Today's guilty verdict marks the end of a six-decade career that brought Harris global fame and an international following
December 1967: Rolf Harris puts his ear to an elephant's trunk at London Zoo
Rolf Harris presented himself as a lovable family entertainer, bringing him global fame and fortune.
A career spanning six decades made him rich beyond his dreams, as he was adored by millions of fans worldwide.
His stardom and prestige was so high he was chosen by courtiers to
paint the Queen in Buckingham Palace and also sang with rock royalty the
Beatles.
But his jovial public character hid a dark secret. He was a serial
sex abuser of women and young girls too afraid to complain about a
deviant celebrity who heaped misery on them but seemed untouchable.
That Rolf Harris could be another entertainer, like Jimmy Savile, using celebrity status to abuse young women, was unimaginable.
During his seven week trial Harris’s loyal following remained in
denial. They were not prepared to believe he was capable of such
disgusting behaviour. But, a jury of six men and six women were
convinced by the overwhelming evidence of serial abuse and found Harris
guilty.
Looking back, some of those fans, will remember their favourite
entertainer telling Piers Morgan of his “guilt” over neglecting his wife
Alwen and daughter Bindi.
Getty
Queen Elizabeth II greets artist Rolf Harris and Kylie
Minogue backstage during the Diamond Jubilee Concert outside Buckingham
Palace
With hindsight it is clear that his feelings of remorse over his
relationships had a far deeper meaning. He could have been agonising
over years of secret affairs and even child abuse.
His twisted double life heaped misery on his victims, believing fame
would deny them the platform to complain about his deviant ways.
Harris was born in 1930 in the sleepy town of Bassendean in Perth,
Western Australia, to parents Cromwell and Marge, both originally from
small Welsh mining communities before individually settling in
Australia.
He described his childhood as“idyllic”, spending days swimming naked
with pals in the River Swan behind the house Cromwell built out of
second-hand materials.
By the age of 16, he was junior swimming champion of Australia,
making him a local hero in the tiny community on the edge of the
Australian bush.
Brimming with confidence, his artistic talents blossomed and in 1952,
after a brief spell working in an asbestos mine, he headed to Britain
to study at the prestigious City and Guilds of London Art School.
Mirrorpix
Rolf Harris, drawing sketches as he entertains children at Albert Dock, Liverpool in 1986
A year later he was working for the BBC performing a regular
ten-minute cartoon drawing section with a puppet called “Fuzz”. He later
became the only entertainer to work for both the Beeb and ITV when
commercial television was introduced in 1955.
Rolf met his wife, Alwen, a Welsh-born sculptress and jeweller, at
the Royal Academy of Arts, where they were both exhibiting paintings.
They married in 1958, with a dog as a bridesmaid.
In 1959 when television was first introduced in Australia, Rolf was
headhunted by Australian networks and became a household name.
He hit the big time in the same year with his famous rendition of the
song Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport, with the Beatles singing backing
vocals and later appearing with him on BBC radio.
He described the next three years as “the happiest of my life” but
the long hours and constant touring had a severe effect on his marriage.
Rolf and Alwen returned to London in 1963 and a year later had their
daughter Bindi, named after Harris’ favourite town in Western Australia.
But as Harris’ star rose he spent more time away, leading his devoted
wife to spiral into depression, losing her hair to alopecia, and later
becoming suicidal due to her husband’s constant absence.
It wasn’t until 30 years later that the painter found her diary in a pile of rubbish.
“I feel like killing myself, I am so bored,” she had written. “My
days are filled with such emptiness. Please take me away from here.”
He was travelling the world and doing as he pleased - a far cry from
the show of unity he presented to the cameras as he walked hand in hand
with wife and daughter outside London’s Southwark Crown Court during his
six week trial.
Mirrorpix
Cilla Black 23.12.1963
He was abusing young girls under the guise of his lovable persona that saw him awarded an MBE in 1968.
But his perversions could not be masked and around the same time he
openly groping a young girl who asked him for an autograph at a
Portsmouth leisure centre after giving her a“Rolfie hug”.
She was just seven or eight at the time.
The self-proclaimed “weird fish” never hid his fondness for young
girls, often satisfying his paedophile tendencies through a veil of
goofy awkwardness.
Between 1975 and 1976, he indecently assaulted a 14-year-old girl by
grabbing her backside at an It’s A Knockout tournament in Cambridge.
Harris denied being there until video evidence was played at his trial of him showing him entertaining the crowd.
Two years later he was made an OBE, however, his tactics remained the
same, blatantly approaching young women and girls on the premise he was
a harmless funny man.
A cameraman who worked with Harris on a number of corporate projects
in Australia also recalled his “infatuation” with young women.
But the line between flirtation and chauvinism was often blurred, no
more so when in Melbourne in 1978 after a female reporter asked a
question, he retorted: “How would you like the get your clothes off and
sit here for a while?”
His sexual appetite hit a snag when he was left ridiculed by a
beautiful backing singer called Glo who got her revenge after he had
spent months sexually harassing her on tour.
After publicly harassing her for weeks, the young singer fronted
Harris by revealing his manhood in front of a shocked dressing room.
In his book Harris confessed: “I turned seven consecutive shades of
red. Not surprisingly, I stopped flirting with pretty young women and
embarrassing them in public. Glo had given me a taste of my own
medicine.”
Despite the incident Harris continued to sexually assault women and
children for many decades after the incident without ever being
challenged.
Getty
Rolf Harris with his bride to be sculptress Alwen Hughes in 1985
His time on the road led to him spending “more time with total
strangers” than with his family, and touring from town to town provided
the perfect cover for his lecherous ways.
Indeed, at his trial he confessed to sexually admiring a 13-year-old
bikini clad friend of his daughter’s while in Hawaii on holiday in the
1978. The girl claimed Harris groped her as she came out of the shower.
This was the start of a string of assaults by Harris as he abused her
over the next 16 years, after training her to “perform like a pet”.
The woman, now 49 but just 15 at the time Harris began molesting her,
told how the star psychologically tormented her for years leading to
her abusing alcohol as an escape.
A year later in 1986 Harris groped 14-year-old Australian Tonya Lee when she was in Britain with a Sydney based theatre group.
PA
Tonya Lee
The predator met the star stuck youngsters in a London pub where he
honed in on the teenager, beckoning her to sit on his lap and again
cornering her outside a toilet before groping her.
In recent years, Harris, who amassed a fortune of £11million as one
of Australia’s most successful entertainers, proclaimed to regret the
effect his years of womanising and affairs had had on his family.
After watching a recording of tearful Alwen speaking of her
abandonment, Harris told interviewer Piers Morgan: “Guilty on all
counts, your honour. I regret the time I missed with Bindi growing up. I
avoid things, I steer around things, like my father.”
And in another interview, Harris hinted at his life of shame, saying:
“I’ve done my fair share of awful things in my time. I have the same
urges and desires as anyone and there were times when I was younger when
I found myself riding roughshod over other people's feelings.”
