Our sex scandals are better than your sex scandals
william smyth
Use to be British political scandals were about sex,
and American were about money. I think we Yanks have
caught up and surpassed the mother country in that regard.
John Elway Rosenthal
In fact the old saying has virtually been reversed. The big issue in the UK
now is the financing of political parties, something which barely raises a
yawn in the US despite its obvious importance. Are those congressional hearings
still going on?
--
Colin Rosenthal
High Altitude Observatory
Boulder, Colorado
rose...@hao.ucar.edu
Anthony
>Use to be British political scandals were about sex,
>and American were about money. I think we Yanks have
>caught up and surpassed the mother country in that regard.
Our *big* sex scandals don't get out. Not yet, anyway. If the full
truth of the Bryn Alyn North Wales child abuse scandal ever does come
out, the reverberations will shake this country to its foundations.
Anthony
william smyth
Anthony <cat...@catfish.nildram.co.uk> wrote in article
<34f83144...@goodnews.nildram.co.uk>...
I don't know anything about this North Wales potential
sex scandal. But watch out for the following signs:
Numerous young accusers describing satanic rituals.
No pictures or physical evidence.
Females being accused of being perpetrators.
The appearance of these factors in about 4 large
"child molestation" rings turned out to indicate there
was no molestation going on----just a type of mass hysteria. William
Anthony
On Sun, 01 Mar 1998 09:31:58 -0800, "william smyth"
<westsid...@msn.com> wrote:
<snip>
>I don't know anything about this North Wales potential
>sex scandal. But watch out for the following signs:
>Numerous young accusers describing satanic rituals.
>No pictures or physical evidence.
>Females being accused of being perpetrators.
>The appearance of these factors in about 4 large
>"child molestation" rings turned out to indicate there
>was no molestation going on----just a type of mass hysteria. William
Article on the leader page of the UK national Sunday newspaper The
Mail On Sunday, 22 February 1998, by Michael Dobbs, former MP :-
[- begin quoted article -]
-----------------------------------------------------
THE EVIL THAT MUST BE MADE TO SPEAK ITS NAME
What's in a name? Let's try two.
The first is Barry, a young man with dark eyes as intense as Welsh
coal. You will not have heard of Barry, although his story is public
and his tale most appalling.
Barry is one of some 400 witnesses who for almost a year have been
giving evidence to a tribunal taking place under the direction of
silver-haired former High Court judge Sir Ronald Waterhouse. The pace
of business is slow, sometimes painstaking. Usually no more than
three of four members of the public attend.
"No one ever paid any attention", Barry explains. "That's why it
happened. No one gives a damn".
There is a greater chance that you will have heard of John Allen,
another witness who gave evidence in Caernarvon Crown Court last week.
On that occasion the public galleries were more crowded, observers
straining to catch a glimpse of a man whose name once meant something
in North Wales.
For John Allen was a pillar of the community. Public carer. Founder
of the Bryn Alyn network of children's homes that local authorities
supported to the astonishing tune of £28 million. And a man who was
sentenced to six years for crimes of the most unimaginable foulness.
But even as I write the next words, many readers will go no further.
For I have led you into one of the great taboos of our time, the shame
that dare not whisper its name.
The Waterhouse enquiry is considering accusations that for more than
20 years the children's homes of North Wales were turned into an evil
empire dedicated not to caring for children, but to their wholesale
physical and sexual abuse.
Hundreds of children, mostly boys, were systematically tortured and
terrorised. Their assailants were their so-called carers within the
local social services. People like John Allen. And - allegedly -
policemen, peers, even priests. These children claim they were
brutalised into acts of oral and anal sex, sometimes committed
simultaneously, and sodomized with crowbars, bottles and chair legs.
(You'll find more comfortable reading on almost any other page of this
newspaper. You can turn the pages, pass by on the other side as so
many have done all these years. But don't. These children need you).
They were subjected to a daily, almost casual regime of cruelty and
ritual humiliation. Beaten so fiercely that they ended up in casualty
wards. Forced to clean toilets with their toothbrushes. One had his
pet gerbil chopped to pieces in front of him. With a shovel.
Of course, many of the allegations are just that - allegations. But
in the words of Gerard Ellis QC, the leading counsel to the tribunal,
there is no doubt that physical and sexual abuse was inflicted "on an
almost unimaginable scale".
Elected councillors visited these homes regularly, even claimed
expenses for doing so, but heard, saw, and said, nothing. After all,
children have no votes.
Clwyd County Council commissioned a report into the allegations. And
when it was delivered they shredded every copy. Because their
insurance company, Municipal Mutual, threatened to withdraw cover if
the conclusions were made public and opened the door to claims. Money
was put before justice. The truth was buried.
All too often officials who fell under a cloud were allowed to retire
on pensions or move to other jobs. It was so much easier, less messy
that way. Or the facts were simply ignored.
Roger Saint was a foster parent who became a member of the adoption
panel in Clwyd. The local authority was told by police that he had a
previous conviction as a child abuser. What did it do? Absolutely
nothing.
The cowardice ended only last May when Saint was jailed for a string
og further sex offences against children.
Wilful ignorance was the habit in the local social services
departments of North Wales. It couldn't be happening, not here.
After all, the accusers were only children. But not everyone turned a
blind eye. One local social services officer demanded that something
be done. Her bosses' response was to sack her. They decided she
wasn't enough of a team player in the great game of cover-up and
sweep-aside.
