Morrison’s connections while working as Welsh secretary, Mail on Sunday, May 31st, 2015).
On top of all of this, Morrison’s name has surfaced in connection with another murder inquiry (as well as that of Vishal Mehortra), of Martin Allen, who disappeared on Bonfire Night 1979, and has never been found. Morrison was amongst those (together with Peter Hayman and Leon Brittan) who visited the cottage in Kensington of Allen’s father, who was chief chauffeur at the Australian High Commission (Don Hale, ‘Witness comes forward in Martin Allen case linked to Westminster paedophile ring’, Daily Star, April 12th, 2015).
The journalist Simon Heffer has also said that rumours about Morrison were circulating in Tory top ranks as early as 1988, whilst Tebbit has admitted hearing rumours ‘through unusual channels’, then confronting Morrison about them, which he denied (Reid, ‘Did Maggie know her closest aide was preying on under-age boys?’); Tebbit, who has suggested that a cover-up of high-level abuse by politicians is likely, now concedes that he had been ‘naive’ in believing Morrison, and rejected Currie’s account of Morrison having admitted his offences to him (James Lyons, ‘Norman Tebbit admits he heard rumours top Tory was paedophile a decade before truth revealed’, Daily Mirror, July 8th, 2014). In a recent interview, Tebbit has given a slightly different rendition of things, claiming that he had ‘heard stories that Peter had an unhealthy interest in young men but not that it was with underage children. I confronted him about this, he denied it flat’ (Marie Woolf, ‘Tebbit quizzed MP on sex claims’, The Sunday Times, July 26th, 2015). He also refused to say who had told him about Morrison, saying somewhat cryptically:
There was no official contact. I choose my words carefully. I will just say that I was made aware. I was not sent a file.
Furthermore, Tebbit claimed he had had ‘no reason to believe Downing Street was aware of the allegation’, and had not contacted Thatcher about it, nor pursued the matter with the police, as he assumed they had no evidence and would not press charges (which raises the question of whether it was the police who told him).
Other Tory politicians recall John Wakeham, Chief Whip from June 1983 to January 1987 (see Wakeham’s profile at parliament.uk) telling them, after coming to him with reports of Morrison’s cottaging skirmishes, ‘If someone brings me some evidence I can do something about it, if required’. Another Tory said ‘It never got out, but people said ‘they’ll never be able to do that for Peter again’ (Michael White, ‘Politicians regret complacency over alleged establishment child abuse’, The Guardian, March 17th, 2015).
The novelist Frederick Forsyth, on the other hand, described Morrison as someone ‘who should have been exposed many years ago’, as well as being a politically incompetent alcoholic; however, as far as his sexual offences were concerned, Forsyth claimed Thatcher ‘suspected nothing’ (Frederick Forsyth, ‘Debauched and dissolute fool’, The Express, July 18th, 2014). Later he called Morrison an ‘awful slut’ who was ‘now exposed at last as a ruthless boy-molester’ (Frederic Forsyth, ‘Mrs Thatcher should have chosen better’, Sunday Express, January 9th, 2015).
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with her private secretary Peter Morrison arriving for the Ian Gow memorial service at St. Margaret’s, Westminister, London.
Recently, Thatcher’s bodyguard Barry Strevens has come forward to claim that he told Thatcher directly about allegations of Morrison holding sex parties at his house with underage boys (one aged 15), when told about this by a senior Cheshire Police Officer. (see Lynn Davidson, ‘Exclusive: Thatcher’s Bodyguard on Abuse Claims’, The Sun on Sunday, July 27th, 2014 (article reproduced in comments below); and Matt Chorley, ‘Barry Strevens says he told Iron Lady about rumours about Peter Morrison’, Mail on Sunday, July 27th, 2014; see also Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith, ‘Thatcher ‘was warned of Tory child sex party claims’’, The Independent, July 27th, 2014). Strevens claimed to have had a meeting with the PM and her PPS Archie Hamilton (now Baron Hamilton of Epsom), which he had requested immediately. Strevens had claimed this was right after the Jeffrey Archer scandal; Archer resigned in October 1986, whilst Hamilton was Thatcher’s PPS from 1987 to 1988. Strevens recalls Thatcher simply thanking him and that was the last he heard of it. He said:
I wouldn’t say she (Lady Thatcher) was naive but I would say she would not have thought people around her would be like that.
I am sure he would have given her assurances about the rumours as otherwise she wouldn’t have given him the job.
Strevens spoke again to the press in May 2015, to clarify further his account given in July 2014: he said that he had been told by a senior officer in Chester of rumours of under-aged boys attending sex parties at a home owned by Morrison. According to Strevens, Archie Hamilton ‘took notes and they thanked me’ (Hamilton recalls the officer being at Downing Street, but no mention of under-age boys), listened to him, and left it at that. Four years later, Thatcher recommended Morrison for a knighthood, which he received (Jonathan Corke, ‘Margaret Thatcher knew paedophile Tory’s sick secret but STILL secured him a knighthood; The former PM also recommended alleged abuser Leon Brittan and is claimed to have been aware of allegations about fellow knights Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith’, Sunday People, May 9th, 2015)
Barry Strevens
Strevens with Thatcher
Danczuk, who says that he met someone who alleges that Morrison raped him, made clear that in his view ‘There is little doubt in my mind that Margaret Thatcher turned a blind eye to known paedophiles from Peter Morrison to Cyril Smith and the rest.’ (James Lyons and James Gillespie, ‘Thatcher ignored Smith Abuse’, The Sunday Times, March 8th, 2015).
The accounts by Nicholls and Strevens make clear that the allegations – concerning in one case a 15-year old boy – are more serious than said in a later rendition by Currie, which said merely that Morrison ‘had sex with 16-year-old boys when the age of consent was 21’ (cited in Andrew Sparrow, ‘Politics Live’, The Guardian, October 24th, 2012). A further allegation was made by Peter McKelvie, who led the investigation in 1992 into Peter Righton in an open letter to Peter Mandelson. A British Aerospace Trade Union Convenor had said one member had alleged that Morrison raped him, and he took this to the union’s National HQ, who put it to the Labour front bench. A Labour minister reported back to say that the Tory Front Bench had been approached. This was confirmed, according to McKelvie, by second and third sources, and also alleged that the conversations first took place at a 1993-94 Xmas Party hosted by the Welsh Parliamentary Labour Party. Mandelson has not yet replied.
In the 1997 election, Christine Russell herself displaced Brandreth and she served as Labour MP until 2010, when she was unseated by Conservative MP Stephen Mosely (see entry for ‘Christine Russell’ at politics.co.uk).
In 2013, following the publication of Hoggart’s article citing Nicholls, an online petition was put together calling for an inquiry, and submittted to then Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State Christopher Grayling. Russell denounced the ‘shoddy journalism’ of the Guardian piece, recalled rumours of Morrison’s preferences, but said there was no hint of illegal acts; she did not however rule out an agreement that Morrison should stand down (‘Campaigners ask for inquiry over ex-Chester MP’, Chester Chronicle, January 3rd, 2013).
Morrison is now widely believed to have been a central character in a network of high-level VIP abusers (see Keir Mudie, ‘VIP paedophile files: The sick web of high-powered and well-connected child abusers’, Sunday People, March 21st, 2015).
Further questions now need to be asked of Lord Tebbit, Teresa Gorman, Edwina Currie, William Hague and other senior Tories, and crucially of Frances Mowatt, not to mention Christine Russell and others in Chester Labour Party, of what was known and apparently covered-up about Morrison. Frances Maude (now Baron Maude of Horsham), the Minister of State for Trade and Investment, was PPS to Morrison from 1984-85 (see Maude’s biography at politics.co.uk), a crucial period, and also needs to be questioned on what he knew about his former boss’s activities. In March of this year, Maude, then Cabinet Minister, refused to make details of newly-found files public (Tom Parmenter, ‘Family Demands Names Of New Child Abuse Files’, Sky News, March 7th, 2015); it appears now that one of these files referred to his old boss Morrison. If money was involved in at least offers to Mowatt, as Currie alleges was told to her by Gorman, then the seriousness of the allegations is grave. In October 2014, Currie arrogantly and haughtily declared on Twitter:
@MaraudingWinger @DrTeckKhong @MailOnline I’ve been nicer than many deserve! But I take the consequences, & I do not hide behind anonymity.
@jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel @woodmouse1 I heard only tiny bits of gossip. The guy is dead, go pursue living perps. You’ll do more good
@woodmouse1 @jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel The present has its own demands. We learn from the past, we don’t get obsessive about it. Get real.
@ian_pace @woodmouse1 @jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel And there are abusers in action right now, while you chase famous dead men.
@ian_pace @woodmouse1 @jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel I’d rather police time be spent now on today’s criminals – detect, stop and jail them
@jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel @woodmouse1 Flattered that you think I know so much. Sorry but that’s not so. If you do, go to police
@ian_pace @woodmouse1 @jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel They want current crimes to be dealt with by police, too. And they may need other help.
@ian_pace @woodmouse1 @jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel Of course. But right now, youngsters are being hurt and abused. That matters.
Considering Currie also rubber-stamped the appointment of Jimmy Savile at Broadmoor (Rowena Mason, ‘Edwina Currie voices regrets over Jimmy Savile after inquiry criticism’, The Guardian, Thursday June 26th, 2014) and clearly knew information about Morrison, including claims of bribery of a political agent, known to at least one other MP (Gorman) as well as herself, it should not be surprising that she would want claims of abuse involving dead figures to be sidelined.
Edwina Currie
This story relates to political corruption at the highest level, with a senior politician near the top of his party involved in the abuse of children, and clear evidence that various others knew about this, but did nothing, and strong suggestions that politicians and police officers conspired to keep this covered up, even using hush money, in such a way which ensured that Morrison was free to keep abusing others until his death. This story must not be allowed to die this time round. The actions of Duff and Armstrong (and Thatcher) may have sealed the fate of further boys who Morrison went onto abuse. That is the highest dereliction of duty imaginable.
The Times, July 24th, 2015
Sean O’Neill and Gabriella Swerling, ‘Child abuse suspect was Thatcher aide’
The Westminster politician protected by MI5 when suspected of child abuse was the Conservative MP Peter Morrison, who became one of Margaret Thatcher’s aides, The Times has learnt.
A Whitehall investigation was carried out in the mid-1980s after two sources approached senior officials with reports that Morrison had “a penchant for small boys”.
MI5 officers questioned Morrison, the MP for Chester and deputy chairman of the party, and accepted his denials. It is understood that the allegations were not reported to police. Four years later, in July 1990, he was appointed Thatcher’s parliamentary private secretary (PPS).
Files recently uncovered at the Cabinet Office revealed a note about the incident sent in November 1986 by Sir Antony Duff, head of the Security Service, to Sir Robert Armstrong, the cabinet secretary. It said there was no threat to national security but the claims did carry “the risk of political embarrassment to the government”.
Sir Robert, 88 – now Lord Armstrong of Ilminster – said last night: “My official business was the protection of national security. I have to stress that there was nothing like evidence in this case. There was just a shadow of a rumour. It’s impossible to take investigative action on shadows of rumours.”
He added: “If there is some reason to think a crime has been committed, then people like the cabinet secretary are not to start poking their noses into it. It’s for the police to do that.”
Morrison, who died in 1995, had been a whip and a junior minister before he was made Thatcher’s PPS. His Times obituary said that he “had clearly reached his ministerial ceiling [in 1990] and it was an act of kindness on the prime minister’s part to appoint him as her new PPS”.
He held the job for four months until November 1990, when he mismanaged the party leadership contest that led to Thatcher’s resignation.
The documents referring to Morrison are in four miscellaneous files discovered by a Cabinet Office team this year.
Peter Wanless, chief executive of the NSPCC, who led a review into lost Whitehall documents on abuse scandals, said that the Duff memo revealed that “child safety came a poor second to preserving reputations of individuals or government departments”.
Writing in The Times today, he says: “It is plainly obvious . . . those at the highest level who once strode the corridors of power were putting their fear of political embarrassment above the risks to children.”
The documents have been sent to the Goddard inquiry into child sexual abuse which formally opened this month.