But even old friends believe it was just part of the act.
Getty
December 1967: Rolf Harris puts his ear to an elephant's trunk at London Zoo
Old pal Ted Egan said: “He’s doing the Rolf Harris show 24 hours a day.
“Everything that seems to be spur of the moment he has rehearsed 50 times. Everyone is a potential member of his audience.”
The aged entertainer, attempted to play to the audience until the
end, even having to be chided by the prosecution counsel for singing to
the jury under cross examination.
Now the man Britain adopted as their own and who won world acclaim
for his unique brand of family entertainment will be remembered first as
a predatory sex pervert.
Published:
16:05, 30 June 2014
| Updated:
16:05, 30 June 2014
The jury in Rolf Harris's child sex
abuse trial didn't get to hear from a further nine women who claim the
entertainer harassed them, including one alleged victim who says she was
groped on live TV.
Another
potential witness claims she was working as a barmaid at a party for the
broadcaster Michael Parkinson when Harris kissed her in front of his
wife Alwen.
The prosecution
wanted to call seven of the women as bad character witnesses alongside
six others who did give evidence during the eight-week trial in London.
But most were ruled inadmissible during legal argument at Southwark Crown Court. Justice
Nigel Sweeney didn't allow jurors to see footage of one English TV
presenter who claimed Harris put his hand up her skirt while she was
interviewing him live on air in the mid-1990s.
During
pre-trial legal argument, prosecutor Sasha Wass QC said watching the
footage it was clear from the woman's reaction what was going on just
out of shot.
In 2005, another woman was working as a barmaid at Berkshire pub where a party was being held for Parkinson.
Harris, in front of his wife, allegedly grabbed the young woman as she was clearing up and started kissing her.
A decade earlier, in the mid-1990s, the star attended a fete at Bray where he's lived since the early 1980s.
He
was allegedly in a tent signing autographs when he told a 13 or
14-year-old girl he liked her jumper and wanted to see what was under
it.
In 1991, another
potential bad character witness met Harris during an art class in
Belfast when she asked if she could interview him for the BBC.
With children and a camera crew watching the artist allegedly pressed himself against her and stuck his tongue into her mouth.
"She
felt disgusted and dirty and described him as opportunistic and
predatory," Ms Wass told the court during pre-trial legal argument.
In 2001, a 20-year-old woman who looked younger than that allegedly met Harris at an art competition at Kensington Olympia.
The celebrity pinched her bottom as they posed for a photograph, the court but not the jury heard.
She
looked at him angrily, but he simply shrugged. A 24-year-old with
psychological problems was allegedly abused in 1999 when she met Harris
while on holiday with friends.
"In
the villa he was staying in he came upon her in the garden, put his
hand inside her skirt and touched her buttocks," Ms Wass said.
"On another occasion he came to where she was staying, went into her room while she was having a nap and got into bed with her."
The court heard he digitally penetrated her, performed oral sex on her and got her to do the same to him.
Finally, a woman says she met the Australian at a motel near Sydney in 1977.
She was 14 and Harris was visiting with fellow celebrity Harry Butler.
The alleged victim says the man who gave the world the wobble board touched her bottom and declared: "Rolfie deserves a cuddle."
He subsequently followed her to a lift where he held her and touched her breast before she managed to escape.
The jurors further weren't aware that during the trial two Australian DJs went public with allegations against Harris.
Former
Perth radio host Jane Marwick claims the celebrity grabbed her breast
in 2001 while posing for a photo after an interview.
At
the time Ms Marwick thought it was "inappropriate behaviour by a grubby
old man" but said if she'd known Harris allegedly abused people "of
very tender years" she would have taken action.
Former ABC radio host Verity James also alleged Harris groped her in the late 1990s or early 2000s.
"He
kind of pushes you up against a wall in a big hug, grabbing at the
buttocks and rubbing on your breasts," Ms James said in late May.
Harris
on Monday was found guilty of indecently assaulting four women in the
UK between 1968 and 1986. He was convicted on all 12 counts.
Another
six witnesses gave supporting evidence during the trial that they were
harassed in Australia, New Zealand and Malta between 1969 and 1991.
Published:
01:08, 28 June 2014
| Updated:
17:13, 28 June 2014
Police are investigating claims that Leonard Rossiter, pictured, was in a gang of sex attackers
Leonard Rossiter died in his dressing
room at the Lyric Theatre in London where he was starring in Joe Orton’s
black comedy Loot. The squash-playing, keep-fit enthusiast had a heart attack that was sudden and unexpected.
A
unique aspect of the tributes to the much-loved actor and TV sitcom
star was the paucity of wicked anecdotes about him. There were none of
those villainous tales that are normally whispered back-stage about
major stars.
As his
biographer Guy Adams observes, Rossiter approached acting ‘as a job, as
solid and practical as book-keeping or car mechanics’.
Now, 30 years after the actor’s death in 1984 at the age of just 57, an anecdote of unique wickedness has finally emerged.
What’s
more, it is as potentially destructive to the memory of the star of
TV’s Rising Damp and The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin as an
unexploded bomb discovered under the floorboards — and just as
distressing to his 87-year-old widow Gillian Raine.
In
the continuing fall-out of the sordid Jimmy Savile affair, a
66-year-old fellow actor is alleging that in 1968, when he was 18 and
working as an extra on a BBC2 drama in which Rossiter was starring, he
was sexually abused twice while an ‘excited’ Rossiter watched.
They
were making the ground-breaking sci-fi story The Year Of The Sex
Olympics. It depicted a dystopian world in which the media is controlled
by an elite few who keep the masses docile by pumping out pornography
and reality-TV shows.
As
part of the plot, the young actor — as well as a girl extra, also
allegedly attacked — was covered in gold paint. He claims that he
endured two rape attempts by three men in a rehearsal room, and was
shouting for help as Rossiter looked on.
‘He obviously found it a big turn-on,’ he has claimed. ‘He was watching with glee.’
The claim is being investigated
by police officers from Operation Yewtree who are working their way
through hundreds of post-Savile allegations of historic abuse by BBC
stars. Some famous names have been jailed, but there has been only mixed
success in obtaining convictions.
In
the case of Rossiter — an allegation that dates back 46 years — they
will interview up to ten former BBC staff involved in the drama’s
production.
Unsurprisingly,
friends of the family are appalled that three decades after his death,
attempts are being made to bring about what one describes as ‘the rise
and fall of Leonard Rossiter’.
Messages
of support and goodwill have been pouring into the little terraced
house near Chelsea’s football ground in Fulham, southwest London, into
which Leonard and Gillian (his second wife) moved just two years before
his death, and where she — also an actress — still lives.
‘It’s
terrible for Gillian to have to go through all this when Len isn’t here
to defend himself,’ declares one friend of the family. ‘It’s hardly
justice. Everyone’s very upset.’
