The weight of mounting allegations of police corruption in London in handling cases of child abuse, often committed by persons from the upper echelons of the British establishment, has led to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) announcing an investigation into the allegations.
The IPCC, a public body set up to oversee the system for handling complaints against the police in England and Wales, announced on Monday that it will investigate 14 referrals detailing allegations of corruption in the Metropolitan Police Service in relation to child sex offences dating from the 1970s to the 2000s.
The allegations relate to instances of the police suppressing evidence, hindering or halting investigations, and covering up offences at the behest of Members of Parliament and senior police officers.
The IPCC Deputy Chair Sarah Green said the allegations are of “grave concern” and of “historic, high level corruption of the most serious nature.”
“We will oversee the investigations and ensure that they meet the terms of reference that we will set…and I would like to reassure people of our absolute commitment to ensuring that the investigations are thorough and robust.”
The announcement came on the day BBC 's Newsnight programme telecast a special story on the issue, based on evidence provided by a police whistleblower. According to the informant, in the early 1980s, detectives who had collected evidence of child abuse against Liberal Member of Parliament late Cyril Smith, were told by a senior police officer to drop the case failing which they would face disciplinary action under the Official Secrets Act.
The undercover officers had kept a watch on the activities of the paedophile ring in a property in South London. At one point, Mr. Smith was even brought to a police station for questioning, but was released within hours. The case officers were ordered to hand over all the evidence they had, including notebooks and video footage, according to Newsnight ’s informant.
The Metropolitan police had launched their own investigation code-named Operation Midland last November after allegations surfaced of a paedophile ring that included senior politicians more than 30 years ago.
Labour MP Simon Danczuk from Rochdale (the same constituency that had previously elected Cyril Smith) and a long-time campaigner against child-abuse, told the BBC that Mr. Smith was protected by “powerful people” because he knew too much about them. Mr Danczuk is the author, along with Matthew Baker of Smile for the Camera: The Double Life of Cyril Smith, published last year.
Allegations of police covering up cases of child sexual abuse have been widely reported in the British media in recent months. Earlier this month, the Daily Mail published cabinet documents that it had acquired under a Freedom of Information Act request, documents that suggested that the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had been told about, but chose to ignore, child abuse allegations against Mr. Smith before he was knighted in 1988.
The allegations of child abuse at the highest levels in Britain have multiplied ever since the shocking story of the popular television personality Jimmy Savile’s unremitting abuse of children broke. As a result of complaints that began to roll out, the police launched Operation Yewtree, an investigation into child abuse claims against well-known media personalities. Now the spotlight is being turned on the political class and the police themselves.
The National Association for People Abused in Childhood, a U.K. support network, estimates that a million children a year in the U.K. suffer some form of abuse, and that one in four children is abused at some time.
The organisation has welcomed the IPCC investigation. “We have been aware of cover-ups, but unlike in the past where the police did not take complaints seriously, the force today is determined to get to the truth of these allegations,” Jon Bird, Operations Manager of NAPAC, told The Hindu .
According to Mr. Bird, a high level of reporting of such cases is one reason why child abuse appears so rampant in Britain as compared to countries where the problem remains hidden. He says that their 10 year-old organisation gets 5,000 phone complaints and 1,500 email complaints a year. “I do think people are speaking up more,” he says.
However, there are aspects to the problem that are specific to this country, he argues. The first is the long history of child exploitation in Britain. “Child exploitation goes back to Victorian times. It is an attitude that goes back centuries. And then we have an elite who went to boarding schools where this was widely prevalent. Not just abuse by men of boys, but by bigger boys against smaller boys.” These students then went on to occupy high positions in the military, judiciary and in politics.