What leading UK politicians should pledge about organised child abuse
Posted: October 17, 2014 Filed under: Abuse, Conservative Party, History, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, PIE, Politics, Westminster | Tags: child abuse, CSAinquiry, national inquiry, theresa may 5 CommentsProper statements and pledges from leading frontbench politicians in all the three major mainland UK political parties have been far from forthcoming; whilst Theresa May has granted a full national inquiry, there have been severe problems with the choices of chair and also the terms of reference. The sheer gravity of what is alleged as concerns politicians themselves seems to be made little apparent. With this in mind, I have drafted the sort of pledge that I feel such politicians ought to make in order to generate some confidence in the process:
A wide variety of allegations have been made of the most serious nature imaginable: that high-level figures in British society, including major politicians in all parties, have been involved in the sexual abuse and trafficking of children in a multitude of named cases. It is also alleged that others have worked to protect and cover up the operations of networks of abusers around the country and further afield. All of this is alleged to have taken place over an extended period of time. It would naturally be inappropriate to comment on the veracity of specific allegations prior to full investigation and the national inquiry, but I wish to pledge the full and unconditional support of my party towards the most thorough investigation possible. This will include maximum co-operation with all investigations, with full unrestricted access to any relevant documentation, including that to which access is currently restricted, and protection for all whistleblowers who might be constrained by the Official Secrets Act or otherwise. These allegations threaten to taint the UK political system and the operation of government permanently, and it is vital that we do everything in our powers to ensure that today’s generation of politicians demonstrate their total abhorrence of and resistance to such hideous actions. With this in mind, we will not shrink from pursuing full exposure and where appropriate prosecution of any figures, no matter how prominent or senior, found to have committed such heinous acts or to have covered up for others who have done so.
If the leaders and frontbenches of the major parties will not give this type of a pledge, then we should hear their reasons for not doing so.
Peter Morrison and the cover-up in the Tory Party – fully updated
Posted: October 6, 2014 Filed under: Abuse, Conservative Party, Politics, Westminster | Tags: bryn alyn, bryn estyn, child abuse, chris house, christine russell, christopher grayling, conservatives, cyril smith, edwina currie, grahame nicholls, gyles brandreth, harriet harman, jack dromey, jillings report, jonathan aitken, labour, michael heseltine, nccl, nick davies, norman tebbit, operation pallial, paedophile information exchange, patricia hewitt, patrick cosgrove, peter morrison, pie, rob richards, stephen norris, teresa gorman, theresa may, william hague 14 Comments[This post has now been superseded by an updated version – please click onto that to see the most recent information on Morrison as well]
In Edwina Currie’s diary entry for July 24th, 1990, she wrote the following:
One appointment in the recent reshuffle has attracted a lot of gossip and could be very dangerous: Peter Morrison has become the PM’s PPS. Now he’s what they call ‘a noted pederast’, with a liking for young boys; he admitted as much to Norman Tebbit when he became deputy chairman of the party, but added, ‘However, I’m very discreet’ – and he must be! She either knows and is taking a chance, or doesn’t; either way it is a really dumb move. Teresa Gorman told me this evening (in a taxi coming back from a drinks party at the BBC) that she inherited Morrison’s (woman) agent, who claimed to have been offered money to keep quiet about his activities. It scares me, as all the press know, and as we get closer to the election someone is going to make trouble, very close to her indeed. (Edwina Currie, Diaries 1987-1992 (London: Little, Brown, 2002), p. 195)
The agent in question was Frances Mowatt. A 192 search reveals that there is now a Frances Mowatt, aged 65+, living in Billericay in Essex, Teresa Gorman’s old constituency.
The following are the recollections of Grahame Nicholls, who ran the Chester Trades Council (Morrison was the MP for Chester from 1974 to 1992), who wrote:
After the 1987 general election, around 1990, I attended a meeting of Chester Labour party where we were informed by the agent, Christine Russell, that Peter Morrison would not be standing in 1992. He had been caught in the toilets at Crewe station with a 15-year-old boy. A deal was struck between Labour, the local Tories, the local press and the police that if he stood down at the next election the matter would go no further. Chester finished up with Gyles Brandreth and Morrison walked away scot-free. I thought you might be interested. (cited in ‘Simon Hoggart’s week’, The Guardian, November 16th, 2012)
Sir Peter Morrison (1944-1995) was known, according to an obituary by Patrick Cosgrove, as a right winger who disliked immigration, supported the return of capital punishment, and wished to introduce vouchers for education. He was from a privileged political family; his father, born John Morrison, became Lord Margadale, the squire of Fonthill, led the campaign to ensure Alec Douglas-Home became Prime Minister in 1963, and predicted Thatcher’s ultimate accession to the leadership (Sue Reid, ‘Did Maggie know her closest aide was preying on under-age boys?’, Daily Mail, July 12th, 2014, updated July 16th). The young Peter attended Eton College, then Keble College, Oxford. Entering the House of Commons in 1974 at the age of 29, during the first Thatcher government he occupied a series of non-cabinet ministerial positions, then became Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party in 1986, replacing Jeffrey Archer after his resignation, and working under Chairman Norman Tebbitt. His sister, Dame Mary Morrison, became a lady-in-waiting to the Queen (Gyles Brandreth, ”I was abused by my choir master’: In a brave and haunting account, TV star and ex MP Gyles Brandreth reveals the years of abuse he endured at prep school’, Daily Mail, September 12th, 2014).
Morrison was close to Thatcher from when he entered Parliament (see Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: Harper Collins, 1993), p. 837), working for her 1975 leadership campaign and, after she became Prime Minister, putting her and Denis up for holiday in the 73 000 acre estate owned by his father in Islay, where games of charades were played (Jonathan Aitken, Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 158-160, 279-281). After being appointed as Thatcher’s Parliamentary Private Secretary in 1990, he ran what is generally believed to have been a complacent and lacklustre leadership campaign for her when she was challenged by Michael Heseltine; as is well-known, she did not gain enough votes to prevent a second ballot, and then resigned soon afterwards. Morrison was known to some others as ‘a toff’s toff’, who ‘made it very clear from the outset that he did not intend spending time talking to the plebs’ on the backbenches (Stephen Norris, Changing Trains: An Autobiography (London: Hutchinson, 1996), p. 149).
Jonathan Aitken, a close friend of Morrison’s, would later write the following about him:
I knew Peter Morrison as well as anyone in the House. We had been school friends. He was the best man at my wedding in St Margaret’s, Westminster. We shared many private and political confidences. So I knew the immense pressures he was facing at the time when he was suddenly overwhelmed with the greatest new burden imaginable – running the Prime Minister’s election campaign.
Sixteen years in the House of Commons had treated Peter badly. His health had deteriorated. He had an alcohol problem that made him ill, overweight and prone to take long afternoon naps. In the autumn of 1990 he became embroiled in a police investigation into aspects of his personal life. The allegations against him were never substantiated, and the inquiry was subsequently dropped. But at the time of the leadership election, Peter was worried, distracted and unable to concentrate. (Aitken, Margaret Thatcher, pp. 625-626).
An important article by Nick Davies published in The Guardian in April 1998, also made the following claim:
Fleet Street routinely nurtures a crop of untold stories about powerful abusers who have evaded justice. One such is Peter Morrison, formerly the MP for Chester and the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. Ten years ago, Chris House, the veteran crime reporter for the Sunday Mirror, twice received tip-offs from police officers who said that Morrison had been caught cottaging in public toilets with underaged boys and had been released with a caution. A less powerful man, the officers complained, would have been charged with gross indecency or an offence against children.
At the time, Chris House confronted Morrison, who used libel laws to block publication of the story. Now, Morrison is dead and cannot sue. Police last week confirmed that he had been picked up twice and never brought to trial. They added that there appeared to be no trace of either incident in any of the official records. (Nick Davies, ‘The sheer scale of child sexual abuse in Britain’, The Guardian, April 1998).
Recently, the former editor of the Sunday Mirror, Paul Connew, has revealed how he was told in 1994 by House of the stories concerning Morrison. Connew has revealed that it was a police officer who was the source, dismayed by the lack of action after Morrison had been arrested for sexually molesting under-age boys; the officer revealed how Morrison had attempted to ‘pull rank’ by demanding to see the most senior officer, and announcing proudly who he was. All the paperwork relating to the arrest simply ‘disappeared’. Connew sent a reporter to confront Morrison at his Chester home, but Morrison dismissed the story and made legal threats, which the paper was not able to counter without naming their police source, which was impossible. The story ultimately died, though Connew was able to establish that in the senior echelons of Scotland Yard, Morrison’s arrest and proclivities were no secret; he had been arrested on multiple occasions in both Chester and London, always hushed up (Paul Connew, ‘Commentary: how paedophile Peter Morrison escaped exposure’, Exaro News, September 26th, 2014).
In an article in the Daily Mail published in October 2012, former Conservative MP and leader of the Welsh Tories Rod Richards claimed that Morrison (and another Tory grandee who has not been named) was connected to the terrible abuse scandals in Bryn Estyn and Bryn Alyn children’s homes, in North Wales, having seen documents which identified both politicians as frequent, unexplained visitors. Richards also claimed that William Hague, who was Secretary of State for Wales from 1995 to 1997, and who set up the North Wales Child Abuse inquiry, would have seen the files on Morrison, but sources close to Hague denied that he had seen any such material. A former resident of the Bryn Estyn care home testified to Channel 4 News, testified to seeing Morrison arrive there on five occasions, and may have driven off with a boy in his car (‘Exclusive: Eyewitness ‘saw Thatcher aide take boys to abuse”, Channel 4 News, November 6th, 2012; see also Reid, ‘Did Maggie know her closest aide was preying on under-age boys?’).
Morrison’s successor as MP for Chester, Gyles Brandreth, wrote that he and his wife Michelle had been told on the doorstep repeatedly and emphatically that the MP was ‘a disgusting pervert’ (David Holmes, ‘Former Chester MP Peter Morrison implicated in child abuse inquiry’, Chester Chronicle, November 8th, 2012). More recently, in a build-up to the launch of a new version of Brandreth’s diaries, which suggested major new revelations but delivered little, Brandreth merely added that when canvassing in 1991 ‘we were told that Morrison was a monster who interfered with children’, and added:
At the time, I don’t think I believed it. People do say terrible things without justification. Beyond the fact that his drinking made Morrison appear unprepossessing — central casting’s idea of what a toff paedophile might look like — no one was offering anything to substantiate their slurs.
At the time, I never heard anything untoward about Morrison from the police or from the local journalists — and I gossiped a good deal with them. Four years after stepping down, Peter Morrison was dead of a heart attack.
What did Mrs Thatcher know of his alleged dark side? When I talked to her about him, I felt she had the measure of the man. She knew he was homosexual, and she knew he was a drinker. She was fond of him, clearly, but told me that he had ruined himself through ‘self-indulgence’ — much as Reginald Maudling had done a generation earlier. (Brandreth, ”I was abused by my choir master’)
Brandreth did however crucially mention that William Hague had told him in 1996 that Morrison’s name might feature in connection with the inquiry into child abuse in North Wales, specifically in connection to Bryn Estyn, thus corroborating Rod Richard’s account, though Brandreth also pointed out that the Waterhouse report made no mention of Morrison (Brandreth, ”I was abused by my choir master’).
The journalist Simon Heffer has also said that rumours about Morrison were circulating in Tory top ranks as early as 1988, whilst Tebbit has admitted hearing rumours ‘through unusual channels’, then confronting Morrison about them, which he denied (Reid, ‘Did Maggie know her closest aide was preying on under-age boys?’); Tebbit, who has suggested that a cover-up of high-level abuse by politicians is likely, now concedes that he had been ‘naive’ in believing Morrison, and rejected Currie’s account of Morrison having admitted his offences to him (James Lyons, ‘Norman Tebbit admits he heard rumours top Tory was paedophile a decade before truth revealed’, Daily Mirror, July 8th, 2014). The novelist Frederick Forsyth, on the other hand, described Morrison as someone ‘who should have been exposed many years ago’, as well as being a politically incompetent alcoholic; however, as far as his sexual offences were concerned, Forsyth claimed Thatcher ‘suspected nothing’ (Frederick Forsyth, ‘Debauched and dissolute fool’, The Express, July 18th, 2014)
Recently, Thatcher’s bodyguard Barry Strevens has come forward to claim that he told Thatcher directly about allegations of Morrison holding sex parties at his house with underage boys (one aged 15), when told about this by a senior Cheshire Police Officer. (see Lynn Davidson, ‘Exclusive: Thatcher’s Bodyguard on Abuse Claims’, The Sun on Sunday, July 27th, 2014 (article reproduced in comments below); and Matt Chorley, ‘Barry Strevens says he told Iron Lady about rumours about Peter Morrison’, Mail on Sunday, July 27th, 2014; see also Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith, ‘Thatcher ‘was warned of Tory child sex party claims’’, The Independent, July 27th, 2014). Strevens claimed to have had a meeting with the PM and her PPS Archie Hamilton (now Baron Hamilton of Epsom), which he had requested immediately. Strevens had claimed this was right after the Jeffrey Archer scandal; Archer resigned in October 1986, whilst Hamilton was Thatcher’s PPS from 1987 to 1988. Strevens recalls Thatcher simply thanking him and that was the last he heard of it. He said:
I wouldn’t say she (Lady Thatcher) was naive but I would say she would not have thought people around her would be like that.