One of the complainants claimed the abuse
occurred on the set of a drama, which was filmed at BBC Television
Centre, pictured, in 1968
Inevitably, that includes the couple’s
only child, Camilla, 41, who is married and lives in Kingston,
Surrey, and is a stalwart protector of her father’s memory.
‘Camilla
is very angry,’ says one close figure. ‘Her dad’s memory means
everything to her. She can hardly believe that anyone can even think he
behaved like that. He wasn’t a pop star or a disc jockey, but a serious
actor, for goodness sake. His family was everything.’
The
family ethic was certainly important to Liverpool-born Rossiter, who
began his working life as an insurance clerk. His father, a barber and
illicit bookie, was killed by a bomb during the Second World War while on duty
as a volunteer ambulance driver, and young Len’s pay helped out his
widowed mother.
But he
reached a point where, he said, he was ‘bored out of my mind’ with the
insurance business and chucked it in to become an actor. Ever a
perfectionist, he took elocution lessons which resulted in the clear and
concise voice that made his characters so real.
Outside
acting, his passions were his family, good wine, sport (as a boy he was
a spin bowler for Lancashire Colts), Everton FC and playing chess
against an electronic machine.
But as a star, he lived a quiet life, finding fame ‘a bit tiring’.
The reason was he could never avoid people identifying him with his roles and calling out to him in the street.
He
had created two of the finest TV characters of the times, and the
public recognised him as Rigsby, the lecherous, snivelling landlord of
Rising Damp, and as Reggie Perrin, the disillusioned executive who fakes
his own death and returns in disguise to take up his old job.
People
also loved the smugly self-satisfied bore he played in those memorable
Cinzano advertisements, soaking Joan Collins on a passenger jet. Collins
wept bitterly at his death. ‘He was such a wonderful man,’ she said.
The
incidents of alleged abuse in 1968 predated his fame by several years,
although he was already a character actor, having not been born with
conventional, leading-man good looks. But women found his energy and
humour very attractive – in his early acting years one of his conquests
was a young Judi Dench.
He
met his first wife, the actress Josephine Tewson — best known as
Hyacinth Bucket’s long-suffering neighbour in Keeping Up Appearances —
while both worked at Salisbury Rep.
Their
1959 marriage lasted a mere three years, Ms Tewson lamenting that in
their brief time together ‘Len was always going off with other women and
being uncaring’. He married Gillian in 1964, and apart from describing
their marriage as ‘up and down’ — in other words, fairly normal — she
has shed no light on any problems they may have had in their private
life, certainly not his weakness for other women.
If
Leonard Rossiter was indulging in extra-marital activities, they were
carried on with remarkable care and discretion on both sides. Certainly,
the acting world was never buzzing with any gossip.
As
for his years at the BBC, the only gossip was about him being
professionally ‘driven’, a demanding ‘monster’ and a ‘tetchy
perfectionist’. Nothing very sexy there.
But
in 2002, 18 years after his death, a letter fell on to his widow
Gillian’s doormat, the contents of which were every bit as shocking, say
friends, as the allegations now being made against her late husband.
The
writer of the letter was Sue MacGregor, the Radio 4 presenter whose
measured voice and unflappable professionalism have been familiar to
listeners (particularly during her years on the Today programme) across
middle-England for getting on for half a century.
Her
reason for writing was that she had written her autobiography, and she
felt she had to warn Gillian that she intended to describe (in some
detail, as it turned out) her secret affair with Leonard that had gone
on for five years until his death.
It
transpired that at the height of his fame, in 1979, she had interviewed
him on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. The next day he phoned and suggested
they meet for a drink.
‘I
was intrigued,’ wrote MacGregor in her book. ‘Could this be simply a
postscript to our meeting of the day before . . . Or was he interested
in something more?’
This
was the beginning of an extraordinarily clandestine affair, their
meetings always taking place at MacGregor’s Primrose Hill apartment.
Being instantly recognisable, whenever he climbed the steps to her front
door, Rossiter covered his face with a white handkerchief as though he
was blowing his nose.
As for
MacGregor, she said she wondered what her neighbours were making of
this gentleman caller who always seemed to have a cold.
It
was a regular, farcical scene that might have come straight out of a
Rossiter sitcom, but this was serious. MacGregor, then aged 37 to his
52, found him ‘quick, clever, funny and an enthusiastic bon viveur . . .
I found him immensely attractive’.
From
the start, however, he had made it plain he would never leave Gillian.
Meanwhile, MacGregor, as with her close relationship with television
inquisitor Sir Robin Day, assured him she was ‘a determinedly
single soul’ — as she still is today at the age of 72.
But she was in love with him, admitting: ‘I did see other men from time to time but none of them seemed quite as attractive.’
For
MacGregor, the secret visits were not enough, but, despite her tears,
he could give no more. So she accepted the limitations.
Rossiter
continued to visit her once a week, right up to his death. ‘I’m not
proud of my relationship with Leonard,’ she said when promoting her
memoir. ‘But I don’t regret it, because I loved him.’
Asked
this week for a view on the allegations being made against Rossiter,
MacGregor said: ‘I’m going to be really boring and say “No Comment”. I
had hoped that [our affair] had, by now — if I may use the
expression — gone to bed.’
Gillian
has never commented on the broadcaster’s revelations. And the couple’s
daughter, Camilla, who, at the time was as ‘horribly shocked’ as her
mother, has loyally dismissed the saga of her father’s infidelity as
something simply made up by Sue MacGregor in order to sell her book.
Camilla
remembers him as a devoted father who enjoyed playing games and taking
her to the park, a man so worried by reports of crashes involving school
buses that he refused to let her join a school coach trip to Hastings
but drove her there himself — and waited all day until it was time to
bring her home.
So what does she think about these abuse claims against her father? ‘When
someone’s dead,’ she says, ‘people can say what they like about them,
can’t they? And the person can’t say anything to defend themselves.’
BRITISH security services infiltrated and
funded the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange in a covert
operation to identify and possibly blackmail establishment figures, a
Home Office whistleblower alleges.
A number of allegations of child sex abuse emerged after MP Cyril Smith's death [REX]
The
former civil servant has told detectives investigating the activities
of paedophiles in national politics that the Metropolitan Police’s
Special Branch was orchestrating the child-sex lobbying group in the
late 1970s and early 1980s.
The whistleblower,
who has spoken exclusively to the Sunday Express, says he was also
warned off asking why such a notorious group was being handed government
money.
It emerged late last year that PIE was
twice gave amounts of £35,000 in Home Office funding
between 1977 and
1980, the £70,000 total equivalent to over £400,000 in today’s money.
Those
details surfaced only after the whistleblower highlighted his concerns
to campaigning Labour MP Tom Watson and his revelations have triggered
an ongoing Home Office inquiry into why the cash was given to PIE which
was abolished in 1985 after a number of prosecutions.
