Paedophile ring

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Victim claims he was abused by VIP paedophile ring

Published April 7, 2015 by JS2

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A child sex abuse victim has claimed he was molested by “very powerful people” at several locations connected to an alleged VIP paedophile ring.

Richard Kerr, who was a victim of abuse at Kincora Boys’ Home in Belfast, has claimed he was also attacked at the Dolphin Square luxury apartment complex and Elm Guest House, both located in London.

It is thought to be the first time that the three places have been linked in relation to claims of historical sex abuse by influential Westminster figures.

Mr Kerr was abused at Kincora in the 1970s and alleges he and two other boys were hand-picked to be trafficked to London in 1977 and sexually abused by men.

Both of the other men have since taken their own lives, Mr Kerr told Channel 4 News.

Insisting that the VIP paedophile ring did exist, he claims to have been abused in London by “men who had control and power over others”, some of whom he believes were politicians.

Dolphin Square in Pimlico, London, is said to have been used by an alleged VIP paedophile ring.

Dolphin Square in Pimlico, London, is said to have been used by an alleged VIP paedophile ring
Dolphin Square in Pimlico, London, is said to have been used by an alleged VIP paedophile ring Credit: Lewis Whyld/PA Wire

His most violent experience allegedly took place at the Elm Guest House in Barnes, south London, where he claims to have been tied up with his hands behind his back while men took photographs.

When the guest house was raided by police in 1981 it was reported that officers had found whips, chains and ropes.

Mr Kerr also claimed to have been taken to Dolphin Square, a block of apartments near Parliament which is now at the centre of allegations of child abuse and murders being investigated by Scotland Yard.

Asked if he would name his abusers, Mr Kerr said:

I’m still in some fear. Even though I’m willing to take the courage.

I need to know that I can have faith in our government but right now, when they’re not willing to bring Kincora into Westminster, the message that sends to me is that there’s some kind of cover-up and there has been.

– RICHARD KERR

Last July, Home Secretary Theresa May announced a major public panel inquiry into whether paedophiles were sheltered in government, the NHS, police, the courts and the BBC.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission said earlier this month it is investigating 17 allegations of a police cover-up in relation to a VIP child sex abuse ring ranging from the 1970s to 2000s.

The full interview with Mr Kerr will be shown on Channel 4 News at 7pm.

ITV news

Another Dark Chapter for London’s Most Scandalous Address

Published December 22, 2014 by JS2

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Newly resurfaced abuse and murder allegations put Dolphin Square, a hulking and slightly nefarious presence for nearly 70 years, at the center of a possible child sex ring.

There’s a bleak certainty in British public life that whenever the words “sex scandal,” “M.P.s,” “establishment,” and “cover-up” appear in pretty much any order, the name of a vast central London apartment block, Dolphin Square, follows soon afterwards. And so it is with what London’s Metropolitan police are calling “credible” allegations that Conservative Members of Parliament belonged to a pedophile ring that operated there between 1975 and 1984 and was responsible for the murder of at least one young boy.

The allegations have been circulating for three decades, but they surfaced with renewed vigor in recent months, following the discovery that the late BBC television presenter Jimmy Savile and several other British “TV personalities,” all now in jail, were serial sexual abusers. The Metropolitan police are taking seriously the evidence from an anonymous witness, known as “Nick,” who says he was abused from age seven to 16. He implicates a Conservative M.P. and a cabinet minister in the murder, and now the police have appealed for help from anyone who lived or worked in Dolphin Square during the 70s and 80s.

The story is nightmarish, with hints of terrible depravity. The police may get somewhere after all these years, but, like the square itself, the affair seems impenetrable. There are the usual rumors of an establishment cover-up—this is Britain, after all—of destroyed dossiers, missing government files, and aborted investigations. The identities of the supposed perpetrators, still less the victims, are not known, though names of public figures are murmured and there now seems to be a genuine attempt to connect the murdered boys with the names of the missing. Only one of the alleged abusers has been named: the late Sir Peter Hayman, a diplomat and former director of MI6 who was named by M.P. Geoffrey Dickens, during his lifetime, as a subscriber to the Pedophile Information Exchange, and investigated for possessing images of child abuse.