I am sure he would have given her assurances about the rumours as otherwise she wouldn’t have given him the job.
The accounts by Nicholls and Strevens make clear that the allegations – concerning in one case a 15-year old boy – are more serious than said in a later rendition by Currie, which said merely that Morrison ‘had sex with 16-year-old boys when the age of consent was 21’ (cited in Andrew Sparrow, ‘Politics Live’, The Guardian, October 24th, 2012). A further allegation was made by Peter McKelvie, who led the investigation in 1992 into Peter Righton in an open letter to Peter Mandelson. A British Aerospace Trade Union Convenor had said one member had alleged that Morrison raped him, and he took this to the union’s National HQ, who put it to the Labour front bench. A Labour minister reported back to say that the Tory Front Bench had been approached. This was confirmed, according to McKelvie, by second and third sources, and also alleged that the conversations first took place at a 1993-94 Xmas Party hosted by the Welsh Parliamentary Labour Party. Mandelson has not yet replied.
In the 1997 election, Christine Russell herself displaced Brandreth and she served as Labour MP until 2010, when she was unseated by Conservative MP Stephen Mosely (see entry for ‘Christine Russell’ at politics.co.uk).
In 2013, following the publication of Hoggart’s article citing Nicholls, an online petition was put together calling for an inquiry, and submittted to then Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State Christopher Grayling. Russell denounced the ‘shoddy journalism’ of the Guardian piece, recalled rumours of Morrison’s preferences, but said there was no hint of illegal acts; she did not however rule out an agreement that Morrison should stand down (‘Campaigners ask for inquiry over ex-Chester MP’, Chester Chronicle, January 3rd, 2013).
Further questions now need to be asked of Lord Tebbit, Teresa Gorman, Edwina Currie, William Hague and other senior Tories, not to mention Christine Russell and others in Chester Labour Party, of what was known and apparently covered-up about Morrison. The identity of Morrison and Gorman’s agent (I could find no mention of a name in Gorman’s autobiography No, Prime Minister! (London: John Blake, 2001)) must be established [Edit: this has now been established as Frances Mowatt – see above] and she should be questioned if still around [Which she is, and living in Billericay, according to 192 directory – see above]. If money was involved, as Currie alleges was told to her by Gorman, then the seriousness of the allegations is grave. Just yesterday (October 5th), Currie arrogantly and haughtily declared on Twitter:
@MaraudingWinger @DrTeckKhong @MailOnline I’ve been nicer than many deserve! But I take the consequences, & I do not hide behind anonymity.
@jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel @woodmouse1 I heard only tiny bits of gossip. The guy is dead, go pursue living perps. You’ll do more good
@woodmouse1 @jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel The present has its own demands. We learn from the past, we don’t get obsessive about it. Get real.
@ian_pace @woodmouse1 @jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel And there are abusers in action right now, while you chase famous dead men.
@ian_pace @woodmouse1 @jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel I’d rather police time be spent now on today’s criminals – detect, stop and jail them
@jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel @woodmouse1 Flattered that you think I know so much. Sorry but that’s not so. If you do, go to police
@ian_pace @woodmouse1 @jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel They want current crimes to be dealt with by police, too. And they may need other help.
@ian_pace @woodmouse1 @jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel Of course. But right now, youngsters are being hurt and abused. That matters.
Considering Currie also rubber-stamped the appointment of Jimmy Savile at Broadmoor (Rowena Mason, ‘Edwina Currie voices regrets over Jimmy Savile after inquiry criticism’, The Guardian, Thursday June 26th, 2014) and clearly knew information about Morrison, including claims of bribery of a political agent, known to at least one other MP (Gorman) as well as herself, it should not be surprising that she would want claims of abuse involving dead figures to be sidelined.
This story relates to political corruption at the highest level, with a senior politician near the top of his party involved in the abuse of children, and clear evidence that various others knew about this, but did nothing, and strong suggestions that politicians and police officers conspired to keep this covered up, even using hush money, in such a way which ensured that Morrison was free to keep abusing others until his death. This story must not be allowed to die this time round.
Gore Vidal – paedophile, literary lover of child rape
Posted: August 11, 2014 Filed under: Abuse | Tags: child abuse, gore vidal, paedophile, roman polanski, timothy mcveigh 3 Comments[Trigger Warning: This post contains extremely disturbing and graphic material dealing with rape and child abuse]
There were few more arrogant, smug, privileged American men of letters than Gore Vidal (1925-2012). A darling of the liberal left in both the US and UK, Vidal could expect fawning treatment in much of the media. Vidal was happy to celebrate the neo-fascist Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh, with whom he corresponded for three years following McVeigh’s conviction, before his execution, and called ‘very intelligent’ (see Gore Vidal, ‘The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh’, Vanity Fair, September 2001); he also dismissed Roman Polanski’s 13-year old rape victim simply as a ‘hooker’, saying:
I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?
and
The media can’t get anything straight. Plus, there’s usually an anti-Semitic and anti-fag thing going on with the press – lots of crazy things. The idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little angel all in white, being raped by this awful Jew, Polacko – that’s what people were calling him – well, the story is totally different now from what it was then.
(see John Meroney, ‘A Conversation with Gore Vidal’, The Atlantic, October 28th, 2009)
Since his death, as chronicled in Tim Teeman’s book In Bed with Gore Vidal (Riverdale, NY: Riverdale Avenue Books, 2013), family members, including Vidal’s half-sister Nina Straight, have spoken of Vidal’s fear that well-founded rumours of his having been a paedophile would come out during his lifetime. Straight believed that Vidal’s long-term adversary William F. Buckley would release evidence of his having had sex with underage boys. He wrote in his 1995 memoir Palimpsest of being ‘attracted to adolescent males’. Buckley’s son found in his father’s belongings, after the latter’s death in 2012, a file called ‘Vidal legal’, and a longterm friend recalled Vidal proudly announcing ‘You know I’m a pederast’, and also travelling to exploit boy prostitutes in Thailand (see Jon Swaine, ‘Gore Vidal terrified paedophilia claims would be make public, family says’, Daily Telegraph, November 11th, 2013).
The journalist Mark Lawson has raised the age-old question of whether knowledge of an artist’s life should make us view their work differently, as in the case of Carlo Gesualdo, Richard Wagner, and others (see Lawson, ‘If the rumours about Gore Vidal are true, what does this mean for his work?’, The Guardian, November 15th, 2013). I would ask people, with this in mind, to read again the following chapter from Vidal’s most notorious novel, Myra Breckinridge (1968), specifically the passage with relates with relish the brutal rape of a teenage boy, Rusty, presented in terms of female/gay empowerment so as to titillate liberal left readers.
I put it that this indicates what type of a predator, rapist and child abuser Vidal was, and that much of his life would have been better spent in prison than writing novels. And all of those who supported and eulogised Vidal through his life are accomplices in facilitating the rape of young boys, and none of them are ever fit to bring up children themselves.
BUCK LONER REPORTS
Recording Disc No. 777
18 March
Flagler and Flagler have come up with dynamite or they think its dynamite but you never know with that woman apparently the Monterrey Mexican marriage certificate is a phony and there is no record from what they can find out of her being married down there but we’ve been burned before I said to Flagler Junior who is working on the case shell just go out and prove they lost the records or something and then that doctor friend of hers will swear he was a witness which is what it sounded like on the long distance telephone call that was bugged and what do we do then I ask you question mark well Flagler Junior seems to think they are on solid ground with the Mexicans though he admits that our little brown friends are not only kind of confused in the paper works department but if Myra thinks of it and shell think of it the bitch they can be bribed to say that there was a marriage when there wasn’t so meanwhile I am biding my time until tomorrow when there should be a full final report from Mexico that there really isn’t a record of this marriage in question period paragraph Flagler Juniors New York man has already met once with Doctor Montag and his report is on my desk now as I dictate while being massaged by Milly who is the best masseuse in the whole business I mean that Milly you little angel that’s right rub good and hard it takes time but when it comes the Buck Loner Special strike that period paragraph interesting conversation with Letitia who thinks that Mary Ann Pringle properly handled could make it as a recording star and she will make some appointments all this is Myra’s doing she is meddling into everything trying to force the kids out into the cold world when their place is here protected and looked after I know how well I know showbiz and all its heartbreaks and Mary Ann will end up like all the others which is nowhere a waitress some place assuming she doesn’t get lucky and marry some guy who will take care of her and cherish her the way Buck Loners Academy does that guy certainly wont be Rusty who’s a wild number the Sheriffs office just asked me to keep an eye on him and I told him so yesterday told him that he would have to watch his step or it was the hoosegow for him he was real shook up and asked me not to tell anybody about his scrape in Mexico and I said nobody knows but me and Myra who happened to be checking into his file and read the Sheriffs last letter to me that woman is into everything Rusty seemed upset by this I guess be cause he thinks Myra will tell Mary Ann well its no business of mine and that’s for sure Milly you are the best ever and if you keep that up there’s a big surprise coming your way strike that period paragraph Myra asked permission to use the infirmary tonight God knows why I suppose she is mixing up some poison which it is my prayer she takes Jesus Mffly don’t stop Mffly Jesus Mffly 28 I am sitting in the infirmary, a small antiseptic white room with glass cabinets containing all sorts of drugs and wicked-looking instruments. Against one wall is an examination table which can be raised or lowered. It is now some four feet above the floor and tilted at a slight angle. Next to it are scales and measuring instruments for both height and body width. I am seated at a small surgical table, making notes while I wait for Rusty. It is ten o’clock at night. The Academy building is dark. The students are gone. No one will disturb us. I am astonished at my own calm. All of my life’s hunger is about to be fed. I am as serene as a great surgeon preparing to make the necessary incision that will root out the problem. This morning, after Posture class, I took Rusty to one side. He has been friendly and smiling ever since our dinner at the Cock and Bull and now treats me in the confident condescending way that the ordinary young man treats an ordinary girl. I put a stop to that. His grinning face went pale when I said coldly, “There’s been no improvement, Rusty. None at all. You’re not trying to walk straight.” “Honest to God I am, Miss Myra, why I even practiced last night with Mary-Ann, she’ll tell you I did. I really am trying.” He seemed genuinely hurt that I had not recognized his effort. I was somewhat kinder in my manner, sharp but in the Eve Arden way. “I’m sure you have tried. But you need special attention and I think I can give it. I’ll expect you at the infirmary at ten o’clock tonight.” “The infirmary?” He looked almost as puzzled as James Craig in the sixth reel of Kismet. “I’ve arranged everything with Uncle Buck. He agrees with me that you need extra help.” “But what kind of help?” He was still puzzled but, as yet, unsuspicious. “You’ll see.” I started to go. He stopped me. “Look, I’ve got a date with Mary-Ann for dinner.” “Postpone it. You see her every night after dinner anyway.” “Well, yes. But we were invited some place at ten.” “Then go at eleven. I’m sorry. But this is more important than your social life. Alter all, you want to be a star, don’t you?” That was always the clincher in dealing with any of the students. They have been conditioned from childhood in the knowledge that to achieve stardom they might be called upon to do anything, and of course they would do anything because stardom is everything and worth any humiliation or anguish. So the saints must have felt in the days of Christendom, as they burned to death with their eyes on heaven where the true stars shine. I spent all afternoon making my preparations. I have the entire procedure worked out to the last detail. When I have finished, I shall have achieved in life every dream and 29 I must write it all down now. Exactly as it happened. While it is fresh in my memory. But my hand trembles. Why? Twice I’ve dropped the yellow ballpoint pen. Now I sit at the surgical table, making the greatest effort to calm myself, to put it all down not only for its own sake but also for you, Randolph, who never dreamed that anyone could ever act out totally his fantasies and survive. Certainly your own guilty longing to kill the nerve in each of Lyndon Johnson’s twenty-odd teeth without the use of anesthetic can never in this life be achieved, and so your dreams must feed upon pale surrogates while mine have been made reality. Shortly after ten, Rusty arrived. He wore the usual checked shirt with two buttons missing and no T-shirt, as well as chino trousers and highly polished cowboy boots. He looked about the infirmary curiously. “I never been in here before.” “That explains why there’s no physical record of you. “Never been sick a day in my life.” Oh, he was proud! No doubt of that. “But even so, the Academy requires a record. It’s one of Uncle Buck’s rules.” “Yeah. I know. And I’ve been meaning to drop in sometime and see the Doe.” “Perhaps that won’t be necessary.” I placed the physical examination chart squarely in the middle of the surgical table. “Sit down.” I was pleasant. He sat in a chair so close to mine that our knees touched. Quickly he swung his legs wide so that my knees were now between his and there was no possibility of further contact. It was plain that in no way do I attract him. We chatted a moment about Mary-Ann, and about Letitia’s interest in her career. I could see that Rusty was both pleased and envious, a normal reaction. Then, delicately, I got around to the subject of Mexico; he became visibly nervous. Finally, I told him that I knew what had happened. “You won’t tell Mary.