Until
now, speculation about the grant has centred on Clifford Hindley, the
late Home Office manager who approved the payments. However, the
whistleblower told the Sunday Express he thought higher and more
sinister powers were at play.
He has given a
formal statement to that effect to detectives from Operation Fernbridge,
which is looking into allegations of historic sex abuse at the Elm
Guest House in south-west London.
At that time, questioning anything to do with Special
Branch, especially within the Home Office, was a ‘no-no’.
Mr X, whistleblower
PIE, now
considered one of the most notorious groups of the era, had gained
respectability in political circles. Its members are said to have
included establishment figures, and disgraced Liberal MP Cyril Smith was
a friend of founder member Peter Righton.
In
1981, Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens used Parliamentary privilege to name Sir
Peter Hayman, the deputy director of MI6, as a member of PIE and an
active paedophile. In 1983 Mr Dickens gave the Home Office a dossier of
what he claimed was evidence of a paedophile network of “big, big names,
people in positions of power, influence and responsibility”. The Home
Office says the dossier no longer exists.
Whistleblower
Mr X, whose identity we have agreed to protect, became a very senior
figure in local government before retiring a few years ago. In the late
1970s and early 1980s, he was a full-time consultant in the Home
Office’s Voluntary Services Unit run by Clifford Hindley.
In
1979 Mr X was asked to examine a funding renewal application for PIE,
but he became concerned because the organisation’s goal of seeking to
abolish the age of consent “conflicted” with the child protection
policies of the Department of Health and Social Security and asked for a
meeting with Mr Hindley, his immediate boss.
Elm House in London where it is alleged child abuse incidents took place [MARK KEHOE]
Mr
X recalled: “I raised my concerns, but he told me that I was to drop
them. Hindley gave three reasons for this. He said PIE was an
organisation with cachet and that its work in this field was respected.
“He
said this was a renewal of an existing grant and that under normal Home
Office practice a consultant such as myself would not be involved in
the decision-making process.
“And he said PIE
was being funded at the request of Special Branch which found it
politically useful to identify people who were paedophiles. This led me
not to pursue my objections. At that time, questioning anything to do
with Special Branch, especially within the Home Office, was a ‘no-no’.
“I
was under the clear belief that I was being instructed to back off and
that his reference to Special Branch was expected to make me to do so.
“Hindley
didn’t give me an explicit explanation of what Special Branch would do
with information it gleaned from funding PIE, but I formed the belief
that it was part of an undercover operation or activity. I was aware a
lot of people in the civil service or political arena had an interest in
obtaining information like that which could be used as a sort of
blackmail.”
He said he asked for a file the Home
Office kept on PIE, but his request was refused. However, he was
certain then Tory Home Office Minister Tim Raison, who died in 2011,
must have signed the 1980 funding application.
Mr
X has given a formal written statement to the inquiry set up last year
into former Home Office links with PIE but has refused to meet the
inquiry in person because he fears “repercussions” under the Official
Secrets Act.
Yesterday Tom Watson said: “The
whole sorry business makes it absolutely imperative the Home Secretary
bows to the will of the 114 MPs demanding a full, fearless public
investigation into child sexual abuse.”
Special
Branch was an integral part of the intelligence service gathering
intelligence on spies and political threats to the state. In 2005 it
merged with the anti-terrorism branch to form a Counter Terrorism
Command.
Police are now investigating claims Savile was involved in the death of a child
The report reveals the full scale of the shocking crimes of Jimmy Savile
The sickening extent of Jimmy Savile’s depravity was laid bare
yesterday as damning reports revealed the pervert was free to roam
hospitals abusing victims at will – even targeting the dead, writes Andrew Gregory.
Police
have also launched an investigation into shock claims the former DJ was
involved in the death of a child who he was allegedly spotted dragging
away at a children’s home.
The mass of NHS papers revealed vile
Savile boasted about having sex with corpses in a mortuary, posed with
bodies and wheeled them around at night, stole glass eyes from the dead
and made them into rings and abused teenage patients in their beds as
they recovered from surgery.
And it is said the paedophile
targeted at least 103 men, women, boys and girls aged between five and
75 for his attacks in hospitals and state institutions, which included
three rapes.
Savile preyed on the vulnerable almost to the end – his last known victim was in 2009 when he was 82.
The
allegations he was involved in the death of a child came from a witness
who said he saw the TV presenter and a friend with the girl at
Roecliffe Manor children’s home in Leicestershire during the 60s.
A
report published by University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust said:
“The Informant stated that he witnessed a girl, who he believes was
called April or Elizabeth, being dragged across the garden at Roecliffe
Manor by ‘Jimmy’ and another man.
“She appeared to be in a stupor. The next day the informant was told by the matron that this girl had died.
The
paper concludes it could not corroborate the claim and said it had
found “no reference to the death of a child at Roecliffe Manor”.
But Leicestershire Police confirmed it is probing the claims.
A
spokesman said: “We have received the report on Roecliffe Manor and
started an investigation to determine if abuse took place and if so to
what extent.”
The home was shut shortly after the alleged incident.
In
February it was revealed Savile’s DNA was used to see if he was linked
to a string of major unsolved crimes, including murder.
The NHS
investigators found he targeted at least 103 victims as he roamed
through 28 hospitals across Britain, including Leeds, Broadmoor and
Stoke Mandeville, abusing as hepleased.
He bragged about having sex with corpses at Leeds General Infirmary.
A
former nurse at Broadmoor said Savile told her about his appalling
activities at the Yorkshire hospital, where he was a charity fundraiser
and volunteer porter.
He said he would “muck about” posing with dead bodies of men and women together before taking photographs.
The
nurse added: “I was a little bit upset because I had no concept, in
those days, of… while I’d heard of necrophilia… but I didn’t
understand what it meant.”
It is claimed former Top of the Pops
frontman Savile told her he sexually assaulted the bodies as well,
something he sickeningly dubbed “garamoosh”.
A former patient at
Barnet General Hospital in North London said nurses told her in 1983
that Savile “liked to have sex with dead bodies”.
The Jim’ll Fix It host also boasted about making jewellery from glass eyes that he removed from their bodies.
One
witness told investigators she asked him about his “gross, big silver
rings”. He told her: “D’you know what they are? They are glass eyes from
dead bodies in Leeds mortuary where I work and I love working there,
and I wheel the dead bodies around at night and I love that.”
Another
witness, who was employed at the hospital, said: “I do remember seeing
this ring he had on that looked like an eyeball and… and I must’ve
mentioned it to him. He said: ‘It’s made from the eyeball of a dead
friend’.”
Savile, who died aged 84 in 2011, has openly talked
about his interest in the dead during media interviews over the years.
He told one interviewer how he spent five days with his mother’s corpse.
Chairwoman
of the independent investigation, Dr Sue Proctor, confirmed Savile had
“expressed an interest in the dead” and said he “would take bodies to
the morgue and carried out sex acts on them”.