It’s easy to imagine the terror of a child smuggled into the square at the dead of night, knowing he was going to be abused by powerful men—an experience “Nick” says he endured on eight or nine occasions. Huge and inscrutable, Dolphin Square is unlike any other building in London. It is a prize example of what Fred F. French, the American developer who conceived the block, called “dense urban suburbia,” a phrase he used to describe the Tudor City and Knickerbocker Village complexes he built in New York. It is a world of its own, with an atmosphere that lies somewhere between menacing and melancholy—a place as distinct, in its own way, as the Overlook Hotel in The Shining or the Bramford Building in Rosemary’s Baby. Dolphin Square is such an attractive name, yet the vibes are anything but.

At the 1997 inquest into the death—from acute alcoholic poisoning—of the Conservative M.P. Iain Mills, it was said that no one noticed his absence for two days. People spoke of the solitary and reclusive lives of residents, of the silent corridors that have no daylight: of the hush. The tabloid headlines deploy the words “V.I.P.” and “luxury” in the descriptions of the square, but the truth is that life can be rather grim in  some of the cabin-size apartments that I saw advertised in the lobby for between $480 and $1,170 a week.

A product of 1930s authoritarian gigantism—which may explain why the leader of the Britain’s Black shirts, Sir Oswald Mosley, made his home there before being interned during the war—Dolphin Square is built on the scale of an ocean liner. An illustration from the 1936 brochure shows residents dressed in evening wear looking down on the Thames from a balcony, as if their ship had just docked in a foreign port.

The British company Costain, which completed French’s plan, successfully marketed the square to the working members of the Establishment as a convenient and fashionable pied a terre, and today many of the 1,229 rented apartments are still leased to a transient population of politicians and civil servants. But writers (Angus Wilson), actors (Peter Finch, Jill Bennett), royalty (Princess Anne), prostitutes, and spies have also taken advantage of the square’s gift of anonymity. It is close to Parliament and Whitehall, as well as to MI5 and MI6, which are just a few minutes’ walk away, although that would not necessarily have been an advantage to the late Labour M.P. Raymond Fletcher, who was busy passing secrets to the Russians while a resident.

In his 1963 Cold War classic, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John le Carré described his hero Alec Leamas’s meeting with a Communist agent called Ashe. “Ashe had a flat in Dolphin Square. It was just what Leamas had expected—small and anonymous with a few hastily assembled curios from Germany.” This was not Ashe’s home, of course—merely a discreet venue for a rendezvous.

Anonymity and transience are sometimes precursors of transgression. The building is home to many single men, and men whose wives are safely tucked up in bed in their constituency homes. The place lends itself to infidelity and experiment. In 1971, it emerged that, in addition to the swimming pool, restaurant, bars, and shopping arcade, Dolphin Square possessed its own de facto sadomasochistic, run by a woman named Sybil Benson, who on a good week claimed to make the then incredible sum of £1,260, even though she limited herself to six clients a day. In the late 80s, another Conservative M.P., Sir Anthony Meyer, was revealed to enjoy some light punishment, received and administered by a model and singer named Simone Washington, a story that suggested the dream headline—at any rate for the Sunday Mirror—“I bathed my spanking M.P. in champagne.”

In the early 60s, the place became notorious during the two overlapping scandals involving the War Minister John Profumo and a gay civil servant at the Admiralty named John Vassal, who after living at the square for four years was arrested in 1962 for passing secrets to the Russians. Profumo did little more than deny his affair with a young woman named Christine Keeler, who may or may not have been simultaneously knocking off the Soviet naval attaché Yevgney Ivanov. She lived in the Dolphin Square apartment rented by an equally spirited young woman named Mandy Rice Davies, who was connected to a shady London landlord named Peter Rachman.

I got to know Mandy in the 70s, and it is sad to learn that a few hours after I was walking around Dolphin Square, thinking about her and how she loathed the place and was convinced that it had some kind of bad karma, she died of cancer last week, aged 70. She was really intelligent and the best possible company, being both funny and curious—qualities that allowed her to survive Profumo and her short stay in Dolphin Square.

The entanglements of the two scandals have provided decades of pleasure to the prurient British, but actually the affair she got caught up in amounted to just a little illicit sex, a little lying, and a country house or two. It all seems rather harmless compared to the allegations of murder. What was amusingly scandalous, or simply sad, about Dolphin Square has been replaced by something much darker and more terrifying. No one believed the enormous catalogue of Jimmy Savile’s abuse until after his death, when a pileup of evidence banished all hopes of denial, so it now seems at least possible that Nick’s appalling story may also be proved true.

Henry Porter

Was Bulic Forsythe killed to protect paedophile ring ‘linked to future minister in Tony Blair’s government?’