-Ann, will you?” That was his first response. “It would just kill her.” “Of course I won’t. And of course I’ll give a good report to Mr. Martinson, your parole officer.” He was startled. “You know him?” “Oh, yes,” I lied–actually I happened to come across a letter from him to Buck. “In fact, he’s asked me to keep an eye on you, and I said I would.” “I hope you tell him that I sure as hell am reformed.” He was vehement. “I will–if you really are, and behave yourself, and let me try to help you with your problem.” “Of course I will, Miss Myra. You know that.” He looked entirely sincere, blue eyes round as a boy’s. Perhaps he is an actor after all. “Now then, about your back. I’ve talked to the chiropractor who will arrange for a special brace. He couldn’t be here tonight but he asked me to take an exact tracing of your spine and then he’ll know what to do. So now if you’ll just slip off that shirt, we’ll get to work.” Resignedly, he got to his feet. Automatically his hands went to his belt buckle in order to loosen it but then, obviously recalling our last encounter, he left the belt as it was, pulling off the shirt with a certain arrogant ease. The belt just covered his navel; otherwise he was in exactly the same state as he had been at the beginning of our first session. I was pleased that my visual recollection of him was so precise. I remembered in exact detail the tracery design of bronze hair across the pale chest, as well as the small roselike inverted nipples. “Stand on the scales, please.” I imitated the chilliest of trained nurses.”Face to the wall and we’ll measure you.” He put one foot on the scales, when I stopped him. “Take off those atrocious cowboy boots! They’ll break the machine.” “Oh, no they won’t, why…” He started to argue. “Rusty!” I was sharp. “Do exactly as I tell you. You don’t want me to tell Mr. Martinson that you’ve been uncooperative, do you?” “No… no.” Standing rest on one foot and then the other, he awkwardly pulled off the boots. He wore white cotton socks; one had a large hole in it through which the big toe protruded. He grinned sheepishly. “Guess I’m full of holes.” “That’s all right.” The small room was now full of the not unpleasant odor of warm leather. Obediently he got onto the scales exactly as I directed, face to the wall. In a most professional way, I measured the width of the chest, and then allowed myself the pleasure of running my hand down the smooth warm back, tracing the spine’s curve right to the point where it vanished, frustratingly, into the white chinos as they swelled just below my hand, masking those famous inviolate buttocks. “All right,” I said, marking down figures on the physical examination chart. “Now we need your weight which is one seventy-four and your height which is six one and a quarter. The chart’s filling up nicely. All right, you can get down.” He stepped off the scales. He was surprisingly at ease: obviously our dinner at the Cock and Bull had given him confidence. “This doctor can really fix me with something that will work?” He was genuinely curious. “He thinks he can, yes. Of course, he’ll have to fit you himself. This is just the preliminary examination which, while we’re at it, Uncle Buck said I should turn into an ordinary physical and so kill two birds with one stone, as he put it in his colorful way.” “You mean like height and weight and that stuff?” As yet he showed no particular alarm. “Exactly,” I said, ready now to begin to shake his selfconfidence. I took a small bottle. “That means a urine specimen.” The look of surprise was exquisite as he took the bottle. “Go behind that screen.” I indicated a white screen in one corner of the room. “But…”he began. “But?” I repeated pleasantly. Without a word, he went behind the screen which was waist-high. He turned and faced the wall; he fumbled with his trousers. Then there was a long moment of complete silence. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “I… don’t know. I guess I’m what they call peeshy.” “Don’t be. Just relax. We’ve got plenty of time.” The thought of “plenty of time” had a most releasing effect. Water passed into the bottle with a surging sound. He then rearranged his clothes and brought me the specimen which I took (marveling at the warmth of the glass: we are furnaces inside!) and carefully placed on it a white sticker inscribed with his name. The entire affair was conducted without a false note. “Now then we’ll just do a drawing of the spine. Loosen your belt and lie face down on the table.” For the first time he seemed aware that history might repeat itself. He stalled. “Maybe we better wait till I see the doctor.” “Rusty,” I was patient but firm. “I’m just following doctor’s orders and you are going to follow my orders, or else. Is that understood?” “Well, yes, but… “There are no ‘buts’ for someone on probation.” “Yes, ma’am!” He got the point. Quickly he undid the belt buckle; then he unfastened the catch to his trousers and, holding them firmly in place, lay face-down on the table. It was a delicious sight, that slender muscular body stretched full length as sacrifice to some cruel goddess. His arms were at his sides, and I noticed with some amusement that he was pressing the palms hard against the table, instinctively repeating his earlier performance. I covered his back with a large sheet of paper. Then with an eyebrow pencil, I slowly traced the spine’s course from the nape of the neck to the line of his trousers. “This is going very, very well.” I sounded to my own ears exactly like Laraine Day, an all-time favorite. “It sort of tickles,” came a muffled voice. Triceps muscles writhed beneath silk-smooth skin. “Are you ticklish?” This suddenly opened an unexpected vista. Fortunately my program was so designed as to include an occasional inspired improvisation. “Well, no, not really…” But I had already taken one large sweaty foot in hand (again marveling at the body heat through the thin sock) and delicately tickled the base of the toes. The effect was electric. The whole body gave a sudden twitch. With a powerful reflex, he kicked the foot from my hand, exclaiming “Cut that out!” in a masterful voice, so entirely had he forgotten his place. I was mild. “Do that again, Rusty, and I will punish you.” “I’m sorry, Miss Myra.” He was conciliatory. He looked at me over his shoulder (the tracing paper had fallen to the floor). “I guess I’m more ticklish than I thought.” “Apparently. Or perhaps I hurt you. You don’t have athlete’s foot, do you?” “Oh, no. No. Not for a long time… in the summer, sometimes…” “We’ll just take a look.” With some difficulty, I slipped off the damp socks. If I were a foot-fetishist like poor Myron, I would have been in seventh heaven. As it was, what excited me was his profound embarrassment, for he has the American male’s horror of smelling bad. Actually, he was relatively odorless. “You must have just had a shower,” I said. He buried his face in the table. “Yeah… just now.” Carefully I examined each toe, holding it tight as though I feared that, at any moment, one of the little piggies might decide to run all the way home. But except for a certain rigidity of the body, he did not show, in any way, distress; not even when I examined each pink toe. “Good,” I said, putting the foot down. “You’re learning control. Ticklishness is a sign of sexual fear, did you know that?” A faint “no” from the head of the table. “That’s why I was so surprised at the way you reacted when I touched your foot. From what you said at the Cock and Bull I couldn’t imagine you ever being tense with a woman.” “I guess you sort of took me by surprise,” was the best that he could think to say. In his present position, he obviously did not want to be reminded of his usual cockiness. “I’m sorry,” I said, deftly sliding his trousers down to his knees. As I had anticipated, he gave a slight gasp but made no move other than to grip with both hands the sides of the trousers in an effort to keep at least his front decently covered. On the table before me, like some cannibal banquet, the famous buttocks curved beneath frayed Jockey shorts. Below the elastic, two round holes, like eyes, revealed fair skin. Teasingly, I put my finger in one of the holes. He winced at the touch. “Doesn’t Mary-Ann ever mend your clothes?” “She… can’t… sew…” He sounded as if he had been running hard, and could not get his breath. But at least he had steeled himself for my next move. The total unveiling of the buttocks was accomplished in an absolute, almost religious, silence. They were glorious. Under the direct overhead light, I was able to appreciate physical details that I had missed in the office. A tiny dark mole on one cheek. An angry red pimple just inside the crack where a hair had grown in upon itself. The iridescent quality of the skin which was covered with the most delicate pale peach fuzz, visible only in a strong light and glittering now with new sweat. I could smell his fear. It was intoxicating. I also noted that although I had pulled the Jockey shorts down to the thighs in the back, he had craftily contrived to hold them up in front, and so his honor, he believed, was only half lost. Intimately I passed my hand over the hard buttocks, firmly locked to all intruders, and remarked, according to plan, “You aren’t feverish, are you?” “No… I’m O.K….” The voice was barely audible. With my free hand I felt his brow; it was bathed in perspiration. “You are hot. We’d better take your temperature. Besides, they want it for the chart.” As I went over to the surgical table and prepared the thermometer, he watched me dully, like a trapped animal. Then I returned to my quarry and, putting one hand on each cheek at the exact point where buttock joins thigh, I said, “Relax now.” He raised up on his arms and looked around at me, eyes suddenly bright with alarm. “What?” “I’ve got to take your temperature, Rusty.” “But… there?” His voice broke like a teenage boy’s. “Of course. Now then… “But why can’t you use the other kind, you know, in the mouth…” With the back of my left hand, I struck him hard across the bottom. He gasped, pulled back. “There is more where that came from,” I said coldly, noting with pleasure a certain darkening of skin where the blood had been brought to the surface by the force of my blow. “Yes, ma’am.” Defeated, the head returned to its position on the table and once again I put my hands on those firm cheeks. “Now,” I said, “relax the muscle.” I could feel beneath my fingers the muscles slowly, reluctantly go slack. I confess I was now trembling with excitement. Gently, carefully I pushed the cheeks apart until everything–secret sphincter and all–was revealed. Normally at moments of great victory, there is a sense of letdown. But not in this case. For one thing I had half feared to find him not clean–unlike so many anal erotics I am not at all attracted by fecal matter, quite the reverse in fact. Yet had he not been tidy, his humiliation would have been total. So I was torn between conflicting desires. As it turned out, his shower had been thorough. The sphincter resembled a tiny pale pink tea rose, or perhaps a kitten’s nose and mouth. From its circumference, like the rays of a sunburst, bronze hairs reflected the overhead light. The only disappointment was that he had craftily managed to arrange his scrotum so that it was entirely out of view, only a thick tuft of hair at the juncture of the groin indicating the direction in which it could be found. But sufficient to the moment are the revelations thereof. I squeezed some lubricant from a tube onto my index finger and then, delicately, touched the never-used entrance. A tremor went through his whole body-the term “fleshquake” occurred to me: so Atlantis must have shuddered before the fall! Carefully, daintily, I applied the lubricant to the silky puckered surface. He held himself quite rigid, again not breathing. Then I grew bolder. I inserted my finger into the tight hot place as far as it would go. I must have touched the prostate for he suddenly groaned, but said nothing. Then, either deliberately or through uncontrollable reflex, he brought the full force of his youthful muscularity to bear on the sphincter muscle and for a moment it felt as though my finger might be nipped off. With my free hand, I slapped his right buttock smartly. “Relax!” I commanded. He mumbled something I could not hear and the sphincter again loosened. I then removed my finger and inserted the thermometer, after first teasing the virginal orifice with delicate probes that made him squirm. Once the thermometer was in, it was completely lost to sight for his buttocks are deep and since the legs were only slightly spread, his cheeks promptly came together when I let them go. I then took up the chart and read off a list of childhood diseases. Chicken pox, measles, whooping cough and he whispered “yes” or “no” or “I don’t remember” in response to the catechism. When I was finished, I said, “All in all, a healthy young boy.” My cold cheery manner was calculated to increase his alarm; obviously it did for not once would he look at me, preferring to stare at the wall just opposite, chin pushed hard against the table. “Now let’s see what’s cooking.” I pushed open the cheeks and slowly removed the thermometer. He was normal of course but I saw fit to lie: “Just as I thought, you do have a touch of fever.