The probe team
interviewed more than 200 people and reviewed at least 1,300 documents
covering the 50 years Savile was associated with the LGI.
It emerged 43 of his attacks took place in public areas such as wards, corridors and offices.
But
starstruck NHS staff allowed him free rein to sexually abuse patients
and hospital workers “didn’t want to hear or believe” what his tormented
young victims were saying, the report said.
After the report was
published, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust chief executive Julian
Hartley apologised to the victims and thanked them “for being courageous
enough to tell their stories”.
roadmoor Hospital chief executive
Steve Shrubb yesterday told those targeted by the sex beast: “My words
cannot heal the injuries that Jimmy Savile has inflicted on you through
his callous abuse of your vulnerability.
“But I can offer my most sincere and heartfelt apology on behalf of Broadmoor Hospital.”
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt apologised unreservedly on behalf of the Government for letting down patients molested.
He
said: “Savile was a callous, opportunistic, wicked predator who abused
and raped individuals, many of them patients and young people who
expected and had a right to expect to be safe.
"We will urge all
NHS organisations to look carefully at anyone mentioned in these
reports, and of course the police will look at the evidence against any
individuals.”
"The total number of allegations relating to Savile’s sexual abuse now stands at more than 500 victims.
"One was even locked in a room by staff after she became upset by the pervert groping her legs and inner high.
Investigators at the LGI found staff were told about some of the incidents but no allegations reached senior managers.
The
inquiry into his activities at the hospital after he started his
association in 1960 included the testimonies of 60 people who gave
accounts of their experiences of Savile to investigators.
The Leeds team said 19 of those who came forward were under 16 and the age range was five to 75.
They said the majority were teenagers but 19 victims were staff – all women.
The inquiry panel said Savile started working on the hospital radio service.
He then became a regular celebrity visitor, a fundraiser and,from 1968, a volunteer porter.
It said he enjoyed unrestricted access to the hospital as he raised £3.5million through his charity activities.
He
had access to keys to various departments, had a series of offices in
the hospital and even had access to the mortuary, the panel said.
But it was not just in the distant past that the former radio host struck.
In 2009, he was chatting to a 43-year-old woman on a train between Leeds and London and put his hand up her skirt.
And neither was his perversion limited to hospitals and children’s homes.
He is said to have struck in TV studios, in his car and while on the road.
Last year Scotland Yard said it had recorded 214 crimes in 28 police force areas against Savile.
MPs from across the West Midlands are backing calls for a national inquiry into historic cases of child sex abuse.
Tom Watson
MPs from across the West Midlands are backing calls for a national inquiry into historic cases of child sex abuse.
Tom Watson (Lab West Bromwich East) and John Hemming (Lib Dem
Yardley) are among those leading calls for the creation of an
independent panel with powers to demand the release of documents from
every agency involved in investigating abuse claims.
They signed a letter to Theresa May, the Home Secretary, urging her
to set up “a full, properly-
resourced investigation into the failure of
the police to follow the evidence in a number of historical cases of
child sexual abuse”.
Other MPs have not signed the letter but have indicated their support for an investigation.
They included Birmingham MP Khalid Mahmood (Lab Perry Barr) who said
he was concerned that some alleged abusers had been treated as “off
limits” by the police “because of their high-profile personalities and
stardom.”
Birmingham MP Steve McCabe (Lab Selly Oak), a shadow education
minister, said he backed an inquiry of some kind as long as it was
timely and provided closure for victims.
The letter suggests that key evidence in child abuse cases has been
lost. It says a panel must examine “why detailed dossiers – such as the
documents submitted to the Home Office by the late Geoffrey Dickens –
have disappeared” and why police surveillance videos “said to be of
prominent people who have been involved in paedophile rings” have gone
missing.
It also says that child pornography videos seized by HM Customs &
Excise have been lost or destroyed and “investigations appear
repeatedly to have been stalled or abandoned over the last thirty
years”.
Other signatories include Green party MP Caroline Lucas and Conservative Tim Loughton, a former Schools Minister.
Mr Watson has led calls for justice for victims of historic child
abuse, and stunned Commons colleagues in 2012 when he claimed that a
child abuse network connected to a Midland paedophile had once reached
all the way into Parliament and 10 Downing Street. John Hemming, is Liberal Democrat MP for Birmingham Yardley
His claims involved Peter Righton, who was convicted in 1992 by
magistrates in Evesham, Worcestershire, of importing and possessing
pornographic material involving boys under the age of 16.
Righton, who was 66 and lived in Badsey Road, Evesham, at the time of
his conviction, had developed a reputation as an academic expert in
child care, and had delivered lectures on the topic in Birmingham and
elsewhere.
Mr Watson told the Commons: “The evidence file used to convict
paedophile Peter Righton, if it still exists, contains clear
intelligence of a widespread paedophile ring.
“One of its members boasts of his links to a senior aide of a former
Prime Minister, who says he could smuggle indecent images of children
from abroad. The leads were not followed up. But if the file still
exists I want to ensure that the Metropolitan Police secure the
evidence, re-examine it and investigate clear intelligence suggesting a
powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and Number 10.”
Since then, separate allegations have been made about Liberal MP Sir
Cyril Smith, who died in 2010. The Crown Prosecution Service has said he
should have been prosecuted for abuse of boys in Rochdale in the 1960s.
Labour MP Simon Danczuk, who know represents Sir Cyril’s old Rochdale
seat, has written a book alleging the former MP was part of a
high-level paedophile ring operating at Westminster in the 1970s.
Mr Watson has worked closely with investigative journalism website
exaronews.com to push for the independent panel. He said: “There is a
growing consensus among MPs of all political parties that the party
leaders should agree to resource adequately searching investigations
into historical allegations of child sexual abuse.
“The failure to act needs to be urgently addressed, and there is a
belief that much more needs to be done to uncover what has happened in
previous investigations.”
The site of Elm Guest House in Barnes, south-west London, where a circle of VIPs allegedly abused children. (Getty)
The MP who alleged that the late parliamentarian Sir Cyril Smith was a
paedophile said he is prepared to name a second, living, politician who
he believes is guilty of child abuse.
On 1 July, Simon Danczuk, Labour MP for Rochdale, is scheduled to
give evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee concerning
allegations that Smith abused children at the Elm Guest House in
south-west London in the 1970s and the 1980s.
An MP on the committee has confirmed to the Independent on Sunday
that Danczuk will be asked about other visitors to the guest house when
he appears before them.
"If asked any question, I will feel obliged to answer that question," Danczuk told the paper.
Danczuk has previously claimed that an "influential" politician who
is still in parliament, was a visitor at the guest house, where a
paedophile ring that included Smith allegedly groomed and abused boys.
"I'm confident there are questions to answer. I base that on quite
extensive conversations I've had with the police," Danczuk said.