But perhaps the greatest cowardice is the one that goes on deep within
us all when we are confronted with the disturbing images of child
abuse. It's simply too offensive. Turns the milk sour on our
cornflakes. We don't want to know. We give it a name - paedophilia -
that sounds like a medical complaint and makes it so much easier to
block out the bloody realities of crowbars, bottles and chair legs.
Yet all of us are in part responsible for this national taboo. "I
talk about child abuse like other people talk about football," Barry
explains, "because that's what my childhood was about. I was the
football. But people get embarrassed. Ask me to stop because they
find it upsetting. They don't want to know."
This is the ferocious challenge for Sir Ronald Waterhouse and his
tribunal. Controversially, he has offered anonymity to most witnesses
during the hearings and, so far, has refused to allow those
complaining of abuse or accused of abuse to be named. ("Barry" is not
his real name and John Allen is an exception only because he has
already been convicted). By offering anonymity, Sir Ronald hopes to
get to the greater part of the truth.
But previous reports have been little more than worthy wodges of paper
urging social services to pull up its socks. Sir Ronald's objective
must be far more ambitious: nothing less than the destruction of the
national cowardice that refuses to face up to child abuse.
And what's in a name? The names of officials who repeatedly failed in
their duty. And the men who have been repeatedly named as abusers.
He must name them all. Yes, this will cause a media feeding frenzy,
it may undermine the rights of the accused. But children have rights,
too, and in the delicate balance of justice, theirs is the greater
right.
And, for once, the media piranha pool might just be a good thing, the
teeth that will tear to pieces the conspiracy of silence. We need to
be confronted with the full horrors of what has gone on in North Wales
and shaken into indignation, not allowed yet again to look the other
way for fear it may spoil our breakfasts.
Fourteen of the children connected with this empire of evil in North
Wales have since killed themselves or died in mysterious circumstances
- almost as many as died at Dunblane. Many, many more have had their
emotional and mental sanity ripped to shreds. Through the Waterhouse
tribunal we have a chance, at last, to put right a very great wrong.
So go to it, Sir Ronald. Make them famous. Name them. Every damned
one.
--------------------------------------------------------
(- end quoted article -]
Now defunct magazine Scallywag covered events at Bryn Alyn in detail,
some years ago. Scallywag is still available online -
www.scallywag.org.
The magazine alleged that the peer referred to in the article is Lord
McAlpine, at the time of the offences treasurer of the governing
Conservative Party. Another regular participant in the activities at
Bryn Clwyd was alleged by Scallywag to be Derek Laud, for years a
leading mover and shaker in successive Conservative administrations.
Scallywag alleged that Laud was a sadist with an abnormally large
penis, who was particularly violent and without mercy in his treatment
of the boys. The magazine alleged that on regular occasions his
victims would end up in casualty wards. He was a leading political
fixer and adviser to Margaret Thatcher although never an MP; indeed he
was pictured waving down to the crowds below from an upstairs window
of 10 Downing Street as the Conservatives celebrated their 1988
election victory.
The former children connected with this empire of evil who died in
mysterious circumstances may have been murdered by the British
security services, the price of their silence their lives. Scallywag
alleged that MI5 used to take foreign diplomats etc to the North Wales
homes, give them boys to "play" with, secretly filmed them as they
buggered, abused and tortured boys then kept the tapes as evidence.
Amazing what a little blackmail leverage can do in delicate
situations...
Anthony
Anthony
On Mon, 02 Mar 1998 01:21:26 GMT, cat...@catfish.nildram.co.uk
(Anthony) wrote:
<snip>
>
>Now defunct magazine Scallywag covered events at Bryn Alyn in detail,
>some years ago. Scallywag is still available online -
>www.scallywag.org.
>
>The magazine alleged that the peer referred to in the article is Lord
>McAlpine, at the time of the offences treasurer of the governing
>Conservative Party. Another regular participant in the activities at
>Bryn Clwyd was alleged by Scallywag to be Derek Laud, for years a
>leading mover and shaker in successive Conservative administrations.
>
From the Scallywag website :-
[- began quoted extract -]
------------------------------------------------------
Michael Brown is one of the very few Conservative MP's who volunteered
to "out" himself as a gay. Derek Laud, now standing for parliament,
(against Bernie Grant in North London) ran a Pimlico PR agency called
Ludgate Communications for a number of years which supplied young boys
for selected parliamentarians from children's homes now being
investigated in North Wales. He sometimes did this in cahoots with Ian
Greer Associates which has since been scandalised because of the Neil
Hamilton Affair and payment for questions on behalf of Al Fayed.
Ludgate Communications was at the very hub of our investigation into
the "boys for questions" allegations. At his Pimlico flat, and
selected addresses in Dolphin Square nearby, Laud threw paedophile
parties and we have one sworn affidavit from a former boy (presently
giving evidence in Wales) who claims he was seriously molested (among
many others) by Lord McAlpine who was at the time the Tory party's
clandestine fund raiser. It was alleged by this boy and others that
Messrs Portillo and Lilley were also guests of Derek Laud. We are
assured that this particular volcano is about to erupt, both in North
Wales and elsewhere. Michael Portillo has always publicly
disassociated himself from Derek Laud, yet here we find him not only
acquainted but seemingly in the inner sanctum of private friends.
[- end quoted extract -]