–Well, we’ll soon take care of that. Now roll over on your back.” He did as he was told, swiftly pulling up trousers and shorts in front; nevertheless, the line of his belt was two inches below the navel and could not, in his present position, be pulled higher. As a result, the timberline of pubic hair was briefly revealed, briefly because he promptly placed both hands over himself in an attempt to hide the quarry from the hunter’s approach. On his back, bare feet pointed and chest streaked with sweat, he seemed smaller than in fact he was, already more boy than man, despite the mature muscularity of the torso. The process of diminishing was well begun. He looked up at me, apprehensively. “Is there much morel got to do?” “We must both follow the chart.” I was enigmatic as I picked up a wooden tongue depressor. “Open your mouth.” He obeyed. I pressed down the pink tongue until he gagged, noting, as I did, the whiteness of the teeth and the abnormal salivation that fear sometimes creates. “You take good care of your teeth.” I gave him the sort of grudging compliment the stern nurse gives a child. “Your body, too. I was happily surprised to find that you were clean in places most boys your age neglect.” Carefully I was reducing his status from man to boy to child to–ah, the triumph! He responded numbly to the progression, blinking with embarrassment. “Now put your hands behind your head.” Slowly he obeyed, aware that I could now see at least a quarter of an inch of dark pubic hair, surprisingly thick and in texture coarser than the fine hairs on the rest of his body. A pulse just above the navel beat rapidly, causing the entire stomach to quiver like some frightened small beast. I let my hand rest lightly on his navel. Crisp hairs tickled my palm as Tin turn tickled them. I could feel the pounding of the blood in his arteries. The sense of power was overwhelming. I felt as if, in some way, it was I who controlled the coursing of the blood in his veins and that it was at my command that the heart beat at all. I felt that I could do anything. “You seem nervous, Rusty.” I challenged him. He swallowed hard. “No… no, Miss Myra. No, I’m not really. It’s just that it’s kind of hot in here…” “And you’re not enjoying your examination.” “Well, it’s kind of strange, you know……” His voice trailed off nervously. “What’s kind of strange?” “Well, you know… I mean having a girl… you know, a lady, like you, do all this to a guy.” “Haven’t you ever been examined by a nurse?” “Never!” This reversion to the old masculine Rusty was promptly quelled by the sudden tug I gave to his Jockey shorts; the full bush was now visible, though nothing else for the shorts were stopped at the crucial juncture by the weight of his body. With great thoroughness, I felt the different sections of his belly, taking pleasure in the firmness of muscles, hard rubber beneath silk. I lingered for quite some time over the pubic area, taking the powerful pulse of each of the two arteries that meet at the groin. I could not, however, make out even the base of his penis. I then took an instrument which resembled sugar tongs, used to test the thickness of the skin’s subcutaneous layer. With frightened eyes, he watched as I picked away at the skin of his belly, pulling the skin as high as I could and then releasing it with a snap. “Nicely resilient,” I said, pinching hard as I could a fold of his belly and causing him to cry out plaintively, “Hey, that hurts!” The return to childhood was well underway. “Stop being such a baby!” Delicately I took one of his nipples in the tongs. He shrank from me, but the tongs pursued. I was careful, however, not to hurt him. With feather touch, I teased the tiny inverted nipple, making him writhe at the tickling pleasure it gave him. Then, suddenly, the nipple was erect. I then teased the other nipple, manipulating the golden aureole of hairs until it, too, ceased to be concave. A glassy look came into his eyes; for the first time an erogenous zone had been explored and exploited (I do not count the probing of his sphincter which, in the context of my investigation, did not arouse him, rather the reverse). I looked at the front of his trousers to see if there was any sudden swelling but I could detect nothing. “You had better slip off those trousers,” I said. “They’re getting badly creased, the way you’re sweating.” “Oh, that’s O.K.” His voice cracked again. “Hurry up! We haven’t got all night.” Grimly he sat up and pulled his trousers down over his knees. I pulled them over his feet and carefully hung them on a chair. When I turned back to my victim, I was surprised to find him sitting up on the table, poised for flight. He had trickily used the turning of my back to restore his shorts to their normal position. Sitting as he was, bare legs dangling over the table, I could see nothing of the crotch, concealed by muscular thighs pressed close together while both hands rested protectively in his lap. He was not going to surrender the last bastion without a struggle. “I didn’t tell you to sit up, did I?” I was cold. “But I thought you were through with me here.” The timbre of the voice had become light; he sounded like a pubescent boy trying to escape punishment. “You’re not finished until I say you are. All right. Stand up. Over here. In front of me.” He got to his feet and approached to within a foot of me. There he stood, awkwardly, hands crossed in front of him, torso glittering with sweat, legs as well proportioned as the rest of him, though somewhat overdeveloped in the thighs, no doubt the result of playing football. He was so close to me that I could feel the heat of his flesh and smell the healthy earthlike aroma the young male body exudes. “Rest your arms at your sides and at least try to stand straight.” He obeyed. The target was now directly in front of me, at my eye’s level. As I stared straight at the hidden area, he clenched his fists nervously, and shifted from foot to foot. The frayed jockey shorts were unfortunately too loose to reveal more than a large rounded area, without clear definition; they were, however, splotched with fresh urine. “Look! You wet yourself!” I pinched the damp cloth, careful to touch nothing beneath. He gave a start. “I guess I did. I was in a hurry.” “Boys are so careless about those things.” We had gone from bowel-training to bed-wetting: such was progress! I looked at the examination card. “Oh yes! Have you ever had a venereal disease?” “Oh, no, ma’am. Never!” “I hope you’re telling me the truth.” I was ominous as I wrote “no” on the chart. “We have ways of finding out, you know.” “Honest I never have. I always been careful… always.” “Always? Just exactly when did you begin with girls?” “When?” He looked at me dumbly. “How old were you?” “Thirteen, I guess. I don’t remember.” “Was she older than you?” He nodded. “In high school. She was a Protestant,” he added wildly. “Did she make the advances?” “Yes. Kind of. She’d show me hers if I showed her mine. You know, kid stuff.” “And you liked what you saw?” “Oh, yes.” A smile flickered for an instant across the frightened face. “Did she like what she saw?” The smile went, as he was reminded of his situation. “Well, there was no complaints.” “Would you say that you were well developed for your age?” “I guess so. I don’t know.” “Did you masturbate often?” The face went red. “Well… maybe some. I guess all guys do.” “What about now?” “Now? Oh, no. Why should I?” “You mean Mary-Ann is quite enough to satisfy you?” “Yes. And I don’t cheat on her.” “How often do you come with her in a night?” He gulped. “That’s awful personal…” I took the measuring stick and with a great cracking sound struck his right thigh. He yelled. Fear and reproach in his face, as he rubbed the hurt skin. “There’s more where that came from if you don’t answer my questions.” He accepted defeat. “I guess I can go four or live times but mostly we just go a couple times because, you see, we have to get up so early…” “Then you are quite a stud, as they say out here.” “Oh, I don’t know…” He gestured helplessly. “Would you say that your penis was larger than most boys’ your age or smaller?” He began to tremble, aware of the prey I was stalking. “Christ, I don’t know. I mean how could I know?” “You see the other boys in the shower, and you were an athlete, after all.” “I guess I didn’t look…” “But surely you must occasionally have taken a peep.” I looked straight at the worn cotton which hid the subject of my inquiry. Both of his hands twitched, as though he wanted to protect himself. “I guess I’m average. I never thought about it. honest.” This of course was a lie since in every known society the adolescent male spends a great deal of time worriedly comparing himself with other males. “You’re unusually modest.” I was dry. “Now I am supposed to check you for hernia. So if you’ll just pull down those shorts… “But I don’t have hernia,” he gabbled. “I was all checked out by this prison doctor in Mexico, and he said I was just fine in that department.” “But it does no harm to double-check. So if you’ll slip them down… “Honest, I’m O.K.” He was sweating heavily. “Rusty, I get the impression that for some mysterious reason you don’t want me to examine your genitals. Exactly what mischief are you trying to hide from me?” “Nothing, honest! I got nothing to hide…” “Then why are you so afraid to let me examine you?” “Because–well, you’re a woman and I’m a man…” “A boy, technically…” “A boy, O.K., and, well, it’s just wrong.” “Then you’re shy.” “Sure, I’m shy about that, in front of a lady.” “But surely you aren’t shy with all those girls you’ve–what’s that word of yours?—‘boffed’?” “But that’s different, when you’re both making love, that’s O.K.” “Baffling,” I said. I frowned as though trying to find some way out of our dilemma. “Naturally, I want to respect your modesty. At the same time I must complete the examination.” I paused; then I gave the appearance of having reached a decision. “All right. You won’t have to remove your shorts…” He gave a sigh of relief… too soon. “However, I shall have to insert my hand inside the shorts and press each testicle as required by the chart.” Oh. Dismay and defeat. “I think you’ll agree that’s a statesmanlike compromise.” On that bright note, I slid my left hand up the inside of his left thigh. He wriggled involuntarily as I forced my fingers past the leg opening of the shorts. The scrotum’s heat was far greater than that of the thigh, I noticed, and the hairs were soaked with sweat. Carefully I took his left testicle in my hand. It was unusually large and firm to the touch, though somewhat loose in the sac, no doubt due to his overheated condition. Delicately I fingered the beloved enemy, at last in my power. Then I looked up and saw that Rusty’s eyes were screwed shut, as though anticipating pain. I gave it to him. I maneuvered the testicle back and forth until I had found the hole from which, in boyhood, it had so hopefully descended. I shoved it back up into the hole. He groaned. Then he gagged as I held it in place. With the gagging, I could feel the entire scrotum contract like a terrified beast, seeking escape. When he gagged again and seemed on the verge of actually being sick, I let the testicle fall back into its normal place and took my hand away. “Jesus,” he whispered. “I almost threw up.” “I’m sorry. But I have to be thorough. I’ll be gentler this time.” Again my hand pushed past the damp cloth and seized the right testicle, which was somewhat smaller than the left. As I maneuvered it gently about, my forefinger strayed and struck the side of something thick and smooth, rooted in wiry hair. He shuddered, but continued to suffer at my hands. I slipped the right testicle into its ancient place and held it there until I sensed he was about to gag. Then I let it drop and removed my hand. He gave a deep sigh. “I guess that’s it.” “Yes, I think so.” I pretended to examine the chart. With a sigh, he sat down on the chair opposite me and clumsily pulled on one sock, tearing the flimsy material; the toes went through the tip. “You’re very clumsy.” I observed. “Yes, ma’am.” He agreed, quickly pulling on the other sock, not wanting in any way to cross me, so eager was he to escape. “Oh, here’s a question we forgot.” I was incredibly sunny. “Have you been circumcised?” The foot he was holding on his knee slid to the floor. Quickly he pressed his thighs together, wadded up his shirt, and covered the beleaguered lap. “Why, no, ma’am. I never was.” “So few Polish boys are, I’m told.” I made a check on the chart. “Does the skin pull back easily?” “Oh, sure!” He was beet-red. “Sure. I’m O.K. MaryAnn’s waiting.” “Not so fast.” I was cold. “I didn’t give you permission to dress, you know.” “But I thought you were finished……” The deep voice was now a whine. “I was. But your jumping the gun like that makes me very suspicious.” “Suspicious?” He was bewildered. “Yes. First, I let you talk me out of giving you the venereal disease examination, and now you’re suddenly getting dressed, without permission, just when the subject once more has to do with your penis. Rusty, I am very, very suspicious.” The blue eyes filled with tears as he sensed what was approaching. “Don’t be, Miss Myra. Believe me, I’m absolutely O.K….” “We have to think of Mary-Ann, too, you know. You could make her very sick just through your carelessness.” “Honest to God, I’m O.K. They even gave me the Wassermann test in the jail……” He jabbered nervously. “I’m sure they did. But what was the result?” “Mr. Martinson will tell you. I was a hundred per cent O.K.” “But Mr. Martinson isn’t here while you are, and frankly I don’t see how I can omit this part of the examination. Stand up please and put down that shirt.” “Oh, come on, please don’t…” His voice broke again, close to a sob. “Do as I say.” On that note of icy command, he stood up slowly and like a man going to his execution–or a schoolboy to his spanking–he put down the shirt and stood dumbly facing me. “Come over here.” He came to within a few inches of where I was sitting; he was so close that my knees touched the warm fur of his shins. “Now let’s see what kind of stud you really are.” “Please…” He whispered. “I don’t want to. It isn’t right.” Deliberately I took the Jockey shorts by the elastic waistband and pulled them slowly, slowly down, enjoying each station of his shame. The first glimpse was encouraging. The base of the penis sprouted from the bronze bush at an angle of almost forty-five degrees, an earnest of vitality. It was well over an inch wide, always a good sign, with one large blue vein down the center, again promising. But another three inches of slow unveiling revealed Rusty’s manhood in its entirety, I slid the shorts to the floor. When I looked up at his face, I saw that once again the eyes were shut, the lips trembling. Then I carefully examined the object of my long