Police launched an investigation into the alleged child abuse ring at Elm Guest House after claims by Labour MP Tom Watson.
Earlier this month Conservative MP for Richmond Zac Goldsmith called
for the UK Home Secretary Theresa May to launch a parliamentary inquiry
into the conclusions of an investigation into child abuse at Knowl View
School in Rochdale, where Smith was a governor.
The committee will ask Danczuk and campaigner Matthew Baker what they believe happened at Elm Guest House.
Protected by parliamentary privilege, they will be able to give evidence without fear of litigation.
Danczuk told the Independent that if asked, he will also name another
living politican who he believes is implicated in a separate child
abuse scandal.
So far, police have made no charges in connection with the investigation.
Officers are also investigating claims that a VIP paedophile ring
abused boys at Grafton Close Children's Home in Richmond, south-west
London.
The MP whose book made sexual abuse allegations against the late
Liberal politician Sir Cyril Smith is planning to use parliamentary
privilege to make similar claims against a second, living,
parliamentarian, next week.
Simon Danczuk, Labour MP for Rochdale, has told The Independent on
Sunday that “if asked any question, I will feel obliged to answer that
question” when he gives evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee on
1 July. An MP on the committee has confirmed that Mr Danczuk will
indeed be asked about visitors to Elm Guest House in south-west London
in the 1970s and 1980s where allegations of sexual abuse and grooming of
children by politicians have been made.
Mr Danczuk has previously
claimed that an unnamed “influential” politician still in Parliament
visited the guest house, where boys were alleged to have been groomed
and abused by a paedophile ring that purportedly included Sir Cyril. Mr
Danczuk told the IoS: “I’m confident there are questions to answer. I
base that on quite extensive conversations I’ve had with the police.” A
number of allegations have been made about events at Elm Guest House,
but no charges have been brought.
The Commons committee will ask
Mr Danczuk and campaigner Matthew Baker to reveal what else they
understand to have happened at Elm Guest House. Mr Danczuk can use
parliamentary privilege as a witness at a select committee, protecting
him from being sued by whoever he names.
Mr Danczuk may also name another politician who, he believes, was involved in a separate historic child abuse scandal.
The
police launched an investigation into allegations of an Elm Guest House
sex ring last year, after allegations by Labour MP Tom Watson.
Earlier
this month, Zac Goldsmith, the Tory MP for Richmond, called on the Home
Secretary, Theresa May, to set up a panel to investigate historical sex
abuse allegations. This was after it emerged that a report into abuse
at the Knowl View school in Rochdale was claimed to have been
suppressed.
Sir Cyril was a governor at Knowl View. He has also been accused of abuse at the Cambridge House hostel in Rochdale.
North East MPs are backing calls for a national inquiry into the extend of child sex abuse in the 70s, 80s and 90s
Mike UrwinTalbot House (formerly Feversham Special School) in Walbottle
MPs from across the North East are backing calls for a national inquiry into historic cases of child sex abuse.
They
are asking Theresa May, the Home Secretary, to set up “a full,
properly-resourced investigation into the failure of the Police to
follow the evidence in a number of historical cases of child sexual
abuse”.
MPs backing the call include Gateshead MP Ian Mearns and South Shields MP Emma Lewell-Buck.
Newcastle
MP Catherine McKinnell said she was moved to back the campaign
following “horrific” cases of child abuse in the North East.
John
Leslie Duncan, 61, from Gateshead, and Kevin Brown, 58, who was already
in jail, were convicted of the abuse they committed against young boys
in their care.
The charges related to incidents that took place throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
Duncan’s
crimes were committed as he worked at Shotley Park Childrens’ Home in
Durham and at the Feversham residential school in Walbottle, Newcastle,
both of which have since closed.
Kevin Brown and John Leslie Duncan who have been jailed for historic sex crimes
Brown’s crimes took place at Feversham school.
Demands
for a wide-ranging inquiry into the extent of sexual abuse in this
country follow claims that cases were covered up in the past - because
those involved had connections with powerful figures at Westminster.
One
Labour MP stunned Commons colleagues in 2012 when he claimed that a
child abuse network connected to a paedophile had once reached all the
way into Parliament and 10 Downing Street.
Tom Watson, best known
for his campaign against phone hacking, told the Commons that evidence
used to convict a paedophile in a case in 1992 “contains clear
intelligence of a widespread paedophile ring.”
He said: “One of
its members boasts of his links to a senior aide of a former Prime
Minister, who says he could smuggle indecent images of children from
abroad.
“The leads were not followed up. But if the file still
exists I want to ensure that the Metropolitan Police secure the
evidence, re-examine it and investigate clear intelligence suggesting a
powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and Number 10.”
Separate
allegations have been made about Liberal MP Sir Cyril Smith, who died
in 2010. The Crown Prosecution Service has said he should have been
prosecuted for abuse of boys in Rochdale in the 1960s.
Labour MP Simon Danczuk
Labour MP Simon Danczuk,
who now represents Sir Cyril’s old Rochdale seat, has written a book
alleging the former MP was part of a high-level paedophile ring
operating at Westminster in the 1970s.
MPs including Tim Loughton, a former Schools Minister, have written to the Home Secretary demanding an inquiry.
And others have expressed their support.
The
letter to Mrs May suggests that key evidence in child abuse cases has
been lost. It says a panel must examine “why detailed dossiers – such as
the documents submitted to the Home Office by the late Geoffrey Dickens
– have disappeared” and why police surveillance videos “said to be of
prominent people who have been involved in paedophile rings” have gone
missing.
It also says that child pornography videos seized by HM
Customs & Excise have been lost or destroyed and “investigations
appear repeatedly to have been stalled or abandoned over the last
thirty years”.
Other signatories include Green party MP Caroline Lucas.
A doll with its mouth taped and tears drawn on its face, with a
notice "1 of 800 DEAD BABIES" pinned to it, tied to the railings of the
Dail in Dublin.A woman who spent eight years in a religious-run orphanage says she
is haunted by memories of a room of “secret” babies she never saw grow
up.The woman, who was put into Mount Carmel Industrial School in Co
Westmeath when she was eight, revealed there was a special dormitory in
the building that none of the girls was allowed enter.Mountcarmel Industrial School in Moate, Co Westmeath
But speaking exclusively to the Irish Mirror, the Co Offaly native,
62, said the room was full of babies in cots who no one ever saw leave.
And admitting that she has been haunted by these memories for years,
she admitted the Tuam buried babies scandal has left her wondering what
ever became of the tots.
The mum-of-four, who now lives in Co Louth, revealed: “They were in a
tiny room that we had to pass when we were going to the toilet but no
one was allowed into it and there was a curtain covering the window but
we all knew there were babies in there, sharing cots.
Cots lined up in a mother and baby home
“When I was young I suppose none of it added up but it all came back
to haunt me later in life because we never saw the babies leave the
room, we never saw them being walked outside in prams or playing outside
as toddlers and the scary thing is we never saw any of them grow up.
