By SIMON DANCZUK FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 00:52, 4 April 2015 | UPDATED: 12:04, 4 April 2015
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... Clegg.htmlSince I exposed Cyril Smith as a child abuser, my world has seemed to revolve around two types of people.
Former police officers who revealed they knew about him all along but had looked the other way or were silenced from on high.
And politicians who claim to have known nothing, but could have done plenty about it.
Ex-policeman Karl told me how in the early Eighties he had been on a CID training course in Wakefield.
A lecturer from the British Transport Police showed the hundred or so officers some security camera footage to illustrate how transport police could detect crime at key transport hubs.
‘Suddenly on the screen, there was footage from Euston of a guy approaching young boys at the station,’ Karl said. ‘It was a dirty old man trying it on with boys.’
There was a murmur of recognition. ‘That’s Cyril Smith,’ someone piped up. ‘Everyone realised it was him,’ said Karl.
So they were being shown a training video of Cyril Smith grooming boys? ‘Pretty much, yeah,’ he shrugged.
But didn’t you wonder why no one was doing anything about Smith? ‘I thought at the time someone should be doing something, but you don’t step on other people’s toes. I presumed Transport Police were dealing with it.’
Another former officer gave me details of Operation Cleopatra, which was launched in 1997 to investigate child abuse in children’s homes and schools across Greater Manchester.
One they looked at was Knowl View, a residential school in Rochdale for children with learning difficulties, where Smith had abused boys.
In 1999 this officer submitted a file recommending Smith be prosecuted for child abuse. But once again this fell on deaf ears. ‘They decided not to pursue him and I never saw my report again,’ he explained.
This had been going on for 40 years, ever since the police made their first inquiries about Smith and boys. But no one ever did anything. And the key question remains: why not?
I’d heard so many stories by now that I had no doubt this was a problem that extended further than Cyril Smith. I knew there must be other politicians involved. Why else would he be protected?
Other stories were now appearing in the newspapers linking MPs with the murder of children during depraved, violent orgies. I spoke to other officers about this and pressed everyone who came to me about it for information. But one thing held them back. There was an incredible fear of speaking out.
As the stakes were getting higher, I’d be passed on to colleagues who’d panic when I approached them and suggest I talk to someone else. Everyone I came across seemed to be touched by the same anxiety. And then I realised why.
The phone rang one afternoon and a woman said she wanted to talk about child abuse stories she’d seen in the newspapers. She was a lawyer who used to operate in Barnes, South-West London, and had represented a young client who had worked at Elm Guest House, which had long been suspected of being run as a gay brothel.
‘The police began to give him a hard time,’ she explained. ‘The questioning was getting a bit aggressive.’ When she tried to intervene, the police officer took her to one side.
He pulled out a police statement and flung it at her in disgust, she recalled. ‘He was angry and told me to read it because that’s why he had to push the lad.’
Up until that moment, she didn’t know much about what had happened at Elm Guest House. But as she began to read the statement before her, a chilling realisation of how serious this was began to dawn on her.
‘The statement was from a young man and detailed how his father had raped him and then told him he would be raped by other men there,’ she said. ‘Among those who had raped him were politicians.’
We were getting dangerously close to things that powerful people did not want ever to be made public. And those helping to break the silence were now coming under worrying pressure from above.
One of the stories I’d told in my book came from former Special Branch detective Tony Robinson, who revealed how a sex abuse dossier had been seized from Lancashire police by MI5.
I spoke to him again early this year after my book had come out. There was anger in his voice as he described a call he’d received out of the blue from Lancashire Police towards the end of 2014.
Now recovering from a serious illness, the frustration and tiredness in his voice were palpable.
‘A young officer called me and wanted to talk about Cyril Smith,’ he said. ‘I’ve been retired 31 years and never heard anything from the police. And now I suddenly get this call. It was obvious they were trying to warn me off. I found it very unnerving.’
A febrile mood was forming in police circles and I could only imagine the kind of calls that were being made, the pressure they were being put under.
‘Everyone’s trying to keep a lid on it,’ Robinson complained. ‘We really need to clean out the Augean stables.’ He even preyed on boys in jailSteve was another informant who emerged from the past, after my book was published, with a harrowing story of Smith’s activities, this time at the Buckley Hall Young Offenders’ Institution in Rochdale.
He was 18 when he arrived there as an inmate at the beginning of the Eighties — and it wasn’t long before he encountered Smith.
Cyril — who appears to have had the run of the place — walked into his cell one afternoon and quietly closed the door. Before Steve had time to question who this giant of a man was, Smith was in his face, scolding him.
‘You’ve been a bad lad, haven’t you?’ he hissed. ‘I hear you’ve been giving other lads cigarettes. Hand them over.’
When Steve protested that he hadn’t got any cigarettes. Smith made him take his clothes off. ‘I need to search you thoroughly,’ he told him. He then told the naked teenager to bend over and he abused him.
The experience was so distressing that Steve trashed his cell, screamed for hours and beat his fists against the door until they bled.
But no one would believe him and he was eventually taken to Manchester’s Strangeways Prison and put in solitary confinement.
Back at Buckley Hall, Smith continued to be a frequent visitor.
No one challenged him and he was able to wander around the place and prey on boys for years. One police officer told me he suspected Smith had keys to the place.
Afterwards I lay on my bed for hours, staring at the ceiling and wondering what had just happened
His hold over those in charge there was such that a teenager named Dave, the prison’s table tennis champion, was ordered to play an exhibition match against Smith in December 1974 in front of inmates and staff — and to deliberately lose it to the superobese and unfit MP.
Four decades later, Dave described for me how ‘we were all assembled in the hall and this huge guy, like the Michelin man, came in. The top brass were fawning over him like he was royalty. I hadn’t a clue who he was. We began to play and, without thinking, I raced into a 7–0 lead.
‘I looked up and the screws were glaring at me. I’d better slow down.
‘I knew if I won another point and beat him I’d be in serious trouble. So I hit shots long, into the net, wide, anywhere but in.
Everyone could see I was throwing the game. When Smith won, he held up his arms and cheered.
“Well done, lad. You pushed me all the way there,” he said, lifting me off my feet. He buried my head in his giant folds of fat and fondled my buttocks. I was gasping for air.
‘Afterwards I lay on my bed for hours, staring at the ceiling and wondering what had just happened. What on earth was a person like him doing in a place like this?'
by semper occultus » Mon Mar 30, 2015 3:30 am 