and arduous hunt, at last captive. A phrase of Myron’s occurred to me: “all potatoes and no meat.” Rusty’s balls were unusually large and impressive; one lower than the other, as they hung bulllike in the rather loose scrotal sac. They were all that I could desire. The penis, on the other hand, was not a success, and I could see now why he was so reluctant to let me see just how short it is. On the other hand both base and head are uncommonly thick and, as Myron always said, thickness not length is how you gauge the size of the ultimate erection. The skin was dead white with several not undecorative veins, while the foreskin covered the entire head, meeting at the tip in an irregular rosy pucker, plainly cousin to the sphincter I had so recently probed. “I’m afraid, Rusty, that you’ve been somewhat oversold on the campus. Poor Mary-Ann. That’s a boy’s equipment.” This had the desired effect of stinging him into a manly response. “Ain’t been no complaints,” he growled. But as he did, both testicles rose in their sac as though seeking an escape hatch in case of battle, while the penis betrayed him by visibly shrinking into the safety of the brush. “Next you’ll tell me that it’s not the size that counts but what you do.” I followed verbal insult with physical: I took the penis firmly in my hand. He dared not move, or speak, or even cry out. The shock had reduced him exactly as planned. I had also confirmed an old theory that although the “normal” male delights in exposing himself to females who attract him he is, conversely, terrified to do so in front of those he dislikes or fears, as though any knowledge they might obtain of the center of his being will create bad magic and hence unman him. In any case, the grail was in my hand at last, smooth, warm, soft. My joy was complete as I slid back the skin, exposing the shiny deep rose of the head which was impressively large and beautifully shaped, giving some credence to the legend that, in action, its owner (already Rusty had become a mere appendage to this reality) was a formidable lover. He was sweaty but clean (I was so close to him that I could smell the strong but not disagreeable fernlike odor of genitals). Delicately but firmly, I pressed the glans, making the phallic eye open. Not one tear was shed. “Apparently, you are all right,” I observed as he looked down with horror at my hand which held him firmly in its grasp, the glans penis exposed like a summer rose. “You’re also clean but beyond that I’m afraid you’re something of a disappointment.” The penis again shrank in my hand. “But of course you’re probably still growing.” The humiliation was complete. There was nothing that he could say. In actual fact, the largeness of the head had already convinced me that what I said was untrue, but policy dictated that I be scornful. “Now then, let’s see how free the foreskin is.” I slid the skin forward, then back. He shuddered. “Now, you do it a few times.” To his relief, I let him go. Clumsily he took himself in one hand as though never before had he touched this strange object, so beloved of Mary-Ann. He gave a few halfhearted tugs to the skin, looking for all the world like a child frightened in the act of masturbating. “Come on,” I said, “you can do better than that.” He changed his grip to the one he obviously used when alone. His hand worked rapidly as he pumped himself like one of those machines that extract oil from the earth, milk from the cow, water from shale. After several minutes of intense and rhythmic massage I noted, with some surprise, that though the head had become a bit larger and darker, the stem had not changed in size. Apparently he knew how to restrain himself. He continued for another minute or two, the only sound in the room his heavy breathing and the soft waterlike sound of skin slapping against skin; then he stopped. “You see,” he said. “It works O.K.” “But I didn’t tell you to stop.” “But if I keep on… I mean… well, Christ, a man’s going to…” boy, I corrected. “A boy’s going to… to…” “To what?” “Get… excited.” “Go right ahead. I’d be amused to see what Mary-Ann sees in you.” Without another word, grimly, he set to work and continued for some time, sweating hard. But still we were denied the full glory. Some lengthening and thickening took place but not to the fullest degree. “Is anything wrong?” I asked sweetly. “I don’t know.” He gulped, trying to catch his breath. “It can’t… won’t…” He was incoherent at the double humiliation. “Do you often have this problem with Mary-Ann?” I sounded as compassionate as Kay Francis, as warm as June Allyson. “Never! I swear…” “Five times in one night and now this! Really, you young boys are such liars.” “I wasn’t lying. I just don’t know what’s wrong……” He beat at himself as though through sheer force he could tap the well of generation. But it was no use. Finally I told him to stop. Then I took over, practicing a number of subtle pressures and frictions learned from Myron… all to no avail. In a curious way the absence of an erection, though not part of the plan, gave me an unexpected thrill: to have so cowed my victim as to short-circuit his legendary powers as a stud was, psychologically, far more fulfilling than my original intention. While I was vigorously shaking him, he made the longexpected move that would complete the drama, the holy passion of Myra Breckinridge. “Do you…” He began tentatively, looking down at me and the loose-stemmed rose that I held in my hand. “Do I what?” “Do you want me to… well, to ball you?” The delivery was superb, as shy as a nubile boy requesting a first kiss. I let go of him as though in horror. “Rusty! Do you know who you’re talking to?” “Yes, Miss Myra. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. “What sort of woman do you think I am?” I took the heavy balls in my hand, as an offering. “These belong to Mary-Ann, and no one else, and if I ever catch you playing around with anybody else, I’ll see that Mr. Martinson puts you away for twenty years.” He turned white. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I thought maybe… the way you were… doing what you were doing…… I’m sorry, really.” The voice stopped. “You have every reason to be sorry.” Again I let him go; the large balls swung back between his legs, and continued gently to sway, like a double pendulum. “In any case, if I had wanted you to–as you put it–‘ball me,’ it’s very plain that you couldn’t. As a stud, you’re a disaster.” He flushed at the insult but said nothing. I was now ready for my master stroke. “However, as a lesson, I shall ball you.” He was entirely at sea. “Ball me? How?” “Put out your hands.” He did so and I bound them together with surgical gauze. Not for nothing had I once been a nurses’ aide. “What’re you doing that for?” Alarm growing. With a forefinger, I flicked the scrotal sac, making him cry out from shock. “No questions, my boy.” When the hands were firmly secured, I lowered the examination table until it was just two feet from the floor. “Lie down,” I ordered. “On your stomach.” Mystified, he did as he was told. I then tied his bound hands to the top of the metal table. He was, as they say, entirely in my power. If I had wanted, I could have killed him. But my fantasies have never involved murder or even physical suffering for I have a horror of blood, preferring to inflict pain in more subtle ways, destroying totally, for instance, a man’s idea of himself in relation to the triumphant sex. “Now then, up on your knees.” “But…” A hard slap across the buttocks put an end to all objections. He pulled himself up on his knees, legs tight together and buttocks clenched shut. He resembled a pyramid whose base was his head and white-socked feet, and whose apex was his rectum. I was now ready for the final rite. “Legs wide apart,” I commanded. Reluctantly, he moved his knees apart so that they lined up with the exact edges of the table. I was now afforded my favorite view of the male, the heavy rosy scrotum dangling from the groin above which the tiny sphincter shyly twinkled in the light. Carefully I applied lubricant to the mystery that even Mary-Ann has never seen, much less violated. “What’re you doing?” The voice was light as a child’s True terror had begun. “Now remember the secret is to relax entirely. Otherwise you could be seriously hurt.” I then pulled up my skirt to reveal, strapped to my groin, Clem’s dildo which I borrowed yesterday on the pretext that I wanted it copied for a lamp base. Clem had been most amused. Rusty cried out with alarm. “Oh, no! For God’s sake, don’t.” “Now you will find out what it is the girl feels when you play the man with her.” “Jesus, you’ll split me!” The voice was treble with fear. As I approached him, dildo in front of me like the god Priapus personified, he tried to wrench free of his bonds, but failed. Then he did the next best thing, and brought his knees together in an attempt to deny me entrance. But it was no use. I spread him wide and put my battering ram to the gate. For a moment I wondered if he might not be right about the splitting: the opening was the size of a dime while the dildo was over two inches wide at the head and nearly a foot long. But then I recalled how Myron used to have no trouble in accommodating objects this size or larger, and what the fragile Myron could do so could the inexperienced but sturdy Rusty. I pushed. The pink lips opened. The tip of the head entered and stopped. “I can’t,” Rusty moaned. “Honestly I can’t. It’s too big.” “Just relax, and you’ll stretch. Don’t worry.” He made whatever effort was necessary and the pursed lips became a grin allowing the head to enter, but not without a gasp of pain and shock. Once inside, I savored my triumph. I had avenged Myron. A lifetime of being penetrated had brought him only misery. Now, in the person of Rusty, I was able, as Woman Triumphant, to destroy the adored destroyer. Holding tight to Rusty’s slippery hips, I plunged deeper. He cried out with pain. But I was inexorable. I pushed even farther into him, triggering the prostate gland, for when I felt between his legs, I discovered that the erection he had not been able to present me with had now, inadvertently, occurred. The size was most respectable, and hard as metal. But when I plunged deeper, the penis went soft with pain, and he cried out again, begged me to stop, but now I was like a woman possessed, riding, riding, riding my sweating stallion into forbidden country, shouting with joy as I experienced my own sort of orgasm, oblivious to his staccato shrieks as I delved and spanned that innocent flesh. Oh, it was a holy moment! I was one with the Bacchae, with all the priestesses of the dark bloody cults, with the great goddess herself for whom Attis unmanned himself. I was the eternal feminine made flesh, the source of life and its destroyer, dealing with man as incidental toy, whose blood as well as semen is needed to make me whole! There was blood at the end. And once my passion had spent itself, I was saddened and repelled. I had not meant actually to tear the tender flesh but apparently I had, and the withdrawing of my weapon brought with it bright blood. He did not stir as I washed him clean (like a loving mother), applying medicine to the small cut, inserting gauze (how often had I done this for Myron!). Then l unbound him. Shakily, he stood up, rubbing tears from his swollen face. In silence he dressed while I removed the harness of the dildo and put it away in the attachase. Not until he was finally dressed did he speak. “Can I go now?” “Yes. You can go now.” I sat down at the surgical table and took out this notebook. He was at the door when I said, “Aren’t you going to thank me for the trouble I’ve taken?” He looked at me, face perfectly blank. Then, tonelessly, he murmured, “Thank you, ma’am,” and went. And so it was that Myra Breckinridge achieved one of the great victories for her sex. But one which is not yet entirely complete even though, alone of all women, I know what it is like to be a goddess enthroned, and allpowerful.
Liz Davies’ Open Letter to Margaret Hodge
Posted: August 3, 2014 Filed under: Abuse, Labour Party, Politics, Westminster | Tags: child abuse, islington council, liz davies, margaret hodge, whistleblowers 11 CommentsLast Friday (August 1st, 2014), Margaret Hodge, Labour MP for Barking and Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, issued a statement on the poor treatment of whistleblowers, and how they are often victimised by managers (see Rayeev Syal, ‘Public service whistleblowers ‘treated shockingly’, report finds’, The Guardian, August 1st, 2014). Hodge was earlier Leader of Islington Council from 1982 to 1992, during which time the council was beset by a terrible child abuse scandal affecting most of the children’s homes in the borough. Liz Davies was a social worker for Islington Council who acted as the principal whistleblower about this scandal; she is now Reader in Social Work at London Metropolitan University. Below I reproduce, with permission from Dr Davies, an open letter from her to Margaret Hodge in response to Hodge’s recent comments.
See also Liz Davies’ website, in particular this page featuring videos of various TV reports about the Islington child abuse scandal, as well as this account of Davies’ work with journalist Eileen Fairweather, who broke the news of the scandal. A wide range of articles about abuse in Islington can be read at the Spotlight blog here and here.
Open letter to Margaret Hodge MP
Dear Margaret Hodge,
You rightly say that, whistleblowing is ‘crucial’ and has to matter ‘right to the top of an organisation’. Your perspective has certainly changed since the time when, as leader of Islington Council, you so seriously hindered my investigation of crimes against children. As the main ‘whistleblower’ I have been struggling since the 90s to put the record straight about the murders, sexual exploitation, neglect and physical torture of children both within the care of Islington social services and in the local community. I have also tried to expose the connections between Islington networks and those in other parts of the country.
We have all learnt a lot in the last 20 years and I am continually discovering more about what actually happened during those years when, as a social worker, I was working to protect vulnerable Islington children. It would seem now, in the context of your statements on whistleblowing and your support of the National Inquiry into Organised Abuse of Children, that it is certainly appropriate to move forward in order to increase all our understanding about what led to the cover up of organised child abuse in the Borough.