“I never spoke about any of my memories until a few years ago when I
plucked up the courage to tell my daughter and now that these stories
have come out about Tuam and the other mother-and-baby homes, I just
felt I had to talk about it.
Specialist Engineers use ground probing radar at site of Tuam mass grave yesterday
“If the government is going to start an inquiry into these
institutions they need to look at Mount Carmel and all the industrial
schools like it because there are a lot of unanswered questions about
what really went on behind those walls.”
The woman, who asked to keep her identity private, claims she was
abused from when she was eight until she turned 13 by a young priest who
used to come to visit the girls in the industrial school.
Known as number 52, she also said she suffered “horrendous” physical
and mental abuse at the hands of the nuns who ran Mount Carmel.
She told the Irish Mirror: “I remember when my periods started they
never told me what it meant, they used to call me a dirty animal and I
just feared there was something seriously wrong with me.
“I was terrified. The priest started abusing me when I was eight, he
only picked certain girls to prey on and I remember I used to see his
car driving into the yard and I’d just start shaking.
“To this day I still remember his number plate, it’s ingrained on my
brain forever just like the memories of the babies in the secret room."
Getty Images Irish Examiner: Mothers protest, ask for investigation by judge of child mass grave site
Marks on the bones of nearly 800 children found in a Roman Catholic
Nun septic tank indicated they had been ritually killed a source within
the Irish Garda police force revealed this week. The informant told five
judges of the International Common Law Court of Justice (ICLCJ)
in Brussels that forensic experts have confirmed the decapitation and
dismemberment of babies in the mass grave resembled the usual signs of
ritualistic murder. Last week death certificates were released on the
796 Irish children, ages two months to nine years, found in a cistern at
the Catholic St. Mary’s Mothers and Babies Home near Taum.
The forensic evidence appeared to link the children’s deaths to the
global elite Ninth Circle Satanic Child Sacrifice Cult network. Since
last month Roman Catholic and Irish government officials have been named
by witnesses at the ICLCJ Court as members of the Ninth Circle Satanic
Child Sacrifice Cult. “These children weren’t just cut up, they were
massacred” the policeman from the Irish Garda told the court.
Yesterday the Irish government and Roman Catholic Church may have
commenced a cover-up by closing off the child mass grave site and
announcing their own in-house “investigation.” “That is the standard
procedure in any institutional cover-up” stated a June 11 declaration
issued by the ICLCJ Court Citizen Prosecutor’s Office in Brussels.
Since March the ICLCJ International Court has been prosecuting members
of the Ninth Circle Satanic Child Sacrifice Cult network for child
trafficking, pedophilia and murder that possibly linked to 34 child mass
grave sites discovered in Ireland, Canada and Spain. The child mass
grave sites were on properties mainly owned by the Roman Catholic
Church, Anglican Church, United Church of Canada and Irish and Canadian
governments. The Canadian 32 child mass grave sites have been refused
excavation by the Catholic Church, Canadian government and Crown of
England even though children’s remains have been uncovered and examined
since 2008 by licensed archeologists including one from the Smithsonian
Institute.
In the last month over 20 witnesses from nine different countries have
named members of the Ninth Circle Satanic Child Sacrifice Cult network
as their perpetrators. Global elites under indictment included European
royalty and prominent church and government officials in England, Italy,
Belgium, Holland, Ireland, Canada and the US.
Yesterday hundreds of protestors marched in Dublin
to the Irish Dail, or Parliament, demanding a full inquiry with the
power to prosecute. Two seven-year-old girls handed Irish Justice
Minister Frances Fitzgerald and Children’s Minister Charlie Flanagan a
petition signed by 30,000 people from Ireland and around the world. It
demanded a judge lead the inquiry into the Catholic Church-run and Irish
state-sanctioned institution for single mothers.
“We are giving you and the Government this petition,”
Dasha Klyaritskaya-Hilliard and her friend Juliette Bruce Merzouk told
the ministers “so that we can understand why other children just like us
were not treated with the love and respect that is the right of every
child.”
The protestors were organized by a group called Justice for the Tuam
Babies. “It was somber, but at the same time uplifting that people had
come together and were able to commemorate the little lives that were
lost and the abuses that took place,” said spokesperson Kevin Squires.
“Defiantly, there was a subdued anger there. I don’t think people would
have come out if they weren’t angry.”
There was a right to be angry, even furious. Since last month over 20
ICLCJ court witnesses have named as their perpetrators at least 24
members of the Ninth Circle Satanic Child Sacrifice Cult network. Those
targeted by prosecutors were nine top judges including British High
Court Judge Fulford, brother of the present King of Holland Prince
Friso, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Prince Bernhard of the
Netherlands; British, Dutch and Belgian royal family members including
Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip and Dutch Queen Wilhemina, her family
and consort King Hendrick; Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, Pope
Francis, former Pope Ratzinger, Dutch Catholic Cardinal Alfrink, a
Canadian Catholic bishop, plus senior government ministers, politicians
and businessmen in Belgium, England and the US.
A Catholic Jesuit Order dated Dec. 25 1967 and called the Magisterial Privilege
has been provided to the ICLCJ Court from the Vatican archives. The
document was said to show that every new Pope was required to
participate in Ninth Circle Satanic Child Sacrifices of newborn
children, including drinking of their blood. For the last month the five
ICLCJ judges have “examined numerous eyewitnesses and Vatican archival
documentation that clearly link Catholic Jesuit head Adolfo Pachon, Pope
Francis, former Pope Ratzinger and Archbishop of Canterbury Justin
Welby to the ritual rape and killing of children as recently as 2010.”
In 2012-2013 the ICLCJ Court in Brussels successfully prosecuted 40
global elite suspected members of the Ninth Circle Satanic Child
Sacrifice Cult network. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip were found
guilty of taking 10 children from the British Columbia Kamloops native
residential school on Oct. 10 1964. The native parents of the children
haven’t seen them since. Within days of Pope Ratzinger’s Feb. 2013
guilty verdict, he resigned from office. Last month Catholic Jesuit head
Adolfo Panchon announced his resignation after the ICLCJ Court linked
him to Ninth Circle Satanic Child Sacrifice Cult ceremonies.
Evidence in the 2013 ICLCJ Court trial in Brussels on Canada’s 50,000
forgotten missing native children was chronicled in Kevin Annett’s
“Hidden No Longer” that can be read for free here.
The children died, disappeared or rest unacknowledged in at least 32
unconsecrated mass graves on grounds owned by the government of Canada,
Roman Catholic Church, Anglican Church and United Church of Canada. It
was found that for more than a century and until 1996 the Canadian
native children died from rape, torture, germ warfare, slave labor,
medical experimentation, involuntary sterilizations and assaults defined
as genocide by the UN Convention on Genocide.