Published November 9, 2014 by JS2

The council official told a new witness, tracked down in a Mirror investigation, that he suspected vulnerable youngsters were being assaulted by an organised gang

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Bulic and his daughter Kiddist

Cold case detectives are probing the murder of a council official who vowed to expose a paedophile ring allegedly linked to a future minister in Tony Blair’s government.

The daughter of Bulic Forsythe believes her father may have beenkilled because he uncovered a children’s home vice ring involving powerful figures.

Bulic told a new witness, tracked down in a Mirror investigation, that he suspected vulnerable youngsters were being assaulted by an organised gang at one home said to have been visited by the Labour politician.

But days later Bulic, 42, was beaten to death in his flat and the case has remained unsolved for 21 years.

Documents reveal detective Clive Driscoll advised the investigation should be reopened when he found potential links to his 1998 children’s homes probe in Lambeth, South London.

But Mr Driscoll was removed from the case for naming the Blair minister as a suspect and Bulic’s murder file has not been touched for 14 years.

Scotland Yard’s Serious Crime Review Group are finally looking at it afresh after the Daily Mirror tracked down the daughter he never met.

Kiddist Forsythe – born three months after Bulic’s murder and 21 next week – said: “Police must examine whether my dad was killed because of what he knew about child sex abuse in Lambeth and if it was linked to people in power.

“We know that he told more than one person he was going to expose wrongdoing in the borough shortly before he was murdered and that his killer or killers remain free.”

Firefighters burst into Bulic’s blazing flat early on Friday, February 6, 1993, and found his blood-soaked body.

The social services manager’s skull had been fractured by a heavy weapon.

Bulic Forsythe
Justice: Bulic Forsythe’s wife Dawn and daughter Kiddist

In the months before his murder, Bulic had told colleagues at Lambeth Council he was on the verge of exposing child sex abuse and corruption.

A new witness told detectives for the first time last year that a terrified Bulic confided in her shortly before his death.

Speaking after she was tracked down by the Mirror, the former Lambeth worker said: “Bulic said, ‘With what I’m about to tell you I’m taking a big risk.

“What if I was to say that council buildings are being used for child sexual abuse on a regular basis’.”

The witness added: “Bulic came to me a second time because South Vale [youth assessment centre in West Norwood] had closed and he asked me who had the keys.

“He said, ‘People are saying they are using it to make films’. He was very frightened about something and then he was murdered.”

Bulic died at the time of an internal Lambeth council probe into alleged sexual abuse in the housing department where he had worked.

The resulting report, obtained by the Mirror, details allegations of rape, sexual assault and the swapping of child abuse videos and violent porn within the council. It implicated senior Lambeth officers as well as police and local politicians.

The report, signed by chair of the panel Eithne Harris, states: “The murder of Bulic Forsythe was seen by some witnesses as a possible outcome for anyone who strayed too far in their investigation or who asked too many questions.”

Published internally in December 1993, it adds: “The panel heard evidence about BF [Bulic Forsythe] while he was working in Social Services, speaking to a colleague and telling her he was going to ‘spill the beans’.

“Three days later he was killed.”

This is not the witness traced by the Mirror.

Daily Mirror front page
Investigation: A Daily Mirror front page

It states: “BF had allegedly expressed his fear of [boss initials] to another witness who visited him.

“He appeared very frightened to the witness. The witness at this point appeared fearful”

The report describes the atmosphere in the department as “one of intense fear”.

Though the panel found no “direct link” between his death and work it said its evidence should be handed to police.

Bulic was last seen alive at 8.45pm on Wednesday, February 4, 1993.

A BBC Crimewatch broadcast five months later revealed that at 10am on the Thursday three official looking men were seen by a neighbour carrying files away from his flat in Clapham, South London.

Two more men were seen in a car behind the property at 2pm. His bedroom was torched at 1am on Friday and the oven turned on.

Kiddist’s mum and Bulic’s widow, Dawn, 60, said: “I think someone wanted to shut him up.”

Paedophiles abused children in Lambeth’s homes for decades.

A former social services manager told Mr Driscoll in 1998 that she saw the future Blair minister making evening visits to the Angell Road children’s home in Brixton in the early 80s.

She claimed she learnt he had visited South Vale.

Former manager of ‘VIP paedophile ring HQ’ Elm Guest House arrested

Published July 14, 2013 by JS2

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Haroon Kasir was arrested on suspicion of the possession of indecent images of children

The former manager of a guest house at the centre of an alleged VIP paedophile ring has been arrested.

Haroon “Harry” Kasir, 69, was held in west London on Tuesday on suspicion of the possession of indecent images of children.