A few years ago, as more information came to light, you apologised for your mistakes and provided the explanation for your actions that you were misled by senior officers. However, I now question why you did not give evidence to this effect to the final Islington Inquiry in 1995. Also, you have not said if you referred these managers to the police and to the appropriate regulatory body in order to prevent them working with children. So many of them, whose names I remember clearly, have progressed in their social work careers without ever having been accountable for their actions or inactions.
Most puzzling is my discovery of how much was previously known about child abuse in Islington since the early 80s and I, of course, realise that you were council leader from 1982. Am I to believe that you really did not know that there had been a long established pattern of sexual exploitation and even the alleged murders of children within Islington’s care? These events were well covered in the local and national media and, in this context, I cannot understand why my disclosures just a few years later were met with such disbelief. Geoffrey Dickens MP, for instance, exposed the sexual exploitation of Islington children. This was just four years before I raised similar concerns about children’s safety in the neighbourhood of Islington where I worked and for which you were the local councillor. This area was just a few streets away from the location that he was including in one of his now famous dossiers. I have to question why I was not informed at the time about these very serious cases. All this prior intelligence would have validated some of my enquiries and greatly assisted my investigations. If I had received support and understanding from you, I would have been far better able to protect the children who were so severely harmed. Instead, every obstacle was put in my way. My only professionally ethical option at the time was to work covertly with police. When our work achieved a major conviction I thought I would be believed but instead I was further silenced by managers. I now question if you were informed about this conviction and the circumstances in which young people were disclosing? I wonder if you were also informed about all the professionals working alongside me in the investigations and how many were told by their agency representatives on the Area Child Protection Committee that there was no evidence.
What exactly did influence your decision-making at the time? What led you to take a stand, for instance, in publicly blaming a brave whistleblowing residential worker? After raising the alarm about child sex abusers accessing children as young as 9 years old in a children’s home, he was dismissed and prevented from working with children for many years. What led you to dismiss my substantial report about a local network of sexual exploitation? Your support from ‘the top’ of the organisation might have been able to reverse the path of history and protect so many children. I am now being contacted by survivors who feel more able to come forward in the current climate. It is deeply worrying that so many of their files are missing. When I attended the Inquiries not a single one of my records was to be found. What is your understanding now of such negligence?
There are so many questions I would like to ask you. Did you know that after presenting 4 hours of evidence to one Islington Inquiry none of my information was included in the report? Did you know that one of the people who was the subject of one of the 14 Islington Inquiry reports returned to Children’s services in recent years and had not been barred from work with children? I do not know the 32 names listed by Ian White, in the Appendix to his final report, of professionals deemed unsuitable to work with children. I do know two social workers who should never have been named on the list as they were whistleblowers. In the light of your recent comment that some whistleblowers are treated badly I would expect that you would agree that the list of 32 needs to be urgently reviewed.
The White Report in 1995 (Report of the Inquiry into the Management of Child Care in the London Borough of Islington) made reference to 61 children I had identified as possible victims of an organised abuse network. It went on to conclude that, ‘while some individual children were at risk of abuse, the Police found no evidence of connections between these such as would support the assertion that there was organised abuse’ (p. 42). I would like to know in the light of current knowledge, and with hindsight, what your opinion is of this finding.
You say that there should be sanctions for those who victimise whistleblowers. The Islington Inquiries were not a legal process and no-one was required to give evidence. Do you think, therefore, that it is too late to call to account those who obstructed my investigations and those who misled you? Other authorities are now interviewing former whistleblowers and considering what action can be taken to right the wrongs of the past. I have not been asked by Islington authorities to assist in identifying perpetrators or to help survivors in understanding what happened to them. As one example, I recently learnt from the media about the unnamed Islington children’s home supposedly related to Savile – no-one has asked me if I know which home it might be. I remain a registered social worker and am therefore appropriately qualified to professionally assist with child protection investigations and I would readily contribute my knowledge about networks of abuse in the area.
I am pleased that you are now supporting whistleblowers. I am one of them and I now ask for your full support in helping to unravel what really did happen in Islington about which you must surely know so much. It is a story which includes your story which has never been told. Many politicians are now bravely coming forward to speak out about organised child abuse – it is surely your time to contribute your account of what really happened.
Yours sincerely
Dr Liz Davies
Reader in Child Protection
London Metropolitan University
l.davies@londonmet.ac.uk
3rd August 2014
Copies to;
Cllr Richard Watts, Leader of Islington Council
Cllr Joe Caluori, Executive Member for Children and Families
Andrew Johnson, Islington Tribune
Article from Telegraph – Simon Danczuk on child sex allegations involving senior Westminster figures
Posted: May 15, 2014 Filed under: Abuse, Labour Party, Westminster | Tags: child abuse, child abusers in parliament, cyril smith, elm guest house, simon danczuk, westminster 1 CommentThe following article does not seem to be available online to read – I believe it is very significant, so am posting it here.
The Daily Telegraph (London)
May 5, 2014 Monday
Edition 1;
National Edition
Government urged to reassure public about child sex claims
BYLINE: Peter Dominiczak
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 230 words
MINISTERS must “reassure the public” about a series of child sex investigations involving Westminster politicians, the Labour MP who exposed Cyril Smith’s behaviour said yesterday.
Simon Danczuk, the MP for Rochdale, last month published a book on Smith which reignited the scandal over the former Liberal MP, who used his power and influence to abuse hundreds of boys for more than four decades.
However, Mr Danczuk has also disclosed details of allegations about two other senior Westminster figures who have been accused of historic abuse.
Mr Danczuk said that he has now been contacted by police officers about a case involving a senior Labour politician and said that officers are taking the allegations “extremely seriously”.
He has also disclosed that during the course of his investigation into Smith, who died in 2010, he interviewed a man who was sexually abused by the MP at the Elm Guest House in Barnes, London, when he was 16. The man gave him the name of another parliamentarian who had visited the guesthouse, describing him as a “much bigger fish” and significantly “higher up the food chain”. Mr Danczuk yesterday said that with so many investigations under way, the Government needs to make a public statement about the allegations.
“We need them to reassure the public that the police are getting adequate resources to carry out these investigations,” he said.
Criminal abuse in the classroom as portrayed by D.H. Lawrence
Posted: May 4, 2014 Filed under: Abuse | Tags: child abuse, d.h. lawrence, physical abuse 1 CommentThere were teachers like this in many schools until quite recently. Many of them (including some I have known) would now be in prison for what they did.
I am no fan of D.H. Lawrence, finding his preaching, stentorian tone grating a lot of the time, and also believe his politics to have come close to fascism. To some extent he seems to justify the actions of Ursula here. I find this one of the most disturbing passages I have read in much mainstream literature, but likely quite accurate in terms of how easily children could be dehumanised by teachers who saw them as ‘things’. Before we sentimentalise teachers past and present, let’s remember how many there have been who used their positions as an opportunity to get high off their own power and give an outlet to their own hatred, taking it out on defenceless children.
From D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow (1915)
She knew by now her enemies in the class. The one she hated most was Williams. He was a sort of detective, not bad enough to be so classed. He could read with fluency, and had plenty of cunning intelligence. But he could not keep still. And he had a kind of sickness very repulsive to a sensitive girl, something cunning and etiolated and degenerate. Once he had thrown an ink-well at her, in one of his mad little rages. Twice he had run home out of class. He was a well-known character.
And he grinned up his sleeve at this girl teacher, sometimes hanging round her to fawn on her. But this made her dislike him more. He had a kind of leech-like power.
From one of the children she took a supple cane, and this she determined to use when real occasion came. One morning, at composition, she said to the boy Williams:
“ Why have you made this blot?”
“ Please, miss, it fell off my pen”, he whined out, in the mocking voice that he was so clever in using. The boys near snorted with laughter. For Williams was an actor, he could tickle the feelings of his hearers subtly. Particularly he could tickle the children with him into ridiculing his teacher, or indeed, any authority of which he was not afraid. He had that peculiar gaol instinct.
“Then you must stay in and finish another page of composition,” said the teacher.
This was against her usual sense of justice, and the boy resented it derisively. At twelve o’clock she caught him slinking out.
“ Williams, Sit Down”, she said.
And there she sat, and there he sat, alone opposite to her, on the back desk, looking up at her with his furtive eyes every minute.
“Please miss, I’ve got to go on an errand”, he called out insolently.
“Bring me your book,” said Ursula.
The boy came out. Flapping his book along the desks, he had not written a line.
“Go back and do the writing you have to do,” said Ursula. And she sat at her desk, trying to correct books. She was trembling and upset. And for an hour the miserable boy writhed and grinned in his seat. At the end of that time he had done five lines.
“As it is late now,” said Ursula, “you will finish the rest this evening.”
The boy kicked his way insolently down the passage.
The afternoon came again. Williams was there, glancing at her, and her heart beat thick, for she ducked his whitish head under the desk, and attracted the attention of other boys.
“Williams,” she said, gathering her courage, for it was critical now to speak to him, “what are you doing?”
He lifted his face, the sore-rimmed eyes half smiling. There was something intrinsically indecent about him. Ursula shrank away.
“Nothing,’ he replied, feeling a triumph.
“What are you doing ? ” she repeated, her heart-beat suffocating her.
“Nothing,” replied the boy, insolently, aggrieved, comic.
“If I speak to you again, you must go down to Mr. Harby,” she said.
But this boy was a match even for Mr. Harby. He was so persistent, so cringing, and flexible, he howled so when he was hurt, that the master hated more the teacher who sent him than he hated the boy himself. For of the boy he was sick of the sight. Which Williams knew. He grinned visibly.
Ursula turned to the map again, to go on with the geography lesson. But there was a little ferment in the class. Williams’ spirit infected them all. She heard a scuffle, and then she trembled inwardly. If they all turned on her this time, she was beaten.
” Please, Miss ” called a voice in distress.
She turned round. One of the boys she liked was ruefully holding out a torn celluloid collar. She heard the complaint, feeling futile.
” Go in front, Wright,” she said.
She was trembling in every fibre. A big, sullen boy, not bad but very difficult, slouched out to the front. She went on with the lesson, aware that Williams was making faces at Wright, and that Wright was grinning behind her. She was afraid. She turned to the map again. And she was afraid.
” Please, Miss, Williams ” came a sharp cry, and a boy on the back row was standing up, with drawn, painted brows, half a mocking grin on his pain, half real resentment against Williams ” Please, Miss, he’s nipped me,” and he rubbed his leg ruefully.
” Come in front, Williams,” she said.
The rat-like boy sat with his pale smile and did not move.
” Come in front,” she repeated, definite now.
” I shan’t,” he cried, snarling, rat-like, grinning. Something went click in Ursula’s soul. Her face and eyes set, she went through the class straight. The boy cowered before her glowering, fixed eyes. But she advanced on him, seized him by the arm, and dragged him from his seat. He clung to the form. It was the battle between him and her. Her instinct had suddenly become calm and quick. She jerked him from his grip, and dragged him, struggling and kicking, to the front. He kicked her several times, and clung to the forms as he passed, but she went on. The class was on its feet in excitement. She saw it, but made no move.
She knew if she let go the boy he would dash to the door. Already he had run home once out of her class. So she snatched her cane from the desk, and brought it down on him. He was writhing and kicking. She saw his face beneath her, white, with eyes like the eyes of a fish, stony, yet full of hate and horrible fear. And she loathed him, the hideous writhing thing that was nearly too much for her. In horror lest he should overcome her, and yet at the heart quite calm, she brought down the cane again and again, whilst he struggled making inarticulate noises, and lunging vicious kicks at her. With one hand she managed to hold him, and now and then the cane came down on him. He writhed, like a mad thing. But the pain of the strokes cut through his writhing, vicious, coward’s courage, bit deeper till at last, with a long whimper that became a yell, he went limp. She let him go, and he rushed at her, his teeth and eyes glinting. There was a second of agonized terror in her heart : he was a beast thing. Then she caught him, and the cane came down on him. A few times, madly, in a frenzy, he lunged and writhed, to kick her. But again the cane broke him, he sank with a howling yell on the floor, and like a beaten beast lay there yelling.
Mr. Harby had rushed up towards the end of this performance.
” What’s the matter? ” he roared.
Ursula felt as if something were going to break in her.
” I’ve thrashed him,” she said, her breast heaving, forcing out the words on the last breath. The headmaster stood choked with rage, helpless. She looked at the writhing, howling figure on the floor.
” Get up,” she said. The thing writhed away from her. She took a step forward. She had realized the presence of the headmaster for one second, and then she was oblivious of it again.
” Get up,” she said. And with a little dart the boy was on his feet. His yelling dropped to a mad blubber. He had been in a frenzy.
” Go and stand by the radiator,” she said.
