Super-injunctions and the child abuse cover-up

Today, in a wide-ranging conversation, it was suggested to me that a figure who is ... how shall I put this? ... possibly of relevance to the matters to be considered by the UK Child Abuse Inquiry had obtained a super-injunction some time ago.

A super-injunction, as I understand it, imposes on the mainstream media a ban on repeating specified information or allegations and also prevents the mainstream media from even saying that the super-injunction exists.

That started me thinking about how often this might have happened.

Could super-injunctions have contributed in a material way to the cover-up of child abuse?

If one or more super-injunctions exist which relate to the matters which fall to be considered by the Child Abuse Inquiry, could this explain at least one part of the surprising silence of the mainstream media on some of the matters which attract a lot of discussion on Twitter?

Some other general questions:

• When was the first super-injunction granted?
• Would it be contempt of court for me publicly to ask an individual if they had sought and obtained a super-injunction?
• Would the UK Child Abuse Inquiry be able to find out whether any super-injunctions existed which related to matters of relevance to the Inquiry?
• Where / how could I find out more about super-injunctions?

Were Fred and Rose West part of a paedophile ring?

I've just been watching a recording of a recent Channel 5 programme about Fred and Rose West and their horrific crimes committed in and around Gloucester.

One throwaway comment in the programme raised a serious question in my mind.

The comment was to the effect that some of the murdered girls (or women) were shared around among other men.

It wasn't clear to me whether or not it was girls (Fred West apparently first had sex with one of his daughters when she was 8 years old) or young women or both.

It raised in my mind the disturbing possibility that Fred and Rose West could have been sharing young girls around to be tortured, raped and killed.

The investigation into the crimes of Fred and Rose West was enormous.

I wonder if the possibility of sharing of girls among other men somehow got lost in the massive amount of information that had to be put together for the court case.

The focus in the media, so far as I'm aware, has always been on the crimes of Fred and Rose West.

Does anyone know if the question of girls being shared around among other men was fully investigated?

Or if any of the other men possibly involved in the abuse of girls have been identified or prosecuted?

Were Home Office priorities designed to protect paedophiles nationwide?

I recently blogged about my shock in response to reading two articles from 2000 by Nick Davies. See I didn't know. I simply didn't know

As well as my strong emotional reaction to the stories it also felt as if a light went on in my head  about an idea I'd already been thinking about, If I were a paedophile how would I protect my own?

The question that burst into my head was this:

Were Home Office priorities designed to protect paedophiles nationwide?

The section of one of the Nick Davies articles that I want to focus on in this post is here:

For senior officers at Avon and Somerset police, the big problem was the Home Office, which now steers police activity with a list of "best value performance indicators", on which each force is judged. There are 37 of them. But there is nothing anywhere in any of them about child abuse. By diverting resources into Operation Panorama, Avon and Somerset was risking its corporate neck.

The quote is from this article: A terraced street in suburbia that shrouded a guilty secret

The question that I can't get out of my mind is this:

Could the absence of child abuse in  Home Office priorities be a deliberate ploy designed by a closet paedophile in the Home Office?

If, and it is an "if", there was a closet paedophile in the Home Office making sure (or maximising the chance) that child abuse was absent from the list of national priorities that would be a fantastic way to minimise or prevent investigation of child abuse cases nationwide.

Police forces were steered towards the Home Office priorities and away from investigation of non-priority areas such as child abuse.

Senior Police officers were, I understand, judged on their performance in relation to these Home Office targets.

So they, as a group. would tend to steer resources in their force to investigations that related to Home Office priorities.

And they, as a group, would tend to steer resources in their force away from investigtions into non-priority areas such as paedophilia.

Senior officers would view as peripheral investigations into child abuse.

So child abuse investigations, even where they were allowed to start in any Police force, would tend to be starved of resources and would be more likely to run into the sand.

The predictable result was that child abusers around the country would be safer, because the Home Office priorities would, in effect, steer every Police force in the country away from investigating child abuse.

Do I have any evidence that there was a closet paedophile in the Home Office? No, I don't.

However, the potential importance of premeditated nationawide obstruction of child abuse investigations by such a "simple" policy decision convinces me that a worthwhile Child Abuse Inquiry must examine this issue with a fine tooth comb.

When did discussions about such targets take place?

Are such meetings minuted?

Has the correspondence been retained?

Which individuals, if any, proposed that child abuse shouldn't be a priority?

Who took the final decisions about what should or should not be Home Office priorities?

Do such discussions or correspondence date back to Leon Brittan's time at the Home Office?

I think these are important questions for a worthwhile Child Abuse Inquiry to address. Don't you?

If I were a paedophile how would I protect my own?

I touched on this question in the passing in a previous post, The judiciary should be included in the UK Child Abuse Inquiry Terms of Reference

But I think it's important to focus thought specifically on the question of how a paedophile in various positions of power and/or influence can protect other paedophiles.

I'm asking these questions to provoke others into asking them explicitly.

Many child abuse researchers know much more detail of individual cases than I do. I'm hoping that by my asking these questions it might help others to think about connections or patterns of behaviour  that might otherwise be missed.

I plan to blog about possible answers to specific questions in future posts.

If I were a paedophile and I was a social worker, how could I facilitate paedophile behaviour and protect myself and other paedophiles?

If I were a paedophile and I was a Police officer, how could I facilitate paedophile behaviour and protect myself and other paedophiles?

If I were a paedophile and I was a senior Police officer, how could I facilitate paedophile behaviour and protect myself and other paedophiles?

If I were a paedophile and I worked in the Crown Prosecution Service, how could I facilitate paedophile behaviour and protect myself and other paedophiles?