He has been bailed until September.

Kasir is a former manager of the Elm Guest House in Barnes, south-west London.

A paedophile ring with high-powered establishment links was said to operate there in the 1980s.

The arrest was the third carried out by Metropolitan Police detectives under Operation Fernbridge.

John Stingemore, 70, was arrested at his home in East Sussex earlier this year.

He ran Grafton Close, the Richmond Council ­children’s home from where it is alleged that boys in care were taken to Elm Guest House.

The third man arrested, Roman Catholic priest Father Tony McSweeney, 66, was held at his home in Norfolk.

Stingemore and McSweeney are also ­currently on bail.

by keir Mudie

 

Charles Napier arrest: Half-brother of Tory MP John Whittingdale questioned over ‘sexual assault’ by police probing alleged VIP paedophile ring

Published June 26, 2013 by JS2

Charles Napier has been arrested

In a Sunday People picture exclusive, the arrest was made in connection with claims made by campaigning MP Tom Watson in the House of Commons last year

The half-brother of senior Tory MP John Whittingdale was arrested today on suspicion of sexual assault by police probing an alleged VIP paedophile ring.

Charles Napier, 65, from Sherborne, Dorset, was arrested at the home he shares with his elderly mother, at around 8.30am in connection with the historical allegation of sexual abuse.

Four officers from the Met entered the house and emerged 40 minutes later with Mr Napier.

Two detectives escorted Mr Napier – wearing a baggy blue sweater and dark trousers – into an unmarked car.

He was taken to a local police station for questioning.

Mr Whittingdale, the chairman of the Media, Culture and Sport committee, said: “I understand from my mother that my half-brother has been arrested but I have no more details about it.”

The arrest was made in connection with the Met’s Operation Fairbank which was set up to investigate claims made by campaigning MP Tom Watson in the House of Commons last year.

Operation Fairbank – set up to investigate historical allegations of child abuse – was set up to investigate the claims.

This arrest is part of a new strand of Operation Fairbank entitled Operation Cayacos, which has now reached the criminal threshold.

Mr Watson said: “I am extremely grateful for the dedicated team officers at the Met who are investigating allegations regarding child abuse.

“I am sure people will appreciate that we should let them continue with their forensic and comprehensive investigations in this area.”

A Scotland Yard spokesman said; “We can confirm officers from Operation Fairbank have this morning, Wednesday 26 June, arrested a

65-year-old man in connection with a historical allegation of sexual assault.

“The man was arrested at an address in Dorset and has been taken into custody locally.”

the Mirror online

 

Paedophile ring case appalling:PM

Published May 16, 2013 by JS2

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David Cameron has described the Oxfordshire paedophile ring case as “absolutely appalling” and “shocking”.

 

The Prime Minister, whose constituency is in the county, said police, social services and the council would have to answer “searching questions”.

“There’s no doubt that first of all it’s good that those who did wrong have been tried and found guilty and are going to be properly punished,” Mr Cameron told reporters on his trip to the US.

“That is step one. But step two is obviously going to be the authorities – the police, social services, county council – everyone’s going to have to ask some very searching questions about how this was allowed to continue for so long, and I know they are already doing that.

“For the Government as a whole, I think if you look at this we’ve got obviously a whole range of investigations going on – investigations into what happened in Rochdale, there’ll be investigations into what happened in Oxfordshire, the Savile inquiry, and you’ve got a number of inquiries in different hospitals and care homes.

“I think it’s important that the Government draws together all the lessons of these different inquiries and Theresa May and Michael Gove are doing just that and there’ll be a cross-cutting piece of Government work to make sure we learn the lessons.”

Seven men were found guilty at the Old Bailey of a catalogue of offences including conspiracy to rape, child prostitution and trafficking over an eight-year period in the university city of Oxford.

Police and social workers have apologised to their victims for failing to rescue the vulnerable schoolgirls who were plucked from the streets and care homes to be drugged, raped and sold into prostitution.

Two sets of brothers – Akhtar Dogar, 32, and Anjum Dogar, 31, and Mohammed Karrar, 38, and Bassam Karrar, 33 – were convicted along with Kamar Jamil, 27, Assad Hussain, 32, and Zeeshan Ahmed, 27.

The youngest victim, known as Girl C to protect her anonymity, said her adoptive mother begged social services for help in 2004 but agencies just “passed the parcel between them”.

Two years later the council agreed to put her in a temporary care home, but by then she had fallen under the control of the gang, who plied her with crack cocaine.