The ICLCJ International Court has over 450 Common Law Peace Officers in
13 countries, with 51 local chartered groups operating. Local organizing
funds are available for common law groups wishing to apply. To contact
the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS),
ICLCJ Court in Brussels, its local affiliates, or to volunteer email or
call: itccscentral@gmail.com, hiddenfromhistory1@gmail.com,
386-323-5774 (USA) or 250-591-4573 (Canada).
About the Author
Judy Byington, MSW, LCSW, retired, author of “Twenty Two Faces” (www.22faces.com),
is an investigative journalist whose articles on international child
exploitation rings have been cited in over 3,000 websites. The retired
therapist, Supervisor, Alberta Mental Health and Director Provo Family
Counseling Center, is the CEO of Child Abuse Recovery and Speakers
Bureau (www.ChildAbuseRecovery.com).
If you have news tips about child abuse issues please email Judy
info@22faces.com. You are invited to sign our petition to Congress for
an investigation of the CIA mind control of children: http://www.chang e.org/petitions/us-congress-survivors-request-investigation-cia-mind-control-of-children
Rochdale
Council misled police looking into alleged paedophiles linked to a
residential school by withholding a report detailing claims of serious
sex abuse there, a former detective says.
Det Supt Bob Huntbach, who is now retired, led inquiries into
people linked to Knowl View School in 2000 but says he did not see the
1991 report.
Mr Huntbach says arrests would have been made had he been given it.
The council says it will not comment until it has completed its own inquiry.
Mr Huntbach said he asked Rochdale Council for all the
relevant paperwork but claims he was never given the unpublished report,
which detailed serious sexual abuse at the school.
Mr Huntbach believes the council "misled" his investigation
"I was not told what I should have known," said Mr Huntbach,
who at the time was head of the police domestic violence and child abuse
unit in Rochdale.
“Start Quote
I'm really annoyed as an individual now in retirement thinking I could have done more”
Bob HuntbachFormer Detective Superintendent
The BBC showed him the report, written and sent to Rochdale Council in 1991 by a health professional who had visited the school.
'Criminal issues'
It detailed boys as young as eight involved in sexual activity while others had been "forced" to have sex.
The report also stated that men from as far away as Sheffield
were travelling to public toilets in Rochdale to have sex with Knowl
View boys aged between eight and 13.
Mr Huntbach said he was never shown the report and if he had
"it would have been a totally different inquiry with a different amount
of staff and a different amount of effort put into it".
"There's an obvious child protection issue and there's obviously criminal issues that needed to be addressed," he said.
The former detective said if he had seen the report he "would have made arrests".
He said: "I'm disappointed that the council didn't engage
with us at the time, for the simple reason it was the ideal opportunity
and I'm really annoyed as an individual now in retirement thinking I
could have done more, I wasn't given the opportunity to do that."
Had he read the report, Mr Huntbach said, he "could have held a lot of people to account".
"It would have been an inquiry taking a different intensity
and there would have been a lot more arrests made. As it was, because we
had no access to this report, we had very little to speak to people
about things, there was nothing there," he added.
In April this year, Greater Manchester Police began a fresh
investigation into allegations of abuse and a possible cover-up at Knowl
View.
Knowl View School
Residential school for vulnerable boys opened in 1969 initially
as a joint venture between councils in Oldham, Bolton, Rochdale and
Lancashire
Closed in 1995
Independent review set up by Rochdale Council will examine all
decision making relating to Knowl View from the late 1980s until the
school's closure
More than 10 former pupils at the school have come forward as
part of Greater Manchester Police's current investigation into abuse
A separate independent inquiry led by Neil Garnham QC is investigating whether Rochdale Council could have done more.
Rochdale Council referred the BBC to the law firm working on
the inquiry, which said it was "not appropriate" to comment until the
review had been completed.
Mr Huntbach now believes he was misled by Rochdale council.
"There are two ways people can lie to you, by not telling you
what you should know or outright lie to you, I think I was not told
what I should have known," he said.
'Dark forces'
The former detective says he also wanted to investigate the
late Cyril Smith. Since the former MP for Rochdale's death in 2010,
allegations have surfaced that he abused young boys at the school.
Mr Huntbach said he had been aware of allegations against Smith but his enquiries came to nothing.
There was also a wider police investigation at the time,
Operation Cleopatra, into allegations relating to care homes across
Greater Manchester. It was also looking at documents and it is not clear
whether officers on this inquiry saw the 1991 report by the health
professional.
Child abuse lawyer Peter Garsden, who represents one man who
alleges he was abused in the 1970s at Knowl View, has told the BBC the
unpublished reports about the school provide key evidence about what
Rochdale council knew at the time.
He said: "In the last 20 years that I've been dealing with
children homes investigations I've never seen anything like this, where a
report has been done itemising child abuse and very little reaction has
resulted from it."
Mr Garsden, who is also president of the Association of Child
Abuse Lawyers, added: "There should have been a public inquiry, the
children should have been properly interviewed and there should have a
police investigation leading to convictions."
He describes "dark forces" operating at the time in Rochdale
and says the evidence suggests a paedophile ring was operating for
decades in the town.
He said: "This scandal had been going on for many years and
paedophiles had been operating there unchecked since at least the 1970s.
"I think there must have been a paedophile ring operating in
Knowl View because there were external sex offenders being introduced to
the home and that could only have happened by invitation of someone
internally."
Detectives investigating the allegations of abuse at Knowl
View say they have identified more than 21 suspects, including Cyril
Smith. Ten people have said they were abused.
Linda says her son experienced physical abuse at the school
The full scale of the abuse at the school is only now starting to emerge.
Linda who lives in Rochdale and did not want to give her
surname said her son, Stephen, was repeatedly beaten by staff at the
school.
Stephen would stay at the school from Monday to Friday after it was decided he could not attend a mainstream school.
She said he wasn't sexually abused but faced a brutal regime from the moment he arrived as a nine-year-old.
She said: "His face was smashed into a radiator and caused
him to have a nose bleed. They said they would hit him with wet towels,
it's ruined my son's life and it's ruined a lot of other lives."
'I feel guilty'
Linda's son, now in his 30s, is no longer able to live an independent life.
"He's still at home with his mum, he's very reliant on
family, he won't eat in front of people, he thinks people are watching
him," she said.
She said she believed what happened to her son was a "crime against children".
She said she was never made aware of the 1991 report, which
warned there would be a "public scandal" if parents found out - despite
her son being a pupil there at the time - and had she know about the
allegations she would have removed him from the school.
"I would have took him straight out of there, they would have
seen smoke from his heels, he wouldn't have been there to be abused no,
I still feel guilty about it, I feel as though I owe him, I owe him in
some way to make up for what he suffered because I let him go there."
Linda says she wants compensation for the life her son has
had since the abuse. The independent inquiry into the role of Rochdale
Council is due to report at the end of July.