If I were a paedophile and I was a judge, how could I facilitate paedophile behaviour and protect myself and other paedophiles?

If I were a paedophile and I was Attorney General or Solicitor General, how could I facilitate paedophile behaviour and protect myself and other paedophiles?

If I were a paedophile and I worked in the Home Office - perhaps in a senior or very senior position -  how could I facilitate paedophile behaviour and protect myself and other paedophiles?

I didn't know. I simply didn't know

I've just been reading two articles originally published in the Guardian in 2000.

Having read both articles from beginning to end I'm in a state of shock.

The words that keep churning through my head are "I didn't know. I simply didn't know".

I (naively) thought that I knew quite a bit about child abuse but something in the two articles by Nick Davies has shown me how little I have appreciated the horror of what was happening in the sordid trading of young boys around Europe.

I guess it's a mixture of the scale of what has been happening and the succession of intimate cruelties perpetrated by the powerful on the powerless.

A light has gone on for me, and it's shining on a scene of premeditated cruelty ... on a truly horrifying scale.

The two articles are a must read, in my opinion.

But be warned ... you'll need a strong stomach to make it all the way through them both from beginning to end.

Only one of the two articles is still on the Guardian web site, so far as I can establish.

In seeming logical order here are the two articles that have had such an effect on me:

1. A terraced street in suburbia that shrouded a guilty secret

2. Paedophilia is easy, 2: how a paedophile murder inquiry fell apart

That's not the order I read the articles in but it seems to me to be the logical order to read them in.

As I say I am left stunned ... shocked ... by what I've read.

I'm torn between warning you about reading them and insisting that the horror of them demands that you read them.

That choice is up to you.

I didn't know. I simply didn't know.

But now I do I am even more determined that the proposed Child Abuse Inquiry must be worthy of its "once in a generation" label.

It has to be fit for purpose.

What is Child (Sexual) Abuse? What should be included in a Child Abuse Inquiry?

When I wrote the draft proposals for an improved Child Abuse Inquiry, Scratchpad - Designing a once-in-a-lifetime Child Abuse Inquiry , I deliberately didn't include a consideration of the basic question, "what is child (sexual) abuse"?

That was partly because I think a detailed consideration of the question throws up some thorny, and likely controversial, "edge cases".

I think the following reasonably summarises (at least part of) the legal position. I would welcome any suggested improvements in my understanding from any lawyers who have expertise in this area.

I assume that the following should be included:

• Adult male abuse on under 16s, male or female
• Adult female abuse on under 16s, male or female

In that context I take adult to mean 18 or over. That's the legal definition of the supposed overnight transition from a child to an adult, but is it the correct one in the context of a child abuse inquiry?

And what of these situations?

• Adult male sexual activity with a "child" of 16 or 17
• Adult female sexual activity with a "child" of 16 or 17

As far as the Law is concerned a 16 or 17 year old is a child.

Paradoxically (although it varies by date) the Law also assumes that a 16 or 17 year old, whether male or female, can give consent to sexual activity.

If that's the case what factors, if any, should be taken to be sufficient to move mutually consenting lawful sexual activity into the "child abuse" category?

And what of activity of a Jimmy Savile type character with an 18 year old "vulnerable" adult?

By definition, that's not "child" abuse since the victim is 18 and therefore, in the eyes of the Law, an adult.

But it has similarities to child abuse  - an adult takes advantage for sexual pleasure of a defect in "capacity" of the victim.

And should abuse by a 16 or 17 year old "child" on another child be considered to be "child (sexual) abuse"?

If so, when should it be considered abuse?

How is it to be distinguished from lawful consenting sexual activity among 16 and 17 year olds? Are there criteria that can be easily expressed in a way that could be included in Terms of Reference?

These are just some of the questions that must be considered when the limits of what a Child (Sexual) Abuse Inquiry should consider.

And, again I'll mention the very difficult but very important issue that I touched on in the post, What of the missing children? - A question to send shivers down the spine, should missing children be included in a Child (Sexual) Abuse Inquiry?

It seems likely that at least some children who disappeared years ago and have never been seen again have been killed.

But if no body has been found can we assume they have been killed?

Can we assume they have been killed as part of some form of child abuse?

Can we assume they have been killed as part of some form of child sexual abuse?

And what of the situations where a badly decomposed body has been found long after the disappearance? The cause of death may not be capable of being determined.

The child is dead, "foul play" may be suspected, but in reality nobody (other than the killer) really knows the cause of death.

And nobody but the (assumed) killer knows whether sexual abuse was or was not a factor in the killing of the child.

Yet, is it a running away from reality if a Child Abuse Inquiry doesn't address the issue of missing children and the dreadful possibility that several, maybe dozens, maybe hundreds have been killed and their bodies never found?

I don't offer answers to these questions here.

These questions are put forward here to stimulate discussion about what the boundaries of a Child Abuse Inquiry should be.

Thank you Tim Berners-Lee

Thank you Tim Berners-Lee.

Without your having invented the World Wide Web I think the community that has built up to research child abuse and share information about it would have had a far tougher job.

Sharing of information through social media such as Twitter has made an enormous contribution to the creation of a community of survivors and concerned others.

Without the several Web sites that are a treasure trove of information about child abuse, including old newspaper cuttings and reports, where would we be?

Perhaps the question from Tom Watson (at the prompting, so I understand, of Peter McKelvie) to David Cameron at Prime Minister's Questions would have kick started a Child Abuse Inquiry.

 Perhaps not.

It seems to me to be at least as likely that the momentum that now exists would simply not have built up without the World Wide Web.

The law of unintended consequences seems to me to apply.

However, thank you again Tim Berners-Lee.