As if mechanically, blubbering, he went.
.The headmaster stood robbed of movement or speech. His face was yellow, his hands twitched convulsively. But Ursula stood stiff not far from him. Nothing could touch her now: she was beyond Mr. Harby. She was as if violated to death.
The headmaster muttered something, turned, and went down the room, whence, from the far end, he was heard roaring in a mad rage at his own class.
The boy blubbered wildly by, the radiator. Ursula looked at the class. There were fifty pale, still faces watching her, a hundred round eyes fixed on her in an attentive, expressionless stare.
” Give out the history readers,” she said to the monitors.
There was dead silence. As she stood there, she could hear again the ticking of the clock, and the chock of piles of books taken out of the low cupboard. Then came the faint flap of books on the desks. The children passed in silence, their hands working in unison. They were no longer a pack, but each one separated into a silent, closed thing.
UPDATED – Yes, Labour politicians need to answer questions about PIE and NCCL, but so do the Tories about Morrison, and the Lib Dems about Smith
Posted: February 25, 2014 Filed under: Abuse, Conservative Party, History, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, PIE, Politics, Westminster | Tags: bryn alyn, bryn estyn, child abuse, chris house, christine russell, christopher grayling, conservatives, cyril smith, edwina currie, grahame nicholls, gyles brandreth, harriet harman, jack dromey, jillings report, jonathan aitken, labour, michael heseltine, nccl, nick davies, norman tebbit, operation pallial, paedophile information exchange, patricia hewitt, patrick cosgrove, peter morrison, pie, rob richards, stephen norris, teresa gorman, theresa may, william hague 16 CommentsIn Edwina Currie’s diary entry for July 24th, 1990, she wrote the following:
One appointment in the recent reshuffle has attracted a lot of gossip and could be very dangerous: Peter Morrison has become the PM’s PPS. Now he’s what they call ‘a noted pederast’, with a liking for young boys; he admitted as much to Norman Tebbit when he became deputy chairman of the party, but added, ‘However, I’m very discreet’ – and he must be! She either knows and is taking a chance, or doesn’t; either way it is a really dumb move. Teresa Gorman told me this evening (in a taxi coming back from a drinks party at the BBC) that she inherited Morrison’s (woman) agent, who claimed to have been offered money to keep quiet about his activities. It scares me, as all the press know, and as we get closer to the election someone is going to make trouble, very close to her indeed. (Edwina Currie, Diaries 1987-1992 (London: Little, Brown, 2002), p. 195)
The following are the recollections of Grahame Nicholls, who ran the Chester Trades Council (Morrison was the MP for Chester from 1974 to 1992), who wrote:
After the 1987 general election, around 1990, I attended a meeting of Chester Labour party where we were informed by the agent, Christine Russell, that Peter Morrison would not be standing in 1992. He had been caught in the toilets at Crewe station with a 15-year-old boy. A deal was struck between Labour, the local Tories, the local press and the police that if he stood down at the next election the matter would go no further. Chester finished up with Gyles Brandreth and Morrison walked away scot-free. I thought you might be interested. (cited in ‘Simon Hoggart’s week’, The Guardian, November 16th, 2012)
Sir Peter Morrison (1944-1995) was known, according to an obituary by Patrick Cosgrove, as a right winger who disliked immigration, supported the return of capital punishment, and wished to introduce vouchers for education. He was from a privileged political family; his father, born John Morrison, became Lord Margadale, the squire of Fonthill, led the campaign to ensure Alec Douglas-Home became Prime Minister in 1963, and predicted Thatcher’s ultimate accession to the leadership (Sue Reid, ‘Did Maggie know her closest aide was preying on under-age boys?’, Daily Mail, July 12th, 2014, updated July 16th). The young Peter attended Eton College, then Keble College, Oxford. Entering the House of Commons in 1974 at the age of 29, during the first Thatcher government he occupied a series of non-cabinet ministerial positions, then became Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party in 1986, replacing Jeffrey Archer after his resignation, and working under Chairman Norman Tebbitt.
Morrison was close to Thatcher from when he entered Parliament (see Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: Harper Collins, 1993), p. 837), working for her 1975 leadership campaign and, after she became Prime Minister, putting her and Denis up for holiday in the 73 000 acre estate owned by his father in Islay, where games of charades were played (Jonathan Aitken, Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 158-160, 279-281). After being appointed as Thatcher’s Parliamentary Private Secretary in 1990, he ran what is generally believed to have been a complacent and lacklustre leadership campaign for her when she was challenged by Michael Heseltine; as is well-known, she did not gain enough votes to prevent a second ballot, and then resigned soon afterwards. Morrison was known to some others as ‘a toff’s toff’, who ‘made it very clear from the outset that he did not intend spending time talking to the plebs’ on the backbenches (Stephen Norris, Changing Trains: An Autobiography (London: Hutchinson, 1996), p. 149).
Jonathan Aitken, a close friend of Morrison’s, would later write the following about him:
I knew Peter Morrison as well as anyone in the House. We had been school friends. He was the best man at my wedding in St Margaret’s, Westminster. We shared many private and political confidences. So I knew the immense pressures he was facing at the time when he was suddenly overwhelmed with the greatest new burden imaginable – running the Prime Minister’s election campaign.
Sixteen years in the House of Commons had treated Peter badly. His health had deteriorated. He had an alcohol problem that made him ill, overweight and prone to take long afternoon naps. In the autumn of 1990 he became embroiled in a police investigation into aspects of his personal life. The allegations against him were never substantiated, and the inquiry was subsequently dropped. But at the time of the leadership election, Peter was worried, distracted and unable to concentrate. (Aitken, Margaret Thatcher, pp. 625-626).
An important article by Nick Davies published in The Guardian in April 1998, also made the following claim:
Fleet Street routinely nurtures a crop of untold stories about powerful abusers who have evaded justice. One such is Peter Morrison, formerly the MP for Chester and the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. Ten years ago, Chris House, the veteran crime reporter for the Sunday Mirror, twice received tip-offs from police officers who said that Morrison had been caught cottaging in public toilets with underaged boys and had been released with a caution. A less powerful man, the officers complained, would have been charged with gross indecency or an offence against children.
At the time, Chris House confronted Morrison, who used libel laws to block publication of the story. Now, Morrison is dead and cannot sue. Police last week confirmed that he had been picked up twice and never brought to trial. They added that there appeared to be no trace of either incident in any of the official records. (Nick Davies, ‘The sheer scale of child sexual abuse in Britain’, The Guardian, April 1998).
In an article in the Daily Mail published in October 2012, former Conservative MP and leader of the Welsh Tories Rod Richards claimed that Morrison (and another Tory grandee who has not been named) was connected to the terrible abuse scandals in Bryn Estyn and Bryn Alyn children’s homes, in North Wales, having seen documents which identified both politicians as frequent, unexplained visitors. Richards also claimed that William Hague, who was Secretary of State for Wales from 1995 to 1997, and who set up the North Wales Child Abuse inquiry, would have seen the files on Morrison, but sources close to Hague denied that he had seen any such material. A former resident of the Bryn Estyn care home testified to Channel 4 News, testified to seeing Morrison arrive there on five occasions, and may have driven off with a boy in his car (‘Exclusive: Eyewitness ‘saw Thatcher aide take boys to abuse”, Channel 4 News, November 6th, 2012).
Morrison’s successor as MP for Chester, Gyles Brandreth, wrote that he and his wife Michelle had been told on the doorstep repeatedly and emphatically that the MP was ‘a disgusting pervert’ (David Holmes, ‘Former Chester MP Peter Morrison implicated in child abuse inquiry’, Chester Chronicle, November 8th, 2012). The journalist Simon Heffer has also said that rumours about Morrison were circulating in Tory top ranks as early as 1988, whilst Tebbitt has admitted hearing rumours ‘through unusual channels’, then confronting Morrison about them, which he denied (Reid, ‘Did Maggie know her closest aide was preying on under-age boys?’).
Recently, Thatcher’s bodyguard Barry Strevens has come forward to claim that he told Thatcher directly about allegations of Morrison holding sex parties at his house with underage boys (one aged 15), when told about this by a senior Cheshire Police Officer. (see Lynn Davidson, ‘Exclusive: Thatcher’s Bodyguard on Abuse Claims’, The Sun on Sunday< July 27th, 2014 (article reproduced in comments below); and Matt Chorley, ‘Barry Strevens says he told Iron Lady about rumours about Peter Morrison’, Mail on Sunday, July 27th, 2014). Strevens claimed to have had a meeting with the PM and her PPS Archie Hamilton (now Baron Hamilton of Epsom), which he had requested immediately. Strevens had claimed this was right after the Jeffrey Archer scandal; Archer resigned in October 1986, whilst Hamilton was Thatcher’s PPS from 1987 to 1988. Strevens recalls Thatcher simply thanking him and that was the last he heard of it. He said:
I wouldn’t say she (Lady Thatcher) was naive but I would say she would not have thought people around her would be like that.
I am sure he would have given her assurances about the rumours as otherwise she wouldn’t have given him the job.
The accounts by Nicholls and Strevens make clear that the allegations – concerning in one case a 15-year old boy – are more serious than said in a later rendition by Currie, which said merely that Morrison ‘had sex with 16-year-old boys when the age of consent was 21’ (cited in Andrew Sparrow, ‘Politics Live’, The Guardian, October 24th, 2012). A further allegation was made by Peter McKelvie, who led the investigation in 1992 into Peter Righton in an open letter to Peter Mandelson. A British Aerospace Trade Union Convenor had said one member had alleged that Morrison raped him, and he took this to the union’s National HQ, who put it to the Labour front bench. A Labour minister reported back to say that the Tory Front Bench had been approached. This was confirmed, according to McKelvie, by second and third sources, and also alleged that the conversations first took place at a 1993-94 Xmas Party hosted by the Welsh Parliamentary Labour Party. Mandelson has not yet replied.
In the 1997 election, Christine Russell herself displaced Brandreth and she served as Labour MP until 2010, when she was unseated by Conservative MP Stephen Mosely (see entry for ‘Christine Russell’ at politics.co.uk).
In 2013, following the publication of Hoggart’s article citing Nicholls, an online petition was put together calling for an inquiry, and submittted to then Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State Christopher Grayling. Russell denounced the ‘shoddy journalism’ of the Guardian piece, recalled rumours of Morrison’s preferences, but said there was no hint of illegal acts; she did not however rule out an agreement that Morrison should stand down (‘Campaigners ask for inquiry over ex-Chester MP’, Chester Chronicle, January 3rd, 2013).
Despite being a Labour Party supporter and member, I agree with those who say that the allegations concerning Harriet Harman, Jack Dromey and Patricia Hewitt during the time of their positions in the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) and the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE – about which more in a later blog post) are not trivial; the fact that the PIE was able to remain affiliated to NCCL for an extended period, despite many newspaper reports about activities of its leading members, some of whom were imprisoned during this period, raises serious questions. But equally if not more important to investigate is the allegation that a very senior Tory politician who was a close personal acquaintance of a Prime Minister, was known by various others to be a pederast, and may have been involved in an awful organised abuse scandal. A new police inquiry was announced by Home Secretary Theresa May in November 2012, which became Operation Pallial; a heavily redacted version of the Jillings Report was published in July 2013. In the meantime, allegations fly all over the internet about senior politicians and the child abuse scandal at Elm Guest House in Barnes, as currently being investigated in Operations Fernbridge and Fairbank (the most reliable reports on this can be found at the Exaro website); some of this is internet conspiracy theorising, and the provenance of some sources is questionable, but major names are floating around the cyber-ether, whilst the police have confirmed that one visitor to the house was the late Liberal MP Cyril Smith.
If Labour have explaining to do concerning Harman, Dromey and Hewitt, then so do the Tories about Morrison and the Liberal Democrats about Smith; some of these allegations are not yet proven, but that is all the more reason to address them.
In particular, questions now need to be asked of Lord Tebbit, Teresa Gorman, Edwina Currie and other senior Tories, not to mention Christine Russell and others in Chester Labour Party, of what was known and apparently covered-up about Morrison. The identity of Morrison and Gorman’s agent (I could find no mention of a name in Gorman’s autobiography No, Prime Minister! (London: John Blake, 2001)) must be established and she should be questioned if still around. If money was involved, as Currie alleges was told to her by Gorman, then the seriousness of the allegations is grave. And Lord Steel must be properly held to account (and other senior Liberal Democrats questioned) about what was known about Cyril Smith, and whether they acted in such a way as to enable him to continue to abuse with impunity
Desiring Progress 