In an interview with The Guardian, Girl C said: “The council put out a press release claiming they had offered wraparound care to all the girls and their families, but the first we heard from them in five years was a letter on April 13 from Jim Leivers (director for children, education and families at the council), where he says he’s been ‘closely involved in providing support’ to me.

“That’s a complete lie. My family have had no support or offers of help at all from Oxfordshire. Nothing. Not at any point. Not even a phone call. The last contact we had with the council was five whole years ago, when my mum was begging them to help her stop me go off the rails. They ignored her then and they’ve ignored us since.”

Girl C told police she was attacked by Bassam Karrar in a guest house in Oxford in November 2006 while he was said to be high on cocaine.

Officers found the girl in the basement “extremely distressed, crying and shaking”.

She told police she had been held against her will, drugged, raped and repeatedly smacked in the face.

The 14-year-old was taken to a police station where photographs were taken of her injuries.

But she later dropped her complaint after pleas from another girl who was seeing Karrar at the time.

A spokesman for the council told The Guardian: “We are sorry the abuse was not stopped sooner. One of the elements of the serious case review will be an investigation of the support offered to the girls by agencies including social services.

“Our offer of a meeting with (Girl C) and her family was very sincere and similar offers to the other girls have been accepted. We want to do everything we can to help all the girls rebuild their lives and our door is open to (Girl C) and her family.”

Fighting broke out in the dock at the Old Bailey after two other defendants – Mohammed Hussain, 25, and a man who cannot be named for legal reasons – were cleared. Zeeshan Ahmed struck out at Mohammed Hussain before being bundled out of the dock by officers.

The admissions of failure from the authorities came as it became apparent that police missed several chances to catch gang members before they were finally arrested.

Thames Valley Police Chief Constable Sara Thornton said she was sorry the paedophile ring had not been brought to justice sooner.

Asked if she had considered offering her resignation she said: ”I think the focus for me is on driving improvements into the future.”

She told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: ”I’m sorry that it took so long. It’s very difficult to get convictions in these sorts of cases.

”It is only because of the bravery of six young women that we got convictions at court yesterday. I thank each one of those individually.”

She said the cases were originally looked at individually and added: ”I don’t think we understood the extent that the abuse was systematic and it was organised. It was only when we sat down, pooled our information with that of the social workers, that we began to piece together the picture which explained what was happening in terms of this criminal network in Oxford.”

Some victims relived their ordeals during the four-month trial, describing how they were groomed, beaten, betrayed and sold into prostitution around the country.

Joanna Simons, the council’s chief executive, said: ”We are incredibly sorry we were not able to stop it any sooner.

”We were up against a gang of devious criminals. The girls thought they were their friends.

”I would like to pay tribute to the courage of the girls in giving evidence. They have been so brave.

”We are so sorry we weren’t able to stop it before. We did not know the nature of what was happening – the devious nature of such depravity. We did not know we were dealing with a gang.”

 

Chichester Observer

Paedophile ring conviction raises racial tensions in Britain

Published May 15, 2013 by JS2

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Police missed chances to stop paedophile ring’s ‘truly appalling’ exploitation of young girls

Seven men have been convicted of sexually abusing underage girls, including one aged 11, by plying them with alcohol and drugs then forcing them into sex acts, in a case that escalated racial tensions in parts of Britain.

The guilty verdict followed five months of testimony indicating the paedophile ring exploited girls between 2004 and 2012 in the Oxford area, northwest of London. Charges include rape, trafficking and child prostitution.

 

 

Chief prosecutor Baljit Ubhey said the girls were subjected to “truly appalling” abuse.

Prosecutors said seven of the men on trial were of Pakistani descent and two had family roots in North Africa. Two were cleared. Other recent cases, including one in Rochdale that involved a similar sex ring, have also involved Pakistani men convicted of abusing young white girls, sparking ethnic tensions and protests.

This case was slightly different in that it involved many instances of child prostitution. The girls were taken to various parts of Britain and forced to have sex with men who paid the convicted men for access to the girls. But, as in the Rochdale case, it appeared the police missed opportunities to stop the cycle of abuse.

Most of the victims – who cannot be named for legal reasons – gave evidence from behind a curtain at the five-month trial, describing forced encounters, physical abuse and intimidation.

One described how she was even threatened with arrest for wasting police time when she tried to report the abuse.

Most of the girls were from troubled families and were living in “care homes” where their frequent absences and substance related problems were ignored.

Oxford County Council chief executive Joanna Simons said she was “incredibly sorry” authorities were not able to stop the abuse earlier.